Experience and the Conservation of
Value
Experience, in the sense
of that which we live through, is never concluded as long as life lasts. Hence
it may present a series of particular states but never a completed totality,
and no general axiom can emerge as the crystallized result of experience. Totalities
and generalizations spring either from an elaboration by thought of that which
has been experienced, or by an unconscious emphasis of one particular
experience or one particular kind of experience as that which decides and
determines all else. Before the stage of conscious reflection we shall find
this unconscious emphasis forming the basis of all which afterwards comes to be
regarded as the result of religious experience. It lies in the nature of
feeling that once aroused by any particular event, it tends to spread over the
whole life of conscious- ness and seeks to impart its own colouring to all
other elements of this life, indifferent as to whether they are or are not
connected with the event in question. …
If faith in the conservation of value be the core of all
religion, it follows that no religion can be constructed on the basis of
immediate experience. We can only immediately learn to know the particular and
definite values which are conditioned by our human and individual nature and
our special conditions of life; no experience can immediately teach us anything
about the conservation of these values any more than it can show us that that
which possesses the highest value for us is the central fact of existence. What
we have experienced and lived through may supply us with a motive for believing
in the conservation of value, but it can never supply the content of this
faith. Personal life—more especially as it expresses itself in great crises,
when new paths are struck out and new forms of life produced — is highest value
we know. Hence we involuntarily employ the experiences we have of this life to
illuminate the whole of existence; it appears to us as though in such crises
existence reveals to us its hidden powers. An expansion of feeling is here in
operation. If we try to translate this into the form of thought, we get a
conclusion by analogy, and an analogy which lies on the other side of the line
at which thought passes over into poetry
—
Harald
Høffding (born March 11, 1843)
Envy
We, who are ordinary
people, are apt to develop a discontent that runs into envy and jealousy, until
it becomes bitter and hard, and that destroys not only our own happiness, but is
exceedingly unjust towards those in the presence of whom we are thus
discontented and envious. Suppose a person is handsomer than I am, has more
brain power, more money, occupies a more distinguished position in society. For
what is such a person responsible? He did not make himself handsome. He did not
earn the money which he inherited. He did not manufacture the brain power which
has come from his ancestors. These things are conferred upon him. It is not out
of spite to us, that he is handsomer or richer or better endowed in any way. It
is no personal injury to us, on his part, that he possesses these things. He is
only responsible for the use that he makes of these endowments ; and, therefore,
his responsibility may be larger and more critical than ours. But there is
something unspeakably mean and little-souled in being bitter, envious, spiteful
toward a person, because he is better off in any way than we are.
—
Minot
J. Savage (1841-1918)
Peter Flötner - Allegory of Envy (circa 1540) Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland |
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