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
These alternations are the completest of the ways in which a self may be
divided. A less complete way is the simultaneous coexistence of two or
more different groups of aims, of which one practically holds the right of
way and instigates activity, whilst the others are only pious wishes, and
never practically come to anything. Saint Augustine’s aspirations to a
purer life, in our last lecture, were for a while an example. Another
would be the President in his full pride of office, wondering whether it
were not all vanity, and whether the life of a wood‐chopper were not the
wholesomer destiny. Such fleeting aspirations are mere _velleitates_,
whimsies. They exist on the remoter outskirts of the mind, and the real
self of the man, the centre of his energies, is occupied with an entirely
different system. As life goes on, there is a constant change of our
interests, and a consequent change of place in our systems of ideas, from
more central to more peripheral, and from more peripheral to more central
parts of consciousness. I remember, for instance, that one evening when I
was a youth, my father read aloud from a Boston newspaper that part of
Lord Gifford’s will which founded these four lectureships. At that time I
did not think of being a teacher of philosophy: and what I listened to was
as remote from my own life as if it related to the planet Mars. Yet here I
am, with the Gifford system part and parcel of my very self, and all my
energies, for the time being, devoted to successfully identifying myself
with it. My soul stands now planted in what once was for it a practically
unreal object, and speaks from it as from its proper habitat and centre.
When I say “Soul,” you need not take me in the ontological sense unless
you prefer to; for although ontological language is instinctive in such
matters, yet Buddhists or Humians can perfectly well describe the facts in
the phenomenal terms which are their favorites. For them the soul is only
a succession of fields of consciousness: yet there is found in each field
a part, or sub‐field, which figures as focal and contains the excitement,
and from which, as from a centre, the aim seems to be taken. Talking of
this part, we involuntarily apply words of perspective to distinguish it
from the rest, words like “here,” “this,” “now,” “mine,” or “me”; and we
ascribe to the other parts the positions “there,” “then,” “that,” “his” or
“thine,” “it,” “not me.” But a “here” can change to a “there,” and a
“there” become a “here,” and what was “mine” and what was “not mine”
change their places.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account