Editing Henri Bergson (section)

==Biography==

=== Overview ===

Bergson lived the quiet life of a French professor, marked by the publication of his four principal works:

# in 1889, ''[[Time and Free Will]]'' (''Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience'')
# in 1896, ''[[Matter and Memory]]'' (''Matière et mémoire'')
# in 1907, ''[[Creative Evolution (book)|Creative Evolution]]'' (''L'Évolution créatrice'')
# in 1932, ''The Two Sources of Morality and Religion'' (''Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion'')

In 1900, the [[Collège de France]] appointed Bergson Chair of Greek and Roman Philosophy, which he remained until 1904. He then replaced [[Gabriel Tarde]] as the Chair of Modern Philosophy until 1920. The public attended his open courses in large numbers.<ref>{{cite web |url= https://antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/matter-and-memory.pdf|title=Matter and memory|website=antilogicalism.com|access-date=9 April 2023|date=July 2017}}</ref>

===Early years ===
Bergson was born in the Rue Lamartine in Paris, not far from the [[Palais Garnier]] (the old Paris opera house) in 1859. His father, the composer and pianist [[Michał Bergson]], was of [[Polish-Jewish]] background<ref name="Gelber">{{cite encyclopedia | url= https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G2-2587502673.html|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20150329105853/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G2-2587502673.html |url-status= dead |archive-date= 29 March 2015 |title=Bergson |first= Nathan Michael |last= Gelber |encyclopedia= [[Encyclopaedia Judaica]]|date= 1 January 2007 |access-date=7 December 2015|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref name="Dynner 2008 104–105">{{cite book|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=jVtp3s8CtScC&pg=PA102 |title= Men of Silk: The Hasidic Conquest of Polish Jewish Society |author-link= Glenn Dynner|first= Glenn|last= Dynner|year= 2008|publisher= Oxford University Press|isbn= 978-0195382655 |pages= 104–105}}</ref><ref name="britannica.com">[https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/61856/Henri-Bergson Henri Bergson]. 2014. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 13 August 2014</ref><ref name="Z ziemi polskiej do Nobla">{{Cite news | title = Z ziemi polskiej do Nobla | url = http://www.wprost.pl/ar/140524/Z-ziemi-polskiej-do-Nobla/?O=140524&pg=2 | newspaper = Wprost | publisher = Agencja Wydawniczo-Reklamowa Wprost | location = Warsaw | date = 4 January 2008 
 | access-date = 10 May 2010 | language = pl |trans-title= From the Polish lands to the Nobel Prize | quote = Polskie korzenie ma Henri Bergson, jeden z najwybitniejszych pisarzy, fizyk i filozof francuski żydowskiego pochodzenia. Jego ojcem był Michał Bergson z Warszawy, prawnuk Szmula Jakubowicza Sonnenberga, zwanego Zbytkowerem (1756–1801), żydowskiego kupca i bankiera. [Translation: Henri Bergson, one of the greatest French writers, physicists and philosophers of Jewish ancestry, had Polish roots. His father was Michael Bergson from Warsaw, the great-grandson of Szmul Jakubowicz Sonnenberg – known as Zbytkower – (1756–1801), a Jewish merchant and banker.] }}</ref><ref name="dziedzictwo.polska.pl">[http://dziedzictwo.polska.pl/katalog/skarb,Testament_starozakonnego_Berka_Szmula_Sonnenberga_z_1818_roku,gid,261356,cid,3312.htm?body=desc Testament starozakonnego Berka Szmula Sonnenberga z 1818 roku] {{webarchive|url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110928215838/http://dziedzictwo.polska.pl/katalog/skarb%2CTestament_starozakonnego_Berka_Szmula_Sonnenberga_z_1818_roku%2Cgid%2C261356%2Ccid%2C3312.htm?body=desc |date= 28 September 2011 }}</ref> (originally bearing the name ''Bereksohn''). His great-grandmother, [[Temerl Bergson]], was a well-known patroness and benefactor of Polish Jewry, especially those associated with the [[Hasidic Judaism|Hasidic]] movement.<ref name="Gelber"/><ref name="Dynner 2008 104–105"/> His mother, Katherine Levison, daughter of a Yorkshire doctor, was from an [[History of the Jews in England|English-Jewish]] and [[History of the Jews in Ireland|Irish-Jewish]] background. The Bereksohns were a famous Jewish entrepreneurial family<ref name="britannica.com"/> of Polish descent. Henri Bergson's great-great-grandfather, {{ill|Szmul Zbytkower|lt=Szmul Jakubowicz Sonnenberg called Zbytkower|pl|Szmul Zbytkower}}, was a prominent banker and a protégé of [[Stanisław II Augustus]],<ref name="Z ziemi polskiej do Nobla"/><ref name="dziedzictwo.polska.pl"/> king of Poland from 1764 to 1795.

