The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

William Jamesmism to be elaborated or lengthily dwelt on in their classic literature.They would have despised a life set wholly in a minor key, andsummoned it to keep within the proper bounds of lachrymosity.The discovery that the enduring emphasis, so far as this world goes,may be laid on its pain and failure, was reserved for races morecomplex, and (so to speak) more feminine than the Hellenes hadattained to being in the classic period. But all the same was theoutlook of those Hellenes blackly pessimistic.Stoic insensibility and Epicurean resignation were the farthestadvance which the Greek mind made in that direction. The Epicureansaid: “Seek not to be happy, but rather to escape unhappiness;strong happiness is always linked with pain; therefore hug the safeshore, and do not tempt the deeper raptures. Avoid disappointmentby expecting little, and by aiming low; and above all do not fret.”The Stoic said: “The only genuine good that life can yield a man isthe free possession of his own soul; all other goods are lies.” Each ofthese philosophies is in its degree a philosophy of despair in nature’sboons. Trustful self-abandonment to the joys that freely offer hasentirely departed from both Epicurean and Stoic; and what eachproposes is a way of rescue from the resultant dust-and-ashes stateof mind. The Epicurean still awaits results from economy of indulgenceand damping of desire. The Stoic hopes for no results, andgives up natural good altogether. There is dignity in both these formsof resignation. They represent distinct stages in the sobering processwhich man’s primitive intoxication with sense-happiness is sure toundergo. In the one the hot blood has grown cool, in the other ithas become quite cold; and although I have spoken of them in thepast tense, as if they were merely historic, yet Stoicism and Epicureanismwill probably be to all time typical attitudes, marking a certaindefinite stage accomplished in the evolution of the world-sicksoul.75 They mark the conclusion of what we call the once-born75 For instance, on the very day on which I write this page, the postbrings me some aphorisms from a worldly-wise old friend in Heidelbergwhich may serve as a good contemporaneous expression of Epicureanism:“By the word ‘happiness’ every human being understandssomething different. It is a phantom pursued only by weaker minds.133