The Varieties of Religious Experience, A Study in Human Nature

This edition features
• a linked Table of Contents

PREFACE
LECTURE I
RELIGION AND NEUROLOGY
Introduction: the course is not anthropological, but deals with personal documents — Questions of fact and questions of value — In point of fact, the religious are often neurotic — Criticism of medical materialism, which condemns religion on that account — Theory that religion has a sexual origin refuted — All states of mind are neurally conditioned — Their significance must be tested not by their origin but by the value of their fruits — Three criteria of value; origin useless as a criterion — Advantages of the psychopathic temperament when a superior intellect goes with it — especially for the religious life.
LECTURE II
CIRCUMSCRIPTION OF THE TOPIC
Futility of simple definitions of religion — No one specific “religious sentiment” — Institutional and personal religion — We confine ourselves to the personal branch — Definition of religion for the purpose of these lectures — Meaning of the term “divine” — The divine is what prompts SOLEMN reactions — Impossible to make our definitions sharp — We must study the more extreme cases — Two ways of accepting the universe — Religion is more enthusiastic than philosophy — Its characteristic is enthusiasm in solemn emotion — Its ability to overcome unhappiness — Need of such a faculty from the biological point of view.
LECTURE III
THE REALITY OF THE UNSEEN
Percepts versus abstract concepts — Influence of the latter on belief — Kant’s theological Ideas — We have a sense of reality other than that given by the special senses — Examples of “sense of presence” — The feeling of unreality — Sense of a divine presence: examples — Mystical experiences: examples — Other cases of sense of God’s presence — Convincingness of unreasoned experience — Inferiority of rationalism in establishing belief — Either enthusiasm or solemnity may preponderate in the religious attitude of individuals.
LECTURES IV AND V
THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY — MINDEDNESS
Happiness is man’s chief concern — “Once-born” and “twice-born” characters — Walt Whitman — Mixed nature of Greek feeling — Systematic healthy-mindedness — Its reasonableness — Liberal Christianity shows it — Optimism as encouraged by Popular Science — The “Mind-cure” movement — Its creed — Cases — Its doctrine of evil — Its analogy to Lutheran theology — Salvation by relaxation — Its methods: suggestion — meditation — “recollection” — verification — Diversity of possible schemes of adaptation to the universe — APPENDIX: TWO mind-cure cases.
LECTURES VI AND VII
THE SICK SOUL
Healthy-mindedness and repentance — Essential pluralism of the healthy-minded philosophy — Morbid-mindedness: its two degrees — The pain-threshold varies in individuals — Insecurity of natural goods — Failure, or vain success of every life — Pessimism of all pure naturalism — Hopelessness of Greek and Roman view — Pathological unhappiness — “Anhedonia” — Querulous melancholy — Vital zest is a pure gift — Loss of it makes physical world look different — Tolstoy — Bunyan — Alline — Morbid fear — Such cases need a supernatural religion for relief — Antagonism of healthy-mindedness and morbidness — The problem of evil cannot be escaped.
LECTURE VIII
THE DIVIDED SELF, AND THE PROCESS OF ITS UNIFICATION
Heterogeneous personality — Character gradually attains unity — Examples of divided self — The unity attained need not be religious — “Counter conversion” cases — Other cases — Gradual and sudden unification — Tolstoy’s recovery — Bunyan’s.
LECTURE IX
CONVERSION
Case of Stephen Bradley — The psychology of character-changes — Emotional excitements make new centres of personal energy — Schematic ways of representing this — Starbuck likens conversion to normal moral ripening — Leuba’s ideas — Seemingly unconvertible persons — Two types of conversion — Subconscious incubation of motives — Self-surrender — Its importance in religious history — Cases.
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LECTURE XX
CONCLUSIONS