Bergson's family lived in London for a few years after his birth, and he obtained an early familiarity with the English language from his mother. Before he was nine, his parents settled in France, and Henri became a naturalized French citizen.

Bergson married Louise Neuberger, a cousin of [[Marcel Proust]], in 1891. (Proust served as [[groomsman#best man|best man]] at the wedding.)<ref>Suzanne Guerlac, ''Thinking in Time: An Introduction to Henri Bergson'', Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2007, p. 9.</ref> Henri and Louise Bergson had a daughter, Jeanne, born deaf in 1896. Bergson's sister, Mina Bergson (also known as [[Moina Mathers]]), married the English [[occult]] author [[Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers]], a founder of the [[Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn]], and the couple later relocated to Paris.

===Education and career===
[[File:Bergson1889Diss2.jpg|thumb|200px|right|''Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience'' (Dissertation, 1889)]]
[[File:Bergson1889Diss1.jpg|thumb|200px|right|''Quid Aristoteles de loco senserit'' (Dissertation, 1889)]]
Bergson attended the Lycée Fontanes (known as the [[Lycée Condorcet]] 1870–1874 and 1883–present) in Paris from 1868 to 1878. He had previously received a Jewish religious education,<ref>Lawlor, Leonard and Moulard Leonard, Valentine, "Henri Bergson", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2016/entries/bergson/></ref> but lost his faith between the ages of 14 and 16. According to Hude (1990), this moral crisis is tied to his discovery of the theory of [[evolution]], according to which humanity shares a common ancestry with modern [[primate]]s, a process construed as needing no creative deity.<ref>Henri Hude, ''Bergson'', Paris, Editions Universitaires, 1990, 2 volumes, quoted by Anne Fagot-Largeau in her [http://www.college-de-france.fr/default/EN/all/phi_sci/cours_3.jsp 21 December 2006 course] at the College of France</ref> 

At the lycée, Bergson won a prize for his scientific work and another, in 1877, when he was 18, for the solution of a mathematical problem. His solution was published the next year in ''[[Nouvelles Annales de Mathématiques]].''<ref>{{cite book|title=Nouvelles Annales de Mathématiques |series=2 |number=17 |year=1878 |page=268 |location=Paris |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=S3c_AQAAIAAJ&pg=PA268 |access-date=15 March 2018|last1=Gerono |first1=Camille Christopher |last2=Terquem |first2=Oiry |last3=Laisant |first3=Charles-Ange |last4=Bricard |first4=Raoul |last5=Boulanger |first5=Auguste }}</ref> It was his first published work. After some hesitation about whether to pursue the sciences or the [[humanities]], he decided on the latter, to his teachers' dismay.<ref name="Fagot-Largeau">[[Anne Fagot-Largeau]], [http://www.college-de-france.fr/default/EN/all/phi_sci/p1184676830986.htm 21 December 2006 course] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090206183341/http://www.college-de-france.fr/default/EN/all/phi_sci/p1184676830986.htm|date=6 February 2009}} at the [[College of France]] (audio file of the course)</ref> When he was 19, he entered the [[École Normale Supérieure]] (during this period, he read [[Herbert Spencer]]).<ref name=Fagot-Largeau/> He obtained there the degree of ''[[licence ès lettres]]'', and then an ''[[Agrégation|agrégation de philosophie]]'' in 1881 from the [[University of Paris]].

The same year, he received a teaching appointment at the lycée in [[Angers]], the ancient capital of [[Duchy of Anjou|Anjou]]. Two years later he settled at the {{Interlanguage link|Lycée Blaise-Pascal (Clermont-Ferrand)|fr}} in [[Clermont-Ferrand]], capital of the [[Puy-de-Dôme]] [[département]].

