The Varieties of Religious Experience
by William James
PREFACE
Being the
VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE
Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion
Delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-1902
PREFACE -
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 the 'Conclusions,' 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.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY,
March, 1902.
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