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The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature Flashcards

William James · Public domain edition · 427 cards · 113 chapters

William James argues that religious experience should be studied through its psychological effects on individuals rather than through institutional doctrine or abstract theology. The deck covers his distinctions between types of inquiry, his criteria for judging religious phenomena, and his defense of analyzing religion biologically and through exceptional cases.

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Chapter 1 · Question

What two orders of inquiry does James distinguish concerning religion?

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Section 14 cards

What two orders of inquiry does James distinguish concerning religion?
James distinguishes an existential judgment, which asks what a thing's nature, origin, constitution, and history are, from a proposition of value (a Werthurtheil or spiritual judgment), which asks what its importance or significance is now that it exists. He insists neither judgment can be deduced immediately from the other; they proceed from diverse intellectual preoccupations and are combined only by making them separately and then adding them together.
Chapter 1
Why does James say he will draw on common, familiar documents?
Because his inquiry is psychological, its subject is religious feelings and impulses rather than institutions, and he focuses on the more developed subjective phenomena recorded by articulate, self-conscious men in works of piety and autobiography. Since one must look to fully evolved forms, the best documents come from those most accomplished in the religious life, who are mostly modern writers or earlier religious classics. These lie along the beaten highway, not in haunts of special erudition, which suits his lack of theological learning.
Chapter 1
Why did the book's plan change from two courses to twenty lectures on one subject?
James originally proposed a first descriptive course on man's religious appetites and a second metaphysical course on their satisfaction through philosophy. But the unexpected growth of the psychological material as he wrote it out caused the second subject to be postponed entirely, so the description of man's religious constitution now fills the twenty lectures. His own philosophic conclusions are only suggested in Lecture XX, with readers directed to pages 511-519 and the Postscript.
Chapter 1
How does James answer readers who fear his examples caricature religion?
James admits that by loading the lectures with concrete examples, chosen among the extremer expressions of the religious temperament, he may seem to offer a caricature, and readers may say such convulsions of piety are not sane. He asks them to read to the end, where he combines religious impulses with other principles of common sense that correct exaggeration and let each reader draw conclusions as moderate as he wishes.
Chapter 1

Section 24 cards

What two orders of question does James distinguish in studying religion?
James distinguishes existential questions (a phenomenon's history and natural derivation, e.g. higher criticism of the Bible) from spiritual questions (its value as revelation). He argues existential facts alone cannot determine value; one must combine them with a spiritual judgment about what qualities give a thing revelation-value, so the same facts yield different verdicts depending on that judgment.
Chapter 2
Why does James study religious geniuses rather than conventional believers?
James says the ordinary believer's religion is second-hand—made by others, transmitted by tradition, fixed by imitation, retained by habit—so studying it profits little. He seeks instead the original experiences that set patterns for all imitated religious feeling. These he finds in individuals for whom religion is an acute fever rather than a dull habit: religious geniuses, often marked by nervous instability.
Chapter 2
What pathological traits does James attribute to religious leaders, and with what example?
James says religious geniuses often show nervous instability: exalted emotional sensibility, discordant inner life, melancholy, obsessions and fixed ideas, trances, voices, and visions—features ordinarily classed as pathological. He claims these traits often helped give them religious authority. His example is George Fox, whose Journal recounts walking barefoot in winter through Lichfield crying woe to the bloody city.
Chapter 2
How does James answer the charge that analyzing religion biologically degrades it?
James denies any intent to discredit religion; he warns such prejudice would obstruct his lectures. He argues we must describe and name religion's pathological aspects as if they occurred in non-religious men, acknowledging that we recoil when the intellect classifies what we are devoted to. He compares this to a crab taking personal outrage at being classed as a crustacean.
Chapter 2

Section 33 cards

Why does James say pleading organic causation against spiritual value is illogical?
James argues that if mental states depend thoroughly on bodily conditions, then every state—scientific theories, atheism, disbelief included—is organically conditioned just as much as religious emotion. So attacking a religious state's spiritual value via its organic cause is arbitrary unless one has already worked out a psychophysical theory linking spiritual values generally to determinate physiological changes. Medical materialism applies the rule selectively, discrediting only states it dislikes.
Chapter 3
On what two grounds does James say we actually judge states of mind superior?
James says we never judge superiority by organic antecedents. We judge either because we take immediate delight in the state, or because we believe it brings good consequential fruits for life. These two criteria—inner happiness and serviceability—do not always agree; what immediately feels good is not always most true, as Philip drunk versus Philip sober shows. Hence the uncertainty and discordancy in spiritual judgments.
Chapter 3
What does James mean by the Philip drunk and Philip sober example?
It illustrates that inner happiness and serviceability diverge: if merely "feeling good" decided validity, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience. But its revelations, however satisfying at the moment, are inserted into an environment that refuses to bear them out. James uses this to explain why some mystical experiences carry enormous inner authority yet come seldom and are contradicted more than confirmed by the rest of life.
Chapter 3

Section 43 cards

What three criteria does James propose for judging religious phenomena?
James names immediate luminousness, philosophical reasonableness, and moral helpfulness as the only available criteria. He argues that a saint's theology must be tested by these, not by the saint's nervous condition: even a placid nervous system would not save a contemptible theology, and hysteria would not discredit a theology that passes these tests.
Chapter 4
Why does James call medical materialists 'belated dogmatists'?
James argues that medical materialists merely invert the old argument from origin: instead of accrediting a belief by its divine or intuitive source, they discredit it by its pathological source. But origin was always an insufficient test, and Maudsley himself concedes that an incomplete mind may serve Nature's purpose, falling back on how a belief works on the whole.
Chapter 4
How does Saint Teresa distinguish genuine visions from diabolical deception?
Teresa argues that genuine heavenly visions leave lasting good dispositions and renewal of strength, while mere imagination produces lassitude and disgust. She told accusers to look at the jewels the divine hand left: her changed dispositions, witnessed by her confessor and evident to all who knew her. A demon, she reasoned, would not uproot her vices and fill her with virtue.
Chapter 4

