The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

William James5. In psychopathic persons, mortifications may be entered on irrationally,by a sort of obsession or fixed idea which comes as a challengeand must be worked off, because only thus does the subjectget his interior consciousness feeling right again.6. Finally, ascetic exercises may in rarer instances be prompted bygenuine perversions of the bodily sensibility, in consequence of whichnormally pain-giving stimuli are actually felt as pleasures.I will try to give an instance under each of these heads in turn; butit is not easy to get them pure, for in cases pronounced enough tobe immediately classed as ascetic, several of the assigned motivesusually work together. Moreover, before citing any examples at all, Imust invite you to some general psychological considerations whichapply to all of them alike.A strange moral transformation has within the past century sweptover our Western world. We no longer think that we are called on toface physical pain with equanimity. It is not expected of a man thathe should either endure it or inflict much of it, and to listen to therecital of cases of it makes our flesh creep morally as well as physically.The way in which our ancestors looked upon pain as an eternalingredient of the world’s order, and both caused and suffered itas a matter-of-course portion of their day’s work, fills us with amazement.We wonder that any human beings could have been so callous.The result of this historic alteration is that even in the MotherChurch herself, where ascetic discipline has such a fixed traditionalprestige as a factor of merit, it has largely come into desuetude, ifnot discredit. A believer who flagellates or “macerates” himself todayarouses more wonder and fear than emulation. Many Catholicwriters who admit that the times have changed in this respect do soresignedly; and even add that perhaps it is as well not to waste feelingsin regretting the matter, for to return to the heroic corporealdiscipline of ancient days might be an extravagance.Where to seek the easy and the pleasant seems instinctive —andinstinctive it appears to be in man; any deliberate tendency to pursuethe hard and painful as such and for their own sakes might well strike269