The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious ExperienceSometimes no emotional state is sovereign, but many contraryones are mixed together. In that case one hears both “yeses” and“noes,” and the “will” is called on then to solve the conflict. Take asoldier, for example, with his dread of cowardice impelling him toadvance, his fears impelling him to run, and his propensities to imitationpushing him towards various courses if his comrades offervarious examples. His person becomes the seat of a mass of interferences;and he may for a time simply waver, because no one emotionprevails. There is a pitch of intensity, though, which, if any emotionreach it, enthrones that one as alone effective and sweeps its antagonistsand all their inhibitions away. The fury of his comrades’ charge,once entered on, will give this pitch of courage to the soldier; thepanic of their rout will give this pitch of fear. In these sovereignexcitements, things ordinarily impossible grow natural because theinhibitions are annulled. Their “no! no!” not only is not heard, itdoes not exist. Obstacles are then like tissue-paper hoops to thecircus rider—no impediment; the flood is higher than the dam theymake.“Lass sie betteln gehn wenn sie hungrig sind!” cries the grenadier,frantic over his Emperor’s capture, when his wife and babes are suggested;and men pent into a burning theatre have been known tocut their way through the crowd with knives.144144 “‘Love would not be love,’ says Bourget, ‘unless it could carry one tocrime.’ And so one may say that no passion would be a veritable passionunless it could carry one to crime.” (Sighele: Psychollogie des sectes, p.136.) In other words, great passions annul the ordinary inhibitions set by“conscience.” And conversely, of all the criminal human beings, the false,cowardly, sensual, or cruel persons who actually live, there is perhaps notone whose criminal impulse may not be at some moment overpowered bythe presence of some other emotion to which his character is also potentiallyliable, provided that other emotion be only made intense enough. Fear isusually the most available emotion for this result in this particular class ofpersons. It stands for conscience, and may here be classed appropriately as a“higher affection.” If we are soon to die, or if we believe a day of judgmentto be near at hand, how quickly do we put our moral house in order—wedo not see how sin can evermore exert temptation over us! Old-fashionedhell-fire Christianity well knew how to extract from fear its full equivalentin the way of fruits for repentance, and its full conversion value.238