It has
been in the direction of a practical, working realization of the
immanence of God and the Divinity of man's true, inner self.
Lectures VI and VII
THE SICK SOUL
At our last meeting, we considered the healthy-minded
temperament, the temperament which has a constitutional
incapacity for prolonged suffering, and in which the tendency to
see things optimistically is like a water of crystallization in
which the individual's character is set. We saw how this
temperament may become the basis for a peculiar type of religion,
a religion in which good, even the good of this world's life, is
regarded as the essential thing for a rational being to attend
to. This religion directs him to settle his scores with the more
evil aspects of the universe by systematically declining to lay
them to heart or make much of them, by ignoring them in his
reflective calculations, or even, on occasion, by denying
outright that they exist. Evil is a disease; and worry over
disease is itself an additional form of disease, which only adds
to the original complaint. Even repentance and remorse,
affections which come in the character of ministers of good, may
be but sickly and relaxing impulses.
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