Varieties of Religious Experience, a Study in Human Nature

by William James

WE cannot divide man sharply into an animal and a rational part. WE cannot distinguish natural from supernatural effects; nor among the latter know which are favors of God, and which are counterfeit operations of the demon. WE have merely to collect things together without any special a priori theological system, and out of an aggregate of piecemeal judgments as to the value of this and that experience—judgments in which our general philosophic prejudices, our instincts, and our common sense are our only guides—decide that ON THE WHOLE one type of religion is approved by its fruits, and another type condemned. "On the whole"—I fear we shall never escape complicity with that qualification, so dear to your practical man, so repugnant to your systematizer!