The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

William Jamesthe largest things of nature to the paltriest of our private wants. TheGod whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively,a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannotaccommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals. Thebubbles on the foam which coats a stormy sea are floating episodes,made and unmade by the forces of the wind and water. Our privateselves are like those bubbles—epiphenomena, as Clifford, I believe,ingeniously called them; their destinies weigh nothing and determinenothing in the world’s irremediable currents of events.“We see that God has created the sun to keep the changeable conditionson the earth in such an order that living creatures, men and beasts, mayinhabit its surface. Since men are the most reasonable of creatures, andable to infer God’s invisible being from the contemplation of the world,the sun in so far forth contributes to the primary purpose of creation:without it the race of man could not be preserved or continued… . Thesun makes daylight, not only on our earth, but also on the other planets;and daylight is of the utmost utility to us, for by its means we can commodiouslycarry on those occupations which in the night-time would eitherbe quite impossible. Or at any rate impossible without our going to theexpense of artificial light. The beasts of the field can find food by daywhich they would not be able to find at night. Moreover we owe it to thesunlight that we are able to see everything that is on the earth’s surface, notonly near by, but also at a distance, and to recognize both near and farthings according to their species, which again is of manifold use to us notonly in the business necessary to human life, and when we are traveling,but also for the scientific knowledge of Nature, which knowledge for themost part depends on observations made with the help of sight, and withoutthe sunshine, would have been impossible. If any one would rightlyimpress on his mind the great advantages which he derives from the sun,let him imagine himself living through only one month, and see how itwould be with all his undertakings, if it were not day but night. He wouldthen be sufficiently convinced out of his own experience, especially if hehad much work to carry on in the street or in the fields… . From the sunwe learn to recognize when it is midday, and by knowing this point oftime exactly, we can set our clocks right, on which account astronomyowes much to the sun… . By help of the sun one can find the meridian…. But the meridian is the basis of our sun-dials, and generally speaking, weshould have no sun-dials if we had no sun.” Vernunftige Gedanken von437