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1 | * William James - [[http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/621][Varieties of Religious Experience]] (=In progress=) |
2 | |
3 | ; - book version of lecture series |
4 | ; - large set of quotes with commentary |
5 | ; - Most are similar in nature (too many) |
6 | ; - Seemingly suspect in quality |
7 | ; - Always *perfectly* support his argument (selection process) |
8 | ; - Many accounts from personal correspondence |
9 | ; - Some are quite interesting |
10 | ; - Luther, Tolstoy, ... |
11 | ; - arguments a bit weak |
12 | ; - e.g. cites Freud as being true (Lecture X) |
13 | ; - Seems to take the (then new) discipline of psychology far too |
14 | ; seriously |
15 | ; - Uses questionable arguments |
16 | ; - Model of the subconcious (Lecture IX), etc. |
17 | ; - Depsite flaws still somewhat interesting |
18 | ; - Some quotations are interesting |
19 | |
20 | The *Varieties of Religious Experience* is a set of twenty lectures on |
21 | religious experience from a psychological perspective. The quality of |
22 | the method used is a bit suspect, but my understanding is that it was |
23 | one of the first pyschological surveys of religion, and so could |
24 | perhaps be forgiven of a few flaws. |
25 | |
26 | I found parts to be boring, and others to have flawed reasoning, but |
27 | with a few lectures that were interesting. At the very least the |
28 | lectures give a reasonable glimpse into the religous fashion of the |
29 | late 1800s. There is a small bit of social commentary thrown in that |
30 | is cited by John Gatto in his *Underground History of American |
31 | Education*, which is why I chose to read this. |
32 | |
33 | ** Lectures I and II |
34 | |
35 | The first two lectures lay the groundwork for the lecture series. The |
36 | first covers a few views on what religious experience is, and gives |
37 | refutations (although not terribly good ones now, perhaps they were |
38 | seen as fine in the early 1900s) to a few deterministic theories. The |
39 | second lecture defines the scope of the topic to be covered, and |
40 | limits the definitions of religion and spirituality. |
41 | |
42 | ; Quote defintions of religion and spirituality |
43 | <quote> |
44 | Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall |
45 | mean for us *the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in |
46 | their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in |
47 | relation to whatever they may consider the divine*. Since the |
48 | relation may be either moral, physical, or ritual, it is evident that |
49 | out of religion in the sense in which we take it, theologies, |
50 | philosophies, and ecclesiastical organizations may secondarily grow. |
51 | In these lectures, however, as I have already said, the immediate |
52 | personal experiences will amply fill our time, and we shall hardly |
53 | consider theology or ecclesiasticism at all. |
54 | </quote> |
55 | |
56 | In the second lecture James's first extremely arbitrary distinction is |
57 | made; he compares the stoicism espoused by Marcus Aurelius to |
58 | Christian writings and draws what I think is a nonexistent difference |
59 | between the two. It is my opinion that the Stoic is just as religious |
60 | by James's definition as the Christian; the stoic merely sees the |
61 | Universe as his god and makes conformance to the natural order his |
62 | ideal. The Stoic actively embraces the natural order just as the |
63 | Christian actively loves his god; the difference is merely in whether |
64 | God is seen as a definite individual or not. |
65 | |
66 | <quote> |
67 | If we compare stoic with Christian ejaculations we see much more |
68 | than a difference of doctrine; rather is it a difference of |
69 | emotional mood that parts them. When Marcus Aurelius reflects on |
70 | the eternal reason that has ordered things, there is a frosty |
71 | chill about his words which you rarely find in a Jewish, and |
72 | never in a Christian piece of religious writing. The universe is |
73 | "accepted" by all these writers; but how devoid of passion or |
74 | exultation the spirit of the Roman Emperor is! Compare his fine |
75 | sentence: "If gods care not for me or my children, here is a |
76 | reason for it," with Job's cry: "Though he slay me, yet will I |
77 | trust in him!" and you immediately see the difference I mean. |
