The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious Experienceso far has been the devil. After all, I am afraid of God as much as ofthe devil, so I drift along, thinking of nothing but suicide, but withneither courage nor means here to execute the act. As you read this,it will easily prove to you my insanity. The style and the ideas areincoherent enough—I can see that myself. But I cannot keep myselffrom being either crazy or an idiot; and, as things are, fromwhom should I ask pity? I am defenseless against the invisible enemywho is tightening his coils around me. I should be no betterarmed against him even if I saw him, or had seen him. Oh, if hewould but kill me, devil take him! Death, death, once for all! But Istop. I have raved to you long enough. I say raved, for I can write nootherwise, having neither brain nor thoughts left. O God! what amisfortune to be born! Born like a mushroom, doubtless betweenan evening and a morning; and how true and right I was when inour philosophy-year in college I chewed the cud of bitterness withthe pessimists. Yes, indeed, there is more pain in life than gladness—it is one long agony until the grave. Think how gay it makes me toremember that this horrible misery of mine, coupled with this unspeakablefear, may last fifty, one hundred, who knows how manymore years!”78This letter shows two things. First, you see how the entire consciousnessof the poor man is so choked with the feeling of evil thatthe sense of there being any good in the world is lost for him altogether.His attention excludes it, cannot admit it: the sun has lefthis heaven. And secondly you see how the querulous temper of hismisery keeps his mind from taking a religious direction. Querulousnessof mind tends in fact rather towards irreligion; and it hasplayed, so far as I know, no part whatever in the construction ofreligious systems.Religious melancholy must be cast in a more melting mood. Tolstoyhas left us, in his book called My Confession, a wonderful accountof the attack of melancholy which led him to his own religious conclusions.The latter in some respects are peculiar; but the melancholypresents two characters which make it a typical document forour present purpose. First it is a well-marked case of anhedonia, of78 Roubinovitch et Toulouse: La Melancolie, 1897, p. 170, abridged.138