The Varieties of Religious Experience — William James

p. 331thus the parent of those disbeHefs which, it was charged, were inconsistent with the experiential method. The inconsistency, you see, is immaterial, and the charge may be neglected. If we pass from disbeliefs to«positive beliefs, it seems to me that there is not even a formal inconsistency to be laid against our method.

The gods we stand by are the gods we need and can use, the gods whose demands on us are reinforcements of our demands on oui'selves and on one another. What I then propose to do is, briefly stated, to test saintHness by common sense, to use human standards to help us decide how far the religious life commends itself as an ideal kind of human activity.

If it commends itself, then any theological beliefs that may inspire it, in so far forth will stand accredited. If not, then they wiU be discredited, and all without reference to anything but human working principles.

It is but the elimination of the humanly unfit, and the survival of the humanly fittest, applied to religious beliefs; and if we look at history candidly and without prejudice, we have to admit that no religion has ever in the long run established or proved itself in any other way. Religions have approved themselves ; they have ministered to sundry vital needs which they found reigning.

When they violated other needs too strongly, or when other faiths ^^ came which served the same needs better, the first reli- B il* o '^ '-^ gions were supplanted. (^i/ila^^^ The needs were always many, and the tests were never ItV-^i'^'^]' sharp.

So the reproach of vagueness and subjectivity ^" and 'on the whole '-ness, which can with perfect legiti- ^^ macy be addressed to the empirical method as we are "^A-l^^ forced to use it, is after all a reproach to which the entire -7 (jiya ,* < life of man in dealing with these matters is obnoxious. No religion has ever yet owed its prevalence to ' apodictic / 2p. 332certainty. In a later lecture I will ask whether objective certainty can ever be added by theological reasoning to a religion that already empirically prevails. One word, also, about the reproach that in following this sort of an empirical method we are handing ourselves over to systematic skepticism.

Since it is impossible to deny secular alterations in our sentiments and needs, it would be absurd to affirm that one's own age of the world can be beyond correction by the next age. Skepticism cannot, therefore, be ruled out by any set of thinkers as a possibility against which their conclusions are secure ; and no empiricist ought to claim exemption from this universal liability.

But to admit one's liabihty to correction is one thing, and to embark upon a sea of wanton doubt is another. Of willfully playing into the hands of skepticism we cannot be accused. He who acknowledges the imperfectness of his instrument, and makes allowance for it in discussing his observations, is in a much better position for gaining / truth than if he claimed his instrument to be infalhble.

Or is dogmatic or scholastic theology less doubted in point of fact for claiming, as it does, to be in point of right undoubtable? And if not, what command over truth would this kind of theology really lose if, instead of absolute certainty, she only claimed reasonable probability for her conclusions ?

If we claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have within their grasp. Pretty surely it will be more than we could have had, if we were unconscious of our liability to err. Nevertheless, dogmatism will doubtless continue to condemn us for this confession. The mere outward form of 3p. 333inalterable certainty is so precious to some minds that to renoimce it explicitly is for them out of the question. They will claim it even where the facts most patently pronounce its folly. But the safe thing is surely to recognize that all the insights of creatures of a day like our- /■ selves must be provisional.

The wisest of critics is an altering being, subject to the better insight of the morrow, and right at any moment, only * up to date ' and * on the whole. When larger ranges of truth open, it is surely best to be able to ojDen ourselves to their reception, unfettered by our previous pretensions. " Heartily know, when half-gods go, the gods arrive.

The fact of diverse judgments about religious phenomena is therefore entirely unescapable, whatever may be one's own desire to attain the irreversible. But apart from that fact, a more fundamental question awaits us, the question whether men's opinions ought to be expected to be absolutely uniform in this field. Ought all men to have the same religion ? Ought they to approve the same fruits and follow the same leadings ?

Are they so like in their inner needs that, for hard and soft, for proud and humble, for strenuous and lazy, for healthyminded and despairing, exactly the same religious incentives are required ? Or are different functions in the / organism of humanity allotted to different types of man, so that some may really be the better for a religion of consolation and reassurance, whilst others are better for one of terror and reproof ?

It might conceivably be so ; and we shall, I think, more and more suspect it to be so as we go on. And if it be so, how can any possible judge or critic help being biased in favor of the religion by which his own needs are best met ? He aspires to impartiality ; but he is too close to the struggle not to be to some degree a participant, and he is sure to approve