The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

William JamesLectures es XI, XII, and XIIISAINTLINESSTHE LAST LECTURE left us in a state of expectancy. What may thepractical fruits for life have been, of such movingly happy conversionsas those we heard of? With this question the really importantpart of our task opens, for you remember that we began all thisempirical inquiry not merely to open a curious chapter in the naturalhistory of human consciousness, but rather to attain a spiritualjudgment as to the total value and positive meaning of all the religioustrouble and happiness which we have seen. We must, therefore,first describe the fruits of the religious life, and then we mustjudge them. This divides our inquiry into two distinct parts. Let uswithout further preamble proceed to the descriptive task.It ought to be the pleasantest portion of our business in theselectures. Some small pieces of it, it is true, may be painful, or mayshow human nature in a pathetic light, but it will be mainly pleasant,because the best fruits of religious experience are the best thingsthat history has to show. They have always been esteemed so; here ifanywhere is the genuinely strenuous life; and to call to mind a successionof such examples as I have lately had to wander through,though it has been only in the reading of them, is to feel encouragedand uplifted and washed in better moral air.The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, bravery towhich the wings of human nature have spread themselves have beenflown for religious ideals. I can do no better than quote, as to this,some remarks which Sainte-Beuve in his History of Port-Royal makeson the results of conversion or the state of grace.“Even from the purely human point of view,” Sainte-Beuve says,“the phenomenon of grace must still appear sufficiently extraordinary,eminent, and rare, both in its nature and in its effects, to deservea closer study. For the soul arrives thereby at a certain fixedand invincible state, a state which is genuinely heroic, and from outof which the greatest deeds which it ever performs are executed.235