In the James' Varieties reading course today it was time for "The Value of Saintliness," one of my favorite sections. This is where you find the words (possibly the most frequently quoted in this blog!):
the human charity which we find in all saints, and the great excess of it which we find in some saints, [are] a genuinely creative social force ... The saints are authors, auctores, increasers, of goodness.... The world is not yet with them, so they often seem in the midst of the world's affairs to be preposterous. And yet they are impregnators of the world, vivifiers and animaters of potentialities of goodness which but for them would lie forever dormant. It is not possible to be quite as mean as we naturally are, when they have passed before us. One fire kindles another; and without that over-trust in human worth which they show, the rest of us would lie in spiritual stagnancy. (Varieties, 1902 edition, 357-58)
These aren't the only kinds of saints James discusses, and it's not clear that the indispensable contribution to human progress here represented is also made by the saints who go to extremes of "devotion," "purity" or even "asceticism" (which appears - ugh - as a "manly" complement to the charming "mystery of gentleness in beauty" which the saints of charity share with "woman"!). It's these saints who seem responsible for the moral progress observable in James' history of religion, a history he thrillingly imagines as ongoing. Thank goodness for the saints who can't or won't play by the religious rules of their time and so nudge or draw all of us to live into greater "potentialities of goodness"! Saints are unlike us in having fewer inhibitions to the "yes, yes!" inclinations which embrace the world. Their "over-trust" inspires our own capacity to trust in human goodness (and doesn't all trust involve "over-trust" to some degree?). Risk believing in the potential goodness of human nature, including your own!
I've often dwelt with students on the seeming paradox in the claim that
What's "natural" and what's "possible" for us shift in a suitably "preposterous" way within that very sentence. How mean are we by nature? The lives of the saints change the answer to that question by the way their example changes our sense of our own possibilities. The saints, as James says, seem excessive, even maladapted to human life today, but are perfectly adapted to a society not yet achieved - and through the power of their example make that society to which they are adapted more likely as they go.
It's quite an optimistic view, really - that human nature is changeable in a good direction, and liable to continue moving in that good direction given half a chance. (Institutional religion doesn't help much, in his view, but science and democracy will.) Despite James' commitment to individuals and varieties. students often balk at the moral realism of this. Isn't "good" an unfounded value judgment, subjective, relative, different for each person or era? But rereading these words in 2020 I was struck by another question. Can there be saints of evil?
I'm thinking of course of the culture of moral cynicism and tribalism which animates the "populisms" of our day, and of our president, in particular. He and his followers think goodness is usually just "virtue signalling": only losers don't see through that, don't see that human goodness is a con. We'll all be better off accepting greed, selfishness, partiality, cruelty, even cheating as human nature: you know what you're dealing with. Don't trust anyone - including yourself! - to be so capable of goodness as people say. Lose the inhibitions when you're inclined to be mean. It's terrifying...
the human charity which we find in all saints, and the great excess of it which we find in some saints, [are] a genuinely creative social force ... The saints are authors, auctores, increasers, of goodness.... The world is not yet with them, so they often seem in the midst of the world's affairs to be preposterous. And yet they are impregnators of the world, vivifiers and animaters of potentialities of goodness which but for them would lie forever dormant. It is not possible to be quite as mean as we naturally are, when they have passed before us. One fire kindles another; and without that over-trust in human worth which they show, the rest of us would lie in spiritual stagnancy. (Varieties, 1902 edition, 357-58)
These aren't the only kinds of saints James discusses, and it's not clear that the indispensable contribution to human progress here represented is also made by the saints who go to extremes of "devotion," "purity" or even "asceticism" (which appears - ugh - as a "manly" complement to the charming "mystery of gentleness in beauty" which the saints of charity share with "woman"!). It's these saints who seem responsible for the moral progress observable in James' history of religion, a history he thrillingly imagines as ongoing. Thank goodness for the saints who can't or won't play by the religious rules of their time and so nudge or draw all of us to live into greater "potentialities of goodness"! Saints are unlike us in having fewer inhibitions to the "yes, yes!" inclinations which embrace the world. Their "over-trust" inspires our own capacity to trust in human goodness (and doesn't all trust involve "over-trust" to some degree?). Risk believing in the potential goodness of human nature, including your own!
I've often dwelt with students on the seeming paradox in the claim that
It is not possible to be quite as mean as we naturally are,
when they have passed before us.
What's "natural" and what's "possible" for us shift in a suitably "preposterous" way within that very sentence. How mean are we by nature? The lives of the saints change the answer to that question by the way their example changes our sense of our own possibilities. The saints, as James says, seem excessive, even maladapted to human life today, but are perfectly adapted to a society not yet achieved - and through the power of their example make that society to which they are adapted more likely as they go.
It's quite an optimistic view, really - that human nature is changeable in a good direction, and liable to continue moving in that good direction given half a chance. (Institutional religion doesn't help much, in his view, but science and democracy will.) Despite James' commitment to individuals and varieties. students often balk at the moral realism of this. Isn't "good" an unfounded value judgment, subjective, relative, different for each person or era? But rereading these words in 2020 I was struck by another question. Can there be saints of evil?
impregnators of the world, vivifiers and animaters of potentialities
of [evil] which but for them would lie forever dormant.
It is not
possible to be quite as [good] as we naturally are,
when they have passed
before us...
I'm thinking of course of the culture of moral cynicism and tribalism which animates the "populisms" of our day, and of our president, in particular. He and his followers think goodness is usually just "virtue signalling": only losers don't see through that, don't see that human goodness is a con. We'll all be better off accepting greed, selfishness, partiality, cruelty, even cheating as human nature: you know what you're dealing with. Don't trust anyone - including yourself! - to be so capable of goodness as people say. Lose the inhibitions when you're inclined to be mean. It's terrifying...
