The Varieties of Religious Experience | Page 9

not even our scientific doctrines, not even our
DIS-beliefs, could retain any value as revelations of the truth, for every
one of them without exception flows from the state of its possessor's
body at the time.
It is needless to say that medical materialism draws in point of fact no
such sweeping skeptical conclusion. It is sure, just as every simple man

is sure, that some states of mind are inwardly superior to others, and
reveal to us more truth, and in this it simply makes use of an ordinary
spiritual judgment. It has no physiological theory of the production of
these its favorite states, by which it may accredit them; and its attempt
to discredit the states which it dislikes, by vaguely associating them
with nerves and liver, and connecting them with names connoting
bodily affliction, is altogether illogical and inconsistent.
Let us play fair in this whole matter, and be quite candid with ourselves
and with the facts. When we think certain states of mind superior to
others, is it ever because of what we know concerning their organic
antecedents? No! it is always for two entirely different reasons. It is
either because we take an immediate delight in them; or else it is
because we believe them to bring us good consequential fruits for life.
When we speak disparagingly of "feverish fancies," surely the
fever-process as such is not the ground of our disesteem--for aught we
know to the contrary, 103 degrees or 104 degrees Fahrenheit might be a
much more favorable temperature for truths to germinate and sprout in,
than the more ordinary blood-heat of 97 or 98 degrees. It is either the
disagreeableness itself of the fancies, or their inability to bear the
criticisms of the convalescent hour. When we praise the thoughts which
health brings, health's peculiar chemical metabolisms have nothing to
do with determining our judgment. We know in fact almost nothing
about these metabolisms. It is the character of inner happiness in the
thoughts which stamps them as good, or else their consistency with our
other opinions and their serviceability for our needs, which make them
pass for true in our esteem.
Now the more intrinsic and the more remote of these criteria do not
always hang together. Inner happiness and serviceability do not always
agree. What immediately feels most "good" is not always most "true,"
when measured by the verdict of the rest of experience. The difference
between Philip drunk and Philip sober is the classic instance in
corroboration. If merely "feeling good" could decide, drunkenness
would be the supremely valid human experience. But its revelations,
however acutely satisfying at the moment, are inserted into an
environment which refuses to bear them out for any length of time. The

consequence of this discrepancy of the two criteria is the uncertainty
which still prevails over so many of our spiritual judgments. There are
moments of sentimental and mystical experience--we shall hereafter
hear much of them--that carry an enormous sense of inner authority and
illumination with them when they come. But they come seldom, and
they do not come to everyone; and the rest of life makes either no
connection with them, or tends to contradict them more than it confirms
them. Some persons follow more the voice of the moment in these
cases, some prefer to be guided by the average results. Hence the sad
discordancy of so many of the spiritual judgments of human beings; a
discordancy which will be brought home to us acutely enough before
these lectures end.
It is, however, a discordancy that can never be resolved by any merely
medical test. A good example of the impossibility of holding strictly to
the medical tests is seen in the theory of the pathological causation of
genius promulgated by recent authors. "Genius," said Dr. Moreau, "is
but one of the many branches of the neuropathic tree." "Genius," says
Dr. Lombroso, "is a symptom of hereditary degeneration of the
epileptoid variety, and is allied to moral insanity." "Whenever a man's
life," writes Mr. Nisbet, "is at once sufficiently illustrious and recorded
with sufficient fullness to be a subject of profitable study, he inevitably
falls into the morbid category. . . . And it is worthy of remark that, as a
rule, the greater the genius, the greater the unsoundness."[3]
[3] J. F. Nisbet: The Insanity of Genius, 3d ed., London, 1893, pp. xvi.,
xxiv.

Now do these authors, after having succeeded in establishing to their
own satisfaction that the works of genius are fruits of disease,
consistently proceed thereupon to impugn the VALUE of the fruits? Do
they deduce a new spiritual judgment from their new doctrine of
existential conditions? Do they frankly forbid us to admire the
productions of genius from now onwards? and say outright that no
neuropath can