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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: 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
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