The Gospel of Relaxation is an essay by William James. It is, in written form, a commencement address he gave to the 1896 graduating class of Boston Normal School of Gymnastics. James, an M.D. (who never practiced as such), was a professor at Harvard, a psychologist, a philosopher, and a popular lecturer at a time when public lectures were in vogue. Think Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain. He was, in fact, the father of American psychology, and became America’s most eminent philosopher. In 1890, James published his masterwork, ten years in the making, Principles of Psychology. It is volume 53 of The Great Books of the Western World. In 1892 he published an abbreviated form of Principles as Psychology: Briefer Course. After publishing these books, James was asked by the Harvard Corporation to give a few public lectures on psychology to Cambridge teachers. Their purpose was to provide some guidance to the proponents of scientific methods of teaching. There were sixteen lectures, later collected as Talks to Teachers. Additionally, in response to invitations to deliver 'addresses' to students at women's colleges, he gave three. These are included as essays in his 1899 volume titled Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life’s Ideals. The first of these addresses to students, delivered to the ladies of Boston Normal, was The Gospel of Relaxation. The Gospel is best seen as a guide to inner peace. It provides psychological and philosophical wisdom on the value of equanimity and how to find it. James gives us lessons, based on physiology, psychology, sociology, and philosophy, that we can apply to ourselves, and live a better life. James states his purpose in the first sentence of the essay. He proposes to show the practical application of certain psychological principles to mental hygiene, the conditions or practices conducive to maintaining mental health. (825)i It is to be a self-help lecture.
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I think your Gospel precis is excellent. Inspired. Inspiring, even...
ReplyDeleteAnd on closer inspection, I'm still very much inspired. We can recover the happy-making possibilities of subjective experience by giving the boot to self-involved hyper-egoism. Be yourself, wag your tongue, don't worry: great prescription for happiness.
I especially like your reading of James's emphasis on mens sana in corpore sano, against the nightmare vision of a blobby Wall-ee future when humans have abandoned muscular vitality and "moral elasticity" etc.
Lesson 6 is a bit perplexing for the secular Jamesian, but your correct emphasis on James's extremely accommodating conception of the divine is rightly reassuring. In "Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life" he lauds "the religion of humanity"(which "affords a basis for ethics as well as theism does") as a dimension of religious experience inclusive even of heathens like me. When he proposes to "defend “experience against philosophy" I think we can understand him to mean more (or less) than “prayer, guidance, and all that sort of thing"--secular experience leans not on prayer but on hope, solidarity, and commitment to the salvific potential of humane goodness. Maybe that's an alternate form of "guidance"--?
"Religious life as a whole," in other words, must include pragmatic/pluralistic meliorism as a wholly sufficing "transcendent dimension of life" for we natural pietists who find ourselves drawn to it (and repelled by supernaturalism).
I'm not sure what finally to say about Brother Lawrence. His humility and purity of heart are admirable, but his total project still seems a bit self-involved...admittedly in a different way than is typical in an egocentric, individualistic, materially-striving society like ours. We can talk about it.
Does Brother L's calm and equanimity come from his religious devotion, or are they its source? I'd want to say that anyone who can come to see "the vicissitudes of their life" as "insignificant things" in the larger scheme, not against the contrast of an eternal afterlife but in light of the possibilities inherent in this life, have attained full spiritual enlightenment. I think that's James's view too, and yours.
Bottom line: the gospel according to Ed is really good news. And happy.