The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious Experience120Lectureses VI and VIITHE SICK SOULAT OUR LAST MEETING, we considered the healthy-minded temperament,the temperament which has a constitutional incapacity forprolonged suffering, and in which the tendency to see things optimisticallyis like a water of crystallization in which the individual’scharacter is set. We saw how this temperament may become thebasis for a peculiar type of religion, a religion in which good, eventhe good of this world’s life, is regarded as the essential thing for arational being to attend to. This religion directs him to settle hisscores with the more evil aspects of the universe by systematicallydeclining to lay them to heart or make much of them, by ignoringthem in his reflective calculations, or even, on occasion, by denyingoutright that they exist. Evil is a disease; and worry over disease isitself an additional form of disease, which only adds to the originalcomplaint. Even repentance and remorse, affections which come inthe character of ministers of good, may be but sickly and relaxingimpulses. The best repentance is to up and act for righteousness,and forget that you ever had relations with sin.Spinoza’s philosophy has this sort of healthy-mindedness woveninto the heart of it, and this has been one secret of its fascination.He whom Reason leads, according to Spinoza, is led altogether bythe influence over his mind of good. Knowledge of evil is an “inadequate”knowledge, fit only for slavish minds. So Spinoza categoricallycondemns repentance. When men make mistakes, he says—“One might perhaps expect gnawings of conscience and repentanceto help to bring them on the right path, and might thereuponconclude (as every one does conclude) that these affections are goodthings. Yet when we look at the matter closely, we shall find that notonly are they not good, but on the contrary deleterious and evilpassions. For it is manifest that we can always get along better byreason and love of truth than by worry of conscience and remorse.Harmful are these and evil, inasmuch as they form a particular kind