This lecture marks the begging of the second half of the Varieties, and we can sense, perhaps, where James is ultimately going when he reiterates the four fruits of the conversion process:
1. A feeling of being in a wider life than that of this world. In Christian saintliness this is always personified as God.
2. A sense of the friendly continuity of the ideal power with our own life, and a willing self-surrender to its control.
3. An immense elation and freedom.
4. A shifting of the emotional centre towards loving and harmonious affections, towards "yes, yes," and away from "no," where the claims of the non-ego are concerned.
The "yes, yes" and the "no," James refers to are the "pushing forward" of impulse and the "pulling back" of inhibition. In James' estimation we live always in a sea of these opposed forces, and our actions and decisions always favor one or the other. Apparently in James's view conversion means a shift toward the affirmative- presumably following our more beneficent impulses.
At any rate, the four psychic fruits result in four practical results:
Asceticism (self-surrender)
Strength of Soul (patience and fortitude)
Purity (psychic cleansing)
and Charity (tenderness for fellow creatures).
The rest of the lecture on saintliness consists of detailed exempla of all these eight practical and spiritual fruits and their combinations.
Thoreau gives us wider life, "in the midst of a gentle rain I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature. Every little pine-needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me." Christ gives us charity, "Love your enemies." St. Francis gives us Strength of Soul by kissing lepers. John Woolman gives us purity by refusing to wear dyed clothing, even hats, as dyes came from slave trade and labor.
And Saint John of the Cross gives us Asceticism:
"Let your soul therefore turn always:
Not to what is most easy, but to what is hardest;
Not to what most pleases, but to what disgusts;
Not to will anything, but to will nothing;
Despise yourself, and wish that others should despise you;
To know all things, learn to know nothing.
For to come to the All you must give up the All."
And here James quotes lengthy examples from Catholic asceticism, noting that the most extreme cases must be deemed pathological, as in the founder of the Sacred Heart order, who said, "nothing but pain makes my life supportable." Where the ascetic and purificatory impulses are married, the individual often "may well find the outer world too full of shocks to dwell in, and can unify his life and keep his soul unspotted only by withdrawing from it."
James concludes the lecture by mentioning to broader traits of saintliness he admits that he does not understand: the vows of obedience and poverty prevalent across religious orders the world over. Of obedience he notes, "it evidently corresponds to a profound interior need of many persons, and we must do our best to understand it." And of poverty he concludes, "Only those who have no private interests can follow an ideal straight away."
6 comments:
I think this is useful in giving context for the previous story, in terms of James's personal orientation. Though it's baffling to me someone who seems to be able to understand the ascetic impulse and sympathize with it but doesn't understand an impulse toward poverty. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding?
Anyway, I'm increasingly delighted by these William James Cliff Notes, and even more delighted that I don't have to read the full text myself :-)
i think maybe what james doesn't "get" about poverty is what most of my Ethics classmates at Messiah didn't understand about poverty.
so the prof asked the class if it was morally better to be poor. good christians, all raised their hands. then we read aristotle and the prof asked if it was morally better to have just a little money, or to have no money.
everyone but me said it was better to have just a little money. i asked the rest of the class if they thought this might be a little inconsistent. no one said anything.
the impulse to cut back, to simplify, to refrain from extravagant wealth is actually not all that uncommon in the Protestant west. with the exception of the last thirty years or so, it might even be called downright american.
but to own nothing, absolutely nothing at all, and to be constantly at risk of starvation, and radically dependent on others?
that seems more strange to most, and probably was strange to the tenured professorial type james was. he did go on to invent Pragmatism, after all.
anyway, glad you appreciate my drudgery!
I can see that, and actually, my impulse is to answer the way your classmates answer - the implication being, it's moral to give away all your excess, but not moral to give away so much that then someone else has to have extra to support you. Very American indeed - as American as "Self-Reliance."
The inconsistency perhaps springs from the very notion of thinking of things as our own - the American notion of property is very strong, of course, and I've heard people I respect almost go so far as to say there is NO freedom without the freedom to own property. (Those famous words in the Declaration of Independence, as you may know, sprang from John Locke's concept of "life, liberty, and estate.") I don't know if it's possible for us to dispose of the concept of right to property, but it certainly isn't a very first-century Christian notion.
in the interest of full disclosure (trying to get my own meme going here) i should say that i actually didn't raise my hand at all, because i didn't know.
i don't know if it's morally better to have no money. but i know that saint francis sure as hell thought so, and he was a pretty cool guy.
and i know this was a pretty big debate in christianity, actually, right up through the middle ages and culminating with the church vs. francis's order.
obviously, the people with money won out. the church got to keep its riches. and martin luther would have a good deal more to say about that later on.
so i own things, and probably think it's okay to own things. maybe it's even a right: sharing can't happen, after all, if you don't "own" anything to start with.
but i also think property is dangerous. and, obviously, wish more people shared my notion.
I think the story of Ananias and Sapphira might be illuminating on this question, but I'm not sure which direction it would point us.
Are Ananias and Sapphira struck dead because they refused to make their property fully common? Not exactly. They're struck dead because they claimed they were giving over the full money for the property, but were lying. That's the implication at least.
Here's how the beginning of Acts 5reads:
1Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. 2With his wife's full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles' feet.
3Then Peter said, "Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? 4Didn't it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn't the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men but to God."
5When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened. 6Then the young men came forward, wrapped up his body, and carried him out and buried him.
7About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. 8Peter asked her, "Tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land?"
"Yes," she said, "that is the price."
9Peter said to her, "How could you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord? Look! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also."
Reading it as presented here, it initially seems like it would weigh in on the pro-property side: The property belongs to you, to do with as you wish. The sin is in lying about the gift, and holding part of it back while seeking credit for giving the full amount. Right? It seems clear here, but I'm not sure it is, because of what comes before it. Here is the end of Acts 4:
32All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. 33With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. 34There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales 35and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.
36Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas (which means Son of Encouragement), 37sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles' feet.
It seems mostly clear here that these sales were voluntary. However, the earliest verse indicates that something else is perhaps going on: "No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had."
This seems like a place where the chapter divisions really hinder our understanding of the passage; read as one unit, it has a very different effect. So, is the relinquishment of property ownership irrelevant to membership in the brotherhood? Not at all. Is it a prerequisite? Not wholly clear. Though property SALE is clearly (?) not a prerequisite, is the eventual sale of one's property a required ritual of the group? Again, it's not completely clear to me.
Well, that's nicely ambiguous. together with the "cloak and staff/sword" bits, i can see why the debate went on and on.
i only wish middle class people, (and, yes, even the rich) wouldn't complain about just barely getting by. i despise slippery slope arguments like nothing else, but it does seem to be a trap of less than absolute poverty.
the benedictines, of couse, would disagree.
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