Varieties of Religious Experience - Fathel

Varieties of Religious Experience A Study in Human Nature
CENTENARY EDITION
William James
with a foreword by Micky James
and new introductions by
Eugene Taylor and Jeremy Carrette
London and New York
-iii-
Questia Media America, Inc. www.questia.com Publication Information: Book Title: Varieties of Religious Experience: A
Study in Human Nature. Contributors: William James - author. Publisher:
Routledge. Place of Publication: London. Publication Year: 2002
First published 1902 by Longmans, Green, and Co., New York
This edition first published 2002
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
Foreword © 2002 Micky James
Editorial matter and selection © 2002 Eugene Taylor and Jeremy Carrette
This edition © 2002 Routledge
Typeset in 11/13pt Goudy by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd,
Guildford and King's Lynn
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-415-27809-0
-iv- Contents
| |Foreword to the Centenary Edition by Micky James |
| |xi |
| | | | |Editors' preface by Eugene Taylor and Jeremy Carrette |
| |xiii |
| | | | |Introduction by Eugene Taylor: The Spiritual Roots of James's |
| |Varieties of Religious Experience |
| |xv |
| | | | |Introduction by Jeremy Carrette: The Return to James: Psychology,|
| |Religion and the Amnesia of Neuroscience |
| |xxxix |
| | | | |Preface from the 1902 Edition |
| |5 |
| | | | |LECTURE I THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE |
| |7 |
| | | | |LECTURE II CIRCUMSCRIPTION OF THE TOPIC |
| |26 |
| | |
-v- |LECTURE III THE REALITY OF THE UNSEEN |
|46 |
| | | |LECTURES IV AND V THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY-MINDEDNESS |
| |66 |
| | | | |LECTURE VI AND VII THE SICK SOUL |
| |103 |
| | |
-vi- |LECTUREV VIII THE DIVIDED SELF, AND THE PROCESS OF ITS UNIFICATION |
|132 |
| | | |LECTURE IX CONVERSION |
| |150 |
| | | | |LECTURE X CONVERSION-concluded |
| |171 |
| | | | |LECTURES XI, XII, AND XIII SAINTLINESS |
| |203 |
| | |
-vii- |LECTURES XIV AND XV THE VALUE OF SAINTLINESS |
|255 |
| | | |LECTURES XVI AND XVII MYSTICISM |
| |294 |
| | | | |LECTURES XVIII PHILOSOPHY |
| |333 |
| | |
-viii- |LECTURE XIX OTHER CHARACTERISTICS |
|354 |
| | | |LECTURE XX CONCLUSIONS |
| |375 |
| | | | |POSTSCRIPT |
| |401 |
| | | | |INDEX |
| |407 |
| | |
-ix- Foreword To the Official Centenary Edition of William James's
Varieties of Religious Experience
by
Micky James
Greetings,
My having been asked to contribute a few words to this commemorative
edition of The Varieties becomes a pleasure I tackle not lightly as I,
myself, am a painter, not a scholar. In such lively regard do I hold the
reader who is interested in this topic that I find myself all but purified
in the waters. Your hefty and devoted attention to William James-to his
ideas about religious experience, of course-but also to his mind and to the
man himself, as well, would surely have blushingly distracted his own. You
do him enormous honor.
I never knew my grandfather, William James, born as I was in 1923, the year
following his own Alice's death, she then a widow of twelve years. I did
meet his son, Alexander, who, of course, was my father, a painter, whose
death brought his brothers Harry and Billy, to our New Hampshire home that
February day of 1946. Though now fifty and more years later, I remember
well my uncles' sundown arrival. That morning we made my father a coffin
from old pine boards. Placed in the darkening dining room, there he was
when they turned up. Standing there, the three of us, and looking down on
him, I heard Uncle Harry say, "He was the most like Dad."
And so, in a curious way, I have met Gramps Willie, as we would
affectionately refer to him in our middle-age, which may
-xi-
yet be another reason why I feel so spirited a nearness to all who are
involved in this commemorative edition, you who-intellectually, sportingly-
have given him your all, you who know him so well.
My own dyslexic father, born in the year of The Principles, 1890, was later
to invite upon his father, William, no end of frustration and despair. From
cool Chicorua, William wrote to his brother Henry the novelist, "Aleck
having passed only in French, is back in hot Cambridge with his tutor. How
long, oh Lord, how long?"
Maturing as a cerebral washout in that dynamic house on Irving Street, my
father could hardly have felt little but a cautious distance from his
father. Somewhere deep within, he must have nursed a lingering wound, for I
never heard him speak but once-once only-of his own loving Dad. While
posing for him one day for a portrait (I was 12), quite out of the blue I
asked, "Did your father have a sense of humor?" He gave me this long look
and, slowly putting down his brushes and palette, he said-and almost
joyfully so-"For chrissake, Yes!" We then returned to our separate tasks.
Until the effect of a poor heart put an end to my dad's automatic writing
days, it was always William James himself who would speak through the
unconscious hand. Each session would begin, "This is your loving dad," and
always in William James's own distinctive handwriting. But to each guest's
most frequent question, "What's it like up there?" immediately the pencil
would respond, "Does the robin tell her hatching secrets to a cow?"
So here we are, and now that I have just about satisfied myself, at least,
that, indeed, I have met that dear man you honor here, here's to express my
delight in the continuing importance of his work, and of my family's warm
support of this unique publication. Insofar as I have been sanctioned by no
one in particular, I give the James family seal of approval to what we
shall hencefor