Varieties of Religious Experience

William James

Description

Harvard psychologist and philosopher William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature explores the nature of religion and, in James' observation, its divorce from science when studied academically. After publication in 1902 it quickly became a canonical text of philosophy and psychology, remaining in print through the entire century. "Scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are; and if we only knew the facts intimately enough, we should doubtless see 'the liver' determining the dicta of the sturdy atheist as decisively as it does those of the Methodist under conviction anxious about his soul. When it alters in one way the blood that percolates it, we get the Methodist, when in another way, we get the atheist form of mind."

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Psychology

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781877527463
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE
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WILLIAM JAMES
 
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The Varieties of Religious Experience A Study In Human Nature First published in 1902.
ISBN 978-1-877527-46-3
© 2008 THE FLOATING PRESS.
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Contents
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Preface Lecture I - Religion and Neurology Lecture II - Circumscription of the Topic Lecture III - The Reality of the Unseen Lectures IV and V - The Religion of Healthy Mindedness Lectures VI and VII - The Sick Soul Lecture VIII - The Divided Self, and the Process of Its Unification Lecture IX - Conversion Lecture X - Conversion—Concluded Lectures XI, XII, and XIII - Saintliness Lectures XIV and XV - The Value of Saintliness Lectures XVI and XVII - Mysticism Lecture XVIII - Philosophy Lecture XIX - Other Characteristics Lecture XX - Conclusions Postscript A Note on the Author of "The Varieties of Religious Experience" Endnotes
Preface
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This book would never have been written had I not been honoredwith an appointment as Gifford Lecturer on Natural Religion atthe University of Edinburgh. In casting about me for subjects ofthe two courses of ten lectures each for which I thus becameresponsible, it seemed to me that the first course might well bea descriptive one on "Man's Religious Appetites," and the seconda metaphysical one on "Their Satisfaction through Philosophy."But the unexpected growth of the psychological matter as I cameto write it out has resulted in the second subject beingpostponed entirely, and the description of man's religiousconstitution now fills the twenty lectures. In Lecture XX I havesuggested rather than stated my own philosophic conclusions, andthe reader who desires immediately to know them should turn topages 501-509, and to the "Postscript" of the book. I hope to beable at some later day to express them in more explicit form.
In my belief that a large acquaintance with particulars oftenmakes us wiser than the possession of abstract formulas, howeverdeep, I have loaded the lectures with concrete examples, and Ihave chosen these among the extremer expressions of the religioustemperament. To some readers I may consequently seem, beforethey get beyond the middle of the book, to offer a caricature ofthe subject. Such convulsions of piety, they will say, are notsane. If, however, they will have the patience to read to theend, I believe that this unfavorable impression will disappear;for I there combine the religious impulses with other principlesof common sense which serve as correctives of exaggeration, andallow the individual reader to draw as moderate conclusions as hewill.
My thanks for help in writing these lectures are due to Edwin D.Starbuck, of Stanford University, who made over to me his largecollection of manuscript material; to Henry W. Rankin, of EastNorthfield, a friend unseen but proved, to whom I owe preciousinformation; to Theodore Flournoy, of Geneva, to Canning Schillerof Oxford, and to my colleague Benjamin Rand, for documents; tomy colleague Dickinson S. Miller, and to my friends, Thomas WrenWard, of New York, and Wincenty Lutoslawski, late of Cracow, forimportant suggestions and advice. Finally, to conversations withthe lamented Thomas Davidson and to the use of his books, atGlenmore, above Keene Valley, I owe more obligations than I canwell express.Harvard University,March, 1902.
Lecture I - Religion and Neurology
