The Varieties of Religious Experience
book
Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered in Edinburgh 1901/2 "I am neither a theologian, nor a scholar learned in the history of religions, nor an anthropologist. Psychology is the only branch of learning in which I am particularly versed. To the psychologist the religious propensities of man must be at least as interesting as any other of the facts pertaining to his mental constitution. It would seem, therefore, as a psychologist, the natural thing for me would be to invite you to a descriptive survey of those religious propensities." When Wm James went to the University of Edinburgh to deliver a lecture series on "natural religion," he defined religion as "the feelings, acts & experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine." Considering religion, then, not as it's defined by or takes place in the churches, but as it's felt in everyday life, he undertook a project that, upon completion, stands not only as one of the most important texts on psychology, not only as a vitally serious contemplation of spirituality, but for many one of the best works of nonfiction written in the 20th century. Reading The Varieties of Religious Experience, it's easy to see why. Applying his analytic clarity to religious accounts from various sources, he elaborates a pluralistic framework in which "the divine can mean no single quality, it must mean a group of qualities, by being cham