Varieties of Religious Experience, a Study in Human Nature

by William James

the religious are often neurotic— Criticism of medical materialism, which condemns religion on that account— Theory

Neuroses

Religion is more enthusiastic than philosophy— Its characteristic is enthusiasm in solemn emotion— Its ability to overcome unhappiness— Need of such a faculty from the biological point of view.

Defined

Empiricism is not skepticism—

Empirical

"The science of religions" can only suggest, not proclaims a religious creed— Is religion a "survival" of primitive thought?—

Science

speak not now of your ordinary religious believer, who follows the conventional observances of his country, whether it be Buddhist, Christian, or Mohammedan. His religion has been made for him by others, communicated to him by tradition, determined to fixed forms by imitation, and retained by habit.

Environment

So of all our raptures and our drynesses, our longings and pantings, our questions and beliefs. They are equally organically founded, be they religious or of non-religious content.

Root

that some states of mind are inwardly superior to others, and reveal to us more truth,

Meditate

If there were such a thing as inspiration from a higher realm, it might well be that the neurotic temperament would furnish the chief condition of the requisite receptivity.

God

we learn most about a thing when we view it under a microscope, as it were, or in its most exaggerated

Study

Mr. Havelock Ellis, for example, identifies religion with the entire field of the soul's liberation from oppressive moods.

Name

For when all is said and done, we are in the end absolutely dependent on the universe; and into sacrifices and surrenders of some sort, deliberately looked at and accepted, we are drawn and pressed as into our only permanent positions of repose. Now in those states of mind which

Univrse

Universe

So we have the strange phenomenon, as Kant assures us, of a mind believing with all its strength in the real presence of a set of things of no one of which it can form any notion whatsoever.

Kant

Such grounds, for rationalism, must consist of four things: (1) definitely statable abstract principles; (2) definite facts of sensation; (3) definite hypotheses based on such facts; and (4) definite inferences logically drawn. Vague impressions of something indefinable

Rationality

sword. [30] In his book (too little read, I fear), Natural Religion, 3d edition, Boston, 1886, pp. 91, 122. In my last lecture I quoted to you the ultra-radical opinion of Mr. Havelock Ellis, that laughter of any sort may be considered a religious exercise, for it bears witness to the soul's emancipation.

Havelock

"What is human life's chief concern?"

Question

antinomian

Lookup

Thus it has come about that many persons to-day regard Walt Whitman as the restorer of the eternal natural religion.

Whitman

maenadic—foundations,

Bacchus

meliorism

Ameliorate

Q. What does Religion mean to you? A. It means nothing; and it seems, so far as I can observe useless to others. I am sixty-seven years of age and have resided in X fifty years, and have been in business forty-five, consequently I have some little experience of life and men, and some women too, and I find that the most religious and pious people are as a rule those most lacking in uprightness and morality. The

Morality

FROWARDNESS

New word

"The great central fact of the universe is that spirit of infinite life and power that is back of all, that manifests itself in and through all. This spirit of infinite life and power that is back of all is what I call God. I care not what term you may use, be it Kindly Light, Providence, the Over-Soul, Omnipotence, or whatever term may be most convenient, so long as we are agreed in regard to the great central fact itself.

God

"What shall I do to be saved?" Luther and Wesley replied: "You are saved now, if you would but believe it." And

Luther

If we admit that evil is an essential part of our being and the key to the interpretation of our life, we load ourselves down with a difficulty that has always proved burdensome in philosophies of religion.

Evil

The Epicurean still awaits results from economy of indulgence and damping of desire. The Stoic hopes for no results, and gives up natural good altogether.

Goodness

anhedonia

Define

calumny

Defined

results strikingly confirm the view that sudden conversion is connected with the possession of an active subliminal

Results

That state of confidence, trust, union with all things, following upon the achievement of moral unity, is the Faith-state.

Faith

automatisms,

Defined

And so one may say that no passion would be a veritable passion unless it could carry one to crime."

Love

concupiscence,

Defining

four great natural passions, joy, hope, fear, and grief.

Passions

Suso,

Lookup

worth of a religion's fruits in merely human terms of value. How CAN you measure their worth without considering whether the God really exists who is supposed to inspire them?

Me

When they violated other needs too strongly, or when other faiths came which served the same needs better, the first religions were supplanted.

Failures

The mere outward form of inalterable certainty is so precious to some minds that to renounce it explicitly is for them out of the question.

Learn

Fanaticism (when not a mere expression of ecclesiastical ambition) is only loyalty carried to a convulsive extreme.

Devout

"The signs of abnormality which sanctified persons show are of frequent occurrence.

Odd

there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.

Lies

We must frankly confess, then, using our empirical common sense and ordinary practical prejudices, that in the world that actually is, the virtues of sympathy, charity, and non-resistance may be, and often have been, manifested in excess.

Extremes

'Knowledge and Love are One,

Love

"But how, you will repeat, CAN one have such certainty in respect to what one does not see?

Question

The Continental schools of philosophy have too often overlooked the fact that man's thinking is organically connected with his conduct. It seems to me to be the chief glory of English and Scottish thinkers to have kept the organic connection in view. The guiding principle of British philosophy has in fact been that every difference must MAKE a difference, every theoretical difference somewhere issue in a practical difference, and that the best method of discussing points of theory is to begin by ascertaining what practical difference would result from

School

excrescences

Define

Let me close, then, by briefly enumerating what she CAN do for religion. If she will abandon metaphysics and deduction for criticism and induction, and frankly transform herself from theology into science of religions, she can make herself enormously useful. The

Science Religion

Summing up in the broadest possible way the characteristics of the religious life, as we have found them, it includes the following beliefs:— 1. That the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it draws its chief significance; 2. That union or harmonious relation with that higher universe is our true end; 3. That prayer or inner communion with the spirit thereof— be that spirit "God" or "law"—is a process wherein work is really done, and spiritual energy flows in and produces effects, psychological or material, within the phenomenal world. Religion includes also the following psychological characteristics:— 4. A new zest which adds itself like a gift to life, and takes the form either of lyrical enchantment or of appeal to earnestness and heroism. 5. An assurance of safety and a temper of peace, and, in relation to others, a preponderance of loving affections.

Smmary

says Leuba, "in this way: GOD IS NOT KNOWN, HE IS NOT UNDERSTOOD; HE IS USED—sometimes as meat-purveyor, sometimes as moral support, sometimes as friend, sometimes as an object of love.

Leuba

anthropocentric."

Define