Section 54 cards

Why does James think studying morbid conditions helps us understand normal mental life?
The author argues that insane conditions isolate special factors of mental life and let us inspect them unmasked by usual surroundings, playing the role in mental anatomy that the scalpel and microscope play in bodily anatomy. He notes that study of hallucinations was key to understanding normal sensation, illusions to perception, and fixed ideas to the normal will and belief.
Chapter 5
What does James say happens when superior intellect combines with psychopathic temperament?
The author argues this combination is the best possible condition for effective genius that gets into biographical dictionaries. The psychopathic temperament brings ardor, emotional susceptibility, fixed ideas, and the tendency for conceptions to pass immediately into belief and action. James cautions there is no special affinity between crankiness as such and superior intellect, since most psychopaths have feeble intellects.
Chapter 5
How does James treat the term 'religious sentiment'?
The author argues it is a collective name for many sentiments religious objects may arouse in alternation, containing nothing psychologically specific. Religious love is natural love directed to a religious object; religious fear is ordinary fear in light of divine retribution; religious awe is the same organic thrill felt in a forest at twilight. There is no simple abstract religious emotion present in every religious experience.
Chapter 5
Why does James refuse to begin with a precise definition of religion's essence?
The author argues that the many different proposed definitions prove 'religion' is a collective name, not a single principle or essence. He compares it to 'government,' which no single essence captures since authority, submission, laws, and assemblies all matter at different moments. He warns that the theorizing mind tends toward over-simplification, the root of absolutism and one-sided dogmatism.
Chapter 5

Section 64 cards

How does William James define religion for the purposes of his lectures?
James arbitrarily defines religion as "the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine." He notes the relation may be moral, physical, or ritual, and that theologies, philosophies, and ecclesiastical organizations may secondarily grow out of religion taken in this sense.
Chapter 6
What two branches divide the religious field, according to James?
James describes a great partition between institutional and personal religion. Institutionalism centers on worship, sacrifice, theology, ceremony, and ecclesiastical organization—an external art of winning the gods' favor. Personal religion centers on man's inner dispositions: conscience, deserts, helplessness, incompleteness. Its acts are personal rather than ritual, the individual transacts alone, and priests and sacraments sink to a secondary place.
Chapter 6
Why does James claim personal religion is more fundamental than theology or ecclesiasticism?
James argues churches, once established, live second-hand upon tradition, but the founders of every church owed their power to direct personal communion with the divine. He cites the superhuman founders—Christ, Buddha, Mahomet—and adds that all originators of Christian sects were in this case. So personal religion should seem the primordial thing, even to those who esteem it incomplete.
Chapter 6
How does James handle religious systems like Buddhism that lack a personal God?
James admits controversy arises if "divine" is taken too narrowly, since some systems called religious do not positively assume a God. Buddhism, he says, is strictly atheistic, though the Buddha popularly stands in place of a God. Modern transcendental idealism, such as Emersonianism, lets God evaporate into abstract Ideality—an immanent divinity in things rather than a deity in concreto.
Chapter 6

Section 74 cards

Why does James hesitate to call every total reaction on life a religion?
James grants that a total reaction upon life is logically defensible as religion, since it expresses one's sense of the universe. But he argues the term would become inconvenient: trifling, sneering attitudes like Voltaire's je m'en fichisme or Renan's systematic irony would then count as religions, straining ordinary language. For common men, religion signifies a serious state of mind.
Chapter 7
What does James say Emerson leaves undecided about the universe's soul?
James says Emerson never unmistakably decides whether the universe's divine soul of order is a mere quality, like the eye's brilliancy or the skin's softness, or a self-conscious life, like the eye's seeing or the skin's feeling. It quivers on the boundary, leaning either way to suit literary rather than philosophic need. Whatever it is, it is active and trustworthy.
Chapter 7
Why does James call godless creeds like Emersonian optimism and Buddhistic pessimism religions?
James argues from the experiential point of view that the appeal such creeds make to the individual, and the response he makes in life, are indistinguishable from and in many respects identical with the best Christian appeal and response. So they deserve the name religion, and 'divine' must be interpreted broadly as any godlike object, concrete deity or not.
Chapter 7
What distinguishes religious sadness from mere melancholy, according to James?
James holds that melancholy forfeits the title religious when the sufferer merely lies kicking and screaming like a sacrificed pig, in Marcus Aurelius's phrase. The sadness of Schopenhauer or Nietzsche, though often ennobling, is often peevishness and lacks the purgatorial note. Religious sadness realizes the tragedy as purging and holds that a way of deliverance exists.
Chapter 7

Section 84 cards

How does James define 'divine' for the purposes of these lectures?
James proposes, arbitrarily, to narrow the definition: the divine means only such a primal reality as the individual feels impelled to respond to solemnly and gravely, and neither by a curse nor a jest. He admits this restriction is his own choice, made because the broader meaning of the primal and enveloping real might prove too broad for study.
Chapter 8
Why does James prefer to study only extreme religious cases?
James argues we learn most about a thing when we view it under a microscope, in its most exaggerated form. Boundaries between religious and irreligious states are misty and a matter of degree, so states only by courtesy called religious are not worth study. At their extreme development, the divinity of the object and solemnity of the reaction are too well marked for doubt.
Chapter 8
What does James say distinguishes religion from pure morality in accepting the universe?
James argues morality pure and simple accepts the reigning law of the whole but may obey with the heaviest, coldest heart, feeling it as a yoke. Religion, in its strong and fully developed manifestations, never feels the service of the highest as a yoke; dull submission is left behind and replaced by a mood of welcome, ranging from cheerful serenity to enthusiastic gladness.
Chapter 8
How does James contrast Stoic and Christian acceptance of the universe?
James says both accept the universe, but the difference is emotional mood, not doctrine. Marcus Aurelius writes with a frosty chill, respecting and submitting to the anima mundi; the Christian God is there to be loved. He compares Marcus's 'If gods care not for me or my children, here is a reason for it' with Job's 'Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him,' likening the gap to arctic versus tropical climate.
Chapter 8

