The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious Experiencehis own lot with that of others; and, doing so, he must see that hisescape is just a lucky chance and no essential difference. He mightjust as well have been born to an entirely different fortune. Andthen indeed the hollow security! What kind of a frame of things is itof which the best you can say is, “Thank God, it has let me off clearthis time!” Is not its blessedness a fragile fiction? Is not your joy in ita very vulgar glee, not much unlike the snicker of any rogue at hissuccess? If indeed it were all success, even on such terms as that! Buttake the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and innine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is one of failure. Eitherhis ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched far higherthan the achievements themselves, or else he has secret ideals ofwhich the world knows nothing, and in regard to which he inwardlyknows himself to be found wanting.When such a conquering optimist as Goethe can express himselfin this wise, how must it be with less successful men?“I will say nothing,” writes Goethe in 1824, “against the course ofmy existence. But at bottom it has been nothing but pain and burden,and I can affirm that during the whole of my 75 years, I havenot had four weeks of genuine well-being. It is but the perpetualrolling of a rock that must be raised up again forever.”What single-handed man was ever on the whole as successful asLuther? Yet when he had grown old, he looked back on his life as ifit were an absolute failure.“I am utterly weary of life. I pray the Lord will come forthwithand carry me hence. Let him come, above all, with his last Judgment:I will stretch out my neck, the thunder will burst forth, and Ishall be at rest.”—And having a necklace of white agates in his handat the time he added: “O God, grant that it may come withoutdelay. I would readily eat up this necklace to-day, for the Judgmentto come to-morrow.”—The Electress Dowager, one day when Lutherwas dining with her, said to him: “Doctor, I wish you may live fortyyears to come.” “Madam,” replied he, “rather than live forty yearsmore, I would give up my chance of Paradise.”Failure, then, failure! so the world stamps us at every turn. Westrew it with our blunders, our misdeeds, our lost opportunities,with all the memorials of our inadequacy to our vocation. And with128