The year after his arrival at Clermont-Ferrand, Bergson displayed his ability in the humanities by the publication of an edition of extracts from [[Lucretius]], with a critical study of ''De Rerum Natura'', issued as ''Extraits de Lucrèce'', and of Lucretius's [[materialism|materialist]] [[cosmology]] (1884), repeated editions of which attest to its value in promoting Classics among French youth. While teaching and lecturing in this part of his country (the [[Auvergne (province)|Auvergne]] region), Bergson found time for private study and original work. He crafted his dissertation, ''Time and Free Will'', which was submitted, along with a short [[Latin]] thesis on [[Aristotle]] (''Quid Aristoteles de loco senserit'', "On the Concept of Place in Aristotle") for his [[doctoral degree]], which was awarded by the [[University of Paris]] in 1889. The work was published in the same year by [[Félix Alcan]]. He also gave courses in Clermont-Ferrand on the [[Pre-Socratic Philosophy|Pre-Socratics]], in particular [[Heraclitus]].<ref name=Fagot-Largeau/>

Bergson dedicated ''Time and Free Will'' to [[Jules Lachelier]] (1832–1918), then [[Minister of National Education (France)|public education minister]], a disciple of [[Félix Ravaisson]] and the author of ''On the Founding of [[inductive reasoning|Induction]]'' (''Du fondement de l'induction'', 1871). Lachelier endeavoured "to substitute everywhere force for inertia, life for death, and liberty for fatalism". According to [[Louis de Broglie]], ''Time and Free Will'' "antedates by forty years the ideas of [[Niels Bohr]] and [[Werner Heisenberg]] on the physical interpretation of wave mechanics."<ref>[[Louis de Broglie]], (1969[1947]) ''The concept of contemporary physics and Bergson’s Ideas on Time and Motion'', in Bergson and the evolution of physics, Pete A.Y. Gunter (Ed. and trans.) Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, p47.</ref>

Bergson settled again in Paris in 1888,<ref>''Henri Bergson: Key Writings'', ed. Keith Ansell Pearson and John Mullarkey. London: Continuum, 2002, p. ix.</ref> and after teaching for some months at the [[municipal college]], known as the ''College Rollin'', he received an appointment at the [[Lycée Henri-Quatre]], where he remained for eight years. There, he read [[Charles Darwin|Darwin]] and gave a course on his theories.<ref name=Fagot-Largeau/> Although Bergson had previously endorsed [[Lamarckism]] and its theory of the [[inheritance of acquired characters|heritability of acquired characteristics]], he came to prefer Darwin's hypothesis of gradual variation, which were more compatible with his continual vision of life.<ref name=Fagot-Largeau/>

In 1896, Bergson published his second major work, ''Matter and Memory''. This rather difficult work investigates the function of the brain and undertakes an analysis of perception and memory, leading up to a careful consideration of the relationship of body and mind. Bergson spent years of research in preparation for each of his three large works. This is especially obvious in ''Matter and Memory'', which shows thorough acquaintance with the extensive pathological investigations carried out during the period.

In 1898, Bergson became ''[[maître de conférences]]'' at his alma mater, École Normale Supérieure, and later that year was promoted to a professorship. The year 1900 saw him installed as a professor at the [[Collège de France]], where he accepted the Chair of [[Greek philosophy|Greek and Roman Philosophy]] in succession to {{Interlanguage link|Charles Lévêque|fr}}.

At the first [[International Congress of Philosophy]], held in Paris during the first five days of August 1900, Bergson read a short paper, "Psychological Origins of the Belief in the Law of Causality" (''Sur les origines psychologiques de notre croyance à la loi de causalité''). In 1900, [[Felix Alcan]] published a work that had previously appeared in the ''[[Revue de Paris]]'', ''[[Laughter (book)|Laughter]]'' (''Le rire''), one of the most important of Bergson's minor works. This essay on the meaning of comedy stemmed from a lecture he had given in his early days in Auvergne. The study of it is essential to an understanding of Bergson's views of life, especially its passages dealing with the place of the artistic in life. The paper's main thesis is that laughter is a corrective evolved to make social life possible for human beings. People laugh at those who fail to adapt to society's demands of society if it seems their failure is akin to an inflexible mechanism. Comic authors have exploited this human tendency to laugh in various ways, and what is common to them is the idea that the comic consists in "something mechanical encrusted on the living".<ref>p. 39</ref><ref>Seth Benedict Graham ''[http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-11032003-192424/unrestricted/grahamsethb_etd2003.pdf A CULTURAL ANALYSIS OF THE RUSSO-SOVIET ANEKDOT] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130116083634/http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-11032003-192424/unrestricted/grahamsethb_etd2003.pdf |date=16 January 2013 }}'', 2003, p. 2</ref>

In 1901, the [[Académie des sciences morales et politiques]] elected Bergson as a member. In 1903 he contributed to the ''[[Revue de métaphysique et de morale]]'' an essay, ''[[Introduction to Metaphysics (Bergson)|Introduction to Metaphysics]]'' (''Introduction à la metaphysique''), which is useful as a preface to the study of his three large books. He detailed in this essay his philosophical program, realized in the ''Creative Evolution''.<ref name=Fagot-Largeau/>

