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1RELIGION AND NEUROLOGY 5 should such a volume, with its manner of coming into existence so defined, be to us as a guide to life and a revelation ? To answer this other question we must have already in our mind some sort of a general theory as to what the peculiarities in a thing should be which give it value for purposes of revelation ; and this theory itself would be what I just called a spiritual judgment. Combining it with our existential judgment, we might indeed deduce another spiritual judgment as to the Bible's worth. Thus if our theory of revelation-value were to affirm that any book, to possess it, must have been composed automatically or not by the free caprice of the writer, or that it must exhibit no scientific and historic errors and express no local or personal passions, the Bible would probably fare ill at our hands. But if, on the other hand, our theory should allow that a book may well be a revelation in spite of errors and passions andjy , u deliberate human composition, if only it be a true record of the inner experiences of great-souled persons wrestling with the crises of their fate, then the verdict would be much more favorable. You see that the existential facts by themselves are insufficient for determining the value ; and the best adepts of the higher criticism accordingly never confound the existential with the spiritual problem. With the same conclusions of fact before them, some take one view, and some another, of the Bible's value as a revelation, according as their spiritual judgment as to the foundation of values differs. I make these general remarks about the two sorts of judgment, because there are many religious persons — some of you now present, possibly, are among them — who do not yet make a working use of the distinction, and who may therefore feel at first a little startled at
26 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE the purely existential point of view from which in the following lectures the phenomena of religious experience must be considered. When I handle them biologically and psychologically as if they were mere curious facts of individual history, some of you may think it a degradation of so sublime a subject, and may even suspect me, until my purpose gets more fully expressed, of deliberately seeking to discredit the religious side of Hfe. Such a result is, of course absolutely alien to my intention ; and since such a prejudice on your part would seriously obstruct the due efPect of much of what I have to relate, I will devote a few more words to the point. There can be no doubt that as a matter of fact a religious life, exclusively pursued, does tend to make the person exceptional and eccentric. I speak not now of your ordinary religious believer, who follows the conventional observances of his country, whether it be Buddhist, Christian, or Mohammedan. His religion has been made for him by others, communicated to him by tradition, determined to fixed forms by imitation, and retained by habit. It would profit us Httle to study this second-hand religious life. We must make search rather for the original experiences which were the pattern-setters to all this mass of suggested feeling and imitated conduct. These experiences we can only find in individuals for whom religion exists not as a dull habit, but as an acute fever rather. But such individuals are * geniuses ' in the religious line ; and like many other geniuses who have brought forth fruits effective enough for commemoration in the pages of biography, such religious geniuses have often shown symptoms of nervous instability. Even more perhaps than other kinds of genius, religious leaders have been subject to abnormal psychical visitations. Invariably they have been creatures of exalted emotional sensibility.
3RELIGION AND NEUROLOGY 7 Often they have led a discordant inner Hfe, and had melancholvx^uring a part of their carear. They have known no measure, been liable to obsessions and fixed ideas; and frequently they have fallen into trances, ]-:^j^ heard voices, seen visions, and presented all sorts of i peculiarities which are ordinarily classed as pathological. Often, moreover, these pathological features in their-'- --.'-. .^ career have helped to give them their religious authority o^^ frtu«*^ and influence. If you ask for a concrete example, there can be no better one than is furnished by the person of George Fox. The Quaker religion which he founded is some-r ^<JS/^. ^ thing which it is impossible to overpraise. In a day of shams, it was a rehgion of veracity rooted in spiritual inwardness, and a return to something more like the original gospel truth than men had ever known in England. So far as our Christian sects to-day are evolving into liberality, they are simply reverting in essence to the position which Fox and the early Quakers so long ago assumed. No one can pretend for a foment that in point of spiritual sagacity and capacity, Fox's mind was unsound. Every one who confronted him personally, from Oliver Cromwell down to county magistrates and jailers, seems to_have acknowledged his superior power. Yet from the point of view of his nervous constitution. Fox was a psychopath or detraque of the deepest dye. His Journal abounds in entries of this sort : — " As I was walking with several friends, I lifted up my head, and saw three steeple-house spires, and they struck at my life. I asked them what place that was ? They said, Lichfield. Immediately the word of the Lord came to me, that I must go thither. Being come to the house we were going to, I wished the friends to walk into the house, saying nothing to them of whither I was to go. As soon as they were gone I stept away,
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
