ABSTRACT
THERE ARE no theories as such which strictly account for emotion as spirit; there are only suggestive passages which bring the two concepts into significant relation so that an exploratory chapter-even if only of notes and hints—becomes required for the full amplification of our theme. The dominant thesis here, mentioned at the close of the last chapter, is: emotion is the place of the spirit. Let us hear another view of William James on emotion, a view so widely ignored that it might perhaps be worth some attention:
Conceive yourself, if possible, suddenly stripped of all the emotion with which your world now inspires you, and try to imagine it as it exists, purely by itself, without your favorable or unfavorable, hopeful or apprehensive comment. It will be almost impossible for you to realize such a condition of negativity and deadness. No one portion of the universe would then have importance beyond another; and the whole collection of its things and series of its events would be without significance, character, expression, or perspective. Whatever of value, interest, or meaning our respective worlds may appear indued with are thus pure gifts of the spectator's mind. The passion of love is the most familiar and extreme example of this fact. If it comes, it comes; if it does not come, no process of reasoning can force it. Yet it transforms the value of the creature loved as utterly as the sunrise transforms Mont Blanc. ... So with fear, with indignation, jealousy, ambition, worship. If they are there, life changes. And whether they shall be there or not depends almost always upon non-logical, often on organic conditions. And as the excited interest which these passions put into the world is our gift to the world, just so are the passions themselves gifts.—Gifts to us, from sources sometimes low and sometimes high; but almost always nonlogical and beyond our control.... Gifts, either of the flesh or of the spirit; and the spirit bloweth where it listeth; and the world's materials lend their surface passively to all the gifts alike. . . .
W. James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, London, 1906, pp. 150-1.