The Varieties of Religious Experience — William James

p. 478me to touch upon is the fact that its manifestations so / frequently connect themselves with the subconscious part ]/ of our existence. You may remember what I said in my opening lecture ^ about the prevalence of the psychopathic temperament in religious biography. You will in point of fact hardly find a religious leader of any kind in whose life there is no record of automatisms.

I speak not merely of savage priests and prophets, whose followers regard automatic utterance and action as by itself tantamount to inspiration, I speak of leaders of thought and subjects of intellectualized experience. Saint Paul had his visions, his ecstasies, his gift of tongues, small as was the importance he attached to the latter.

The whole array of Christian saints and heresiarchs, including the greatest, the Bernards, the Loyolas, the Luthers, the Foxes, the Wesleys, had their visions, voices, rapt conditions, guiding impressions, and * openings. They had these things, because they had exalted sensibility, and to such things persons of exalted sensibility are liable. In such liability there lie, however, consequences for theology.

Beliefs are strengthened wherever automatisms corroborate them. Incursions from beyond the transmarginal region have a peculiar power to increase conviction. The inchoate sense of presence is infinitely stronger than conception, but strong as it may be, it is seldom equal to the evidence of hallucination. Saints who actually see or hear their Saviour reach the acme of assurance.

Motor automatisms, though rarer, are, if- possible, even more convincing than sensations. The subjects here actually feel themselves played upon by powers beyond their will. The evidence is dynamic; the God or spirit moves thej very organs of their body.^ j^ t^^ 1 Above, pp. 24, 25. " ^"^ * A friend of mine, a first-rate psychologist, who is a subject of graphic

p. 479The great field for this sense of being the instrument of a higher power is of course ' inspiration. It is easy to discriminate between the rehgious leaders who have been habitually subject to inspiration and those who have not.

In the teachings of the Buddha, of Jesus, of Saint Paul (apart from his gift of tongues), of Saint Augustine, of Huss, of Luther, of Wesley, automatic or semi-automatic composition appears to have been only occasional. In the Hebrew prophets, on the contrary, in Mohammed, in some of the Alexandrians, in many minor Catholic saints, in Fox, in Joseph Smith, something like it appears to have been frequent, sometimes habitual.

We have distinct professions of being under the direction of a foreign power, and serving as its mouthpiece. As regards the Hebrew prophets, it is extraordinary, writes an author who has made a careful study of them, to see — " How, one after another, the sam6 features are reproduced in the prophetic books.

The process is always extremely different from what it would be if the prophet arrived at his insight into spiritual things by the tentative efforts of his own automatism, tells me that the appearance of independent actuation in the movements of his arm, when he writes automatically, is so distinct that it obliges him to abandon a psychophysical theory which he had previously believed in, the theory, namely, that we have no feeling of the discharge downwards of our voluntary motor-centres.

We must normally have such a feeling, he thinks, or the sense of an absence would not be so striking as it is in these experiences. Graphic automatism of a fully developed kind is rare in religious history, so far as my knowledge goes. Such statements as Antonia Bourignon's, that " I do nothing but lend my hand and spirit to another power than mine," is shown by the context to indicate inspiration rather than directly automatic writing.

In some eccentric sects this lattetoccurs. The most striking instance of it is probably tlie bulky volume called^ ' Oahspe, a new Bible in the Words of Jehovah and his angel ambassadors,' Boston and London, 1891, written and illustrated automatically by Dr, Newbrough of New York, whom I understand to be now, or to have been lately, at the head of the spiritistic community of Shalam in New Mexico.

The latest automatically written book which has come under my notice is ' Zertoulem's Wisdom of the Ages,' by George A. Fuller, Boston, 1901.

p. 480genius. There is something sharp and sudden about it. He can lay his finger, so to speak, on the moment when it came. And it always comes in the form of an overpowering force from without, against which he struggles, but in vain. Listen, for instance, [to] the opening of the book of Jeremiah. Read through in like manner the first two chapters of the prophecy of Ezekiel.

" It is not, however, only at the beginning of his career that the prophet passes through a crisis which is clearly not selfcaused. Scattered all through the prophetic writings are expressions which speak of some strong and irresistible impulse coming down upon the prophet, determining his attitude to the events of his time, constraining his utterance, making his words the vehicle of a higher meaning than their own.

For instance, this of Isaiah's : ' The Lord spake thus to me with a sti-ong hand,' — an emphatic phrase which denotes the overmastering nature of the imj)ulse, — ' and instructed me that I should not walk in the way of this people.' ... Or passages like this from Ezekiel : ' The hand of the Lord God fell upon me,' ' The hand of the Lord was strong upon me.

The one standing characteristic of the prophet is that he speaks with the au- ) thority of Jehovah himself. Hence it is that the prophets one * and all preface their addresses so confidently, ' The Word of the Lord,' or ' Thus saith the Lord. They have even the a audacity to speak in the first person, as if Jehovah himself were Y speaking.

As in Isaiah : ' Hearken unto me, O Jacob, and Israel my called ; I am He, I am the First, I also am the last,' — and so on. The personality of the prophet sinks entirely into the background ; he feels himself for the time being the mouthpiece of the Almighty." ^ " We need to remember that prophecy was a profession, and that the prophets formed a professional class. There were schools of the prophets, in which the gift was regularly cultivated.

A group of young men would gather round some commanding figure — a Samuel or an Elisha — and would not only record or spread the knowledge of his sayings and doings, but seek to catch themselves something of his inspiration. It 1 W. Sanday : The Oracles of God, London, 1892, pp. 49-56, abridged.