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It is with no small amount of trepidation that I take my placebehind this desk, and face this learned audience. To usAmericans, the experience of receiving instruction from theliving voice, as well as from the books, of European scholars, isvery familiar. At my own University of Harvard, not a winterpasses without its harvest, large or small, of lectures fromScottish, English, French, or German representatives of thescience or literature of their respective countries whom we haveeither induced to cross the ocean to address us, or captured onthe wing as they were visiting our land. It seems the naturalthing for us to listen whilst the Europeans talk. The contraryhabit, of talking whilst the Europeans listen, we have not yetacquired; and in him who first makes the adventure it begets acertain sense of apology being due for so presumptuous an act.Particularly must this be the case on a soil as sacred to theAmerican imagination as that of Edinburgh. The glories of thephilosophic chair of this university were deeply impressed on myimagination in boyhood. Professor Fraser's Essays in Philosophy,then just published, was the first philosophic book I ever lookedinto, and I well remember the awestruck feeling I received fromthe account of Sir William Hamilton's classroom thereincontained. Hamilton's own lectures were the first philosophicwritings I ever forced myself to study, and after that I wasimmersed in Dugald Stewart and Thomas Brown. Such juvenileemotions of reverence never get outgrown; and I confess that tofind my humble self promoted from my native wilderness to beactually for the time an official here, and transmuted into acolleague of these illustrious names, carries with it a sense ofdreamland quite as much as of reality.
But since I have received the honor of this appointment I havefelt that it would never do to decline. The academic career alsohas its heroic obligations, so I stand here without furtherdeprecatory words. Let me say only this, that now that thecurrent, here and at Aberdeen, has begun to run from west toeast, I hope it may continue to do so. As the years go by, Ihope that many of my countrymen may be asked to lecture in theScottish universities, changing places with Scotsmen lecturing inthe United States; I hope that our people may become in all thesehigher matters even as one people; and that the peculiarphilosophic temperament, as well as the peculiar politicaltemperament, that goes with our English speech may more and morepervade and influence the world.
As regards the manner in which I shall have to administer thislectureship, I am neither a theologian, nor a scholar learned inthe history of religions, nor an anthropologist. Psychology isthe only branch of learning in which I am particularly versed.To the psychologist the religious propensities of man must be atleast as interesting as any other of the facts pertaining to hismental constitution. It would seem, therefore, that, as apsychologist, the natural thing for me would be to invite you toa descriptive survey of those religious propensities.
If the inquiry be psychological, not religious institutions, butrather religious feelings and religious impulses must be itssubject, and I must confine myself to those more developedsubjective phenomena recorded in literature produced byarticulate and fully self-conscious men, in works of piety andautobiography. Interesting as the origins and early stages of asubject always are, yet when one seeks earnestly for its fullsignificance, one must always look to its more completely evolvedand perfect forms. It follows from this that the documents thatwill most concern us will be those of the men who were mostaccomplished in the religious life and best able to give anintelligible account of their ideas and motives. These men, ofcourse, are either comparatively modern writers, or else suchearlier ones as have become religious classics. The documentshumains which we shall find most instructive need not then besought for in the haunts of special erudition—they lie along thebeaten highway; and this circumstance, which flows so naturallyfrom the character of our problem, suits admirably also yourlecturer's lack of special theological learning. I may takemy citations, my sentences and paragraphs of personal confession,from books that most of you at some time will have had already inyour hands, and yet this will be no detriment to the value of myconclusions. It is true that some more adventurous reader andinvestigator, lecturing here in future, may unearth from theshelves of libraries documents that will make a more delectableand curious entertainment to listen to than mine. Yet I doubtwhether he will necessarily, by his control of so much moreout-of-the-way material, get much closer to the essence of thematter in hand.
The question, What are the religious propensities? and thequestion, What is their philosophic significance? are twoentirely different orders of question from the logical point ofview; and, as a failure to recognize this fact distinctly maybreed confusion, I wish to insist upon the point a little beforewe enter into the documents and materials to which I havereferred.
In recent books on logic, distinction is made between two ordersof inquiry concerning anything. First, what is the nature of it?how did it come about? what is its constitution, origin, andhistory? And second, What is its importance, meaning, orsignificance, now that it is once here? The answer to the onequestion is given in an existential judgment or proposition. Theanswer to the other is a proposition of value, what the Germanscall a Werthurtheil, or what we may, if we like, denominate aspiritual judgment. Neither judgment can be deduced immediatelyfrom the other. They proceed from diverse intellectualpreoccupations, and the mind combines them only by making themfirst separately, and then adding them together.
In the matter of religions it is particularly easy to distinguishthe two orders of question. Every religious phenomenon has itshistory and its derivation from natural antecedents. What isnowada