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James, William, 1842-1910

"Varieties of Religious Experience, a Study in Human Nature"

The phenomenon
connects itself with the life of the subconscious self,
so-called, of which we must erelong speak more directly.
[90] Smith Baker, in Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases,
September, 1893.

Now in all of us, however constituted, but to a degree the
greater in proportion as we are intense and sensitive and subject
to diversified temptations, and to the greatest possible degree
if we are decidedly psychopathic, does the normal evolution of
character chiefly consist in the straightening out and unifying
of the inner self. The higher and the lower feelings, the useful
and the erring impulses, begin by being a comparative chaos
within us--they must end by forming a stable system of functions
in right subordination. Unhappiness is apt to characterize the
period of order-making and struggle. If the individual be of
tender conscience and religiously quickened, the unhappiness will
take the form of moral remorse and compunction, of feeling
inwardly vile and wrong, and of standing in false relations to
the author of one's being and appointer of one's spiritual fate.


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