33
Contemporary Intuitionism
In the domain of philosophy and psychology, the tendencies corresponding to the second phase of anti-traditional action are naturally marked by the importance assigned to the ‘subconscious’ in all its forms, in other words to the most inferior psychic elements of the human being, something particularly apparent so far as philosophy properly so called is concerned in the theories of William James as well as in the ‘intuitionism’ of Bergson. The work of Bergson has been considered in an earlier chapter, in relation to the justifiable criticisms of rationalism and its consequences formulated therein, though never very clearly and often in equivocal terms; but the characteristic feature of what may be called (if the term be admissible) the ‘positive’ part of his philosophy is that, instead of seeking above reason for something that might remedy its insufficiencies, he takes the opposite course and seeks beneath it; thus, instead of turning toward true intellectual intuition, of which he is as completely ignorant as are the rationalists, he appeals to an imagined ‘intuition’ of an exclusively sensitive and ‘vital’ order, and in the very confused notions that emerge the intuition of the senses properly so called is mingled with the most obscure forces of instinct and sentiment. So it is not as a result of a more or less ‘fortuitous’ encounter that Bergson’s ‘intuitionism’ has manifest affinities, particularly marked in what may be called its ‘final state’ (and this applies equally to the philosophy of William James), with ‘neo-spiritualism’, but it is as a result of the fact that both are expressions of the same tendencies: the attitude of the one in relation to rationalism is more or less parallel to that of the other in relation to materialism, the one leaning toward the ‘sub-rational’ just as the other leans toward the ‘sub-corporeal’ (doubtless no less unconsciously), so that the direction followed in both cases is undoubtedly toward the ‘infra-human’.
This is not the place for a detailed examination of these theories, but attention must at least be called to certain features closely connected with the subject of this book. The first is their ‘evolutionism’, which remains unbroken and is carried to an extreme, for all reality is placed exclusively within ‘becoming’, involving the formal denial of all immutable principle, and consequently of all metaphysics; hence their ‘fleeting’ and inconsistent quality, which really affords, in contrast with the rationalist and materialist ‘solidification’, something like a prefiguration of the dissolution of all things in the final chaos. A significant example is found in Bergson’s view of religion, which is set out appropriately enough in a work of his exemplifying the ‘final state’ mentioned above.[133] Not that there is really anything new in that work, for the origins of the thesis maintained are in fact very simple: in this field all modern theories have as a common feature the desire to bring religion down to a purely human level, which amounts to denying it, consciously or otherwise, since it really represents a refusal to take account of what is its very essence; and Bergson’s conception does not differ from the others in that respect.
These theories of religion, taken as a whole, can be grouped into two main types: one is ‘psychological’ and claims to explain religion by the nature of the human individual, and the other is ‘sociological’ and tries to see in religion a fact of an exclusively social kind, the product of a sort of ‘collective consciousness’ imagined as dominating individuals and imposing itself on them. Bergson’s originality consists only in having tried to combine these two sorts of explanation, and he does so in rather a curious way: instead of considering them as more or less mutually exclusive, as do most of the partisans of one or the other, he accepts both explanations, but relates them to two different things, each called by the same name of ‘religion’, the ‘two sources’ of religion postulated by him really amounting to that and nothing more.[134] For him therefore there are two sorts of religion, one ‘static’ and the other ‘dynamic’, alternatively and somewhat oddly called by him ‘closed religion’ and ‘open religion’; the first is social in its nature and the second psychological; and naturally his preference is for the second, which he regards as the superior form of religion — we say ‘naturally’ because it is very evident that it could not be otherwise in a ‘philosophy of becoming’ such as his, since from that point of view whatever does not change does not correspond to anything real, and even prevents man from grasping the real such as it is imagined to be. But someone will say that a philosophy of this kind, since it admits of no ‘eternal truths’,[135] must logically refuse all value not only to metaphysics but also to religion; and that is exactly what happens, for religion in the true sense of the word is just what Bergson calls ‘static religion’, in which he chooses to see nothing but a wholly imaginary ‘story-telling’; as for his ‘dynamic religion’, the truth is that it is not religion at all.
His so-called ‘dynamic religion’ in fact contains none of the characteristic elements that go to make up the definition of religion: there are no dogmas, since they are immutable or, as Bergson says, ‘fixed’; no more, of course, are there any rites, for the same reason and because of their social character, dogmas and rites necessarily being left to ‘static religion’; and as for morality, Bergson starts by setting it aside as something quite outside religion as he understands it. So there is nothing left, or at least nothing is left but a vague ‘religiosity’, a sort of confused aspiration toward an ‘ideal’ of some description, rather near to the aspirations of modernists and liberal Protestants, and reminiscent in many respects of the ‘religious experience’ of William James, for all these things are obviously very closely connected. This ‘religiosity’ is taken by Bergson to be a superior kind of religion, for he thinks, like all those who follow the same tendencies, that he is ‘sublimating’ religion, whereas all he is doing is to empty it of all positive content, since there is nothing in religion compatible with his conceptions. Such notions are no doubt all that can be extracted from a psychological theory, for experience has failed to show that any such theory can get beyond ‘religious feeling’ — and that, once more, is not religion. In Bergson’s eyes ‘dynamic religion’ finds its highest expression in ‘mysticism’, which however he does not understand and sees on its worst side, for he only praises it for whatever in it is ‘individual’, that is to say, vague, inconsistent, and in a sense ‘anarchic’; and the best examples of this kind of mysticism, though he does not quote them, could be found in certain teachings of occultist and Theosophist inspiration. What really pleases him about the mystics, it must be stated categorically, is their tendency to ‘divagation’ in the etymological sense of the word, which they show only too readily when left to themselves. As for that which is the very foundation of true mysticism, leaving aside its more or less abnormal or ‘eccentric’ deviations (which may or may not strike one’s fancy), its attachment to a ‘static religion’ he evidently regards as negligible; nevertheless one feels that there is something here that worries him, for his explanations concerning it are somewhat embarrassed; but a fuller examination of this question would lead too far away from what for present purposes are its essentials.
134
So far as morality is concerned, it is not of special interest here, but the explanation of it proposed by Bergson is of course parallel to his explanation of religion.
135
It is worthy of note that Bergson seems to avoid the use of the word ‘truth’, and that he almost always uses instead the word ‘reality’, a word that in his view signifies that which undergoes continual change.