The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious ExperienceIn illustrating these characteristics by documents, we have beenliterally bathed in sentiment. In re-reading my manuscript, I amalmost appalled at the amount of emotionality which I find in it.After so much of this, we can afford to be dryer and less sympatheticin the rest of the work that lies before us.The sentimentality of many of my documents is a consequence ofthe fact that I sought them among the extravagances of the subject.If any of you are enemies of what our ancestors used to brand asenthusiasm, and are, nevertheless, still listening to me now, you haveprobably felt my selection to have been sometimes almost perverse,and have wished I might have stuck to soberer examples. I replythat I took these extremer examples as yielding the profounder information.To learn the secrets of any science, we go to expert specialists,even though they may be eccentric persons, and not to commonplacepupils. We combine what they tell us with the rest of ourwisdom, and form our final judgment independently. Even so withreligion. We who have pursued such radical expressions of it maynow be sure that we know its secrets as authentically as anyone canknow them who learns them from another; and we have next toanswer, each of us for himself, the practical question: what are thedangers in this element of life? and in what proportion may it needto be restrained by other elements, to give the proper balance?But this question suggests another one which I will answer immediatelyand get it out of the way, for it has more than once alreadyvexed us.327 Ought it to be assumed that in all men the mixture ofreligion with other elements should be identical? Ought it, indeed,to be assumed that the lives of all men should show identical religiouselements? In other words, is the existence of so many religioustypes and sects and creeds regrettable?To these questions I answer “No” emphatically. And my reason isthat I do not see how it is possible that creatures in such differentpositions and with such different powers as human individuals are,should have exactly the same functions and the same duties. Notwo of us have identical difficulties, nor should we be expected to327 For example, on pages 135, 160, 326 above.432