In Henri Bergson's view, the world includes two opposing tendencies--life and matter. Life is dynamic, has force and will, and struggles for richness and complexity through and beyond matter. Matter is the congealed residue of creation that has already taken place and, according to the laws of nature, is in a gradual state of erosion. Morality and religion, Bergson shows in the present book, may be regarded in similar terms. They partake, on the one hand, of a static principle, combining nature's heritage and the accrual of past forms, and a dynamic principle through which morality and religion remain always in crisis, always alive to contingency and growth. In the course of this study Bergson inquires into the nature of moral obligation, into the place of religion and the purpose it has served since primitive times, into static religion and its value in preserving man from the dangers of his own intelligence; into dynamic religion or mysticism as a manifestation of the life force and a means of producing man's forward leap beyond the limits of the closed society for which nature intended him and into the open society which is the brotherhood of man. --From publisher's description.