78 | The anima mundi, to whose disposal of his own personal destiny |
79 | the Stoic consents, is there to be respected and submitted to, |
80 | but the Christian God is there to be loved; and the difference of |
81 | emotional atmosphere is like that between an arctic climate and |
82 | the tropics, though the outcome in the way of accepting actual |
83 | conditions uncomplainingly may seem in abstract terms to be much |
84 | the same. |
85 | </quote> |
86 | |
87 | ** Lecture III: "The Reality of the Unseen" |
88 | |
89 | The third lecture consists of a brief overview of various |
90 | interpretations of the structure of the unseen world. An argument for |
91 | a dualistic universe is then given using a few passages on spiritual |
92 | encounters as supposed proof. James criticizes strict rationalism as |
93 | well. |
94 | |
95 | <quote> |
96 | Nevertheless, if we look on man's whole mental life as it exists, on |
97 | the life of men that lies in them apart from their learning and |
98 | science, and that they inwardly and privately follow, we have to |
99 | confess that the part of it of which rationalism can give an account |
100 | is relatively superficial. It is the part that has the prestige |
101 | undoubtedly, for it has the loquacity, it can challenge you for |
102 | proofs, and chop logic, and put you down with words. But it will fail |
103 | to convince or convert you all the same, if your dumb intuitions are |
104 | opposed to its conclusions. If you have intuitions at all, they come |
105 | from a deeper level of your nature than the loquacious level which |
106 | rationalism inhabits. Your whole subconscious life, your impulses, |
107 | your faiths, your needs, your divinations, have prepared the premises, |
108 | of which your consciousness now feels the weight of the result; and |
109 | something in you absolutely *knows* that that result must be truer than |
110 | any logic-chopping rationalistic talk, however clever, that may |
111 | contradict it. This inferiority of the rationalistic level in |
112 | founding belief is just as manifest when rationalism argues for |
113 | religion as when it argues against it. That vast literature of proofs |
114 | of God's existence drawn from the order of nature, which a century ago |
115 | seemed so overwhelmingly convincing, to-day does little more than |
116 | gather dust in libraries, for the simple reason that our generation |
117 | has ceased to believe in the kind of God it argued for. Whatever sort |
118 | of a being God may be, we *know* to-day that he is nevermore that mere |
119 | external inventor of "contrivances" intended to make manifest his |
120 | "glory" in which our great-grandfathers took such satisfaction, though |
121 | just how we know this we cannot possibly make clear by words either to |
122 | others or to ourselves. I defy any of you here fully to account for |
123 | your persuasion that if a God exist he must be a more cosmic and |
124 | tragic personage than that Being. |
125 | </quote> |
126 | |
127 | ** Lectures IV and V: "The Religion of Healthy Mindedness" |
128 | |
129 | Lecture IV is an interesting read and surveys a few positive minded |
130 | philosophies, but Lecture V focuses entirely on the *mind-cure* |
131 | movement. William James then gives a terrible argument for the |
132 | validity of *mind-cure*, and compares it to science while neglecting the |
133 | complete lack of objectivity in the methods of test the effects of |
134 | *mind-cure*. |
135 | |
136 | <quote> |
137 | It is a deliberately optimistic scheme of life, with both a |
138 | speculative and a practical side. In its gradual development during |
139 | the last quarter of a century, it has taken up into itself a number |
140 | of contributory elements, and it must now be reckoned with as a |
141 | genuine religious power. It has reached the stage, for example, when |
142 | the demand for its literature is great enough for insincere stuff, |
143 | mechanically produced for the market, to be to a certain extent |
144 | supplied by publishers--a phenomenon never observed, I imagine, until |
145 | a religion has got well past its earliest insecure beginnings. |
146 | |
147 | ... |
148 | |
149 | The plain fact remains that the spread of the movement has been |
150 | due to practical fruits, and the extremely practical turn of |
151 | character of the American people has never been better shown than |