Section 94 cards

How does James distinguish the Christian writer's impulse from Marcus Aurelius's?
James says the Christian writer is more active and positive: Marcus Aurelius agrees to the scheme, while the German theologian agrees with it, literally abounding in agreement and running out to embrace the divine decrees. James adds that even devout Stoic passages seem a little cold beside a genuine Christian outpouring such as the Imitation of Christ.
Chapter 9
According to the Theologia Germanica, what is true repentance and its outcome?
The author says a man who sees himself as utterly vile falls into deep abasement, will not desire consolation or release, and does not grieve over his sufferings because they seem right to him. Entering this hell, none may console him, yet God has not forsaken him; when he seeks only the eternal Good, he becomes partaker of joy, bliss, peace, and consolation.
Chapter 9
What does James call the practically important differentia of religion?
James argues the essence of religious experience must be the element found nowhere else, most visible in one-sided, exaggerated, intense experiences. Comparing tamer philosophical minds with intenser ones, he finds a distinct character he regards as religion's practically important differentia, brought out by contrasting an abstractly conceived Christian with a similarly conceived moralist.
Chapter 9
How does James contrast moralistic and Christian spurning of sick-room attitudes?
James says the merely moralistic spurning takes an effort of volition, while the Christian spurning results from excitement of a higher emotion requiring no volition. The moralist must hold his breath and keep muscles tense, an athletic attitude that inevitably breaks down when the organism decays or morbid fears invade. Religion then consoles the person in his very powerlessness, expunging fear rather than holding it in abeyance.
Chapter 9

Section 104 cards

According to James, what distinguishes religious happiness from ordinary happiness?
The author argues religious happiness is not merely a feeling of escape from evils; it consents to evil outwardly as sacrifice while inwardly knowing it permanently overcome. It carries a solemnity that ordinary happiness lacks, containing a measure of its own opposite, like a bitter in sweetness.
Chapter 10
Why does James criticize Havelock Ellis's definition of religion?
Ellis identifies religion with every form of joyous soul-expansion, including wine, dancing, and laughter. James objects that this straight identification of religion with any and every happiness leaves out the essential peculiarity of religious happiness—its solemn, sacrificial constitution that holds a lower unhappiness in check.
Chapter 10
What does James's image of Guido Reni's St. Michael painting illustrate?
The painting shows St. Michael with his foot on Satan's neck; its richness comes from the fiend's presence. James uses it to argue the world is richer for having a devil in it so long as we keep our foot upon his neck—the religious consciousness holds the negative or tragic principle in check, making it emotionally rich.
Chapter 10
Why does James prefer to study religion's most extreme examples first?
He argues that if religion proves valuable even in its acutest, most repulsive forms, its value for life at large is established; one can then shade down and trace its legitimate boundaries. He also contends religion makes easy and felicitous what is in any case necessary—surrender and sacrifice.
Chapter 10

Section 114 cards

According to Kant, what practical meaning do words like God, soul, and immortality have?
Kant held that these words cover no distinctive sense-content, so theoretically they are devoid of significance. Yet they have definite meaning for practice: we can act as if there were a God, feel as if free, treat Nature as if full of designs, and plan as if immortal. Faith that these unintelligible objects exist is, in Kant's phrase, a full equivalent in praktischer Hinsicht for knowledge of what they might be.
Chapter 11
What does James mean by the 'sense of reality' in human consciousness?
James concludes from his instances that there is in human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of 'something there,' deeper and more general than the special senses by which psychology supposes realities are revealed. Anything—including a vague religious idea—that excites this sense would appear real, even if almost unimaginable or, as with Kant's moral theology, a non-entity in point of whatness.
Chapter 11
How does James use the bar-of-iron analogy to illustrate belief?
James likens the believer to a bar of iron without touch or sight, yet strongly endowed with an inner capacity for magnetic feeling. Aroused by magnets coming and going nearby, it is consciously determined to different attitudes, though it could never outwardly describe the agencies stirring it. Similarly, the sentiment of reality can polarize a whole life around something hardly present to the mind for definite description.
Chapter 11
What is Plato's 'true order of going' toward absolute Beauty?
In the often-quoted passage from the Banquet, Plato says one should use earthly beauties as steps, mounting from one to two, from two to all fair forms, from fair forms to fair actions, from fair actions to fair notions, until arriving at the notion of absolute Beauty and knowing its essence. James cites this as Plato's defense of the reality of abstract objects, the platonic theory of ideas.
Chapter 11

Section 122 cards

What did the first correspondent feel on the night after his tactile hallucination?
After blowing out the candle and lying awake thinking of the previous night, he suddenly felt something come into the room and stay close to his bed for a minute or two. He did not recognize it by any ordinary sense, yet felt a horribly unpleasant sensation, like a large tearing vital pain over the chest but within the organism—more abhorrence than pain.
Chapter 12
How did the correspondent's sense-of-presence experiences differ in emotional quality?
The same correspondent reported that at other conjunctures the sense of presence developed with equal intensity and abruptness but was filled with joy: not mere consciousness of something there, but a startling awareness of some ineffable good and the sure knowledge of the close presence of a mighty person. He did not interpret these theistically as signifying God.
Chapter 12

Section 134 cards

According to James, in what form do many religious persons possess the objects of their belief?
James lays it down as certain that in the distinctively religious sphere many persons (though how many cannot be told) possess the objects of their belief not as mere conceptions the intellect accepts as true, but as quasi-sensible realities directly apprehended. As the sense of their real presence fluctuates, the believer alternates between warmth and coldness in faith.
Chapter 13
What did the scientific man's account show about the feeling of reality, and what happened to it over time?
The scientific man became agnostic between twenty and thirty yet never lost an 'indefinite consciousness' of an Absolute Reality behind phenomena, which he treated practically as prayer, turning to it in trouble for support. Later he could only intermittently connect with it, and by nearly fifty the power had entirely left him, leaving life 'curiously dead and indifferent.' James uses this negative case to suggest the feeling of reality is more like a sensation than an intellectual operation.
Chapter 13
In the clergyman's account, what did the hilltop experience do to his faith and his early conception of God?
The clergyman describes his soul opening into the Infinite, a rushing together of inner and outer worlds, with ineffable joy and exaltation, feeling himself less real than the presence. His highest faith and truest idea of God were born then; his early crude conception burst into flower without destruction of the old, a rapid unfolding. Since that time no discussion of proofs of God's existence has been able to shake his faith.
Chapter 13
In the Swiss writer's account, what were his physical and mental conditions, and what did he insist about the experience's sensory content?
He was in perfect health on the sixth day of tramping, feeling neither fatigue, hunger, nor thirst, with good news from home and no anxiety — a state of equilibrium. Then he felt raised above himself and the presence of God penetrating him, weeping for minutes. He insists God had neither form, color, odor, nor taste, and the presence had no determinate localization; God was present though invisible, falling under no sense, yet perceived by consciousness.
Chapter 13

