The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

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The Varieties of Religious Experiencenaturally to think that the smallest details of this world derive infinitesignificance from their relation to an unseen divine order. Thethought of this order yields him a superior denomination of happiness,and a steadfastness of soul with which no other can compare.In social relations his serviceability is exemplary; he abounds inimpulses to help. His help is inward as well as outward, for his sympathyreaches souls as well as bodies, and kindles unsuspected facultiestherein. Instead of placing happiness where common men placeit, in comfort, he places it in a higher kind of inner excitement,which converts discomforts into sources of cheer and annuls unhappiness.So he turns his back upon no duty, however thankless;and when we are in need of assistance, we can count upon the saintlending his hand with more certainty than we can count upon anyother person. Finally, his humble-mindedness and his ascetic tendenciessave him from the petty personal pretensions which so obstructour ordinary social intercourse, and his purity gives us in hima clean man for a companion. Felicity, purity, charity, patience, selfseverity—theseare splendid excellencies, and the saint of all menshows them in the completest possible measure.But, as we saw, all these things together do not make saints infallible.When their intellectual outlook is narrow, they fall into all sortsof holy excesses, fanaticism or theopathic absorption, self-torment,prudery, scrupulosity, gullibility, and morbid inability to meet theworld. By the very intensity of his fidelity to the paltry ideals withwhich an inferior intellect may inspire him, a saint can be even moreobjectionable and damnable than a superficial carnal man would bein the same situation. We must judge him not sentimentally only,and not in isolation, but using our own intellectual standards, placinghim in his environment, and estimating his total function.Now in the matter of intellectual standards, we must bear in mindthat it is unfair, where we find narrowness of mind, always to imputeit as a vice to the individual, for in religious and theological mattershe probably absorbs his narrowness from his generation. Moreover,we must not confound the essentials of saintliness, which are thosegeneral passions of which I have spoken, with its accidents, which arethe special determinations of these passions at any historical moment.In these determinations the saints will usually be loyal to the tempo-330
William Jamesrary idols of their tribe. Taking refuge in monasteries was as much anidol of the tribe in the middle ages, as bearing a hand in the world’swork is to-day. Saint Francis or Saint Bernard, were they living today,would undoubtedly be leading consecrated lives of some sort,but quite as undoubtedly they would not lead them in retirement.Our animosity to special historic manifestations must not lead us togive away the saintly impulses in their essential nature to the tendermercies of inimical critics.The most inimical critic of the saintly impulses whom I know isNietzsche. He contrasts them with the worldly passions as we findthese embodied in the predaceous military character, altogether tothe advantage of the latter. Your born saint, it must be confessed,has something about him which often makes the gorge of a carnalman rise, so it will be worth while to consider the contrast in questionmore fully.Dislike of the saintly nature seems to be a negative result of thebiologically useful instinct of welcoming leadership, and glorifyingthe chief of the tribe. The chief is the potential, if not the actualtyrant, the masterful, overpowering man of prey. We confess ourinferiority and grovel before him. We quail under his glance, andare at the same time proud of owning so dangerous a lord. Suchinstinctive and submissive hero-worship must have been indispensablein primeval tribal life. In the endless wars of those times, leaderswere absolutely needed for the tribe’s survival. If there were anytribes who owned no leaders, they can have left no issue to narratetheir doom. The leaders always had good consciences, for consciencein them coalesced with will, and those who looked on their facewere as much smitten with wonder at their freedom from innerrestraint as with awe at the energy of their outward performances.Compared with these beaked and taloned graspers of the world,saints are herbivorous animals, tame and harmless barn-yard poultry.There are saints whose beard you may, if you ever care to, pullwith impunity. Such a man excites no thrills of wonder veiled interror; his conscience is full of scruples and returns; he stuns usneither by his inward freedom nor his outward power; and unlesshe found within us an altogether different faculty of admiration toappeal to, we should pass him by with contempt.331
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The Varieties ofReligiousExperience
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ContentsPREFACE....................
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William JamesLECTURE II CIRCUMSCRIP
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William JamesLECTURES XI, XII, AND
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William Jameseses: 1. The subconsci
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William Jamesmy colleague Dickinson
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William Jamesits heroic obligations
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William Jamesas a guide to life and
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William Jamespower. Yet from the po
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William Jamesthors are actually abl
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William Jamesin favor of the sexual
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William Jamesof our states of mind,
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William Jamesstrictly to the medica
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William Jamesment from origin has s
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William Jamesthe bugaboo of morbid
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William Jamesreligious evolution. T
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William JamesLecture e IICIRCUMSCRI
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William Jamesnot prevent me from ta
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