152 | by the fact that this, their only decidedly original contribution |
153 | to the systematic philosophy of life, should be so intimately |
154 | knit up with concrete therapeutics. To the importance of |
155 | mind-cure the medical and clerical professions in the United |
156 | States are beginning, though with much recalcitrancy and |
157 | protesting, to open their eyes. It is evidently bound to develop |
158 | still farther, both speculatively and practically, and its latest |
159 | writers are far and away the ablest of the group. It matters |
160 | nothing that, just as there are hosts of persons who cannot pray, |
161 | so there are greater hosts who cannot by any possibility be |
162 | influenced by the mind-curers' ideas. For our immediate purpose, |
163 | the important point is that so large a number should exist who |
164 | *can* be so influenced. They form a psychic type to be studied |
165 | with respect. |
166 | </quote> |
167 | |
168 | The lectures are ended with an argument for the validity of *mind-cure* |
169 | that compares it directly to science with a clear anti-science bias. |
170 | |
171 | <quote> |
172 | These are exceedingly trivial instances [*the first-hand accounts of |
173 | mind-cure working given in the lecture*], but in them, if we |
174 | have anything at all, we have the method of experiment and |
175 | verification. For the point I am driving at now, it makes no |
176 | difference whether you consider the patients to be deluded |
177 | victims of their imagination or not. That they seemed to |
178 | *themselves* to have been cured by the experiments tried was enough |
179 | to make them converts to the system. And although it is evident |
180 | that one must be of a certain mental mould to get such results |
181 | (for not every one can get thus cured to his own satisfaction any |
182 | more than every one can be cured by the first regular |
183 | practitioner whom he calls in), yet it would surely be pedantic |
184 | and over-scrupulous for those who *can* get their savage and |
185 | primitive philosophy of mental healing verified in such |
186 | experimental ways as this, to give them up at word of command for |
187 | more scientific therapeutics. |
188 | |
189 | What are we to think of all this? Has science made too wide a |
190 | claim? |
191 | |
192 | I believe that the claims of the sectarian scientist are, to say |
193 | the least, premature. The experiences which we have been |
194 | studying during this hour (and a great many other kinds of |
195 | religious experiences are like them) plainly show the universe to |
196 | be a more many-sided affair than any sect, even the scientific |
197 | sect, allows for. What, in the end, are all our verifications |
198 | but experiences that agree with more or less isolated systems of |
199 | ideas (conceptual systems) that our minds have framed? But why |
200 | in the name of common sense need we assume that only one such |
201 | system of ideas can be true? The obvious outcome of our total |
202 | experience is that the world can be handled according to many |
203 | systems of ideas, and is so handled by different men, and will |
204 | each time give some characteristic kind of profit, for which he |
205 | cares, to the handler, while at the same time some other kind of |
206 | profit has to be omitted or postponed. Science gives to all of |
207 | us telegraphy, electric lighting, and diagnosis, and succeeds in |
208 | preventing and curing a certain amount of disease. Religion in |
209 | the shape of mind-cure gives to some of us serenity, moral poise, |
210 | and happiness, and prevents certain forms of disease as well as |
211 | science does, or even better in a certain class of persons. |
212 | Evidently, then, the science and the religion are both of them |
213 | genuine keys for unlocking the world's treasure-house to him who |
214 | can use either of them practically. Just as evidently neither is |
215 | exhaustive or exclusive of the other's simultaneous use. And |
216 | why, after all, may not the world be so complex as to consist of |
217 | many interpenetrating spheres of reality, which we can thus |
218 | approach in alternation by using different conceptions and |
219 | assuming different attitudes, just as mathematicians handle the |
220 | same numerical and spatial facts by geometry, by analytical |
221 | geometry, by algebra, by the calculus, or by quaternions, and |
