Henri Bergson Quotes

The process by which philosophy seems to assimilate the results of positive science, like the operation in the course of which a philosophy appears to re-assemble in itself the fragments of earlier philosophies, is not a synthesis but an analysis. Science is the auxiliary of action. And action aims at a result. The scientific intelligence asks itself therefore what will have to be done in order that a certain desired result be attained, or more generally, what conditions should obtain in order that a certain phenomenon take place. It goes from an arrangement of things to a rearrangement, from a simultaneity to a simultaneity. Of necessity it neglects what happens in the interval; or if it does concern itself with it, it is in order to consider other arrangements in it, still more simultaneities. With methods meant to seize the ready-made, it cannot in general enter into what is being done, it cannot follow the moving reality, adopt the becoming which is the life of things. This last task belongs to philosophy.

Men do not sufficiently realise that their future is in their own hands. Theirs is the task of determining first of all whether they want to go on living or not. Theirs is the responsibility, then, for deciding if they want merely to live, or intend to make just the extra effort required for fulfilling, even on their refractory planet, the essential function of the universe, which is a machine for the making of gods (la fonction essentielle de l'universe, qui est une machine à faire des dieux).

Social thought is unable not to keep its original structure.

El presente sólo se forma del pasado, y lo que se encuentra en el efecto estaba ya en la causa.

De diez errores políticos, nueve consisten simplemente en creer todavía verdadero lo que ha cesado de serlo.

Either there is no philosophy possible, and all knowledge of things is a practical knowledge aimed at the profit to be drawn from them, or else philosophy consists in placing oneself within the object itself by an effort of intuition.

Noi facem deosebirea dintre o capră şi o oaie; dar oare putem distinge o capră de o altă capră sau o oaie de o altă oaie?

The intuition we refer to then bears above all upon internal duration. It grasps a succession which is not juxtaposition, a growth from within, the uninterrupted prolongation of the past into a present which is already blending into the future. It is the direct vision of the mind by the mind, — nothing intervening, no refraction through the prism, one of whose facets is space and another, language. Instead of states contiguous to states, which become words in juxtaposition to words, we have here the indivisible and therefore substantial continuity of the flow of the inner life. Intuition, then, signifies first of all consciousness, but immediate consciousness, a vision which is scarcely distinguishable from the object seen, a knowledge which is contact and even coincidence. —

Lidský intelekt, tak, jak si jej my představujeme, není nikterak onen, který nám líčil Platón v alegorii o jeskyni. Není právě tak jeho úlohou, aby pozoroval jak míjejí prázdné stíny, jako aby zřel, ohlížeje se za sebe, hvězdu zrak oslňující. Má dělati něco jiného. Zapřaženi jako voli oráčovi do těžké práce, cítíme hru svých svalů a kloubů, tíhu pluhu a odpor půdy: jednati a věděti o sobě, že jednáme, vstupovati ve styk se skutečností a dokonce ji žíti, avšak jen v mezích jejího významu pro dílo, které se dokonává, a pro brázdu, která se táhne, takový jest úkol lidského intelektu. A přece koupeme se v blahodárném fluidu, z něhož čerpáme samu sílu k práci a životu. Z tohoto oceánu života, do něhož jsme ponořeni, vdechujeme ustavičně něco a cítíme, že naše bytost, nebo alespoň intelekt, který ji vede, vytvořil se tu jakýmsi místním ztužením. Filosofie může být jen úsilím, jak znovu rozplynouti se v celku. A intelekt, resorbuje-li se ve svém principu, prožije zas naruby svou vlastní genesi. Avšak takový podnik nebude již moci dovršiti se na ráz; bude nutně hromadný a postupný. Bude záležeti na výměně dojmů, které opravujíce se vzájemně a též na sebe se kladouce, posléze rozšíří v nás lidství a dosáhnou toho, že půjde nad sebe samo.

As we have said, when one wishes to prepare a glass of sugared water one is obliged to wait until the sugar melts. This necessity for waiting is the significant fact. It shows that if one can cut out from the universe the systems for which time is only an abstraction, a relation, a number, the universe itself becomes something different. If we could grasp it in its entirety, inorganic but interwoven with organic beings, we should see it ceaselessly taking on forms as new, as original, as unforeseeable as our states of consciousness.

Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.

I would say act like a man of thought and think like a man of action.

Si régulière que soit une physionomie, si harmonieuse qu'on en suppose les lignes, si souples les mouvements, jamais l'équilibre n'en est absolument parfait. On y démêlera toujours l'indication d'une grimace possible, enfin une déformation préférée où se contourneraient plutôt la nature. L'art du caricaturiste est de saisir ce mouvement parfois imperceptible, et de le rendre visible à tous les yeux en l'agrandissant. Il fait grimacer ses modèles comme ils grimaceraient eux-mêmes s'ils allaient jusqu'au bout de leur grimace. Il devine, sous les harmonies superficielles de la forme, les révoltes profondes de la matière. Il réalise des disproportions et des déformations qui ont dû exister dans la nature à l'état de velléité, mais qui n'ont pu aboutir, refoulées par une force meilleure.

Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science. What the mystic finds waiting for him, then, is a humanity which has been prepared to listen to his message by other mystics invisible and present in the religion which is actually taught. Indeed his mysticism itself is imbued with this religion, for such was its starting point. His theology will generally conform to that of the theologians. His intelligence and his imagination will use the teachings of the theologians to express in words what he experiences, and in material images what he sees spiritually. And this he can do easily, since theology has tapped that very current whose source is the mystical. Thus his mysticism is served by religion, against the day when religion becomes enriched by his mysticism. This explains the primary mission which he feels to be entrusted to him, that of an intensifier of religious faith.

The stating and solving of the problem are here very close to being equivalent; the truly great problems are set forth only when they are solved. But many little problems are in the same position. I open an elementary treatise on philosophy. One of the first chapters deals with pleasure and pain. There the student is asked a question such as this: “Is pleasure happiness, or not?” But first one must know if pleasure and happiness are genera corresponding to a natural division of things into sections. Strictly speaking the phrase could signify simply: “Given the ordinary meaning of the terms pleasure and happiness should one say that happiness consists in a succession of pleasures?” It is then a question of vocabulary that is being raised; it can be solved only by finding out how the words “pleasure” and “happiness” have been used by the writers who have best handled the language. One will moreover have done a useful piece of work; one will have more accurately defined two ordinary terms, that is, two social habitudes. But if one claims to be doing more, to be grasping realities and not to be re-examining conventions, why should one expect terms, which are perhaps artificial (whether they are or not is not yet known since the object has not been studied), to state a problem which concerns the very nature of things?