Section 144 cards

What does James say about the convincingness of feelings of God's reality?
James argues these feelings are as convincing to those who have them as any direct sensible experience, and usually more convincing than results established by mere logic. If held strongly, one cannot help regarding them as genuine perceptions of truth, revelations no adverse argument can expel from belief.
Chapter 14
How does James define rationalism and its four required grounds for belief?
James describes rationalism as the opinion opposed to mysticism in philosophy, insisting all beliefs find articulate grounds. These consist of definitely statable abstract principles, definite facts of sensation, definite hypotheses based on such facts, and definite inferences logically drawn. Vague impressions of something indefinable have no place in it.
Chapter 14
According to James, how does rationalism compare to intuition in founding belief?
The author argues rationalism accounts for only a relatively superficial part of mental life. Intuitions come from a deeper level; subconscious life, impulses, faiths, needs, and divinations prepare premises whose result consciousness feels. Something in you knows that result truer than any logic-chopping rationalistic talk, and this inferiority shows whether rationalism argues for or against religion.
Chapter 14
What examples of the chronic sense of God's presence does James give from Starbuck's collection?
A forty-nine-year-old man says God is more real than any thought, thing, or person, felt in sunshine or rain, answering in clear words or strong mental impressions, usually a Scripture text. Others describe God surrounding them like physical atmosphere, a soothing presence enwrapping them, and a seventeen-year-old boy feeling God beside him at church and Communion.
Chapter 14

Section 154 cards

According to James, what is the relationship between instinct and reasoned argument in religion?
The author argues that in the metaphysical and religious sphere, articulate reasons only persuade us when our inarticulate feelings of reality already favor the same conclusion. Impulsive belief sets up the original body of truth, and verbalized philosophy is merely its showy translation into formulas. The unreasoned immediate assurance is the deep thing; reasoned argument is a surface exhibition. Instinct leads, intelligence follows.
Chapter 15
Does James claim the subconscious and non-rational should hold primacy in religion?
No. James explicitly states he does not yet say it is better that the subconscious and non-rational hold primacy in the religious realm. He confines himself to pointing out that, as a matter of fact, they do hold it. He separates the descriptive observation from any judgment about whether this arrangement is preferable.
Chapter 15
What two moods does James say a man's religion involves, and how do they vary?
Stated in the completest terms, a man's religion involves both moods of contraction and moods of expansion of his being. The quantitative mixture and order of these moods vary greatly from one age, one system of thought, and one individual to another. So one may insist on dread and submission, or on peace and freedom, as the essence, and still remain materially within the limits of truth.
Chapter 15
How does James contrast the sombre and sanguine onlookers' views of religious peace?
The constitutionally sombre person makes even religious peace sober, with danger still hovering and flexion not wholly checked; he finds an astringent relish in the truth of human impotence before God, as in the Book of Job. The sanguine onlooker feels deliverance incomplete unless the burden is altogether overcome and danger forgotten, giving definitions that sombre minds think leave out all solemnity. James says each emphasizes opposite aspects.
Chapter 15

Section 164 cards

How does Francis W. Newman describe the 'once-born' in their approach to God?
Newman says the once-born see God not as a strict Judge or Glorious Potentate but as the animating Spirit of a beautiful, harmonious world—Beneficent, Kind, Merciful, and Pure. They lack metaphysical tendencies, do not look into themselves, and are not distressed by their own imperfections. They hardly think of themselves at all, and have no vivid conception of the severer qualities of God's Majesty.
Chapter 16
According to Edward Everett Hale, what advantage did his simple religious upbringing give him?
Hale says he was born into a family where religion was simple and rational and trained in its theory, so he never knew religious or irreligious struggles. He always knew God loved him and was grateful. He reports having no idea what the 'problem of life' was, and argues a child taught early that he is God's child will take life more easily than one told he is a child of wrath.
Chapter 16
How does Dr. Bucke characterize Walt Whitman's temperament and emotional range?
Bucke reports Whitman seemed to derive absolute happiness from nature—grass, trees, flowers, sky, birds, and natural sounds—liking so many things and disliking so few. He never argued, disputed, spoke about money, complained, swore, or showed fear. Bucke concluded the absence of fretfulness, antipathy, and anger was entirely real, not merely suppressed.
Chapter 16
What does the author argue about the once-born temperament and its limits?
The author argues such writers show a temperament organically weighted toward cheer and fatally forbidden to linger over the darker aspects of the universe. In some individuals, he says, optimism may become quasi-pathological: the capacity for even transient sadness or momentary humility seems cut off as by a congenital anesthesia. He calls Walt Whitman the supreme contemporary example of inability to feel evil.
Chapter 16

Section 172 cards

How did early Greeks regard good and evil, per James?
James says the earlier Greeks neither denied nature's ills nor invented a better world to escape them. Good was good and bad just bad; instinctive good was not reckoned sin, and they felt no need to insist evil must be "good in the making." This integrity of instinctive reactions, free from moral sophistry, gives ancient pagan feeling its pathetic dignity.
Chapter 17
How does James defend systematic healthy-mindedness from the charge of dishonesty?
James argues happiness, like every emotional state, has an instinctive blindness to opposing facts for self-protection. Further, much evil lies in how men take phenomena: a change of inner attitude from fear to fight can convert it into tonic good. So ignoring evil may become a deliberate, even honorable, religious policy rather than simple dishonesty.
Chapter 17

