william james

The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature

First published 1902
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contents

i
Preface.
This book would never have been written had I not been honored with an appointment as Gifford Lecturer on Natural Religion at the…
ii
Lecture I. Religion And Neurology.
It is with no small amount of trepidation that I take my place behind this desk, and face this learned audience. To us Americans, the…
iii
Lecture II. Circumscription of the Topic.
Most books on the philosophy of religion try to begin with a precise definition of what its essence consists of. Some of these would-be…
iv
Lecture III. The Reality Of The Unseen.
Were one asked to characterize the life of religion in the broadest and most general terms possible, one might say that it consists of the…
v
Lectures IV and V. The Religion Of Healthy-Mindedness.
If we were to ask the question: “What is human life's chief concern?” one of the answers we should receive would be: “It is happiness.” How…
vi
Lectures VI And VII. The Sick Soul.
At our last meeting, we considered the healthy-minded temperament, the temperament which has a constitutional incapacity for prolonged…
vii
Lecture VIII. The Divided Self, And The Process Of Its Unification.
The last lecture was a painful one, dealing as it did with evil as a pervasive element of the world we live in. At the close of it we were…
viii
Lecture IX. Conversion.
To be converted, to be regenerated, to receive grace, to experience religion, to gain an assurance, are so many phrases which denote the…
ix
Lecture X. Conversion—Concluded.
In this lecture we have to finish the subject of Conversion, considering at first those striking instantaneous instances of which Saint…
x
Lectures XI, XII, And XIII. Saintliness.
The last lecture left us in a state of expectancy. What may the practical fruits for life have been, of such movingly happy conversions as…
xi
Lectures XIV And XV. The Value Of Saintliness.
We have now passed in review the more important of the phenomena which are regarded as fruits of genuine religion and characteristics of…
xii
Lectures XVI And XVII. Mysticism.
Over and over again in these lectures I have raised points and left them open and unfinished until we should have come to the subject of…
xiii
Lecture XVIII. Philosophy.
The subject of Saintliness left us face to face with the question, Is the sense of divine presence a sense of anything objectively true? We…
xiv
Lecture XIX. Other Characteristics.
We have wound our way back, after our excursion through mysticism and philosophy, to where we were before: the uses of religion, its uses…
xv
Lecture XX. Conclusions.
The material of our study of human nature is now spread before us; and in this parting hour, set free from the duty of description, we can…
xvi
Postscript.
In writing my concluding lecture I had to aim so much at simplification that I fear that my general philosophic position received so scant…