The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious Experiencewhere the religion is simple and rational; who is trained in the theoryof such a religion, so that he never knows, for an hour, what thesereligious or irreligious struggles are. I always knew God loved me,and I was always grateful to him for the world he placed me in. Ialways liked to tell him so, and was always glad to receive his suggestionsto me… . I can remember perfectly that when I was comingto manhood, the half-philosophical novels of the time had adeal to say about the young men and maidens who were facing the‘problem of life.’ I had no idea whatever what the problem of lifewas. To live with all my might seemed to me easy; to learn wherethere was so much to learn seemed pleasant and almost of course; tolend a hand, if one had a chance, natural; and if one did this, why,he enjoyed life because he could not help it, and without proving tohimself that he ought to enjoy it… . A child who is early taught thathe is God’s child, that he may live and move and have his being inGod, and that he has, therefore, infinite strength at hand for theconquering of any difficulty, will take life more easily, and probablywill make more of it, than one who is told that he is born the childof wrath and wholly incapable of good.”35One can but recognize in such writers as these the presence of atemperament organically weighted on the side of cheer and fatallyforbidden to linger, as those of opposite temperament linger, overthe darker aspects of the universe. In some individuals optimismmay become quasi-pathological. The capacity for even a transientsadness or a momentary humility seems cut off from them as by akind of congenital anaesthesia.36This finding of a luxury in woe is very common during adolescence.The truth-telling Marie Bashkirtseff expresses it well:—“In his depression and dreadful uninterrupted suffering, I don’tcondemn life. On the contrary, I like it and find it good. Can you35 Starbuck: Psychology of Religion, pp. 305, 306.36 “I know not to what physical laws philosophers will some day refer thefeelings of melancholy. For myself, I find that they are the most voluptuousof all sensations,” writes Saint Pierre, and accordingly he devotes aseries of sections of his work on Nature to the Plaisirs de la Ruine, Plaisirsdes Tombeaux, Ruines de la Nature, Plaisirs de la Solitude—each of themmore optimistic than the last.80