Section 184 cards

What shift within Christianity does James describe over the past fifty years?
The author describes a "victory of healthy-mindedness within the church" over the morbidness tied to old hell-fire theology. Preachers now minimize consciousness of sin, ignore or deny eternal punishment, and stress human dignity rather than depravity. They view the old Christian's preoccupation with saving his soul as sickly, and treat a sanguine, "muscular" attitude as an ideal of Christian character. James says he is only pointing out the change, not judging its rightness.
Chapter 18
How does James say evolutionism functions religiously for the healthy-minded?
The author argues that the idea of universal evolution supports a doctrine of general meliorism and progress that suits the religious needs of the healthy-minded so well it seems made for them. Many contemporaries trained in science, or fond of popular science, embrace "evolutionism" interpreted optimistically as a substitute for the religion they were born in, having grown dissatisfied with what seemed the harshness and irrationality of orthodox Christianity.
Chapter 18
What does the sixty-seven-year-old correspondent say about sin and religion?
The correspondent says religion means nothing to him and seems useless to others; he finds the most religious people often lacking in uprightness and totally disbelieves in God, calling the God-idea a product of ignorance and fear. He calls sin a condition or disease incidental to man's incomplete development, and says morbidness over it increases the disease. He expects justice and good order to prevail so that evil will be unthinkable a million years hence.
Chapter 18
What is the Mind-cure movement and what does James credit it with?
James calls Mind-cure, or "New Thought," a deliberately optimistic scheme of life with speculative and practical sides, drawing on the Gospels, Emersonianism, Berkeleyan idealism, spiritism, optimistic evolutionism, and Hinduism. Its core is belief in the all-saving power of healthy-minded attitudes and contempt for doubt, fear, and worry. James credits it with cures, character regeneration, restored cheerfulness, and tonic effects on public opinion, while conceding failures, self-deceptions, and vague literature.
Chapter 18

Section 193 cards

How does the mind-cure's view of the lower nature's vice differ from Christian theology?
James states that Christian theology has always considered frowardness the essential vice of the lower part of human nature, but the mind-curers say the mark of the beast in it is fear. James notes this gives an entirely new religious turn to their persuasion.
Chapter 19
How does the mind-cure define 'fearthought' and 'worry'?
Quoting a writer of the school, James reports that 'fearthought' was coined to stand for the unprofitable element of forethought, and 'worry' is defined as fearthought in contradistinction to forethought. Fearthought is further defined as the self-imposed or self-permitted suggestion of inferiority, placing it among harmful, unnecessary, and therefore not respectable things.
Chapter 19
How does the mind-cure's pantheistic view of man's higher nature differ from ordinary Christianity?
James says the mind-cure's notion of man's higher nature is decidedly pantheistic: the spiritual in man is partly conscious but chiefly subconscious, and through the subconscious we are already one with the Divine without any miracle of grace or abrupt creation of a new inner man. He finds traces of Christian mysticism, transcendental idealism, vedantism, and subliminal-self psychology.
Chapter 19

Section 204 cards

In the first correspondent's account, what does she claim about fatigue and illness?
She claims her earlier life included many years of bedridden invalidism with paralyzed spine and lower limbs, but since her "resurrection in the flesh" she has worked as a healer for fourteen years without vacation and never known a moment of fatigue or pain, reasoning that a conscious part of Deity cannot be sick.
Chapter 20
What did the second correspondent say was the one thing that impressed her most?
She says it was learning that we must be in absolutely constant relation or mental touch with the essence of life permeating all, called God. This is unrecognizable unless lived actually, by constant turning to the innermost consciousness of our real selves or God within for illumination, as one turns to the sun.
Chapter 20
How does the second correspondent describe bodily health in relation to the inward attitude?
She says she disregards the meaning of the attitude for bodily health as such, because health comes of itself as an incidental result and cannot be found by any special mental act or desire for it, beyond the general attitude of turning inward. Outer things should be results, not objects.
Chapter 20
How does James characterize mind-cure's treatment of evil compared with philosophers and Evangelicals?
James says mind-curers offer no speculative explanation of evil; it is empirically there, but the practical point of view predominates. Rather than worrying over evil as a mystery or laying to heart its lesson like Evangelicals, they treat it as ignorance to be outgrown. Christian Science, he says, calls evil simply a lie. James calls this a bad speculative omission.
Chapter 20

Section 214 cards

What slogan summarizes the mind-cure system's optimism, and what does it claim thoughts do?
The mind-cure system is "wholly and exclusively compacted of optimism," holding that "Pessimism leads to weakness. Optimism leads to power." One writer prints "Thoughts are things" in bold type, claiming that thoughts of health, youth, vigor, and success will become one's outward portion. Fear and contracted, egoistic thoughts are inlets to destruction. Many mind-curers add that thoughts are forces, so like attracts like and one's thoughts draw allied thoughts from the world over.
Chapter 21
How does James compare the mind-cure movement to the Lutheran and Wesleyan movements?
The author argues there is a psychological similarity: both answer the anxious question "What shall I do to be saved?" with emancipation—"You are saved now, if you would but believe it." Mind-curers tell those things are wrong with them that they are well, sound, and clear already if they did but know it. James suggests mind-cure may play a part almost as great in popular religion's future as those earlier movements did.
Chapter 21
What anti-moralistic method does James say succeeds where conscious effort fails?
James says official moralists urge constant vigilance and a will like a bow always bent, but for some persons this conscious effort yields only failure and torment. The way to success, vouched for by personal narrations, is surrender: passivity not activity, relaxation not intentness. Give up responsibility, resign your destiny to higher powers, be indifferent to outcomes, and you may gain inward relief and often the goods you renounced. A critical point is usually passed, often suddenly and automatically.
Chapter 21
What does James say about the word "suggestion" as an explanation of mind-cure methods?
James says mind-cure methods are largely suggestive and that environment's suggestive influence plays an enormous part in spiritual education. But he argues "suggestion" has become a wet blanket on investigation, used to fend off inquiry into why ideas are efficacious over some people and not others. It is only another name for the power of ideas so far as they prove efficacious over belief and conduct, and merely waving it as a banner gives no light.
Chapter 21

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What makes an idea suggestive to an individual, according to the chapter?
The author argues an idea must arrive with the force of a revelation to be suggestive. He notes the mind-cure gospel of healthy-mindedness has acted as a revelation for many whose hearts church Christianity had left hardened, releasing their springs of higher life. The originality of any religious movement, he suggests, lies in finding a previously sealed channel through which those springs are set free in some group.
Chapter 22
What happens to a religion's suggestive power once it becomes official and established?
The author argues that personal faith, enthusiasm, example, and above all novelty are the prime suggestive agency in such success. If mind-cure should ever become official, respectable, and intrenched, these elements of suggestive efficacy will be lost. In its acuter stages, he says, every religion must be a homeless Arab of the desert, and he cites the church's inner struggle between the acute religion of the few and the chronic religion of the many.
Chapter 22
How does mind-cure's use of the subconscious compare with Catholic recollection?
The author says mind-cure made unprecedentedly great use of the subconscious life, adding systematic passive relaxation, concentration, meditation, and something like hypnotic practice to reasoned advice. He asks wherein this intrinsically differs from Catholic 'recollection' or the practice of the presence of God, defined by Alvarez de Paz as remembering God everywhere. External associations differ, but the purely spiritual part of the exercise is identical in both communions.
Chapter 22
What do positivists claim about religious thought versus scientific method?
The author reports that 'scientists' or 'positivists' call religious thought a mere survival, an atavistic reversion to primitive consciousness. They say primitive thought conceives everything under the form of personality, while science has proved personality is a passive resultant of impersonal, general forces. Science supplanted this, they claim, through experimental verification: expectations are verified only so long as the terms inferred from remain impersonal and universal.
Chapter 22

