The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

William Jameswork out identical solutions. Each, from his peculiar angle of observation,takes in a certain sphere of fact and trouble, which eachmust deal with in a unique manner. One of us must soften himself,another must harden himself; one must yield a point, another muststand firm—in order the better to defend the position assigned him.If an Emerson were forced to be a Wesley, or a Moody forced to bea Whitman, the total human consciousness of the divine would suffer.The divine can mean no single quality, it must mean a group ofqualities, by being champions of which in alternation, different menmay all find worthy missions. Each attitude being a syllable in humannature’s total message, it takes the whole of us to spell themeaning out completely. So a “god of battles” must be allowed to bethe god for one kind of person, a god of peace and heaven andhome, the god for another. We must frankly recognize the fact thatwe live in partial systems, and that parts are not interchangeable inthe spiritual life. If we are peevish and jealous, destruction of theself must be an element of our religion; why need it be one if we aregood and sympathetic from the outset? If we are sick souls, we requirea religion of deliverance; but why think so much of deliverance,if we are healthy-minded?328 Unquestionably, some men have328 From this point of view, the contrasts between the healthy and themorbid mind, and between the once-born and the twice-born types, ofwhich I spoke in earlier lectures (see pp. 159-164), cease to be the radicalantagonisms which many think them. The twice-born look down uponthe rectilinear consciousness of life of the once-born as being “mere morality,”and not properly religion. “Dr. Channing,” an orthodox ministeris reported to have said, “is excluded from the highest form of religious lifeby the extraordinary rectitude of his character.” It is indeed true that theoutlook upon life of the twice-born—holding as it does more of the elementof evil in solution—is the wider and completer. The “heroic” or“solemn” way in which life comes to them is a “higher synthesis” intowhich healthy- mindedness and morbidness both enter and combine. Evilis not evaded, but sublated in the higher religious cheer of these persons(see pp. 47-52, 354-357). But the final consciousness which each typereaches of union with the divine has the same practical significance for theindividual; and individuals may well be allowed to get to it by the channelswhich lie most open to their several temperaments. In the cases which433