On the death of [[Gabriel Tarde]], the sociologist and philosopher, in 1904, Bergson succeeded him as Chair of Modern Philosophy. From 4 to 8 September of that year, he visited [[Geneva]], attending the Second International Congress of Philosophy, when he lectured on ''The Mind and Thought: A Philosophical Illusion'' (Le cerveau et la pensée : une illusion philosophique). An illness prevented his visiting Germany to attend the Third Congress held at [[Heidelberg]]. In these years, Bergson strongly influenced [[Jacques Maritain]], perhaps even saving Maritain and his wife Raïssa from suicide.<ref>[https://plto.stanford.edu/entries/maritain Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Jacques Maritain]{{Dead link|date=July 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism |url=https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268021528/bergsonian-philosophy-and-thomism |access-date=2023-07-15 |website=Notre Dame University Press |language=en-US}}</ref>

Bergson's third major work, ''Creative Evolution'', the most widely known and most discussed of his books, appeared in 1907. Pierre Imbart de la Tour remarked that ''Creative Evolution'' was a milestone of a new direction in thought.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Gunn |first=John Alexander |title=Bergson and His Philosophy |date=2005 |publisher=Kessinger |isbn=978-1-4191-0968-3 |edition=Fac-sim |location=S.L.}}</ref> By 1918, [[Alcan]], the publisher, had issued 21 editions, making an average of two editions ''per annum'' for ten years. Following the appearance of this book, Bergson's popularity increased enormously, not only in academic circles but among the general public.

At that time, Bergson had already extensively studied biology, including the theory of [[fecundation]] (as shown in the first chapter of the ''Creative Evolution''), which had only recently emerged, ca. 1885 – no small feat for a philosopher specializing in the [[history of philosophy]], in particular Greek and Roman philosophy.<ref name=Fagot-Largeau/> He also most certainly had read, apart from Darwin, [[Haeckel]], from whom he retained his idea of a unity of life and of the ecological solidarity between all living beings,<ref name=Fagot-Largeau/> as well as [[Hugo de Vries]], from whom he quoted his [[mutation theory]] of evolution (which he opposed, preferring Darwin's gradualism).<ref name=Fagot-Largeau/> He also quoted [[Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard]], the successor of [[Claude Bernard]] at the Chair of Experimental Medicine in the Collège de France.

Bergson served as a juror with [[Florence Meyer Blumenthal]] in awarding the [[Prix Blumenthal]], a grant given between 1919 and 1954 to painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers, and musicians.<ref name="FMBlumenthal">{{Cite web
  | title = Florence Meyer Blumenthal
  | publisher = Jewish Women's Archive, Michele Siegel
  | url = http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/blumenthal-florence-meyer}}</ref>

===Relationship with James and pragmatism===
Bergson travelled to London in 1908 and met there with [[William James]], the [[Harvard University]] philosopher who was Bergson's senior by 17 years, and who was instrumental in calling Bergson's work to the attention of the Anglo-American public. The two became great friends. James's impression of Bergson is given in his Letters under the date of 4 October 1908:

<blockquote>So modest and unpretending a man but such a genius intellectually! I have the strongest suspicions that the tendency which he has brought to a focus, will end by prevailing, and that the present epoch will be a sort of turning point in the history of philosophy.</blockquote>

As early as 1880, James had contributed an article in French to the periodical ''La Critique philosophique'', of Renouvier and Pillon, titled ''Le Sentiment de l'effort''. Four years later, a couple of articles by him appeared in the journal ''Mind'': "What is an Emotion?" and "On some Omissions of Introspective Psychology". Bergson quoted the first two of these in ''Time and Free Will''. In 1890–91 appeared the two volumes of James's monumental work ''[[The Principles of Psychology]]'', in which he refers to a pathological phenomenon Bergson observed. Some writers{{Who|date=March 2024}}, taking merely these dates into consideration and overlooking that James's investigations had been proceeding since 1870 (registered from time to time by various articles that culminated in ''The Principles''), have mistakenly dated Bergson's ideas as earlier than James's.

