The front matter is a publisher’s list of James’s other books with their dates, which is a serviceable chronology: The Principles of Psychology, 2 vols., 1890; Psychology: Briefer Course, 1892; The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, 1897; Human Immortality. The Varieties comes after all of them — the Gifford Lectures of a psychologist who had already written the standard textbook of his field, turning that apparatus on religious experience rather than on perception.
The Varieties of Religious Experience — William James
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WILLIAM JAMES 77ir Joreiiiost psyc/ico/oi^isf of our tiiiir. For tliirix-fire years professor of phiiosopliy af Harvard College.
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THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 2 vols. 8vo. New York: Henry Holt & Co. London : Macmillan & Co. 1890. PSYCHOLOGY: BRIEFER COURSE. i2mo. New York: Henry Holt & Co. London: Macmillan & Co. 1892. THE WILL TO BELIEVE, AND OTHER ESSAYS IN POPULAR PHILOSOPHY. i2mo. London, New York, and Bombay : Longmans, Green & Co. 1897. HUMAN IMMORTALITY: TWO SUPPOSED OBJEC- TIONS TO THE DOCTRINE. i6mo. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1898. TALKS TO TEACHERS ON PSYCHOLOGY: AND TO STUDENTS ON SOME OF LIFE'S IDEALS. i2mo. New York : Henry Holt & Co. London and Bombay : Longmans, Green & Co. 1899.
THE LITERARY REMAINS OF HENRY JAMES. Edited, with an Introduction, by William Jambs. With Portrait. Crown 8vo. Boston : Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
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, LL.D., Etc. CORKESPONDING MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF PRANCE AND OF THE ROYAL PRUSSIAN ACADEMY OP SCIENCES, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY six:
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 91 AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK LONDON AND BOMBAY 1903
Copyright, 1902, By WILLIAM JAMES.
All rights reserved.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.
First Edition, June, 1902. Reprinted, with revisions, August, 1902. Reprinted, October, November, December, 1902, and January, 1903.
To €. P* (5. IN FILIAL GRATITUDE AND LOVE
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 ' Then* 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 vi PREFACE 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 vdll.
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.