34
THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
in putting into coquettishly sacrilegious forms which remain to us
as excellent expressions of the “all is vanity” state of mind. Take
the following passage, for example, — we must hold to duty, even
against the evidence, Renan says, — but he then goes on: —
“There are many chances that the world may be nothing but a fairy
pantomime of which no God has care. We must therefore arrange our-
selves so that on neither hypothesis we shall be completely wrong. We
must listen to the superior voices, but in such a way that if the second
hypothesis were true we should not have been too completely duped. If in
effect the world be not a serious thing, it is the dogmatic people who will
be the shallow ones, and the worldly minded whom the theologians now
call frivolous will be those who are really wise.
“In utrumque paratus, then. Be ready for anything — that perhaps is
wisdom. Give ourselves up, according to the hour, to confidence, to
skepticism, to optimism, to irony, and we may be sure that at certain
moments at least we shall be with the truth. . . . Good-humor is a philo-
sophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more
seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of
philosophy with a smile. We owe it to the Eternal to be virtuous; but we
have the right to add to this tribute our irony as a sort of personal reprisal.
In this way we return to the right quarter jest for jest; we play the trick
that has been played on us. Saint Augustine’s phrase: Lord, if we are
deceived, it is by thee! remains a fine one, well suited to our modern feeling.
Only we wish the Eternal to know that if we accept the fraud, we accept
it knowingly and willingly. We are resigned in advance to losing the
interest on our investments of virtue, but we wish not to appear ridiculous
by having counted on them too securely.”
1
Surely all the usual associations of the word “religion” would
have to be stripped away if such a systematic
parti pris of irony were
also to be denoted by the name. For common men “religion,” what-
ever more special meanings it may have, signifies always a serious
state of mind. If any one phrase could gather its universal message,
that phrase would be, “All is not vanity in this Universe, whatever
the appearances may suggest.” If it can stop anything, religion as
commonly apprehended can stop just such chaffing talk as Renan’s.
It favors gravity, not pertness; it says “hush” to all vain chatter and
smart wit.
1
Feuilles détachées, pp. 394–398 (abridged).
CIRCUMSCRIPTION OF THE TOPIC
35
But if hostile to light irony, religion is equally hostile to heavy
grumbling and complaint. The world appears tragic enough in
some religions, but the tragedy is realized as purging, and a way of
deliverance is held to exist. We shall see enough of the religious
melancholy in a future lecture; but melancholy, according to our
ordinary use of language, forfeits all title to be called religious when,
in Marcus Aurelius’s racy words, the sufferer simply lies kicking
and screaming after the fashion of a sacrificed pig. The mood of
a Schopenhauer or a Nietzsche, — and in a less degree one may
sometimes say the same of our own sad Carlyle, — though often
an ennobling sadness, is almost as often only peevishness running
away with the bit between its teeth. The sallies of the two German
authors remind one, half the time, of the sick shriekings of two
dying rats. They lack the purgatorial note which religious sadness
gives forth.
There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any
attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin
or snicker; if sad, it must not scream or curse. It is precisely as
being solemn experiences that I wish to interest you in religious
experiences. So I propose — arbitrarily again, if you please — to
narrow our definition once more by saying that the word “divine,”
as employed therein, shall mean for us not merely the primal and
enveloping and real, for that meaning if taken without restriction
might well prove too broad. The divine shall mean for us only
such a primal reality as the individual feels impelled to respond to
solemnly and gravely, and neither by a curse nor a jest.
But solemnity, and gravity, and all such emotional attributes,
admit of various shades; and, do what we will with our defining, the
truth must at last be confronted that we are dealing with a field
of experience where there is not a single conception that can be
sharply drawn. The pretension, under such conditions, to be rigor-
ously “scientific” or “exact” in our terms would only stamp us as
lacking in understanding of our task. Things are more or less divine,
states of mind are more or less religious, reactions are more or less
total, but the boundaries are always misty, and it is everywhere a
question of amount and degree. Nevertheless, at their extreme of
development, there can never be any question as to what experiences
are religious. The divinity of the object and the solemnity of the
reaction are too well marked for doubt. Hesitation as to whether a