222 | each time come out right? On this view religion and science, |
223 | each verified in its own way from hour to hour and from life to |
224 | life, would be co-eternal. Primitive thought, with its belief in |
225 | individualized personal forces, seems at any rate as far as ever |
226 | from being driven by science from the field to-day. Numbers of |
227 | educated people still find it the directest experimental channel |
228 | by which to carry on their intercourse with reality |
229 | </quote> |
230 | |
231 | He draws a very strong conclusion that would be difficult to draw from |
232 | even quality evidence and objective trials; this drawn from subjective |
233 | personal accounts with no controlled testing method. A representative |
234 | example follows of his evidence follows. |
235 | |
236 | <quote> |
237 | "One of my first experiences in applying my teaching was two |
238 | months after I first saw the healer. I fell, spraining my right |
239 | ankle, which I had done once four years before, having then had |
240 | to use a crutch and elastic anklet for some months, and carefully |
241 | guarding it ever since. As soon as I was on my feet I made the |
242 | positive suggestion (and felt it through all my being): 'There |
243 | is nothing but God, and all life comes from him perfectly. I |
244 | cannot be sprained or hurt, I will let him take care of it.' |
245 | Well, I never had a sensation in it, and I walked two miles that |
246 | day." |
247 | </quote> |
248 | |
249 | Ignoring any other problems in William James's argument, it is clear |
250 | that his conclusion is far too heavy to rest upon the evidence he has |
251 | chosen to use. |
252 | |
253 | ** Lectures VI and VII: "The Sick Soul" |
254 | |
255 | The lectures on the Sick Soul are filled with rather weak quotations |
256 | (excepting a few short passages of Tolstoy). The reader is reminded |
257 | over and over how terrible and painful it is to be working through |
258 | these horrid expressions of melancholy which aren't really so |
259 | terrible. |
260 | |
261 | James's view is that a state of melancholy is merely a transitional |
262 | stage that comes before a second mental birth occurs, and allows for a |
263 | deep religious belief to set in. Most of the remainder of the lecture |
264 | series is dedicated to analyzing the mind of the Second Born which he |
265 | sees are far deeper spiritually than the simple positive Once Born |
266 | type (depsite his previous praise of *mind-cure*). |
267 | |
268 | ** Lecture VIII: "The Divided Self, and the Process of Its Unificiation" |
269 | |
270 | Here the lectures return to things mildly interesting with an overview |
271 | of heterogenous personalities and a few passages on unificiation of |
272 | conflicting desires. James splits unificiations into gradual and |
273 | sudden ones giving examples of each. This lecture is the bridge |
274 | between lectures V through VII and the material on conversion. |
275 | |
276 | ** Lectures IX and X: "Conversion" |
277 | |
278 | ; IX |
279 | - conversion allows for unification of divided self |
280 | - Definition of Association |
281 | - Conversion is sudden change of *the habitual center of personal energy* |
282 | - Examples of conversion |
283 | - Common people, stereotypical conversion types |
284 | - Seemingly of suspect quality |
285 | - Note of the trouble of not being able to be religious |
286 | - Painted in a negative light! |
287 | ; X |
288 | - Focus on instantaneous conversion |
289 | - Give prototypical example |
290 | |
291 | <quote> |
292 | "Coming out of the cafe I met the carriage of Monsieur B. [the |
293 | proselyting friend]. He stopped and invited me in for a drive, |
294 | but first asked me to wait for a few minutes whilst he attended |
295 | to some duty at the church of San Andrea delle Fratte. Instead |
296 | of waiting in the carriage, I entered the church myself to look |
297 | at it. The church of San Andrea was poor, small, and empty; I |
298 | believe that I found myself there almost alone. No work of art |
299 | attracted my attention; and I passed my eyes mechanically over |
300 | its interior without being arrested by any particular thought. I |
301 | can only remember an entirely black dog which went trotting and |
302 | turning before me as I mused. In an instant the dog had |
303 | disappeared, the whole church had vanished, I no longer saw |
