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Work #1663 · Middle period

Mind-Energy

Bergson's 1919 'L'Énergie spirituelle' — essays on consciousness, dreams, telepathy, soul-body relation

Henri Bergson · 1900s-1913 essays; collected 1919 · French · Essay collection (7 essays)

Tradition: Bergsonian process-philosophy / French spiritualist tradition / philosophical psychology

Bergson's 1919 'L'Énergie spirituelle' — essays on consciousness, dreams, telepathy, and the soul-body relation

Published by Félix Alcan in 1919 as 'L'Énergie spirituelle', the volume collects seven essays composed between 1900 and 1913 on themes Bergson did not treat at length in his major books: 'Life and Consciousness' (1911 Birmingham Huxley Lecture), 'The Soul and the Body' (1912), 'Phantasms of the Living and Psychical Research' (1913), 'Dreams' (1901), 'Memory of the Present and False Recognition' (1908), 'Intellectual Effort' (1902), 'Brain and Thought' (1904). The essays explore consciousness, memory, the soul-body relation, and the borderlands between philosophy and psychical research — the latter a serious interest of Bergson's middle period.

Author

Editions cited

  • L'Énergie spirituelle (Félix Alcan, Paris, 1919); English trans. H. W. Carr, Mind-Energy (Macmillan, 1920); modern French ed. PUF Quadrige
Compare this work

School Embodiments

Process Philosophy · 22%
Philosophy of Mind · 22%
Phenomenology · 16%
Psychoanalysis · 14%
Humanism · 12%
Process Philosophy 22%

Middle-Bergsonian process-philosophical essays.

"Consciousness is the moving creative principle of life." (Mind-Energy, 'Life and Consciousness')
Philosophy of Mind 22%

Major middle-Bergsonian philosophy-of-mind essays.

"The soul and the body — the relation re-examined." (Mind-Energy, ch. on Soul and Body)
Phenomenology 16%

Bergsonian-phenomenological methodology.

"Lived experience of consciousness, dream, memory." (Mind-Energy)
Psychoanalysis 14%

Engagement with psychical research and dream phenomena.

"Phantasms of the Living and Psychical Research." (Mind-Energy, included essay)
Humanism 12%

Humanist-spiritualist orientation.

"The spiritual energy that exceeds the material brain." (Mind-Energy, on Brain and Thought)

Internal Tensions

Major middle-Bergsonian essay collection; principal source for his philosophy of mind and engagement with psychical research.

⧖

I. Time

1900-13 essays; 1919 publication.

Attributes
Extent: Infinite Ontological Status: Relational Grain: Continuous Freedom: Non-Deterministic Traversability: Linear Direction: Uni-directional Dimensionality: One
✦

II. Space

Paris (Collège de France).

Attributes
Extent: Infinite Ontological Status: Emergent Curvature: Flat Dimensionality: Three Locality: Local
◉

III. Matter

Essay collection.

Attributes
Extent: Finite Ontological Status: Emergent Conservation: Conserved Dimensionality: Three Locality: Local
◎

IV. Observer

Middle Bergson.

Attributes
Time Instance: Multiple Space Instance: Single Knowledge Extent: Immediate Knowledge Retainment: Total Physicality: Both Agency: Active Number: Plural Metaphysical Agency: Cosmic-ordering
⚡

V. Energy

Vitalist-philosophical energies.

Attributes
Extent: Infinite Ontological Status: Emergent Conservation: Variable Dispersibility: Reversible
⧉

VI. Information

Seven essays.

Attributes
Ontological Status: Relational Cosmic Conservation: Conserved Personal Conservation: Conserved Granularity: Continuous

Personas that cite this work

Henri Bergson

Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint

Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.

100%
Henri Bergson
34/34
85%
Rabindranath Tagore
29/34
83%
Hypatia of Alexandria
25/30
83%
Plotinus
25/30
82%
Mulla Sadra (Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi)
28/34
82%
Nishida Kitarō
28/34

Computed school proximity

The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.

73%
Mysticism
17/26
72%
Psychedelic / Entheogenic Worldview
19/26
71%
Energetic Wellness Worldview
20/26
70%
Ubuntu / African Communal Ontology
19/26
67%
Hermeticism
18/26
67%
Western Esotericism
18/26
66%
Analytical Psychology (Jungian)
18/26
66%
Taoism
17/26

How Mind-Energy resolves each dilemma

48 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 20 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 9 unaligned.

Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.

