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The Varieties of Religious Experiencewe act in our own concerns. Again, one finds that one can wait foreverything patiently, and that is one of life’s great arts. One finds alsothat each thing comes duly, one thing after the other, so that onegains time to make one’s footing sure before advancing farther. Andthen every thing occurs to us at the right moment, just what we oughtto do, etc., and often in a very striking way, just as if a third personwere keeping watch over those things which we are in easy danger offorgetting.“Often, too, persons are sent to us at the right time, to offer or askfor what is needed, and what we should never have had the courageor resolution to undertake of our own accord.“Through all these experiences one finds that one is kindly andtolerant of other people, even of such as are repulsive, negligent, orill-willed, for they also are instruments of good in God’s hand, andoften most efficient ones. Without these thoughts it would be hardfor even the best of us always to keep our equanimity. But with theconsciousness of divine guidance, one sees many a thing in life quitedifferently from what would otherwise be possible.“All these are things that every human being knows, who has hadexperience of them; and of which the most speaking examples couldbe brought forward. The highest resources of worldly wisdom areunable to attain that which, under divine leading, comes to us of itsown accord.”314Such accounts as this shade away into others where the belief is,not that particular events are tempered more towardly to us by asuperintending providence, as a reward for our reliance, but that bycultivating the continuous sense of our connection with the powerthat made things as they are, we are tempered more towardly fortheir reception. The outward face of nature need not alter, but theexpressions of meaning in it alter. It was dead and is alive again. It islike the difference between looking on a person without love, orupon the same person with love. In the latter case intercourse springsinto new vitality. So when one’s affections keep in touch with thedivinity of the world’s authorship, fear and egotism fall away; andin the equanimity that follows, one finds in the hours, as they suc-314 C. Hilty: Gluck, Dritter Theil, 1900, pp. 92 ff.420
William Jamesceed each other, a series of purely benignant opportunities. It is as ifall doors were opened, and all paths freshly smoothed. We meet anew world when we meet the old world in the spirit which this kindof prayer infuses.Such a spirit was that of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus.315 It isthat of mind-curers, of the transcendentalists, and of the so-called“liberal” Christians. As an expression of it, I will quote a page fromone of Martineau’s sermons:—“The universe, open to the eye to-day, looks as it did a thousandyears ago: and the morning hymn of Milton does but tell the beautywith which our own familiar sun dressed the earliest fields and gardensof the world. We see what all our fathers saw. And if we cannotfind God in your house or in mine, upon the roadside or the marginof the sea; in the bursting seed or opening flower; in the dayduty or the night musing; in the general laugh and the secret grief;in the procession of life, ever entering afresh, and solemnly passingby and dropping off; I do not think we should discern him anymore on the grass of Eden, or beneath the moonlight of Gethsemane.Depend upon it, it is not the want of greater miracles, but of thesoul to perceive such as are allowed us still, that makes us push allthe sanctities into the far spaces we cannot reach. The devout feelthat wherever God’s hand is, there is miracle: and it is simply an315 “Good Heaven!” says Epictetus, “any one thing in the creation issufficient to demonstrate a Providence, to a humble and grateful mind.The mere possibility of producing milk from grass, cheese from milk, andwool from skins; who formed and planned it? Ought we not, whether wedig or plough or eat, to sing this hymn to God? Great is God, who hassupplied us with these instruments to till the ground; great is God, whohas given us hands and instruments of digestion, who has given us togrow insensibly and to breathe in sleep. These things we ought forever tocelebrate… . But because the most of you are blind and insensible, theremust be some one to fill this station, and lead, in behalf of all men, thehymn to God; for what else can I do, a lame old man, but sing hymns toGod? Were I a nightingale, I would act the part of a nightingale; were I aswan, the part of a swan. But since I am a reasonable creature, it is myduty to praise God … and I call on you to join the same song.” Works,book i. ch. xvi., Carter-Higginson (translation) abridged.421
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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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