The Varieties of Religious Experience

By James, William

Book Id: WPLBN0000605483
Format Type: PDF eBook
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Title:	The Varieties of Religious Experience
Author:	James, William
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Literature & thought, Literature and history, Literature & philosophy
Collections:	Project Gutenberg Consortia Center
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Publisher:	Project Gutenberg Consortia Center


Citation APA MLA Chicago James, W. (n.d.). The Varieties of Religious Experience. Retrieved from http://self.gutenberg.org/

Description
Preface: This book would never have been written had I not been honored with an appointment as Gifford Lecturer on Natural Religion at the University of Edinburgh. In casting about me for subjects of the two courses of ten lectures each for which I thus became responsible, it seemed to me that the first course might well be a descriptive one on ?Man?s Religious Appetites,? and the second a metaphysical one on ?Their Satisfaction through Philosophy.? But the unexpected growth of the psychological matter as I came to write it out has resulted in the second subject being postponed entirely, and the description of man?s religious constitution now fills the twenty lectures. In Lecture XX I have suggested rather than stated my own philosophic conclusions, and the reader who desires immediately to know them should turn to pages 501-509, and to the ?Postscript? of the book. I hope to be able at some later day to express them in more explicit form.

Table of Contents
CONTENTS LECTURE I RELIGION AND NEUROLOGY Introduction: the course is not anthropological, but deals with personal documents-- Questions of fact and questions of value-- In point of fact, the religious are often neurotic-- Criticism of medical materialism, which condemns religion on that account-- Theory that religion has a sexual origin refuted-- All states of mind are neurally conditioned-- Their significance must be tested not by their origin but by the value of their fruits-- Three criteria of value; origin useless as a criterion-- Advantages of the psychopathic temperament when a superior intellect goes with it-- especially for the religious life.