For life is tendency, and the essence of a tendency is to develop in the form of a sheaf, creating, by its very growth, divergent directions among which its impetus is divided.
Henri BergsonRead
Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that religion simplifies mysticism in the same way that popularization makes science more accessible to the general public.
Henri Bergson's quote highlights the relationship between complex concepts and their more accessible forms. Just as popularization serves to make scientific ideas understandable for wider audiences, religion embodies and simplifies the deeper mysteries of mysticism for those seeking spiritual understanding. Essentially, both processes aim to bridge the gap between intricate ideas and public comprehension, translating the profound into the more digestible.
Themes
ReligionMysticismSciencePopularizationUnderstanding
In practice
Example use cases
During a seminar on spirituality, one might use this quote to illustrate how deeper concepts can be made relatable.
More from Henri Bergson
All quotes βTo exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.
Henri BergsonRead
Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.
Henri BergsonRead
I believe that the time given to refutation in philosophy is usually time lost. Of the many attacks directed by many thinkers against each other, what now remains? Nothing, or assuredly very little. That which counts and endures is the modicum of positive truth which each contributes. The true statement is, of itself, able to displace the erroneous idea, and becomes, without our having taken the trouble of refuting anyone, the best of refutations.
Henri BergsonRead
And I also see how this body influences external images: it gives back movement to them.
Henri BergsonRead
There are manifold tones of mental life, or, in other words, our psychic life may be lived at different heights, now nearer to action, now further removed from it, according to the degree of our attention to life.
Henri BergsonRead
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I was not content to believe in a personal devil and serve him, in the ordinary sense of the word. I wanted to get hold of him personally and become his chief of staff.
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What if God were not exactly truth, and if this could be proved? And if he were instead the vanity, the desire for power, the ambitions, the fear, and the enraptured and terrified folly of mankind?
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The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.
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