The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

William JamesOne mode of emotional excitability is exceedingly important inthe composition of the energetic character, from its peculiarly destructivepower over inhibitions. I mean what in its lower form ismere irascibility, susceptibility to wrath, the fighting temper; andwhat in subtler ways manifests itself as impatience, grimness, earnestness,severity of character. Earnestness means willingness to livewith energy, though energy bring pain. The pain may be pain toother people or pain to one’s self—it makes little difference; forwhen the strenuous mood is on one, the aim is to break something,no matter whose or what. Nothing annihilates an inhibition as irresistiblyas anger does it; for, as Moltke says of war, destruction pureand simple is its essence. This is what makes it so invaluable an allyof every other passion. The sweetest delights are trampled on with aferocious pleasure the moment they offer themselves as checks to acause by which our higher indignations are elicited. It costs thennothing to drop friendships, to renounce long-rooted privileges andpossessions, to break with social ties. Rather do we take a stern joyin the astringency and desolation; and what is called weakness ofcharacter seems in most cases to consist in the inaptitude for thesesacrificial moods, of which one’s own inferior self and its petsoftnesses must often be the targets and the victims.145So far I have spoken of temporary alterations produced by shiftingexcitements in the same person. But the relatively fixed differences ofcharacter of different persons are explained in a precisely similar way.In a man with a liability to a special sort of emotion, whole ranges ofinhibition habitually vanish, which in other men remain effective,and other sorts of inhibition take their place. When a person has aninborn genius for certain emotions, his life differs strangely from that145 Example: Benjamin Constant was often marveled at as an extraordinaryinstance of superior intelligence with inferior character. He writes(Journal, Paris, 1895, p. 56), “I am tossed and dragged about by my miserableweakness. Never was anything so ridiculous as my indecision. Nowmarriage, now solitude; now Germany, now France hesitation upon hesitation,and all because at bottom I am unable to give up anything.” He can’t“get mad” at any of his alternatives; and the career of a man beset by suchan all-round amiability is hopeless.239