The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious Experiencethe Sun? I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, andbehold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit. For that which befalleththe sons of men befalleth beasts; as the one dieth, so dieth the other,all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again… . The dead know notanything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory ofthem is forgotten. Also their love and their hatred and their envy isnow perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in anythingthat is done under the Sun… . Truly the light is sweet, and apleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the Sun: but if a man livemany years and rejoice in them all, yet let him remember the days ofdarkness; for they shall be many.”In short, life and its negation are beaten up inextricably together.But if the life be good, the negation of it must be bad. Yet the twoare equally essential facts of existence; and all natural happiness thusseems infected with a contradiction. The breath of the sepulchresurrounds it.To a mind attentive to this state of things and rightly subject to thejoy-destroying chill which such a contemplation engenders, the onlyrelief that healthy-mindedness can give is by saying: “Stuff and nonsense,get out into the open air!” or “Cheer up, old fellow, you’ll be allright erelong, if you will only drop your morbidness!” But in all seriousness,can such bald animal talk as that be treated as a rationalanswer? To ascribe religious value to mere happy-go-lucky contentmentwith one’s brief chance at natural good is but the very consecrationof forgetfulness and superficiality. Our troubles lie indeed toodeep for that cure. The fact that we can die, that we can be ill at all, iswhat perplexes us; the fact that we now for a moment live and are wellis irrelevant to that perplexity. We need a life not correlated with death,a health not liable to illness, a kind of good that will not perish, agood in fact that flies beyond the Goods of nature.It all depends on how sensitive the soul may become to discords.“The trouble with me is that I believe too much in common happinessand goodness,” said a friend of mine whose consciousness wasof this sort, “and nothing can console me for their transiency. I amappalled and disconcerted at its being possible.” And so with mostof us: a little cooling down of animal excitability and instinct, alittle loss of animal toughness, a little irritable weakness and descent130