The Varieties of Religious Experience | Page 2

follows
success-- Extravagances-- Excessive devoutness, as fanaticism-- As
theopathic absorption-- Excessive purity-- Excessive charity-- The
perfect man is adapted only to the perfect environment-- Saints are
leavens-- Excesses of asceticism---- Asceticism symbolically stands for
the heroic life-- Militarism and voluntary poverty as possible
equivalents-- Pros and cons of the saintly character-- Saints versus
"strong" men-- Their social function must be considered-- Abstractly
the saint is the highest type, but in the present environment it may fail,
so we make ourselves saints at our peril-- The question of theological
truth.
LECTURES XVI AND XVII MYSTICISM Mysticism defined-- Four
marks of mystic states-- They form a distinct region of consciousness--
Examples of their lower grades-- Mysticism and alcohol-- "The
anaesthetic revelation"-- Religious mysticism-- Aspects of Nature--
Consciousness of God-- "Cosmic consciousness"-- Yoga-- Buddhistic
mysticism-- Sufism-- Christian mystics-- Their sense of revelation--
Tonic effects of mystic states-- They describe by negatives-- Sense of
union with the Absolute-- Mysticism and music-- Three conclusions--
(1) Mystical states carry authority for him who has them-- (2) But for
no one else-- (3) Nevertheless, they break down the exclusive authority
of rationalistic states-- They strengthen monistic and optimistic
hypotheses.
LECTURE XVIII PHILOSOPHY Primacy of feeling in religion,
philosophy being a secondary function-- Intellectualism professes to
escape objective standards in her theological constructions-- "Dogmatic
theology"-- Criticism of its account of God's attributes-- "Pragmatism"
as a test of the value of conceptions-- God's metaphysical attributes
have no practical significance-- His moral attributes are proved by bad
arguments; collapse of systematic theology-- Does transcendental
idealism fare better? Its principles-- Quotations from John Caird-- They
are good as restatements of religious experience, but uncoercive as
reasoned proof-- What philosophy CAN do for religion by

transforming herself into "science of religions."
LECTURE XIX OTHER CHARACTERISTICS Aesthetic elements in
religion--Contrast of Catholicism and Protestantism-- Sacrifice and
Confession-- Prayer-- Religion holds that spiritual work is really
effected in prayer-- Three degrees of opinion as to what is effected--
First degree-- Second degree-- Third degree-- Automatisms, their
frequency among religious leaders-- Jewish cases-- Mohammed--
Joseph Smith-- Religion and the subconscious region in general.
LECTURE XX CONCLUSIONS Summary of religious
characteristics-- Men's religions need not be identical-- "The science of
religions" can only suggest, not proclaims a religious creed-- Is religion
a "survival" of primitive thought?-- Modern science rules out the
concept of personality-- Anthropomorphism and belief in the personal
characterized pre-scientific thought-- Personal forces are real, in spite
of this-- Scientific objects are abstractions, only individualized
experiences are concrete-- Religion holds by the concrete-- Primarily
religion is a biological reaction-- Its simplest terms are an uneasiness
and a deliverance; description of the deliverance-- Question of the
reality of the higher power-- The author's hypotheses: 1. The
subconscious self as intermediating between nature and the higher
region-- 2. The higher region, or "God"-- 3. He produces real effects in
nature.
POSTSCRIPT Philosophic position of the present work defined as
piecemeal supernaturalism-- Criticism of universalistic
supernaturalism-- Different principles must occasion differences in
fact-- What differences in fact can God's existence occasion?-- The
question of immortality-- Question of God's uniqueness and infinity:
religious experience does not settle this question in the affirmative--
The pluralistic hypothesis is more conformed to common sense.
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
"Their 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
501-509, 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 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