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What does James say mind-cure claims, and how does it spread?
James says mind-cure claims that nature's controlling energies are personal, that one's thoughts are forces, and that the universe's powers respond directly to individual appeals. It spreads, he argues, not merely by proclamation but by palpable experiential results, aggressively using science's own methods and weapons even in the heyday of science's authority.
Chapter 23
In the shopping case, what did the woman do and experience?
Feeling influenza-like symptoms, she recalled the mind-cure teachings, refrained from telling a friend how she felt, and went to bed instead of sending for a doctor. She surrendered passively, repeating 'Behold the handmaid of the Lord,' felt at peace, and woke well. James calls such instances trivial but illustrative of experiment and verification.
Chapter 23
What does James conclude about science versus mind-cure?
James argues the sectarian scientist's claims are premature. He contends the world can be handled by many systems of ideas, each yielding its own profit: science gives telegraphy, electric lighting, and diagnosis; mind-cure gives some people serenity, moral poise, and happiness, preventing certain diseases as well as science or better in a certain class of persons. Neither is exhaustive or exclusive.
Chapter 23
What does James say about whether patients are deluded?
James says it makes no difference to his point whether the patients are deluded victims of imagination. That they seemed to themselves to have been cured by the experiments was enough to make them converts. He adds that one must be of a certain mental mould to get such results, since not everyone is cured to his own satisfaction.
Chapter 23

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What did the first case conclude caused his physical healing?
He concluded the physical change resulted first from a change of mental state wrought within him, and second that this mental change was not mainly due to excited imagination or consciously received hypnotic suggestion. He believed he received telepathically, on a mental stratum below immediate consciousness, a healthier and more energetic attitude from another person whose thought was directed upon him with that intention.
Chapter 24
How did the second case describe the growth he experienced?
He said the growth had all been toward elimination of selfishness—not only grosser sensual forms but subtler unrecognized kinds expressing themselves in sorrow, grief, regret, and envy. He described it as a practical working realization of the immanence of God and the divinity of man's true inner self, accompanied by increased tolerance, serenity, and disappearance of physical troubles.
Chapter 24
According to James, how does healthy-minded religion treat evil and repentance?
James says this religion directs people to settle scores with evil by declining to lay it to heart, ignoring it, or denying it exists. Evil is a disease, and worry over disease is another disease. Repentance and remorse may be sickly impulses; the best repentance is to act for righteousness and forget past relations with sin.
Chapter 24
What did Spinoza condemn about repentance, as James quotes him?
Spinoza condemned repentance categorically, calling gnawings of conscience and remorse not good but deleterious and evil passions. He argued we get along better by reason and love of truth than by worry of conscience, since these states are a kind of sadness, and sadness should be kept from life. James notes this healthy-mindedness is woven into Spinoza's philosophy.
Chapter 24

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What opinion of repentance did Molinos hold that got him condemned?
Molinos taught that when one falls into a fault, one should not trouble or afflict oneself, since such failings are effects of frail nature stained by Original Sin. The enemy tries to make one distrust divine Grace and magnify one's misery. Instead one should shut out these suggestions, trust in divine mercy, and rise quickly, for he who rises quickly and continues his race is as if he had never fallen.
Chapter 25
Why does monistic theism struggle to explain evil, according to James?
The author argues that philosophic theism tends toward pantheistic monism, making the world one flawless unit of fact. In such an Individual, the worst parts must be as essential as the best, so evil must have its foundation in God—hard to reconcile with a God absolutely good. The obvious escape, he suggests, is to cut loose from monism and allow a pluralistic world where evil need not be essential.
Chapter 25
How does healthy-mindedness view evil metaphysically, per James?
The author argues healthy-mindedness votes for the pluralistic view: evil is emphatically irrational, not to be pinned in, preserved, or consecrated in any final system of truth. It is a pure abomination, an alien unreality, a waste element to be sloughed off and forgotten. The ideal is a mere extract from the actual, marked by deliverance from this diseased, inferior stuff—elements making no rational whole with the rest.
Chapter 25
What distinction does James draw between two levels of the morbid mind?
For some people, evil means only a mal-adjustment with things, a wrong correspondence between life and environment; this is curable on the natural plane by modifying self or things. For others, evil is a wrongness or vice in essential nature, requiring a supernatural remedy. James notes Latin races leaned toward the former, plural removable ills, while Germanic races tended to think of Sin in the singular, ineradicably ingrained.
Chapter 25

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According to James, what question arises from living on different sides of the pain-threshold?
James asks whether one who lives habitually on one side of the pain-threshold might need a different sort of religion than one who lives on the other. He calls this the question of the relativity of different types of religion to different types of need, and says it will become a serious problem later.
Chapter 26
Why does James say healthy-minded optimism cannot give a rational answer to the sick soul?
James argues that telling a troubled mind "cheer up" or "get out into the open air" is mere animal talk, not a rational answer. Ascribing religious value to happy-go-lucky contentment consecrates forgetfulness and superficiality. Our troubles lie too deep: the fact that we can die and be ill is what perplexes us, not that we now live and are well.
Chapter 26
What examples does James give of successful men who saw their lives as failure?
James cites Goethe, who in 1824 said his 75 years held not four weeks of genuine well-being, calling existence perpetual rolling of a rock. He also cites Luther, who wearily prayed for the Last Judgment and told the Electress Dowager he would rather give up his chance of Paradise than live forty more years.
Chapter 26
What is the second stage of world-sickness, beyond mere failure?
James says if sensitiveness increases and one is carried farther over the misery-threshold, the successful moments themselves are spoiled. All natural goods perish: riches, fame, love, youth, health. Behind everything is universal death, and since life and its negation are beaten together, all natural happiness seems infected with contradiction.
Chapter 26

