because we take an immediate delight in them; or
else it is because we believe them to bring us good consequential
fruits for life. When we speak disparagingly of "feverish fancies,"
surely the fever-process as such is not the ground of our
disesteem--for aught we know to the contrary, 103 degrees or 104
degrees Fahrenheit might be a much more favorable temperature for
truths to germinate and sprout in, than the more ordinary blood-heat of
97 or 98 degrees. It is either the disagreeableness itself of the
fancies, or their inability to bear the criticisms of the convalescent
hour. When we praise the thoughts which health brings, health's
peculiar chemical metabolisms have nothing to do with determining our
judgment. We know in fact almost nothing about these metabolisms. It
is the character of inner happiness in the thoughts which stamps them
as good, or else their consistency with our other opinions and their
serviceability for our needs, which make them pass for true in our
esteem.

Now the more intrinsic and the more remote of these criteria do not
always hang together. Inner happiness and serviceability do not always
agree. What immediately feels most "good" is not always most "true,"
when measured by the verdict of the rest of experience. The difference
between Philip drunk and Philip sober is the classic instance in
corroboration. If merely "feeling good" could decide, drunkenness
would be the supremely valid human experience. But its revelations,
however acutely satisfying at the moment, are inserted into an
environment which refuses to bear them out for any length of time. The
consequence of this discrepancy of the two criteria is the uncertainty
which still prevails over so many of our spiritual judgments. There
are moments of sentimental and mystical experience--we shall hereafter
hear much of them--that carry an enormous sense of inner authority and
illumination with them when they come. But they come seldom, and they
do not come to everyone; and the rest of life makes either no
connection with them, or tends to contradict them more than it confirms
them. Some persons follow more the voice of the moment in these cases,
some prefer to be guided by the average results. Hence the sad
discordancy of so many of the spiritual judgments of human beings; a
discordancy which will be brought home to us acutely enough before
these lectures end.

It is, however, a discordancy that can never be resolved by