What William James thinks about religion
American philosopher and psychologist (1842 to 1910); studied at Harvard; author of The Principles of Psychology (1890), The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) and Pragmatism (1907).
William James did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
8 dated positions, c. 1902, in their own words. Our reading of what William James has said — not written or endorsed by them.
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Their wordsMedical materialism seems indeed a good appellation for the too simple-minded system of thought which we are considering. Medical materialism finishes up Saint Paul by calling his vision on the road to Damascus a discharging lesion of the occipital cortex, he being an epileptic.
↗The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)gutenberg.org All 17 from this book
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Their wordsReligion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.
↗The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)gutenberg.org All 17 from this book
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Their wordsWere one asked to characterize the life of religion in the broadest and most general terms possible, one might say that it consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto. This belief and this adjustment are the religious attitude in the soul.
↗The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)gutenberg.org All 17 from this book
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Their wordsThe completest religions would therefore seem to be those in which the pessimistic elements are best developed. Buddhism, of course, and Christianity are the best known to us of these.
↗The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)gutenberg.org All 17 from this book
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Their wordsTo be converted, to be regenerated, to receive grace, to experience religion, to gain an assurance, are so many phrases which denote the process, gradual or sudden, by which a self hitherto divided, and consciously wrong inferior and unhappy, becomes unified and consciously right superior and happy, in consequence of its firmer hold upon religious realities.
↗The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)gutenberg.org All 17 from this book
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Their wordsLet us be saints, then, if we can, whether or not we succeed visibly and temporally. But in our Father's house are many mansions, and each of us must discover for himself the kind of religion and the amount of saintship which best comports with what he believes to be his powers and feels to be his truest mission and vocation.
↗The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)gutenberg.org All 17 from this book
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Their wordsI do believe that feeling is the deeper source of religion, and that philosophic and theological formulas are secondary products, like translations of a text into another tongue.
↗The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)gutenberg.org All 17 from this book
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Their wordsI believe the pragmatic way of taking religion to be the deeper way.
↗The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)gutenberg.org All 17 from this book
The line under a date fills as the words age, a quarter at a time: past a month, six months, a year, and three years. Empty means said within the last month; full, more than three years ago. It says when, not whether it still holds — a change of mind is marked on the claim itself.
Dashed means we only know the words existed by that date; they may be older.