Time · 9 dilemmas, all mainstream
Do you really choose? The future is open and you are a genuine origin of it. 69% Are addicts responsible for their addiction? The addict could have chosen otherwise — that's why recovery is real. 69% Should we hold AI systems responsible for what they do? An AI without a free will is not the kind of thing that can be responsible. 69% Is the universe running out of usable energy? Time is unbounded but matter is finite; usable energy can fail without time failing. 47% Are natural resources fundamentally finite, or only practically so? Time goes on but matter is bounded; we are eventually constrained even with infinite time. 47% Could we owe future generations more than is materially possible to provide? Time is unbounded but matter is not; we can owe more across long time than the matter can provide. 47% How much weight do future people deserve? Time arises from events or from a deeper substrate — the future is not yet. 32% Is regret rational? The past is not a thing now; regret is the present holding what is no longer. 32% Do we owe extinct species something we cannot give them? Past species no longer exist; what we owe is to the present and the future. 32%

Matter · 7 dilemmas · 3 distinctive

What stuff is — fundamental, relational, or appearance.

Distinctive · only 23% of schools agree (47/202)
Is the world created from nothing?
Creatio ex nihilo is one of the most distinctive Western-theological claims. Whether matter was created from nothing, eternally exists, or is sustained moment-by-moment turns on what kind of thing matter is.
Matter is real but emerges from something deeper — neither bedrock nor created-from-nothing.
On this view, matter is genuinely there, but it isn't the floor of reality. It depends on something more fundamental — dependent origination, mind, divine sustaining act, computational substrate, or the structure of conditions — and is conserved only at its own level of description. …
Roads not taken Yes — matter was created and is conserved as a real substance. (55%) · Matter is constituted by relations; the question of 'from what?' presupposes substance. (16%) · Matter arises and dissolves through cosmic rounds; neither created from nothing nor eternal. (4%)
Distinctive · only 23% of schools agree (47/202)
Is the physical world fully real?
Realists, idealists, and relationalists divide on whether matter exists mind-independently, derivatively, or as a pattern of relations. The split runs deeper than any single scientific question.
Real but sustained — not mind-independent in the strict realist sense.
On this view, the physical world is real enough — it has its own laws, its own conservation principles, its own resistance to wish — but it is not the floor of being. It is sustained by something else: mind, divine attention, computational substrate, or …
Roads not taken Yes — the physical world is fully real, mind-independent, persisting. (55%) · Real as relations — neither pure substance nor pure construction. (16%) · Real for this cycle — the deepest reality cycles through creation and dissolution. (4%)
Distinctive · only 23% of schools agree (47/202)
Does matter have intrinsic moral standing?
Do rocks, soil, rivers, and stuff in general deserve moral consideration — or only the living, the conscious, the human? The answer turns on what matter is.
Matter is morally considerable derivatively — through what it sustains.
On this view, matter doesn't have standing on its own; it has standing through what it makes possible. Soil matters because it grows food; water matters because it sustains life and mind and practice. Asking whether the rock as such has moral standing slightly misreads …
Roads not taken Matter is morally considerable insofar as it is created or conserved good. (55%) · Matter has intrinsic moral standing as part of the relational fabric. (16%) · Matter is in flux; standing is impermanent and ritual-mediated. (4%)
4 mainstream positions
What is money? Money is a real institution with intrinsic features. 54% What is a nation? A nation is a real moral community with intrinsic character. 54% What makes someone male or female? Sex is a real biological kind with given content. 54% Should we edit the human germline? Human nature is a real biological kind given by reproductive biology or by creation; editing the germline transgresses what is given. 54%

Observer · 37 dilemmas · 5 distinctive

Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.

