The Varieties of Religious Experience — William James
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
p. 241calls ^ spontaneous,' that is, fertile in self-suggestions, as distinguished from a ' passive ' subclass, to which most of the subjects of striking transformation belonged. His inference is that self-suggestion of impossibility had prevented the influence upon these persons of an environment which, on the more ' passive ' subjects, had easily brought forth the effects they looked for.
Sharp distinctions are difficult in these regions, and Professor Coe's numbers are small.
But his methods were careful, and the results tally with what one might expect ; and they seem, on the whole, to justify his practical conclusion, which is that if you should expose to a converting influence a subject in whom three factors unite : first, pronounced emotional sensibility ; second, tendency to auto- Cu*c^-c:< — matisms ; and third, suggestibility of the passive type ; /) you might then safely predict the result : there would be '^^-^^t^*- a sudden conversion, a transformation of the striking kind.
Does this temperamental origin diminish the significance of the sudden conversion when it has occurred ?
Not in the least, as Professor Coe well says ; for " the ultimate test of religious values is nothing psychological, nothing definable in terms of how it liapjiens^ but something ethical, definable only in terms of what is attained.'' ^ As we proceed farther in our inquiry we shall see that what is attained is often an altogether new level of spiritual vitality, a relatively heroic level, in which impossible things have become possible, and new energies and endurances are shown.
The personality is changed, the man is born anew, whether or not his psychological idiosyncrasies are what give the particular shape to his metamorphosis. ' Sanctification ' is the technical name of this result ; and erelong examples of it shall be brought 1 Op. cit., p. 144.
p. 242before you. In this lecture I have still only to add a few remarks on the assurance and peace which fill the hour of change itself. One word more, though, before proceeding to that point, lest the final purpose of my explanation of suddenness by subliminal activity be misunderstood.
I do indeed believe that if the Subject have no liability to such subconscious activity, or if his conscious fields have a hard rind of a margin that resists incursions from beyond it, his conversion must be gradual if it occur, and must resemble any simple growth into new habits.
His possession of a developed subliminal self, and of a leaky or pervious margin, is thus a conditio sine qua non of the Subject's becoming converted in the instantaneous I way.
But if you, being orthodox Christians, ask me as a psychologist whether the reference of a phenomenon to a subliminal self does not exclude the notion of the direct presence of the Deity altogether, I have to say frankly that as a psychologist I do not see why it necessarily should.
The lower manifestations of the Subliminal, indeed, fall within the resources of the personal subject : his ordinary sense-material, inattentively taken in and subconsciously remembered and combined, will account for all his usual automatisms.
But just as our primary wide-awake consciousness throws open our senses to the touch of things material, so it is logically conceivable that if there he higher spiritual agencies that can directly touch us, the psychological condition of their doing so might he our possession of a subconscious region which alone should yield access to them. The hubbub of the waking life might close a door which in the dreamy Subliminal might remain ajar or open. Thus that perception of external control which is so p. 243essential a feature in conversion might, in some cases at any rate, be interpreted as the orthodox interpret it : forces transcending the finite individual might impress him, on condition of his being what we may call a subliminal human specimen.
But in any case the value of these forces would have to be determined by their effects, and the mere fact of their transcendency would of itself establish no presumption that they were more divine than diaboHcal. I confess that this is the way in which I should rather see the topic left lying in your minds until I come to a much later lecture, when I hope once more to gather these dropped threads together into more definitive conclusions.
The notion of a subconscious self certainly ought not at this point of our inquiry to be held to exclude all notion of a higher penetration. If there be'\ higher powers able to impress us, they may get access to us only through the subliminal door. (See below, p. 515 ff.) Let us turn now to the feelings which immediately fill the hour of the conversion experience. The first one to be noted is just this sense of higher control.
It is not always, but it is very often present. We saw examples of it in AUine, Bradley, Brainerd, and elsewhere. The need of such a higher controlling agency is well expressed in the short reference which the eminent French Protestant iVdolphe Monod makes to the crisis of his own conversion. It was at Naples in his early manhood, in the summer of 1827.
" My sadness," he says, " was without limit, and having got entire possession of me, it filled my life from the most indifferent external acts to the most secret thoughts, and corrupted at their source my feelings, my judgment, and my happiness. It was then that I saw that to expect to put a stop to this disorder
No commentary for this page under the selected tracks.
There is commentary on page 1.