The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious Experience294Lectures es XIV and XVTHE VALALUE UE OF SAINTLINESSWE HAVE NOW passed in review the more important of the phenomenawhich are regarded as fruits of genuine religion and characteristicsof men who are devout. Today we have to change our attitudefrom that of description to that of appreciation; we have to askwhether the fruits in question can help us to judge the absolutevalue of what religion adds to human life. Were I to parody Kant, Ishould say that a “Critique of pure Saintliness” must be our theme.If, in turning to this theme, we could descend upon our subjectfrom above like Catholic theologians, with our fixed definitions ofman and man’s perfection and our positive dogmas about God, weshould have an easy time of it. Man’s perfection would be the fulfillmentof his end; and his end would be union with his Maker. Thatunion could be pursued by him along three paths, active, purgative,and contemplative, respectively; and progress along either path wouldbe a simple matter to measure by the application of a limited numberof theological and moral conceptions and definitions. The absolutesignificance and value of any bit of religious experience wemight hear of would thus be given almost mathematically into ourhands.If convenience were everything, we ought now to grieve at findingourselves cut off from so admirably convenient a method asthis. But we did cut ourselves off from it deliberately in those remarkswhich you remember we made, in our first lecture, about theempirical method; and it must be confessed that after that act ofrenunciation we can never hope for clean-cut and scholastic results.We cannot divide man sharply into an animal and a rational part.We cannot distinguish natural from supernatural effects; nor amongthe latter know which are favors of God, and which are counterfeitoperations of the demon. We have merely to collect things togetherwithout any special a priori theological system, and out of an aggregateof piecemeal judgments as to the value of this and that experi-