304 | anything, . . . or more truly I saw, O my God, one thing alone. |
305 | "Heavens, how can I speak of it? Oh no! human words cannot |
306 | attain to expressing the inexpressible. Any description, however |
307 | sublime it might be, could be but a profanation of the |
308 | unspeakable truth. |
309 | |
310 | "I was there prostrate on the ground, bathed in my tears, with my |
311 | heart beside itself, when M. B. called me back to life. I could |
312 | not reply to the questions which followed from him one upon the |
313 | other. But finally I took the medal which I had on my breast, |
314 | and with all the effusion of my soul I kissed the image of the |
315 | Virgin, radiant with grace, which it bore. Oh, indeed, it was |
316 | She! It was indeed She! [What he had seen had been a vision of |
317 | the Virgin.] |
318 | |
319 | "I did not know where I was: I did not know whether I was |
320 | Alphonse or another. I only felt myself changed and believed |
321 | myself another me; I looked for myself in myself and did not find |
322 | myself. In the bottom of my soul I felt an explosion of the most |
323 | ardent joy; I could not speak; I had no wish to reveal what had |
324 | happened. But I felt something solemn and sacred within me which |
325 | made me ask for a priest. I was led to one; and there alone, |
326 | after he had given me the positive order, I spoke as best I |
327 | could, kneeling, and with my heart still trembling. I could give |
328 | no account to myself of the truth of which I had acquired a |
329 | knowledge and a faith. All that I can say is that in an instant |
330 | the bandage had fallen from my eyes, and not one bandage only, |
331 | but the whole manifold of bandages in which I had been brought |
332 | up. One after another they rapidly disappeared, even as the mud |
333 | and ice disappear under the rays of the burning sun." |
334 | </quote> |
335 | |
336 | - Notes recent protestant phenomemon of instantaneous conversion |
337 | - Gives psychological explanation for instant conversion |
338 | - Field of conciousness |
339 | - Subconcious on margin |
340 | - Subconcious life can affect concious existance |
341 | - Note: cites Freud & friends as reliable |
342 | |
343 | <quote> |
344 | In the wonderful explorations by Binet, Janet, Breuer, Freud, |
345 | Mason, Prince, and others, of the subliminal consciousness of |
346 | patients with hysteria, we have revealed to us whole systems of |
347 | underground life, in the shape of memories of a painful sort |
348 | which lead a parasitic existence, buried outside of the primary |
349 | fields of consciousness, and making irruptions thereinto with |
350 | hallucinations, pains, convulsions, paralyses of feeling and of |
351 | motion, and the whole procession of symptoms of hysteric disease |
352 | of body and of mind. Alter or abolish by suggestion these |
353 | subconscious memories, and the patient immediately gets well. |
354 | His symptoms were automatisms, in Mr. Myers's sense of the word. |
355 | These clinical records sound like fairy-tales when one first |
356 | reads them, yet it is impossible to doubt their accuracy; and, |
357 | the path having been once opened by these first observers, |
358 | similar observations have been made elsewhere. They throw, as I |
359 | said, a wholly new light upon our natural constitution. |
360 | </quote> |
361 | |
362 | - Conversion is a transfer of energies from the subconcious |
363 | - Changes center of focus in the field of conciousness |
364 | - Disproves religious nature of instant conversion argument |
365 | - Notes that there are no discernable differences between instant |
366 | converts and slow converts |
367 | |
368 | <quote> |
369 | The believers in the non-natural character of sudden conversion |
370 | have had practically to admit that there is no unmistakable |
371 | class-mark distinctive of all true converts. The super-normal |
372 | incidents, such as voices and visions and overpowering |
373 | impressions of the meaning of suddenly presented scripture texts, |
374 | the melting emotions and tumultuous affections connected with the |
375 | crisis of change, may all come by way of nature, or worse still, |
376 | be counterfeited by Satan. The real witness of the spirit to the |
377 | second birth is to be found only in the disposition of the |
378 | genuine child of God, the permanently patient heart, the love of |
379 | self eradicated. And this, it has to be admitted, is also found |
