The Varieties of Religious Experience
A Study in Human Nature
Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at Edinburgh in
1901‐1902
By
William James
Longmans, Green, And Co,
New York, London, Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras
1917
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.
Index.
Footnotes
[Title Page]
To
This book would never have been written had I not been honored with an
appointment as Gifford Lecturer on Natural Religion at the University of
Edinburgh. In casting about me for subjects of the two courses of ten
lectures each for which I thus became responsible, it seemed to me that
the first course might well be a descriptive one on “Man’s Religious
Appetites,” and the second a metaphysical one on “Their Satisfaction
through Philosophy.” But the unexpected growth of the psychological matter
as I came to write it out has resulted in the second subject being
postponed entirely, and the description of man’s religious constitution
now fills the twenty lectures. In Lecture XX I have suggested rather than
stated my own philosophic conclusions, and the reader who desires
immediately to know them should turn to pages 511‐519, and to the
“Postscript” of the book. I hope to be able at some later day to express
them in more explicit form.
In my belief that a large acquaintance with particulars often makes us
wiser than the possession of abstract formulas, however deep, I have
loaded the lectures with concrete examples, and I have chosen these among
the extremer expressions of the religious temperament. To some readers I
may consequently seem, before they get beyond the middle of the book, to
offer a caricature of the subject. Such convulsions of piety, they will
say, are not sane. If, however, they will have the patience to read to the
end, I believe that this unfavorable impression will disappear; for I
there combine the religious impulses with other principles of common sense
which serve as correctives of exaggeration, and allow the individual
reader to draw as moderate conclusions as he will.
My thanks for help in writing these lectures are due to Edwin D. Starbuck,
of Stanford University, who made over to me his large collection of
manuscript material; to Henry W. Rankin, of East Northfield, a friend
unseen but proved, to whom I owe precious information; to Theodore
Flournoy, of Geneva, to Canning Schiller, of Oxford, and to my colleague
Benjamin Rand, for documents; to my colleague Dickinson S. Miller, and to
my friends, Thomas Wren Ward, of New York, and Wincenty Lutoslawski, late
of Cracow, for important suggestions and advice. Finally, to conversations
with the lamented Thomas Davidson and to the use of his books, at
Glenmore, above Keene Valley, I owe more obligations than I can well
express.