The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious ExperienceIn the end we fall back on the hackneyed symbolism of a mechanicalequilibrium. A mind is a system of ideas, each with theexcitement it arouses, and with tendencies impulsive and inhibitive,which mutually check or reinforce one another. The collectionof ideas alters by subtraction or by addition in the course of experience,and the tendencies alter as the organism gets more aged. Amental system may be undermined or weakened by this interstitialalteration just as a building is, and yet for a time keep upright bydead habit. But a new perception, a sudden emotional shock, or anoccasion which lays bare the organic alteration, will make the wholefabric fall together; and then the centre of gravity sinks into an attitudemore stable, for the new ideas that reach the centre in therearrangement seem now to be locked there, and the new structureremains permanent.Formed associations of ideas and habits are usually factors of retardationin such changes of equilibrium. New information, howeveracquired, plays an accelerating part in the changes; and the slow mutationof our instincts and propensities, under the “unimaginable touchof time” has an enormous influence. Moreover, all these influencesmay work subconsciously or half unconsciously.99 And when youget a Subject in whom the subconscious life—of which I must speakmore fully soon—is largely developed, and in whom motives habituallyripen in silence, you get a case of which you can never give a fullaccount, and in which, both to the Subject and the onlookers, theremay appear an element of marvel. Emotional occasions, especially99 Jouffroy is an example: “Down this slope it was that my intelligencehad glided, and little by little it had got far from its first faith. But thismelancholy revolution had not taken place in the broad daylight of myconsciousness; too many scruples, too many guides and sacred affectionshad made it dreadful to me, so that I was far from avowing to myself theprogress it had made. It had gone on in silence, by an involuntary elaborationof which I was not the accomplice; and although I had in realitylong ceased to be a Christian, yet, in the innocence of my intention, Ishould have shuddered to suspect it, and thought it calumny had I beenaccused of such a falling away.” Then follows Jouffroy’s account of hiscounter-conversion, quoted above.182