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According to James, what happens to present joys when they are known to lead nowhere?
The author argues that the lustre of the present hour is borrowed from the background of possibilities it goes with. If a present fact is known to lead nowhere, its glow and gilding vanish, however agreeable it is in its immediacy. He compares this to an old man with an insidious internal disease who laughs and drinks wine until the doctors reveal his fate, after which the knowledge knocks the satisfaction out of all these functions.
Chapter 27
How does James characterize the early Greeks' supposed healthy-minded joyousness?
James argues that the beautiful joyousness of Greek polytheism is only a poetic modern fiction. Homer has steady enthusiasm, but his reflective passages are cheerless, and once the Greeks grew systematically pensive and thought of ultimates they became unmitigated pessimists. The jealousy of the gods, nemesis, all-encompassing death, and fate's dark opacity were the fixed background of their imagination.
Chapter 27
What does James say Epicureanism and Stoicism represent?
James describes them as philosophies of despair in nature's boons, the farthest advance the Greek mind made toward insensibility and resignation. The Epicurean seeks to escape unhappiness by expecting little and aiming low; the Stoic gives up natural good altogether, seeking only free possession of his own soul. James says they mark the conclusion of the once-born period and leave the world as an unreconciled contradiction.
Chapter 27
What does Ribot's term anhedonia designate, and what example does James give?
Ribot coined anhedonia to designate passive joylessness and dreariness, discouragement, dejection, and lack of taste and zest and spring. He describes a girl with liver disease who felt no affection for her parents and no pleasure in her doll, and a magistrate with hepatic disease who said thoughts of home and family moved him as little as a theorem of Euclid. James notes prolonged seasickness can produce it temporarily.
Chapter 27

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According to James, what is the source of the value, interest, and meaning our worlds appear to have?
The author argues that value, interest, and meaning are "pure gifts of the spectator's mind," not rationally deducible from outer facts. The same fact can inspire opposite feelings in different persons or at different times in the same person. Passions like love, fear, and indignation depend on non-logical, often organic conditions beyond our control, and the world's materials passively receive whatever emotional light is shed on them.
Chapter 28
How does James describe the world as it appears to melancholiacs, and how does this compare to conversion?
James says melancholiacs undergo a change in the whole expression of reality, but in the reverse direction from conversion. Where conversion brings a transfiguration in which "a new heaven seems to shine upon a new earth," melancholy makes the world look remote, strange, sinister, and uncanny: color gone, breath cold. Patients describe seeing through a cloud or a veil, people moving like shadows, and everything seeming like theatre scenery.
Chapter 28
What two characters make Tolstoy's melancholy a typical document for James's purpose?
James identifies Tolstoy's account in My Confession as first a well-marked case of anhedonia, a passive loss of appetite for all life's values, and second a case where the altered, estranged aspect the world assumed stimulated Tolstoy's intellect into gnawing, carking questioning and effort for philosophic relief. James notes Tolstoy's resulting religious conclusions were in some respects peculiar, but the melancholy itself is typical.
Chapter 28
How does James distinguish religious melancholy from the querulous, exasperated form, and what does he say about classification?
James says religious melancholy must be cast in a more melting mood, while a worse form is positive, active anguish like psychical neuralgia, which may take the character of loathing, irritation, self-mistrust, or fear. He warns that most cases are mixed and classifications should not be treated with too much respect, and that only a relatively small proportion of cases connect with the religious sphere at all; exasperated cases, as a rule, do not.
Chapter 28

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What four ways does Tolstoy say men of his class meet the situation?
Tolstoy identifies four responses: mere animal blindness, sucking the honey without seeing the dragon or mice; reflective epicureanism, snatching what one can while the day lasts, which he calls a more deliberate stupefaction; manly suicide; and weakly, plaintively clinging to the bush of life despite seeing the mice and dragon. He says he can learn nothing from the first way.
Chapter 29
What did Tolstoy conclude after searching the sciences for an answer?
Tolstoy sought explanations across all branches of human knowledge, laboriously and obstinately, and found nothing. He became convinced that all who sought answers in the sciences before him also found nothing, and that they recognized the meaningless absurdity of life as the only incontestable knowledge accessible to man.
Chapter 29
What kept Tolstoy from suicide despite his intellect favoring it?
Tolstoy says that while his intellect worked, something else worked too, keeping him from the deed: a consciousness of life that obliged his mind to turn elsewhere. Alongside his ideas ran a pining thirst for God, coming from his heart and directly contrary to his intellectual movement, a dread of isolation mitigated by hope of finding assistance.
Chapter 29
How does Tolstoy's fable of the traveler in the desert illustrate his despair?
A traveler fleeing a wild beast jumps into an empty well, where a dragon waits below. Clinging to a bush, he sees a white mouse and a black mouse gnawing its roots. He licks drops of honey with rapture. Tolstoy says he hangs on the boughs of life knowing death waits, but the honey no longer pleases him.
Chapter 29

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According to James, what kind of happiness follows profound disillusionment?
The author argues that after extreme disillusionment there is seldom a restitutio ad integrum. The happiness that returns is not simple ignorance of ill but something more complex, including natural evil as one element, yet no longer a stumbling-block because it is seen as swallowed up in supernatural good. The process is redemption, a second birth, not mere reversion to natural health.
Chapter 30
How does James characterize Bunyan's religious melancholy?
James calls Bunyan a typical case of the psychopathic temperament: sensitive of conscience to a diseased degree, beset by doubts, fears, and insistent ideas, and a victim of verbal automatisms both motor and sensory. Scripture texts came in half-hallucinatory form like voices, buffeting his mind like a shuttlecock. Added to this were fearful melancholy, self-contempt, and despair.
Chapter 30
What does Bunyan say about his inward pollution and his desires?
Bunyan says his original and inward pollution was his plague: he was more loathsome in his own eyes than a toad, and thought so in God's eyes too. Sin seemed to bubble from his heart like water from a fountain. He envied beasts with no soul to perish, yet sorrowed that he could not find in his soul a desire for deliverance; his heart was hard, and he could not shed a tear.
Chapter 30
What did the French sufferer's panic fear experience consist of?
In twilight he was struck by a horrible fear of his own existence, combined with the image of an idiotic epileptic patient in the asylum. He felt 'That shape am I, potentially,' and nothing he possessed could defend him against that fate. Something solid in his breast gave way, and the universe changed; for months he could not go out into the dark alone. He thought the experience had a religious bearing.
Chapter 30

