Psychological principles / by James Ward.

  • James Ward
Date:
1918
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Psychological principles / by James Ward. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    were men who proclaimed that ‘ they had overcome the world, being in it but no longer of it, had realised ‘a peace passing all understanding 7 and found ‘ strength to do all things ’ in the consciousness of an indwelling presence deeper than their self-con¬ sciousness—verily a state of eyhaifiovia in the highest sense ; for the guiding‘genius’ that inspired this new life was, they believed, divine1. And their lives confirmed their profession, whatever we may think of the mysterious and seemingly mystical source to which they appealed. They were superior to the weakness of the flesh, the fear of men and the temporal anxieties that hold so many in bondage, leading perhaps to the ‘ self-loathing and self¬ despair’ from which this new ‘birth’ is the deliverance. Thus, for these religious geniuses at any rate, ‘the divided self’ ceased to be, and the inner peace and unity they professed to have found, appeared in its stead. With a single eye and a single aim their whole being seemed full of light and joy. At one in mind and will with the ground of all reality and the source of all good, as they conceived it, what had they to fear, whoever might be against them ? They stood fast, strenuously devoted through life and faithful in death to the widest, deepest and highest that they knew, or indeed—when all is said and done—that it has entered into the heart of man to conceive. Reaching by subjective selec¬ tion to the supreme in the scale of values, we must regard them as so far attaining to the highest rank as personalities; their world was circumscribed by no selfish interests, since they loved God, in whom and by whom and for whom were all things. As regards unity, stability and originality there seems nothing beyond: no further crises, only progression. It detracts in no wise from this living by faith—we must emphatically maintain— that its so-called God-consciousness may be epistemologically un- verifiable. We are for the present concerned exclusively with the psychological facts, and these seem to be beyond question. It is also pointless to rejoin, as some doubtless may be inclined to do: No, they are not facts, they are at the best only rare and beautiful ideals. But there are no more important psychological facts—especially when character is m question—than the ideals or values that determine conduct. Though the highest is the hardest to attain, yet the difficulties lie not in circumstances but 1 Cf. above, § 3, p. 450. On Eudaemonism and Personality, cf. Professor James Seth’s Study of Ethical Principles, 1894, ch. iii.
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