380 | in those who pass no crisis, and may even be found outside of |
381 | Christianity altogether. |
382 | </quote> |
383 | |
384 | - Instant conversion is a natural result of exposing a person with a |
385 | rich subconcious existence to religion and is merely one type of |
386 | conversion |
387 | |
388 | <quote> |
389 | Sharp distinctions are difficult in these regions, and Professor Coe's |
390 | numbers are small. But his methods were careful, and the results |
391 | tally with what one might expect; and they seem, on the whole, to |
392 | justify his practical conclusion, which is that if you should expose |
393 | to a converting influence a subject in whom three factors unite: |
394 | first, pronounced emotional sensibility; second, tendency to |
395 | automatisms; and third, suggestibility of the passive type; you might |
396 | then safely predict the result: there would be a sudden conversion, a |
397 | transformation of the striking kind. |
398 | </quote> |
399 | |
400 | - Finishes with discussion of pre-conversion emotion |
401 | - Usually melancholy |
402 | - Disguist at sin |
403 | - Post Conversion feeling |
404 | - New self |
405 | - Clean |
406 | |
407 | ** Lectures XI - XIII: Saintliness |
408 | |
409 | - Descriptive assement of fruits of conversion |
410 | - general discussion of what causes differing character |
411 | - Impulse vs Inhibition |
412 | - Strong emotions shut down inhibition |
413 | - Application of general principles to the results of conversion |
414 | - Top over point -> God works through Subliminal |
415 | - Ignore how the Subliminal works |
416 | - [It seems that this is done to avoid concluding that there is |
417 | no god] |
418 | - [Minimization of importance of natural processes in |
419 | post-convesion] |
420 | - Saintliness |
421 | - Four universal inner conditions |
422 | - Four results of the inner conditions |
423 | - EXAMPLES |
424 | - Prescence of a higher & friendly power |
425 | - Charity (agape) love |
426 | - Charity not unique to theistic religions, therefore it |
427 | should be seen as coordinate rather than subordinate to |
428 | the topic of the lecture series (page 296) |
429 | - Inward Tranquillity |
430 | - Sombre constitution results in resignation and submission |
431 | - Cheerful constitution results in joyous consent |
432 | - Purity |
433 | - Internal discord leads to suffering |
434 | - Ascetecism |
435 | - result of extreme pursuit of purity |
436 | - List of sources of ascetic behavior |
437 | - Ascetecism in monks |
438 | - Obedience |
439 | - Low reasons |
440 | - Obedience expedient in ecclesiastical organizations |
441 | - External counsel at certain times is better than |
442 | internal |
443 | - High Reason |
444 | - Inner softening |
445 | - Catholic view as sacrifice |
446 | - [quote p.274 "sacrifice which man offers to God..."] |
447 | - passages by member of the order of St Ignatius |
448 | - Poverty |
449 | - Things steal freedom, therefore a life of doing/being |
450 | is superior |
451 | |
452 | ** Lectures XIV-XV: The Value of Saintliness |
453 | |
454 | - Critique of Saintliness |
455 | - Using empirical methods (unlike Catholics) |
456 | - Humans cannot differentiate between natural and supernatural |
457 | effects |
458 | - (Defense of Methodology) |
459 | - Current religious views result of empiricism |
460 | - Rejection of former gods over time as they cease to serve our |
461 | needs |
462 | - Must be skeptical (not unreasonably so however) of current |
463 | beliefs |
464 | - Humans are fallible; admitting this brings us closer to truth |
465 | by enabling discussion of flaws in beliefs |
466 | - Quite probably that no one religion is entirely correct |
467 | - Concerned with personal religious experiences, and not with |
468 | instutitional religion [reiteration from second lecture] |
469 | - Ideas of a prophet -> heterodoxy -> heresy (if accepted by |
470 | others) -> orthodxy (if survives persection) |
471 | - Cycle then begins anew |
472 | - Religion itself cannot be blamed for evils committed |
473 | - Extreme Saintliness due to excess |
474 | - In men, excess is due to lack of balance, or excessively strong |
475 | personality elements mixed with weak ones |
476 | - If all faculities are strong and cooperate one has a strong |
477 | character rather than one plagued by excess |
478 | - Extremely saintly people have strong spiritual faculities, but |
