… definitely different from what he consciously conceives …
This is from ‘The Varieties of Religious Experience’ (1901-02) found in William James: Writings 1902-1910 (1987):
… Now with most of us the sense of our present wrongness is a far more distinct piece of our consciousness than is the imagination of any positive ideal we can aim at. In a majority of cases, indeed, the ‘sin’ almost exclusively engrosses the attention, so that conversion is “a process of struggling away from sin rather than of striving towards righteousness.”
[line break added] A man’s conscious wit and will, so far as they strain towards the ideal, are aiming at something only dimly and inaccurately imagined. Yet all the while the forces of mere organic ripening within him are going on towards their own prefigured result, and his conscious strainings are letting loose subconscious allies behind the scenes, which in their way work towards rearrangement; and the rearrangement towards which all these deeper forces tend is pretty surely definite, and definitely different from what he consciously conceives and determines.
[line break added] It may consequently be actually interfered with (jammed, as it were, like the lost word when se seek too energetically to recall it), by his voluntary efforts slanting from the true direction.
… To state it in terms or our own symbolism: when the new center of personal energy has been subconsciously incubated so long as to be just ready to open into flower, ‘hands off’ is the only word for us, it must burst forth unaided!
… psychology, defining these forces as ‘subconscious,’ and speaking of their effects as due to ‘incubation,’ or ‘cerebration,’ implies that they do not transcend the individual’s personality; and herein she diverges from Christian theology, which insists that they are direct supernatural operations of the Deity. I propose to you that we do not yet consider this divergence final but leave the question for a while in abeyance — continued inquiry may enable us to get rid of some of the apparent discord.
My most recent previous post from James’s book is here.
-Julie
Coloring 