The Will to Believe argues that we are often compelled, in practice, to take decisions where no adequate theoretical grounds for a decision exist, for even to do nothing is still a decision. Religious matters, James says, come under this head; we have, he maintains, a right to adopt a believing attitude although “our merely logical intellect may not have been coerced.” This is essentially the attitude of Rousseau’s Savoyard vicar, but James’s development is novel.
