The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious ExperienceThe legends that gather round the lives of holy persons are fruits of thisimpulse to celebrate and glorify. The Buddha200 and Mohammed201and their companions and many Christian saints are incrusted with aheavy jewelry of anecdotes which are meant to be honorific, but aresimply abgeschmackt and silly, and form a touching expression of man’smisguided propensity to praise.An immediate consequence of this condition of mind is jealousyfor the deity’s honor. How can the devotee show his loyalty betterthan by sensitiveness in this regard? The slightest affront or neglectmust be resented, the deity’s enemies must be put to shame. In exceedinglynarrow minds and active wills, such a care may become anengrossing preoccupation; and crusades have been preached and massacresinstigated for no other reason than to remove a fancied slightupon the God. Theologies representing the gods as mindful of theirPersia, “who had solemnly vowed, thirty years before, that he would neveremploy his organs of speech otherwise but in uttering, everlastingly, thename of his favorite, Ali, Ali. He thus wished to signify to the world thathe was the most devoted partisan of that Ali who had been dead a thousandyears. In his own home, speaking with his wife, children, and friends,no other word but ‘Ali!’ ever passed his lips. If he wanted food or drink oranything else, he expressed his wants still by repeating ‘Ali!’ Begging orbuying at the bazaar, it was always ‘Ali!’ Treated ill or generously, he wouldstill harp on his monotonous ‘Ali!’ Latterly his zeal assumed such tremendousproportions that, like a madman, he would race, the whole day, upand down the streets of the town, throwing his stick high up into the air,and shriek our, all the while, at the top of his voice, ‘Ali!’ This dervish wasvenerated by everybody as a saint, and received everywhere with the greatestdistinction.” Arminius Vambery, his Life and Adventures, written byHimself, London, 1889, p. 69. On the anniversary of the death of Hussein,Ali’s son, the Shi-ite Moslems still make the air resound with cries of hisname and Ali’s.200 Compare H. C. Warren: Buddhism in Translation, Cambridge, U.S.,1898, passim.201 Compare J. L. Merrick: The Life and Religion of Mohammed, ascontained in the Sheeah traditions of the Hyat-ul-Kuloob, Boston. 1850,passim.306