René Guénon - The Reign of Quantity and The Signs of the Times

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] The Two Sources of Morality and Religion . 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] 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. 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] 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. 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.

To return to ‘static religion’: so far as its supposed origins are concerned, it will be seen that Bergson trustfully accepts all the tales of the all too well known ‘sociological school’, including those that are most worthy of suspicion: ‘magic’, ‘totemism’, ‘taboo’, ‘mana’, ‘animal worship’, ‘spirit worship’, and ‘primitive mentality’, nothing being missing of the conventional jargon or of the accustomed trivialities, if such expressions may be allowed (as indeed they must be when discussing matters so grotesque in character). The only thing for which he is perhaps really responsible is the place he assigns to a so-called ‘fable-making function’, which seems to be much more fabulous than that which it seeks to explain: but he had to invent some sort of theory to allow of the comprehensive denial of the existence of any real foundation of those things that are commonly treated as ‘superstitions’, a ‘civilized’ philosophy, and more than that, a ‘twentieth-century’ philosophy, evidently considering that any other attitude would be unworthy of itself. In all this there is only one point of present interest, that concerning ‘magic’; magic is a great resource for certain theorists, who clearly have no idea of what it really is, but who try to find in it the origin both of religion and of science. Bergson’s position is not precisely that: he seeks for a ‘psychological origin’ in magic, and turns it into ‘the exteriorization of a desire that fills the heart,’ and he makes out that ‘if one reconstitutes by an effort of introspection the natural reaction of man to his perception of things, one finds that magic and religion are connected, and that there is nothing in common between magic and science.’ It is true that later on he wavers: if one adopts a certain point of view, ‘magic evidently forms part of religion,’ but from another point of view ‘religion is opposed to magic’; he is clearer when he asserts that ‘magic is the opposite of science’ and that ‘far from preparing for the coming of science, as has been supposed, magic has been the great obstacle against which methodical learning has had to contend.’ All that is almost exactly the reverse of the truth, for magic has absolutely nothing to do with religion, and, while admittedly not the origin of all the sciences, it is simply a single science among the others; but Bergson is no doubt quite convinced that no sciences can exist other than those enumerated in modern ‘classifications’, established from the most narrowly profane point of view imaginable. Speaking of ‘magical operations’ with the imperturbable self-assurance of one who has never seen any, [136] It is most regrettable that Bergson was on bad terms with his sister, Mrs S. S. L. MacGregor Mathers (alias ‘Soror Vestigia Nulla Retrorsum’) who might have been able to give him a little instruction in such matters. [S. S. L MacGregor Mathers, author of The Kabbalah Unveiled , was a leading figure in various occult organizations in the early twentieth century, primarily in England, and is known especially for his role in the founding of The Order of the Golden Dawn, whence the ‘initiatic’ name given for his wife derives. Mrs Mathers was herself very active in all these matters. For a time the Order of the Golden Dawn attracted a number of figures who became well-known in later years, including William Butler Yeats (on whom both of the Mathers exerted a strong influence for a time) and Arthur Edward Waite. Ed.] he writes this remarkable sentence: ‘If primitive intelligence had begun its dealings with such matters by conceiving principles, it would soon have had to give way to experience, which would have demonstrated their falsity.’ One can admire the intrepidity of this philosopher, shut into his private room, and well protected against the attacks of certain influences that undoubtedly would not hesitate to take advantage of him as an auxiliary no less valuable than unwitting, when he denies a priori everything that does not fit into the framework of his theories. How can he think that men were stupid enough to have repeated indefinitely, even without ‘principles’, ‘operations’ that were never successful, and what would he say if it should be found, on the contrary, that experience ‘demonstrates the falsity’ of his own assertions? Obviously he does not even imagine the possibility of anything of that kind; such is the strength of the preconceived ideas in him and in those like him that they do not doubt for a single instant that the world is strictly confined within the measure of their conceptions (this in fact being what allows them to construct ‘systems’); and how can a philosopher be expected to understand that he ought to refrain, just like an ordinary mortal, from talking of things he knows nothing about?