The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human NatureJames, William
ReligionComparative
The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature
James, William
Conversion; Experience (Religion); Philosophy and religion; Psychology, Religious; Religion
Poor patient Bunyan, like Tolstoy, saw the light again, but we must also
postpone that part of his story to another hour. In a later lecture I will
also give the end of the experience of Henry Alline, a devoted evangelist
who worked in Nova Scotia a hundred years ago, and who thus vividly
describes the high‐water mark of the religious melancholy which formed its
beginning. The type was not unlike Bunyan’s.
“Everything I saw seemed to be a burden to me; the earth seemed
accursed for my sake: all trees, plants, rocks, hills, and vales
seemed to be dressed in mourning and groaning, under the weight of
the curse, and everything around me seemed to be conspiring my
ruin. My sins seemed to be laid open; so that I thought that every
one I saw knew them, and sometimes I was almost ready to
acknowledge many things, which I thought they knew: yea sometimes
it seemed to me as if every one was pointing me out as the most
guilty wretch upon earth. I had now so great a sense of the vanity
and emptiness of all things here below, that I knew the whole
world could not possibly make me happy, no, nor the whole system
of creation. When I waked in the morning, the first thought would
be, Oh, my wretched soul, what shall I do, where shall I go? And
when I laid down, would say, I shall be perhaps in hell before
morning. I would many times look on the beasts with envy, wishing
with all my heart I was in their place, that I might have no soul
to lose; and when I have seen birds flying over my head, have
often thought within myself, Oh, that I could fly away from my
danger and distress! Oh, how happy should I be, if I were in their
place!”(82)
Envy of the placid beasts seems to be a very widespread affection in this
type of sadness.
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The worst kind of melancholy is that which takes the form of panic fear.
Here is an excellent example, for permission to print which I have to
thank the sufferer. The original is in French, and though the subject was
evidently in a bad nervous condition at the time of which he writes, his
case has otherwise the merit of extreme simplicity. I translate freely.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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