William James hailed Bergson as an ally. In 1903, he wrote:
<blockquote>I have been re-reading Bergson's books, and nothing that I have read for years has so excited and stimulated my thoughts. I am sure that his philosophy has a great future; it breaks through old frameworks and brings things to a solution from which new crystallizations can be reached.<ref>
[http://www.ibiblio.org/HTMLTexts/John_Alexander_Gunn/Bergson_And_His_Philosophy/chapter1.html Bergson and his philosophy] Chapter 1: Life of Bergson
</ref></blockquote>

The most noteworthy tributes James paid to Bergson come in the [[Hibbert Lectures]] (A Pluralistic Universe), which James gave at [[Manchester College, Oxford]], shortly after meeting Bergson in London. He remarks on the encouragement he gained from Bergson's thought, and refers to his confidence in being "able to lean on Bergson's authority".

Bergson's influence had led James "to renounce the intellectualist method and the current notion that logic is an adequate measure of what can or cannot be". It had induced him, he continued, "to give up logic, squarely and irrevocably" as a method, for he found that "reality, life, experience, concreteness, immediacy, use what word you will, exceeds our logic, overflows, and surrounds it".

These remarks, which appeared in James's book ''A Pluralistic Universe'' in 1909, impelled many English and American readers to investigate Bergson's philosophy, but no English translations of Bergson's major work had yet appeared. James encouraged and assisted [[Arthur Mitchell (physician)|Arthur Mitchell]] in preparing an English translation of ''Creative Evolution''. In August 1910, James died. It was his intention, had he lived to see the translation finished, to introduce it to the English reading public by a prefatory note of appreciation. The next year, the translation was completed and still greater interest in Bergson and his work ensued. By coincidence, in that same year (1911), Bergson wrote a 16-page preface, ''Truth and Reality'', to the French translation of James's book ''Pragmatism''. In it, he expressed sympathetic appreciation of James's work, together with certain important reservations.

From 5 to 11 April, Bergson attended the Fourth International Congress of Philosophy held at [[Bologna]], in Italy, where he gave an address on "Philosophical Intuition". In response to invitations he visited England in May of that year and on several subsequent occasions. These visits were well received. His speeches offered new perspectives and elucidated many passages in his three major works: ''Time and Free Will'', ''Matter and Memory'', and ''Creative Evolution''. Although necessarily brief statements, they developed and enriched the ideas in his books and clarified for English audiences the fundamental principles of his philosophy.

===Lectures on change===
In May 1911, Bergson gave two lectures, ''The Perception of Change'' (''La perception du changement''), at the [[University of Oxford]]. The [[Clarendon Press]] published these in French in the same year.<ref>
{{Cite book
|last= Bergson
|first= Henri
|title= La perception du changement; conférences faites à l'Université d'Oxford les 26 et 27 mai 1911
|url= https://archive.org/details/perceptionchange00berguoft
|trans-title= The perception of change: lectures delivered at the University of Oxford on 26 and 27 May 1911
|year= 1911
|publisher= Clarendon
|location= Oxford
|language= fr
|page= [https://archive.org/details/perceptionchange00berguoft/page/n40 37]}}
</ref> His talks were concise and lucid, leading students and the general reader to his other, longer writings. Oxford later conferred on him the degree of [[Doctor of Science]].

Two days later he delivered the [[Huxley Lecture]] at the [[University of Birmingham]], taking for his subject ''Life and Consciousness''. This subsequently appeared in ''[[The Hibbert Journal]]'' (October 1911), and, revised, is the first essay in the collected volume ''Mind-Energy'' (''L'Énergie spirituelle''). In October he again travelled to England, where he had an enthusiastic reception, and delivered at [[University College London]] four lectures on ''La Nature de l'Âme'' (The Nature of the Soul).

In 1913, Bergson visited the United States of America at the invitation of [[Columbia University]] and lectured in several American cities, where very large audiences welcomed him. In February, at Columbia, he lectured both in French and English, taking as his subjects ''Spirituality and Freedom'' and ''The Method of Philosophy''. Being again in England in May of that year, he accepted the presidency of the British [[Society for Psychical Research]], and delivered to it an address, ''Phantoms of Life and Psychic Research'' (Fantômes des vivants et recherche psychique).

Meanwhile, his popularity increased, and translations of his work began to appear in a number of languages: [[English language|English]], [[German language|German]], [[Italian language|Italian]], [[Danish language|Danish]], [[Swedish language|Swedish]], [[Hungarian language|Hungarian]], [[Polish language|Polish]], and [[Russian language|Russian]]. In 1914 Bergson's countrymen honoured him by his election as a member of the [[Académie française]]. He was also made President of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques and became Officier de la [[Légion d'honneur]] and Officier de l'Instruction publique.

