Again, in L’Evolution creatrice we find him suggesting that in maternity and love may lie the secret of the universe.

The important point however, in considering Bergson in relation to Religion and Theology, is his marked objection to teleology.  It is this which has led many to style his philosophy pessimistic.  Religion does not live readily in a pessimistic atmosphere.  Then religion regards Life and the Universe as valuable, not because they yield to some single impulsion, but because, at every step, they manifest a meaning and significance interpreted by our conceptions of value.  Bergson’s view only favours religion as ordinarily comprehended, in so far as it breaks away from a materialistic mechanism, and asserts freedom and gives Spirit some superiority over Matter.  At first sight, the term “creative” seemed very promising, but can we stop where Bergson has left us?  Why should he banish teleology?  His super-consciousness is so indeterminate that it is not allowed to hamper itself with any purpose more definite than that of self-augmentation.  The course and goal of Evolution are to it unknown and unknowable.  Creation, freedom, and will are great things, as Mr. Balfour remarks, but we cannot lastingly admire them unless we know their drift.  It is too haphazard a universe which Bergson displays.  Joy does not seem to fit in with what is so aimless.  It would be better to invoke God with a purpose than a supra-consciousness with none. [Footnote:  Creative Evolution and Philosophic Doubt, Hibbert Journal, Oct., 1911, pp. 1-23.]

In response to an international inquiry, conducted by Frederic Charpin, for the Mercure de France, formulated in the question, Assistons-nous a une dissolution ou a une evolution de l’idee religieuse et du sentiment religieux?  Bergson wrote:  “I feel quite unable to foretell what the external manifestation of the religious sense may be in time to come.  I can only say that it does not seem to me likely to be disintegrated.  Only that which is made up of parts can be disintegrated.  Now, I am willing to admit that the religious sense has been gradually enriched and complicated by very diverse elements; none the less it is in essence a simple thing, sui generis; and resembles no other emotion of the soul.  It may, perhaps be urged that a simple element, although it cannot be decomposed, may yet disappear, and that the religious sense will inevitably vanish when it has no object to which it can attach itself.  But this would be to forget that the object of the religious sense is, in part at least, prior to that sense itself; that this object is felt even more than it is thought and that the idea is, in this case, the effect of the feeling quite as much as its cause.  The progressive deepening of the idea may therefore make the religious sense clearer and ever clearer; it cannot modify that which is essential in it, still less effect its disappearance.” [Footnote:  Charpin:  La Question religieuse, 1908, Paris.]