The Varieties of Religious Experience — William James
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p. 319The loathing of 'capital' with which our laboring classes to-day are growing more and more infected seems largely composed of tliis sound sentiment of antipathy for lives based on mere having.
As an anarchist poet writes : — " Not by accumulating riches, but by giving away that which you have, " Shall you become beautiful ; " You must undo the wrappings, not case yourself in fresh ones ; " Not by multiplying clothes shall you make your body sound and healthy, but rather by discarding tliem . . .
" For a soldier who is going on a campaign does not seek what fresh furniture he can carry on his back, but rather what he can leave behind ; " Knowing well that every additional thing which he cannot freely use and handle is an impediment." ^ In short, lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or on being, and in the interest of action people subject to spiritual excitement throw away possessions as so many clogs.
Only those who have no private interests can follow an ideal straight away. Sloth and cowardice creep in with every dollar or guinea we have to guard.
When a brother novice came to Saint Francis, saying : " Father, it would be a great consolation to me to own a psalter, but even supposing that our general should concede to me this indulgence, still I should like also to have your consent," Francis put him off with the examples of Charlemagne, Roland, and Oliver, pursuing the infidels in sweat and labor, and finally dymg on the field of battle.
" So care not," he said, " for owning books and knowledge, but care rather for works of goodness. And when some weeks later the novice came * Edward Carpenter : Towards Democracy, p. 362, abridged.
p. 320again to talk of liis craving for the psalter, Francis said : " After you have got your psalter you will crave a breviary ; and after you have got your breviary you wiU sit in your stall Hke a grand prelate, and will say to your brother : ^ Hand me my breviary.' . . .
And thenceforward he denied all such requests, saying : A man possesses of learning only so much as comes out of him in action, and a monk is a good preacher only so far as his deeds proclaim him such, for every tree is known by its fruits.
' But beyond this more worthily athletic attitude involved in doing and being, there is, in the desire of not having, something profounder still, somethmg related to that fundamental mystery of rehgious experience, the satisfaction found in absolute surrender to the larger power.
So long as any secular safeguard is retained, so long as any residual prudential guarantee is clung to, so long the surrender is incomplete, the vital crisis is not passed, fear still stands sentinel, and mistrust of the divine obtains : we hold by two anchors, looking to God, it is true, after a fashion, but also holding by our proper machinations. In certain medical experiences we have the same critical point to overcome.
A drunkard, or a morphine or cocaine maniac, offers himself to be cured. He appeals to. the doctor to wean him from his enemy, but he dares not face blank abstinence. The tyrannical drug is still an anchor to windward : he hides supplies of it among his clothing ; arranges secretly to have it smuggled in in case of need. Even so an incompletely regenerate man still trusts in his own expedients.
His money is like the sleej)ing potion which the chronically wakeful patient keeps beside his bed ; he throws himself on God, but if he should need the other help, there it ^ Speculum Perfectionis, ed. P. Sabatier, Paris, 1898, pp. 10, 13, p. 321will be also. Every one knows cases of this incomplete and ineffective desire for reform, — drunkards whom, with all their self-reproaches and resolves, one perceives to be quite unwilHng seriously to contemplate never being drunk again !
Really to give up anything on which we have relied, to give it up definitively, ^for good and all' and forever, signifies one of those radical alterations of character which came under our notice in the lectures on conversion.
In it the inner man rolls over into an entirely different position of equiHbrium, lives in a new centre of energy from this time on, and the tm-ning-point and hinge of all such operations seems usually to involve the sincere acceptance of certain nakednesses and destitutions.
Accordingly, throughout the annals of the saintly life, we find this ever-recurring note : Fling yourself upon God's providence without making any reserve whatever, — take no thought for the morrow, — sell all you have and give it to the poor, — only when the sacrifice is ruthless and reckless will the higher safety really arrive.
As a concrete example let me read a page from the biography of Antoinette Bourignon, a good woman, much persecuted in her day by both Protestants and Catholics, because she would not take her religion at second hand.
When a young girl, in her father's house, — " She spent whole nights in prayer, oft repeating : Lord, what wilt thou have me to do f And being one night in a most profound penitence, she said from the bottom of her heart : ' O my Lord ! What must T do to please thee ? For I have nobody to teach me. Speak to my soul and it will hear thee. At that instant she heard, as if another had spoke within her : Forsake all earthly things.
Separate thyself from the love of the creatures. Deny thyself She was quite astonished, not understanding this language, and mused long on these three points, thinking how she could fulfill them. She thought she could not live without earthly things, nor without loving the creatures,
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