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.

  • James, William, 1842-1910.
Date:
1902
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: 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. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    stands vindicated beyond dispute. It becomes an essen- tial organ of our life, performing a function which no other portion of our nature can so successfully fulfill. From the merely biological point of view, so to call it, this is a conclusion to which, so far as I can now see, we shall inevitably be led, and led moreover by following the purely empirical method of demonstration which I sketched to you in the first lecture. Of the farther office of religion as a metaphysical revelation I will say nothing now. But to foreshadow the terminus of one's investigations is one thing, and to arrive there safely is another. In the next lecture, abandoning the extreme generalities which have engrossed us hitherto, I propose that we begin our actual journey by addressing ourselves directly to the concrete facts.