Distinctive · only 5% of schools agree (11/202)
Is environmental damage ever truly permanent?
Extinction is forever; soil erosion takes centuries to repair; the carbon we emit will warm the climate for millennia. But whether 'forever' or 'millennia' means what they say depends on what kind of process the universe is.
What appears irreversible is reversible by the right action.
On this view, the appearance of permanence is a function of limits we have not yet exceeded. Divine action, sufficiently advanced technology, intentional restoration practice can in principle reverse what now appears irreversible. The lost is not gone for good; it is gone for now.
Roads not taken Damage is real and permanent on the relevant timescales. There is no recovery; there is only limitation. (66%) · Loss is part of cycles; what disappears returns in another form. (17%) · From the standpoint of the One, the categories of permanence and loss are conventional. (8%)
Distinctive · only 5% of schools agree (11/202)
Can a civilization recover from collapse?
Rome fell; Maya cities emptied; Bronze Age trade networks collapsed in a single generation. Whether what was lost can be recovered — or whether collapse is structurally final — depends on what kind of process civilization is.
Civilization is the kind of order that can in principle be restored.
On this view, the order that constitutes civilization — information, practices, institutions, ethics — is not destroyed by collapse, only dispersed. Given the right work, by humans, divine action, or both, it can be reconstituted. The historical pattern of recovery and renewal is partial evidence; …
Roads not taken Civilizational complexity is hard to build and easy to lose; recovery is at best partial. (66%) · Civilization rises and falls in cycles; recovery is structural to history. (17%) · From the One's vantage, civilizational categories are themselves conventional. (8%)
Distinctive · only 5% of schools agree (11/202)
Does the second law of thermodynamics mean something morally?
The universe trends from order to disorder. Whether that physical pattern carries moral weight — making the preservation of order, beauty, complexity a kind of cosmic duty — depends on whether time has the kind of structure morality could lean on.
Apparent entropy is reversible in principle; the moral category is restoration.
On this view, the second law describes local pattern rather than cosmic destiny. What is broken can be repaired — by divine action, by human work, by energetic intervention. The moral weight of restoration is real and not borrowed from the physics. The cosmos is …
Roads not taken Entropy is what time is. The moral weight, if any, is the weight of working against the current. (66%) · Local entropy increase is part of a cycle; the moral category is participation in the cycle. (17%) · From the One's vantage, the second law is itself a feature of the conventional, not the ultimate. (8%)
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree (18/202)
What makes someone the same person over time?
When dementia hollows out memory, when a coma resolves with no recall, when you imagine being uploaded — the question of whether the surviving person is still you turns on what kind of thing the 'you' was to begin with.
You span moments — identity is a pattern that need not be located at a single now.
On this view, the observer is not bound to a single present. Identity is something that exists across moments — as a pattern, an ancestral line, a trans-temporal structure. Uploading, in this picture, is not a metaphysical impossibility but an engineering question; ancestors are real …
Roads not taken You are your body — continuity is bodily continuity. (36%) · You are a soul — what persists through change is the non-bodily aspect. (29%) · There was never a fixed self to either preserve or lose. (14%)
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree (18/202)
Is the late-stage dementia patient still the person their spouse married?
Loss of memory, of recognition, of the cognitive patterns that made the person — does this end the person, or merely the person you knew? The answer turns on what makes someone who they are.
The person is the pattern across moments — diminished pattern, diminished person.
On this view, the person is constituted by a pattern extending across moments — memory, narrative, characteristic ways of being. As dementia erodes the pattern, the person is correspondingly diminished. What remains is real but is less than what was; the marriage to the person …
Roads not taken Same body, same person — even when the cognitive pattern has changed. (36%) · The soul persists; the cognitive change is the body's, not the person's. (29%) · There was no fixed person to lose; care is owed to whoever is here. (14%)
23 mainstream positions
If a teleporter copied and destroyed you, would you have survived? You are the pattern; the pattern survives the substrate change. You arrive. 9% Are the dead morally present to the living? Observers span moments; the dead are present in a real (not merely metaphorical) way. 13% Is divine omniscience compatible with human freedom? An observer can occupy multiple times at once; foreknowledge is not foreordering. 13% Does meditation reveal something genuinely timeless? Meditation accesses a trans-temporal level the ordinary observer doesn't ordinarily reach. 13% Does prayer change God's mind? Prayer participates in a trans-temporal liturgy or communion; the question of 'changing the mind' misses the trans-temporal mode. 13% What is our place in nature? Nature is partly what we make of it — concepts, practices, and minds shape the world. 15% Should we colonize space? The 'space frontier' is partly what we make of it. 15% Is genetic engineering of food stewardship or domination? What counts as a 'natural' genome is itself a construction. 15% Could causation work backwards? Causation runs one way — the arrow of time is real and structural. 68% Is the asymmetry between memory and anticipation a real feature of time, or just of us? The asymmetry is real because time itself has a real direction. 68% Is the arrow of time a real feature of the cosmos, or only of how we describe it? The arrow is real and structural; the asymmetry isn't an artifact of description. 68% When does a person begin? A person exists from conception — when a new being comes into existence. 54% What is marriage? Marriage has a given form — it’s a kind of thing we recognize, not make. 54% Does environmental harm in another country bind me morally? Moral obligation tracks the relations one is in; distance does matter, structurally. 50% Is reality fundamentally digital? No — continuous divine sustaining act, the Tao that knows no joints, the One's self-disclosure. 44% Are there indivisible units of experience? No — continuous divine presence; consciousness is the unbroken witness. 44% Is memory stored or reconstructed? Held in continuous divine or ancestral remembering — neither stored discretely nor purely reconstructed. 44% What happens to "you" when you die? A soul continues into another mode of being. 37% Can prayer for someone far away affect them? Prayer reaches because God or a cosmic ordering acts on the prayed-for. 37% Are coincidences ever more than coincidence? What looks like coincidence is providence — there is no such thing as a real coincidence. 37% Should we trust expert testimony when we can't verify it? Trust expertise only insofar as it coheres with first-person experience. 17% Is religious revelation a real source of knowledge? What gets called 'revelation' is real direct experience — not a text. 17% Does an LLM 'know' the things it correctly produces? An LLM has no first-person experience, so no knowing in the relevant sense. 17%
9 unaligned
Could a fetal brain organoid in a petri dish be conscious? Schools split: 32% / 29% / 11% — Could an AI have a mind that matters? Schools split: 30% / 30% / 15% — Do animals have moral standing comparable to humans? Schools split: 32% / 29% / 11% — Does history have a direction or meaning? Schools split: 37% / 23% / 19% — How is knowledge of reality produced? Schools split: 25% / 17% / 13% — Is salvation, liberation, or fulfillment individual or communal? Schools split: 15% / 14% / 4% — Is truth universal, tradition-bound, situated, or constructed? Schools split: 65% / 16% / 10% — What kind of religious-theological authority does the tradition recognize? Schools split: 44% / 16% / 14% — Who is the moral primary — the individual, the community, the cosmos, the class, or the species? Schools split: 40% / 28% / 14% —

