Henri-Louis Bergson (1859 – 1941) was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that the processes of immediate experience and intuition are more significant than abstract rationalism and science for understanding reality.

He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his rich and vitalizing ideas and the brilliant skill with which they have been presented". In 1930 France awarded him its highest honour, the Grand-Croix de la Legion d'honneur.

Bergson lived the quiet life of a French professor, marked by the publication of his four principal works:

in 1889, Time and Free Will
in 1896, Matter and Memory
in 1907, Creative Evolution
in 1932, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion

The lectures and essays which form the content of Bergson's book “Mind-energy” have been delivered or published at different times and places from 1901 to 1913. They show clearly his characteristic philosophical attitude, and his empirical method in dealing with philosophical problems, here applied to an important general problem of psychology. In this rather small volume he is less intimately concerned with the nature of "mind energy" than with the nature of the relationship which exists between mind and brain. Most of the lectures and essays are concerned with different phases of this problem. While certain conclusions reached by following various lines of facts are indicated, no attempt is made to formulate a precise theory.

Bergson is led to the conclusion that mental processes and neural processes do not stand in a one to one relationship to each other. Even if we had a complete knowledge of all the processes among the atoms and molecules of the brain, and knew their psychical correlates of the moment, this would not enable us to tell all that was going on in the mind at that moment, because a vast part of mental life goes on independently of the brain. One could "read" from a complete knowledge of brain processes only that relatively small portion of mental activity which immediately has to do with the choice and action of the moment, with the insertion of the mind in the physical universe.

The function of the brain as connected with the mind is, as M. Bergson has stated in his other books, to inhibit mental activity, screening off all except such portion of it as may be useful from the point of view of the choice and action of the moment. Occasionally this screen falls, the inhibitory mechanism lapses in its functioning, and in dreams, in cases of false recognition, in the various phenomena of trance, and in certain other mental states, we are enabled to discern portions of that abundance of mental life which goes on in addition to that portion connected with the working of the brain.

In the last essay "Brain and Thought," the position is taken that theories of equivalence, besides being untrue to the facts, are further vitiated by a logical error, into which their supporters inevitably fall. Either the notation of idealism, or that of realism, or both may be employed. But whatever is employed must be employed consistently, and the two notations kept separate from one another. This, M. Bergson finds, the supporters of theories of equivalence are unable to do, but they surreptitiously interchange one for the other to avoid the contradictions.

CONTENTS
I LIFE AND CONSCIOUSNESS
II THE SOUL AND THE BODY
III "PHANTASMS OF THE LIVING" AND PSYCHICAL RESEARCH .
IV DREAMS
V MEMORY OF THE PRESENT AND FALSE RECOGNITION
VI INTELLECTUAL EFFORT
VII BRAIN AND THOUGHT: A PHILOSOPHICAL ILLUSION


Bergson writes, "To know with scientific certainty that another being is conscious, we should have to enter into it, coincide with it, be it," and adds that the probability of analogy amounts to practical certainty in numerous cases.