The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

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The Varieties of Religious Experiencebetween crankiness as such and superior intellect,7 for most psychopathshave feeble intellects, and superior intellects more commonlyhave normal nervous systems. But the psychopathic temperament,whatever be the intellect with which it finds itself paired,often brings with it ardor and excitability of character. The crankyperson has extraordinary emotional susceptibility. He is liable tofixed ideas and obsessions. His conceptions tend to pass immediatelyinto belief and action; and when he gets a new idea, he has norest till he proclaims it, or in some way “works it off.” “What shall Ithink of it?” a common person says to himself about a vexed question;but in a “cranky” mind “What must I do about it?” is the formthe question tends to take. In the autobiography of that high-souledwoman, Mrs. Annie Besant, I read the following passage: “Plenty ofpeople wish well to any good cause, but very few care to exert themselvesto help it, and still fewer will risk anything in its support.‘Someone ought to do it, but why should I?’ is the ever reechoedphrase of weak-kneed amiability. ‘Someone ought to do it, so whynot I?’ is the cry of some earnest servant of man, eagerly forwardspringing to face some perilous duty. Between these two sentenceslie whole centuries of moral evolution.” True enough! and betweenthese two sentences lie also the different destinies of the ordinarysluggard and the psychopathic man. Thus, when a superior intellectand a psychopathic temperament coalesce—as in the endless permutationsand combinations of human faculty, they are bound tocoalesce often enough—in the same individual, we have the bestpossible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into thebiographical dictionaries. Such men do not remain mere critics andunderstanders with their intellect. Their ideas possess them, theyinflict them, for better or worse, upon their companions or theirage. It is they who get counted when Messrs. Lombroso, Nisbet,and others invoke statistics to defend their paradox.To pass now to religious phenomena, take the melancholy which,as we shall see, constitutes an essential moment in every complete7 Superior intellect, as Professor Bain has admirably shown, seems to consistin nothing so much as in a large development of the faculty of associationby similarity.30
William Jamesreligious evolution. Take the happiness which achieved religious beliefconfers. Take the trancelike states of insight into truth which allreligious mystics report.8 These are each and all of them specialcases of kinds of human experience of much wider scope. Religiousmelancholy, whatever peculiarities it may have qua religious, is atany rate melancholy. Religious happiness is happiness. Religioustrance is trance. And the moment we renounce the absurd notionthat a thing is exploded away as soon as it is classed with others, orits origin is shown; the moment we agree to stand by experimentalresults and inner quality, in judging of values—who does not seethat we are likely to ascertain the distinctive significance of religiousmelancholy and happiness, or of religious trances, far better by comparingthem as conscientiously as we can with other varieties ofmelancholy, happiness, and trance, than by refusing to consider theirplace in any more general series, and treating them as if they wereoutside of nature’s order altogether?I hope that the course of these lectures will confirm us in thissupposition. As regards the psychopathic origin of so many religiousphenomena, that would not be in the least surprising or disconcerting,even were such phenomena certified from on high to bethe most precious of human experiences. No one organism can possiblyyield to its owner the whole body of truth. Few of us are not insome way infirm, or even diseased; and our very infirmities help usunexpectedly. In the psychopathic temperament we have the emotionalitywhich is the sine qua non of moral perception; we have theintensity and tendency to emphasis which are the essence of practicalmoral vigor; and we have the love of metaphysics and mysticismwhich carry one’s interests beyond the surface of the sensible world.What, then, is more natural than that this temperament should introduceone to regions of religious truth, to corners of the universe,which your robust Philistine type of nervous system, forever offeringits biceps to be felt, thumping its breast, and thanking Heaventhat it hasn’t a single morbid fiber in its composition, would be sureto hide forever from its self-satisfied possessors?8 I may refer to a criticism of the insanity theory of genius in the PsychologicalReview, ii. 287 (1895).31
Page 1 and 2: The Varieties ofReligiousExperience
Page 3 and 4: ContentsPREFACE....................
Page 5 and 6: William JamesLECTURE II CIRCUMSCRIP
Page 7 and 8: William JamesLECTURES XI, XII, AND
Page 9 and 10: William Jameseses: 1. The subconsci
Page 11 and 12: William Jamesmy colleague Dickinson
Page 13 and 14: William Jamesits heroic obligations
Page 15 and 16: William Jamesas a guide to life and
Page 17 and 18: William Jamespower. Yet from the po
Page 19 and 20: William Jamesthors are actually abl
Page 21 and 22: William Jamesin favor of the sexual
Page 23 and 24: William Jamesof our states of mind,
Page 25 and 26: William Jamesstrictly to the medica
Page 27 and 28: William Jamesment from origin has s
Page 29: William Jamesthe bugaboo of morbid
Page 33 and 34: William JamesLecture e IICIRCUMSCRI
Page 35 and 36: William Jamesnot prevent me from ta
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