Bergson found disciples of many types. In France movements such as [[Neo-Catholicism (France)|neo-Catholicism]] and [[Modernism (Roman Catholicism)|Modernism]] on the one hand and [[syndicalism]] on the other endeavoured to absorb and appropriate for their own ends some of his central ideas. The continental organ of socialist and syndicalist theory, ''[[Le Mouvement socialiste]]'',<ref>
{{Cite journal
| last        = Reberioux
| first       = M.
| author-link  = Madeleine Rebérioux
|date=January–March 1964
| title       = La gauche socialiste française: ''La Guerre Sociale'' et ''Le Mouvement Socialiste'' face au problème colonial
|trans-title=French right-wing socialism: ''La Guerre Sociale'' and ''Le Mouvement Socialiste'' in the face of the colonial problem
| journal     = Le Mouvement Social
| issue       = 46
| pages       = 91–103
| publisher   = Editions l'Atelier/Association Le Mouvement Social
| doi = 10.2307/3777267
| jstor         = 3777267
| language    = fr
| quote       = ... deux organes, d'ailleurs si dissembables, ou s'exprime l'extrême-gauche du courant socialiste français: le ''Mouvement socialiste'' d'Hubert Lagardelle et la ''Guerre sociale'' de Gustave Hervé. Jeune publications – le ''Mouvement socialiste'' est fondé en janvier 1899, la ''Guerre sociale'' en décembre 1906 –, dirigées par de jeunes équipes qui faisaient profession de rejeter le chauvinisme, d'être attentives au nouveau et de ne pas reculer devant les prises de position les plus véhémentes, ...
}}
</ref> portrayed the realism of [[Karl Marx]] and [[Pierre-Joseph Proudhon]] as hostile to all forms of intellectualism, and argued, therefore, that supporters of Marxist socialism should welcome a philosophy such as Bergson's.{{Citation needed|date=September 2009}} Other writers, in their eagerness, claimed that the thought of the holder of the Chair of Philosophy at the Collège de France and the aims of the ''[[Confédération Générale du Travail]]'' and the [[Industrial Workers of the World]] were in essential agreement.

While social revolutionaries endeavoured to make the most out of Bergson, many religious leaders, particularly the more liberal-minded theologians of all creeds, e.g., the Modernists and Neo-Catholic Party in his own country, showed a keen interest in his writings, and many of them found encouragement and stimulus in his work. The [[Roman Catholic Church]], however, banned Bergson's three books on the charge of [[pantheism]] (that is, of conceiving of God as immanent to his Creation and of being himself created in the process of the Creation).<ref name=Fagot-Largeau/> They were placed on the [[Index Librorum Prohibitorum|Index of prohibited books]] (Decree of 1 June 1914).

===Later years===
[[File:1917 Henri Bergson and daughter Jeanne Bergson.jpg|thumb|Bergson with his daughter, Jeanne, in 1917. [[Autochrome Lumière|Autochrome]] by [[The Archives of the Planet|Auguste Léon]]]]
In 1914, the Scottish universities arranged for Bergson to give the famous [[Gifford Lectures]], planning one course for the spring and another for the autumn. Bergson delivered the first course, consisting of 11 lectures, under the title ''The Problem of Personality'', at the [[University of Edinburgh]] in the spring of that year. The course of lectures planned for the autumn months had to be abandoned because of the outbreak of war.

Bergson was not silent during the conflict, and gave some inspiring addresses. As early as 4 November 1914, he wrote an article, "Wearing and Nonwearing Forces" (''La force qui s'use et celle qui ne s'use pas''), that appeared in a periodical of the ''[[poilu]]s'', ''Le Bulletin des Armées de la République Française''. A presidential address, "The Meaning of the War", was delivered in December 1914 to the Académie des sciences morales et politiques.

Bergson contributed also to the publication arranged by ''[[The Daily Telegraph]]'' in honour of King [[Albert I of Belgium]], ''King Albert's Book'' (Christmas, 1914).<ref>
{{Cite book
|title= King Albert's book: a tribute to the Belgian king and people from representative men and women throughout the world
|url= https://archive.org/details/kingalbertsbookt00lond
|year= 1914
|publisher= The Daily Telegraph
|location= London
|page= [https://archive.org/details/kingalbertsbookt00lond/page/187 187]
}}
</ref> In 1915, he was succeeded in the office of President of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques by [[Alexandre Ribot]], and then delivered a discourse on "The Evolution of German Imperialism". Meanwhile, he found time to issue at the Minister of Public Instruction's request a brief summary of French philosophy. Bergson did a large amount of traveling and lecturing in America during the war. He participated in the negotiations that led to the [[World War I#Entry of the United States|entry of the United States]] into the war. He was there when the French Mission under [[René Viviani]] paid a visit in April and May 1917 after America's entry into the conflict. Viviani's book ''La Mission française en Amérique'' (1917) has a preface by Bergson.

