“ In a man with a liability to a special sort of emotion, whole ranges of inhibition habitually vanish, which in other men remain effective, and other sorts of inhibition take their place. ”
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). copy citation
| Author | William James |
|---|---|
| Source | The Varieties of Religious Experience |
| Topic | emotions |
| Date | 1902 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/621/621-h/621-h.html |
Context
“So far I have spoken of temporary alterations produced by shifting excitements in the same person. But the relatively fixed differences of character of different persons are explained in a precisely similar way. In a man with a liability to a special sort of emotion, whole ranges of inhibition habitually vanish, which in other men remain effective, and other sorts of inhibition take their place. When a person has an inborn genius for certain emotions, his life differs strangely from that of ordinary people, for none of their usual deterrents check him. Your mere aspirant to a type of character, on the contrary, only shows, when your natural lover, fighter, or reformer, with whom the passion is a gift of nature, comes along, the hopeless inferiority of voluntary to instinctive action.”
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