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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: to get at its typical differentia.
This sort of happiness in the absolute and everlasting is what we
find nowhere but in religion. It is parted off from all mere
animal happiness, all mere enjoyment of the present, by that
element of solemnity of which I have already made so much
account. Solemnity is a hard thing to define abstractly, but
certain of its marks are patent enough. A solemn state of mind is
never crude or simple--it seems to contain a certain measure of
its own opposite in solution. A solemn joy preserves a sort of
bitter in its sweetness; a solemn sorrow is one to which we
intimately consent. But there are writers who, realizing that
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