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
“As far as I am individually concerned, I am not bothering myself
at present as to what the results of this emancipated condition
may be. I have no doubt that the perfect health aimed at by
Christian Science may be one of the possibilities, for I note a
marked improvement in the way my stomach does its duty in
assimilating the food I give it to handle, and I am sure it works
better to the sound of a song than under the friction of a frown.
Neither am I wasting any of this precious time formulating an idea
of a future existence or a future Heaven. The Heaven that I have
within myself is as attractive as any that has been promised or
that I can imagine; and I am willing to let the growth lead where
it will, as long as the anger and their brood have no part in
misguiding it.”(95)
The older medicine used to speak of two ways, _lysis_ and _crisis_, one
gradual, the other abrupt, in which one might recover from a bodily
disease. In the spiritual realm there are also two ways, one gradual, the
other sudden, in which inner unification may occur. Tolstoy and Bunyan may
again serve us as examples, examples, as it happens, of the gradual way,
though it must be confessed at the outset that it is hard to follow these
windings of the hearts of others, and one feels that their words do not
reveal their total secret.
Howe’er this be, Tolstoy, pursuing his unending questioning, seemed to
come to one insight after another. First he perceived that his conviction
that life was meaningless took only this finite life into account. He was
looking for the value of one finite term in that of another, and the whole
result could only be one of those indeterminate equations in mathematics
which end with 0=0. Yet this is as far as the reasoning intellect by
itself can go, unless irrational sentiment or faith brings in the
infinite. Believe in the infinite as common people do, and life grows
possible again.
“Since mankind has existed, wherever life has been, there also has
been the faith that gave the possibility of living. Faith is the
sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroy
himself, but continues to live on. It is the force whereby we
live. If Man did not believe that he must live for something, he
would not live at all. The idea of an infinite God, of the
divinity of the soul, of the union of men’s actions with God—these
are ideas elaborated in the infinite secret depths of human
thought. They are ideas without which there would be no life,
without which I myself,” said Tolstoy, “would not exist. I began
to see that I had no right to rely on my individual reasoning and
neglect these answers given by faith, for they are the only
answers to the question.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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