479 | deficient ability to perceive extravagane |
480 | - Leads to excessie self-denial |
481 | - Still useful as archetypes |
482 | - Four Virtues & Unbalanced Forms |
483 | - Devoutness |
484 | - Fanatacism |
485 | - Strong character mixed with narrow mind |
486 | - Theopathy (cointed by WJ to describe excess devoutness) |
487 | - Excess of devotion with feeble mind |
488 | - Person becomes absorbed in inward love of/from God |
489 | - Purity |
490 | - Narrow mindedness results on love of God replacing all other |
491 | love |
492 | - In aggressive types stamps external disorder from existence |
493 | - In passive types disorder is eliminated internall by secluding |
494 | self |
495 | - Example: Lous of Gonzaga |
496 | - Such a life was seen as good in the 16th century, but in the |
497 | early 20th was seen as repulsive due to secular changes (more |
498 | value being placed on helping society than merely saving |
499 | oneself) |
500 | - Charity / Tenderness |
501 | - Saintly 'Resist No Evil' versus Worldy Pragmatic Standpoint |
502 | - No simple answer |
503 | - Perfect conduct relation between actor, objects acted upon, and |
504 | recipients of the action |
505 | - Best intentions fail when executed incorrectly or addressed |
506 | to the wrong recipient |
507 | - Thus cannot judge charity by actor alone |
508 | - Saintly charity works in a perfect world |
509 | - Excessive in the World That Is |
510 | - Evil takes advantage of charity |
511 | - However, the world would be far worse without charitable |
512 | people |
513 | - Treating others charitably inspires others to become |
514 | better |
515 | - Exposure to an excessively charitable person softens a |
516 | person |
517 | - Without this type all would lie in spiritual stagnation |
518 | - Therefore even excessive charity has value |
519 | - Force destroys enemies |
520 | - Prudence at best resists enemies |
521 | - Non-resistance / Charity turns enemies into friends |
522 | - Though excessive, the saint makes the world a better place |
523 | - Compare to Utopianists and Anarchists |
524 | - Ascetecism |
525 | - Virtue most prone to excess |
526 | - It seems at first those wo are excessively ascetic are still |
527 | inwardly attached to the world |
528 | - If one were truly liberated he would not need excessive |
529 | moritification |
530 | - Different view: Ascetic sees wrongs in the world, and rather |
531 | than ignore them he conquers them internally |
532 | - One who does not fear Death seems strong |
533 | - Ascetecism is a profounder way of handling excistence than |
534 | simple optimistic naturalism |
535 | - In the modern time, people should throw away useless |
536 | asceticism and embrace useful aspects |
537 | - Attributes of early 20th century life and weakened churching |
538 | breed weaker character |
539 | - Militarism used as a subtitute for religious ascetecism |
540 | - Poor subtitute |
541 | - Speaks to the base and brutish aspects of human nature |
542 | - Ascetic poverty much superior to militarism/war |
543 | - WJ believes it **must** be embraced to fight evils of the |
544 | time [quote page 319-320] |
545 | - Desire to gain wealth breeds cowardice and corruption |
546 | - Wealthy man enslaved to riches |
547 | - Poor man lacks chains |
548 | - Single attributes of saintliness are found in the non-religious |
549 | - Combination of all forms is religious in nature |
550 | - Flows from sense of divine order |
551 | - Saintly person palces happiness internally rather than deriving |
552 | from comfort |
553 | - Saintly attributes mixed with narrow mind results in terrible |
554 | excessive forms |
555 | - We should not, however, place blame for narrow mindedness |
556 | entirely on the individual |
557 | - Essentials vs Accidents of saintliness |
558 | - Dislike of Saintly character |
559 | - Man traditionally worships strong leaders |
560 | - Saints are weak and passive |
561 | - Male vs Female nature [think Yin vs Yang] |
562 | - Many suppose there is one ideal type of character |
563 | - Empiricism rejects this as foolish |
564 | - On the one hande the saintly character is better than the |
565 | strongman becaue he is adapted to life in a perfect society |
566 | - On the other in the real world he would be ill adapted |
567 | - Mixture of the two characters useful [think Nietzsche's |
568 | uebermensch or Taoist] |
569 | - Saintly character has real value |