Early in 1918, the [[Académie française]] received Bergson officially when he took his seat among "The Select Forty" as successor to [[Emile Ollivier]] (the author of the historical work ''L'Empire libéral''). A session was held in January in his honour at which he delivered an address on Ollivier. In the war, Bergson saw the conflict of Mind and Matter, or rather of Life and Mechanism; and thus showed his philosophy's central idea in action.

As many of Bergson's contributions to French periodicals remained relatively inaccessible, he had them published in two volumes. The first of these was being planned when war broke out. The conclusion of strife was marked by the appearance of a delayed volume in 1919. It bears the title ''Spiritual Energy: Essays and Lectures'' (reprinted as ''Mind-Energy'' – ''L'Énergie spirituelle : essais et conférences''). The advocate of Bergson's philosophy in England, [[Wildon Carr]], prepared an English translation under the title ''Mind-Energy''. The volume opens with the Huxley Memorial Lecture of 1911, "Life and Consciousness", in a revised and developed form under the title "Consciousness and Life". Signs of Bergson's growing interest in social ethics and in the idea of a future life of personal survival are manifested. The lecture before the Society for Psychical Research is included, as is also the one given in France, ''L'Âme et le Corps'', which contains the substance of the four London lectures on the Soul. The seventh and last article is a reprint of Bergson's famous lecture to the Congress of Philosophy at Geneva in 1904, ''The Psycho-Physiological Paralogism'' (Le paralogisme psycho-physiologique), which now appears as ''Le cerveau et la pensée : une illusion philosophique''. Other articles are on the False Recognition, on Dreams, and Intellectual Effort. The volume is a most welcome production and serves to bring together what Bergson wrote on the concept of mental force, and on his view of "tension" and "detension" as applied to the relation of matter and mind.

In June 1920, the [[University of Cambridge]] honoured him with the degree of [[Doctor of Letters]]. In order that he might devote his full-time to the great new work he was preparing on ethics, religion, and sociology, the Collège de France relieved Bergson of the duties attached to the Chair of Modern Philosophy there. He retained the chair, but no longer delivered lectures, his place being taken by his disciple, the mathematician and philosopher [[Édouard Le Roy]], who supported a [[conventionalism|conventionalist]] stance on the [[foundations of mathematics]], which was adopted by Bergson.<ref name=TheCreativeEvolution>See Chapter III of [https://archive.org/stream/creativeevolu1st00berguoft#page/n7/mode/2up ''The Creative Evolution'']</ref> Le Roy, who also succeeded to Bergson at the Académie française and was a fervent Catholic, extended to [[Revelation|revealed truth]] his conventionalism, leading him to privilege faith, heart and sentiment to [[dogma]]s, speculative theology and abstract reasoning. Like Bergson's, his writings were placed on the Index by the Vatican.

===Debate with Albert Einstein===
In 1922, Bergson's book ''Durée et simultanéité, à propos de la théorie d'Einstein'' (''Duration and Simultaneity: Bergson and the Einsteinian Universe'') was published.<ref>[[Jimena Canales|Canales J.]], ''The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson and the Debate That Changed Our Understanding of Time'', Princeton, Princeton Press, 2015.</ref> Earlier that year, [[Albert Einstein]] had come to the French Society of Philosophy and briefly replied to a short speech made by Bergson.<ref>Minutes of the meeting:[http://s3.archive-host.com/membres/up/784571560/GrandesConfPhiloSciences/philosc13_einstein_1922.pdf Séance du 6 Avril 1922]</ref> It has been alleged that Bergson's knowledge of physics was insufficient and that the book did not follow up contemporary developments on physics.{{By whom|date=September 2021}} On the other hand, in "Einstein and the Crisis of Reason", a leading French philosopher, [[Maurice Merleau-Ponty]], accused Einstein of failing to grasp Bergson's argument. This argument, Merleau-Ponty says, which concerns not the physics of special relativity but its philosophical foundations, addresses paradoxes caused by popular interpretations and misconceptions about the theory, including Einstein's own.<ref>Signs, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, trans. Richard C. McCleary, Northwestern Univ. Press, 1964.</ref> ''Duration and Simultaneity'' was not published in the 1951 ''Edition du Centenaire'' in French, which contained all of his other works, and was only published later in a work gathering different essays, titled ''Mélanges''. This work took advantage of Bergson's experience at the [[League of Nations]], where he presided from 1920 to 1925 over the [[International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation]] (the ancestor of [[UNESCO]], and which included Einstein and [[Marie Curie]]).<ref>On the relation between Einstein and Bergson in this committee, see [http://www.jimenacanales.org/pdf-files/canales-Einstein,%20Bergson%20and%20the%20Experiment%20that%20Failed.pdf ''Einstein, Bergson and the Experiment that Failed: Intellectual Cooperation at the League of Nations''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304081431/http://www.jimenacanales.org/pdf-files/canales-Einstein,%20Bergson%20and%20the%20Experiment%20that%20Failed.pdf |date=4 March 2016 }}. On the involvement of Bergson (and Einstein) in the Committee in general, see {{cite book |last=Grandjean |first=Martin |date=2018 |title=Les réseaux de la coopération intellectuelle. La Société des Nations comme actrice des échanges scientifiques et culturels dans l'entre-deux-guerres |trans-title=The Networks of Intellectual Cooperation. The League of Nations as an Actor of the Scientific and Cultural Exchanges in the Inter-War Period |url=https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01853903/document |language=fr |location=Lausanne |publisher=Université de Lausanne }}.</ref>