1RELIGION AND NEUROLOGY 5 should such a volume, with its manner of coming into existence so defined, be to us as a guide to life and a revelation ? To answer this other question we must have already in our mind some sort of a general theory as to what the peculiarities in a thing should be which give it value for purposes of revelation ; and this theory itself would be what I just called a spiritual judgment. Combining it with our existential judgment, we might indeed deduce another spiritual judgment as to the Bible's worth. Thus if our theory of revelation-value were to affirm that any book, to possess it, must have been composed automatically or not by the free caprice of the writer, or that it must exhibit no scientific and historic errors and express no local or personal passions, the Bible would probably fare ill at our hands. But if, on the other hand, our theory should allow that a book may well be a revelation in spite of errors and passions andjy , u deliberate human composition, if only it be a true record of the inner experiences of great-souled persons wrestling with the crises of their fate, then the verdict would be much more favorable. You see that the existential facts by themselves are insufficient for determining the value ; and the best adepts of the higher criticism accordingly never confound the existential with the spiritual problem. With the same conclusions of fact before them, some take one view, and some another, of the Bible's value as a revelation, according as their spiritual judgment as to the foundation of values differs. I make these general remarks about the two sorts of judgment, because there are many religious persons — some of you now present, possibly, are among them — who do not yet make a working use of the distinction, and who may therefore feel at first a little startled at
26 THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE the purely existential point of view from which in the following lectures the phenomena of religious experience must be considered. When I handle them biologically and psychologically as if they were mere curious facts of individual history, some of you may think it a degradation of so sublime a subject, and may even suspect me, until my purpose gets more fully expressed, of deliberately seeking to discredit the religious side of Hfe. Such a result is, of course absolutely alien to my intention ; and since such a prejudice on your part would seriously obstruct the due efPect of much of what I have to relate, I will devote a few more words to the point. There can be no doubt that as a matter of fact a religious life, exclusively pursued, does tend to make the person exceptional and eccentric. I speak not now of your ordinary religious believer, who follows the conventional observances of his country, whether it be Buddhist, Christian, or Mohammedan. His religion has been made for him by others, communicated to him by tradition, determined to fixed forms by imitation, and retained by habit. It would profit us Httle to study this second-hand religious life. We must make search rather for the original experiences which were the pattern-setters to all this mass of suggested feeling and imitated conduct. These experiences we can only find in individuals for whom religion exists not as a dull habit, but as an acute fever rather. But such individuals are * geniuses ' in the religious line ; and like many other geniuses who have brought forth fruits effective enough for commemoration in the pages of biography, such religious geniuses have often shown symptoms of nervous instability. Even more perhaps than other kinds of genius, religious leaders have been subject to abnormal psychical visitations. Invariably they have been creatures of exalted emotional sensibility.
3RELIGION AND NEUROLOGY 7 Often they have led a discordant inner Hfe, and had melancholvx^uring a part of their carear. They have known no measure, been liable to obsessions and fixed ideas; and frequently they have fallen into trances, ]-:^j^ heard voices, seen visions, and presented all sorts of i peculiarities which are ordinarily classed as pathological. Often, moreover, these pathological features in their-'- --.'-. .^ career have helped to give them their religious authority o^^ frtu«*^ and influence. If you ask for a concrete example, there can be no better one than is furnished by the person of George Fox. The Quaker religion which he founded is some-r ^<JS/^. ^ thing which it is impossible to overpraise. In a day of shams, it was a rehgion of veracity rooted in spiritual inwardness, and a return to something more like the original gospel truth than men had ever known in England. So far as our Christian sects to-day are evolving into liberality, they are simply reverting in essence to the position which Fox and the early Quakers so long ago assumed. No one can pretend for a foment that in point of spiritual sagacity and capacity, Fox's mind was unsound. Every one who confronted him personally, from Oliver Cromwell down to county magistrates and jailers, seems to_have acknowledged his superior power. Yet from the point of view of his nervous constitution. Fox was a psychopath or detraque of the deepest dye. His Journal abounds in entries of this sort : — " As I was walking with several friends, I lifted up my head, and saw three steeple-house spires, and they struck at my life. I asked them what place that was ? They said, Lichfield. Immediately the word of the Lord came to me, that I must go thither. Being come to the house we were going to, I wished the friends to walk into the house, saying nothing to them of whither I was to go. As soon as they were gone I stept away,
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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