Information · 4 dilemmas · 4 distinctive

Pattern, memory, and what is preserved or lost.

Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree (18/202)
Is anything truly lost when someone forgets?
The memory you don't retrieve, the conversation you can't remember, the face you no longer recognise — is the forgetting a loss of something real, or just the routine operation of a finite mind?
Information persists or doesn't depending on whether the holder is sustained.
On these views, conservation is not a flat cosmic law but a function of the conditions that hold. Memory persists where it is sustained — by divine attention, by community, by ritual, by practice — and is genuinely lost where it isn't. The asymmetry between …
Roads not taken Information is lost when a mind forgets; matter and energy continue, but the pattern is gone. (51%) · Information is conserved — the personal pattern is held even when an individual mind loses it. (39%) · Forgetting is the cosmic case, not the exception; nothing is conserved. (1%)
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree (18/202)
Does deleting your data online destroy something real?
Account deletion, the right to be forgotten, the obsolescence of file formats, the slow decay of digital archives — whether any of this destroys something that was real depends on whether information is the kind of thing that can be destroyed.
Information persists where it is held; deletion releases what isn't held elsewhere.
On these views, information persists or doesn't depending on whether something is sustaining it. What is held in divine memory or in active communal practice continues; what is held only by the deleted artifact is genuinely released. The variable conservation maps onto a variable moral …
Roads not taken Information is genuinely lost when the substrate that hosted it goes; deletion really destroys. (51%) · Information at the cosmic level isn't destroyed; deletion only obscures access. (39%) · Nothing is fundamentally conserved; deletion is just routine impermanence. (1%)
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree (18/202)
Could the dead, in principle, be brought back?
If we had perfect information about who someone was — their connectome, their behavioral patterns, their history — could we, in principle, restore them? The question is partly engineering, but the ceiling on the engineering is metaphysical.
What is held by God or sustaining practice can be restored; what isn't can't.
On these views, the conservation of personal information depends on what is sustaining it. The Eastern Orthodox doctrine of resurrection holds that the person is preserved in God's memory and restored in the resurrection by divine action operating on what God has held. What is …
Roads not taken The information dissipates with the substrate; restoration is in principle impossible. (51%) · The information that constitutes a person is conserved; restoration is in principle possible. (39%) · Nothing of what was can be restored; restoration is wishful framing. (1%)
Distinctive · only 9% of schools agree (18/202)
Is forgiveness ontologically possible?
When someone forgives, does the offense actually go away — erased, undone, no longer a fact — or does forgiveness reframe a wrong that persists exactly as it always was?
The offense persists where sustained and releases where conditionally absolved; forgiveness is real ontological work.
On these views, conservation is not a flat cosmic law but a function of what sustains. An offense persists where it is held — by holding-on, by ritual continuation, by divine attention to a particular debt — and is genuinely released where it is conditionally …
Roads not taken The offense is locally constituted by its substrate; when the substrate dissolves, the offense genuinely passes away. (51%) · The offense persists ontologically; forgiveness is real moral work, but it doesn't erase what was. (39%) · Nothing is preserved; the offense is impermanent, and holding it is the suffering. (1%)
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