Morality in Evolution. The Moral Philosophy of Henri Bergson by Idella J. Gallagher (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 59l5 nature, and values of the eleven religions in the world today. The most positive character of the study is the ample use of the sacred books of the great religions which are used to elucidate the historical and doctrinal development of the religions. The negative aspects of this work, however, far outweigh this single contribution. Value judgments, both positive and negative, extend for pages following each treatment of a particular religion. Although these judgments are basically sketchy and simplistic, Hume goes to great length to use Christianity as the norm and exemplar from which he draws comparisons and contrasts. The questions which he asks of other religions are taken from the Christian world view and problematic. Judging, evaluating, and comparing from within the faith of the scholar is a position avoided by comparative religionists in the last twenty years. This type of study could be used for reference but better works are available; it may be a contribution to the history of methodology in comparative religion in its early stages. Hume's book will not give one an appreciation for the spiritual heritage of mankind but it will leave the reader with a highly fragmented and relativistic view of the whole religious enterprise. The Catholic University of America Washington, D. C. WILLIAM CENKNER, 0. P. Morality in Evolution. The Moral Philosophy of Henri Bergson. By !DELLA J. GALLAGHER. The Hague: Matinus Nijhoff, 1971. Pp. 112 Guilders 18,lt would be rather difficult to summarize a book which is already an intelligent, precise, and sympathetic summary of Bergson's doctrine; therefore it seems better to indicate the intention which explains its contents. The author, !della J. Gallagher, has very well realized that Bergson's moral philosophy must be first of all connected, in order to be deeply understood , with the bergsonian philosophy as a whole. And to achieve such a connexion, she has taken the most sensible perspective, starting with theepistemological and metaphysical dualism which constantly underlies this philosophy, and then emphasizing its two masterpieces, i.e., the intuition of duration and the theory of life, both narrowly related to each other. For, as it is pointed out in the last words of chapter I of the Two Sources, " Let us then give to the word biology the very wide meaning it should have, and will perhaps have one day, and let us say in conclusion that all morality, be it pressure or aspiration, is in essence biological," it is quite certain that the moral philosophy herein proposed borrows its principles from the vision of life which had been formerly described through Creative Evolution and develops this vision. 526 BOOK REVIEWS The study of morality and religion was required, so to speak, by the exceptional situation that mankind has obtained, according to Creative Evolution, among the living beings and even in the all universe: mankind represents the species in which the "Vital impetus" {Elan vital) has succeeded, after so many failures or half accomplishments, to reach the open air and promote its spiritual vocation. This vocation was to liberate consciousness impeded in matter, so that it becomes a spirit sharing in the creative action from which the universe comes; therefore moral and religious life of mankind appear as the development and the summit of evolution. In short, Bergson has carried on until the Two Sources, although in a quite unforeseeable way (his first surprise before concrete duration having brought him to many others), the task which he had undertaken in his youth: to reform Spencer's evolutionism. He was then led, by a spontaneous inclination as much as by principle, to investigate omral and religious problems such as obligation, the morality of the closed society and of the open soul, the religion of the city and the religion of the mystics, in the light of a biological approach. Likewise, it is by replacing morality, reason, and society in a biological light that Bergson gets around the two opposing doctrines that he wanted to outpace altogether: Kantian rationalism and contemporary sociology inspired by Comte or Durkheim. Dr. Gallagher has very well outlined all these aspects through an analysis which equally respects the successive steps, articulations, notions, methods, and major...