===Later years and death===
While living with his wife and daughter in a modest house in a quiet street near the [[Porte d'Auteuil (Paris Métro)|Porte d'Auteuil]] in Paris, Bergson won the [[Nobel Prize for Literature]] in 1927 for ''The Creative Evolution''. Because of serious [[rheumatology|rheumatic ailments]], he could not travel to Stockholm, and sent instead a text subsequently published in ''La Pensée et le mouvant''.<ref name=Fagot-Largeau/> He was elected a foreign honorary member of the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]] in 1928.<ref name=AAAS>{{cite web|title=Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B|url=http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterB.pdf|publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences|access-date=16 June 2011}}</ref>

After his retirement from the Collège de France, Bergson began to fade into obscurity: he suffered from a degenerative illness (rheumatism, which left him half paralyzed<ref name=Fagot-Largeau/>). He completed his new work, ''The Two Sources of Morality and Religion'', which extended his philosophical theories to the realms of morality, religion, and art, in 1932. It was respectfully received by the public and the philosophical community, but by that time Bergson's days as a philosophical luminary were past. He was, however, able to reiterate his core beliefs near the end of his life, by renouncing all the posts and honours previously awarded him rather than accept exemption from the [[Vichy anti-Jewish legislation|antisemitic laws]] of the [[Vichy France|Vichy]] government.

Bergson inclined to convert to Catholicism, writing in his will on 7 February 1937: "My thinking has always brought me nearer to Catholicism, in which I saw the perfect complement to Judaism."<ref>Quoted in: {{Cite book
|last= Zolli
|first= Eugenio
|author-link= Israel Zolli
|title= Before the Dawn
|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=bq_Qp53ksMAC&pg=PA81
|orig-year= 1954
|year= 2008
|publisher= Ignatius Press
|isbn= 978-1-58617-287-9
|page= 89
}}
</ref> Though wishing to convert to Catholicism, as stated in his will, he did not do so in view of the travails inflicted on the Jewish people by the rise of [[Nazism]] and [[antisemitism]] in Europe in the 1930s; he did not want to appear to want to leave the persecuted. After the fall of France in 1940, Jews in occupied France were required to register at police stations. When completing his police form, Bergson made the following entry: "Academic. Philosopher. Nobel Prize winner. Jew."<ref>Gilbert, Martin. The Second World War: A Complete History (p. 129). Rosetta Books. Kindle Edition.</ref> It was the position of the Archbishop of Paris, [[Emmanuel Célestin Suhard]], that the public revelation of Bergson's conversion was too dangerous at the time, when the city was occupied by the Nazis, to both the Church and the Jewish population.<ref>[https://catholicism.org/forgotten-converts.html Forgotten Converts, Gary Potter, 2006.]</ref>

On 3 January 1941, Bergson died in occupied Paris of bronchitis.<ref name="TuckerWood1999">{{cite book|author1=Spencer Tucker|author2=Laura Matysek Wood|author3=Justin D. Murphy|title=The European Powers in the First World War: An Encyclopedia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gv3GEyB19wIC&pg=PA124|year=1999|publisher=Taylor & Francis|isbn=978-0-8153-3351-7|pages=124}}</ref> A Roman Catholic priest said prayers at his funeral per his request. Bergson is buried in the Cimetière de Garches, [[Hauts-de-Seine]].