The Varieties of Religious Experience — William James

p. 41what those elements were. In a general way I can now say what I had in mind. " I accept the universe " is reported to have been a favorite utterance of our New England transcendentalist, Margaret Fuller ; and when some one repeated this phrase to Thomas Carlyle, his sardonic comment is said to have been : " Gad ! she 'd better !

" At bottom the whole concern of both morality and religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe. Do we accept it only in part and grudgingly, or heartily and altogether ? Shall our protests against certain things in it be radical and unforgiving, or shall we think that, even with evil, there are ways of living that must lead to good?

If we accept the whole, shall we do so as if stunned into submission, — as Carlyle would have us — " Gad ! we 'd better ! " — or shall we do so with enthusiastic assent ? Morality pure and simple accepts the r^^t^^^,^^ law of the whole which it finds reigning, so far as to acknowledge and obey it, but it may obey it with the cW**^ - heaviest and coldest heart, and never cease to feel it as a yoke.

But for religion, in its strong and fully developed manifestations, the service of the highest never is f\^,y(jy^^^^ felt as a yoke. Dull submission is left far behind, and a /^ -, -? mood of welcome, which may fill any place on the scale v ' between cheerful serenity and enthusiastic gladness, has C^«»^' taken its place.

It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accept the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints. The difference is as great as that between passivity and activity, as that between the defensive and the aggressive mood. Gradual as are the steps by which an individual may 2p. 42grow from one state into the other, many as are the intermediate stages which different individuals represent, yet when you place the typical extremes beside each other for comparison, you feel that two discontinuous psychological universes confront you, and that in passing from one to the other a ^ critical point ' has been overcome.

If we comj)are stoic with Christian ejaculations we see much more than a difference of doctrine ; rather is it a difference of emotional mood that parts them. When Marcus Aurelius reflects on the eternal reason that has fj^* ordered things, there is a frosty chill about his words which you rarely find in a Jewish, and never in a Christian piece of religious writing.

The universe is ^ accepted ' by all these writers ; but how devoid of passion or exultation the spirit of the Roman Emperor is ! Compare his fine sentence : " If gods care not for me or my children, here is a reason for it," with Job's cry : " Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him ! " and you immediately see the difference I mean.

The anima nmndi, to whose disposal of his own personal destiny the Stoic consents, is there to be respected and submitted to, but the Christian God is there to be loved ; and the difference of emotional atmosphere is like that between an arctic climate and the tropics, though the outcome in the way of accepting actual conditions uncomplainingly may seem in abstract terms to be much the same.

" It is a man's duty," says Marcus Aurelius, " to comfort \ himself and wait for the natural dissolution, and not to be vexed, but to find refreshment solely in these thoughts — first that nothing will happen to me which is not conformable to the nature of the universe ; and secondly that I need do nothing contrary to the God and deity within me ; for there is no man who can compel me to transgress.^ He is an abscess on the 1 Book v., ch. X. (abridged).