The Varieties of Religious Experience — William James

p. 526polytheism return upon us — a polytheism which I do not on this occasion defend, for my only aim at present is to keep the testimony of religious experience clearly within its proper bounds.

Upholders of the monistic view will say to such a polytheism (which, by the way, has always been the real religion of common people, and is so still to-day) that unless there be one all-inclusive God, our guarantee of security is left imperfect. In the Absolute, and in the Absolute only, all is saved.

If there be different gods, each caring for his part, some portion of some of us might not be covered with divine protection, and our rehgious consolation would thus fail to be complete. It goes back to\ what was said on pages 131-133, about the possibility j of there being portions of the universe that may irre- j trievably be lost.

Common sense is less sweeping in its demands than philosophy or mysticism have been wont to be, and can suffef the notion of this world being partly saved and partly lost. The ordinary moralistic state of mind makes the salvation of the world conditional upon the success with which each unit does its part.

Partial and conditional salvation is in fact a most familiar notion when taken in the abstract, the only difficulty being to determine the details. Some men are even disinterested , enough to be wilHng to be in the unsaved remnant as far 1 as their persons go, if only they can T3e persuaded that j their cause will prevail — all of us are willing, whenever J our activity-excitement rises sufficiently high.

I think, in fact, that a final philosophy of rehgion will have to consider the pluralistic hypothesis more seriously than it has rO hitherto been willing to consider it. For practical life at » ^ any rate, the chance of salvation is enough. No fact in human nature is more characteristic than its willingness to live on a chance. The existence of the chance makes 2p. 527the difference, as Edmund Gurney says, between a life of which the keynote is resignation and a life of which the keynote is hope/ But all these statements are unsatisfactory from their brevity, and I can only say that I hope to return to the same questions in another book. > Tertium Quid, 1887, p. 99. See also pp. 148, 149.

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Absolute, oneness with the, 419. Abstractness of religious objects, 53. Achilles, 86. ACKBRMANN, MaDAME, 63. Adaptation to environment, of things, 438 ; of saints, 374-377. Esthetic elements in religions, 460. Alacoque, 310, 344, 413. Alcohol, 387. Al-Ghazzali, 402. Ali, 341. Alleine, 228. Alline, 159, 217. Alternations of personality, 193. Alvarez de Paz, 116. Amiel, 394. Anaesthesia, 288. Anaesthetic revelation, 387-393. Angelus Silesius, 417. Anger, 181, 264. * Anhedonia,' 145. Aristocratic type, 371. Akistotle, 495. Ars, le Cur^ d', 302. Asceticism, 273, 296-310, 360-365. Aseity, God's, 439, 445. Atman, 400. Attributes of God, 440 ; their aesthetic use, 458. AuGCTSTiNE, Saint, 171, 361, 496. Adrblius, see Marcus. Automatic writing, 62, 478. Automatisms, 234, 250, 478-483. Baldwin, 347, 503. Bashkirtseff, 83. Beecher, 256. Behmen, see Boehme. Belief, due to non-rationalistic impulses, 73. Besant, Mrs., 23, 168. Bhagavad-Gita, 361. Blavatsky, Madam, 421. Blood, 389. Blumhardt, 113. Boehme, 410, 417, 418. Booth, 203. Bougaud, 344. BOURGET, 263. BouRiGNOsr, 321.