« back to search

"Such fleeting aspirations are mere 'velleitates,' whimsies. They exist on the remoter outskirts of the mind and the real self of the man, the centre of his energies, is occupied with an entirely different system."

— James, William (1842-1910)

Author

James, William (1842-1910)

Work Title

The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature

Place of Publication

New York

Publisher

Longman, Green, and Co

Date

1901-2, 1902

Metaphor

"Such fleeting aspirations are mere 'velleitates,' whimsies. They exist on the remoter outskirts of the mind and the real self of the man, the centre of his energies, is occupied with an entirely different system."

Metaphor in Context

These alternations are the completest of the ways in which a self may be divided. A less complete way is the simultaneous coexistence of two or more different groups of aims, of which one practically holds the right of way and instigates activity, whilst the others are only pious wishes, and never practically come to anything. Saint Augustine's aspirations to a purer life in our last lecture, were for a while an example. Another would be the President in his full pride of office, wondering whether it were not all vanity, and whether the life of a wood chopper were not the wholesomer destiny. Such fleeting aspirations are mere velleitates, whimsies. They exist on the remoter outskirts of the mind and the real self of the man, the centre of his energies, is occupied with an entirely different system. As life goes on, there is a constant change of our interests, and a consequent change of place in our systems of ideas, from more central to more peripheral, and from more peripheral to more central parts of consciousness. I remember, for instance, that one evening when I was a youth, my father read aloud from a Boston newspaper that part of Lord Gifford's will which founded these four lectureships. At that time I did not think of being a teacher of philosophy: and what I listened to was as remote from my own life as if it related to the planet Mars. Yet here I am, with the Gifford system part and parcel of my very self, and all my energies, for the time being devoted to successfully identifying myself with it. My soul stands now planted in what once was for it a practically unreal object, and speaks from it as from its proper habitat and centre.
(pp. 194-5)