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What three forms of melancholy experience does James say level man's optimism?
James concludes that the cases examined express three ways man's original optimism and self-satisfaction are leveled: the vanity of mortal things, the sense of sin, and the fear of the universe. He notes none of these cases involved intellectual insanity or delusion about matters of fact, distinguishing them from genuinely insane melancholia with its hallucinations.
Chapter 31
Why does James argue healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine?
The author argues healthy-mindedness works for many people and is a valid religious solution within its sphere, but it breaks down when melancholy comes. It is inadequate as philosophy because the evil facts it refuses to account for are a genuine portion of reality, and may be the best key to life's significance and the only openers to the deepest levels of truth.
Chapter 31
How does James contrast the once-born and twice-born views of the world?
James describes the once-born religion as a one-storied affair, accounts kept in one denomination, where happiness means living on the plus side of a simple algebraic sum. The twice-born see a double-storied mystery: natural good is transient and false, cancelled by death, so renunciation and despair of it are the first step toward the spiritual life.
Chapter 31
Which religions does James call the completest, and why?
James says the completest religions are those in which pessimistic elements are best developed, naming Buddhism and Christianity as the best known. Both are essentially religions of deliverance: the man must die to an unreal life before being born into the real life. He adds that coarser revivalistic religions with blood and miracles may never be displaced because some constitutions need them.
Chapter 31

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What psychological basis does James give for the twice-born character?
James says the psychological basis of the twice-born character seems to be a certain discordancy or heterogeneity in the native temperament—an incompletely unified moral and intellectual constitution. He contrasts such persons with those born harmonious and well balanced, whose impulses are consistent, whose will follows intellect easily, and whose lives are little haunted by regrets.
Chapter 32
How does James explain the cause of heterogeneous personality, and how does he rate that explanation?
James reports that heterogeneous personality has been explained as the result of inheritance—traits of incompatible, antagonistic ancestors supposedly preserved alongside each other. He says this explanation may pass for what it is worth, but it certainly needs corroboration. Whatever the cause, he locates the extreme examples in the psychopathic temperament, whose inner heterogeneity writers emphasize.
Chapter 32
According to James, what does the normal evolution of character chiefly consist in?
James argues that in all of us, the normal evolution of character chiefly consists in the straightening out and unifying of the inner self—the higher and lower feelings and useful and erring impulses begin as comparative chaos and must end as a stable system of functions in right subordination. This holds to a greater degree the more intense, sensitive, and diversified our temptations, and most of all if decidedly psychopathic.
Chapter 32
What example of blasphemous obsession does James cite from Bunyan?
James says Bunyan had an obsession with the words 'Sell Christ for this, sell him for that, sell him, sell him!' running through his mind a hundred times together. Finally, out of breath with retorting 'I will not, I will not,' he impulsively said 'Let him go if he will,' and this loss of the battle kept him in despair for over a year. James notes the lives of the saints are full of such obsessions, ascribed to Satan.
Chapter 32

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How does James describe the 'divided will' when higher wishes lack intensity?
The author describes the divided will as a state in which higher wishes lack 'that last acuteness,' a touch of explosive intensity or dynamogenic quality that would let them burst their shell and irrupt efficaciously into life, quelling the lower tendencies forever. He promises to discuss this higher excitability further in a later lecture.
Chapter 33
What pattern did Alline describe in his cycle of sin and repentance?
Alline kept up secret prayer and religious duties while joining frolics, telling himself no sin existed if he avoided drunkenness, cursing, and open vice. Under distress he repented, but once it passed, associates and fondness for young company drew him back. He often left company to pray and weep, feigned cheerfulness, yet remained ringleader of frolics for months, with conscience roaring night and day.
Chapter 33
According to James, is religious conversion the only route to inner unity?
No. The author argues that remedying inner incompleteness and reducing inner discord is a general psychological process that may occur with any mental material and need not take religious form. Regeneration is one species of a genus; the new birth may be into incredulity, into license, or be produced by new stimuli such as love, ambition, cupidity, revenge, or patriotic devotion, all sharing the same psychological form.
Chapter 33
What did Jouffroy's 'counter-conversion' involve, and what did he feel afterward?
Jouffroy's doubts long harassed him until a December night when his disbelief became fixed and stable, the veil of his own incredulity torn. He felt the inflexible current of thought force him to release childhood, family, and beliefs, leaving nothing erect in his mind. He described the moment as frightful, his earlier life going out like a fire, and the following days as the saddest of his life.
Chapter 33

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What two ways of inner unification does James compare to recovery from disease?
James borrows older medical language of lysis and crisis: one gradual, one abrupt, in which a person may recover from bodily disease. He argues that in the spiritual realm there are likewise two ways, one gradual and one sudden, in which inner unification may occur. He names Tolstoy and Bunyan as examples of the gradual way, while admitting it is hard to follow the windings of others' hearts.
Chapter 34
How does Horace Fletcher describe his conversion to healthy-mindedness?
Fletcher recounts that a friend told him one must first get rid of anger and worry, and that this is possible. The thought possessed him overnight; in the morning he reasoned that if it is possible to get rid of them, why have them at all, and at once accepted it. From the instant he realized these 'cancer spots' were removable, they left him, and life took on an entirely different aspect.
Chapter 34
What does Fletcher report about his later experience and the scope of his change?
Fletcher says it took months to feel absolute security, but repeated occasions of worry and anger produced no feeling in him. He reports increased energy and vigor of mind, and that former irritants like porters and cabmen no longer annoy him. He concludes that the other depressing passions grow from the two roots of anger and worry, and that eliminating them brought desire to be useful rather than indifference or sloth.
Chapter 34
What case of sudden conversion to avarice does James quote from John Foster?
Foster describes a young man who wasted a large patrimony on profligate revels and worthless associates, who then neglected him. Reduced to want, he went out intending to end his life, but sat on an eminence overlooking his former estates and formed a resolution that they should be his again. He took the humblest work, saved scrupulously, and died an inveterate miser worth £60,000.
Chapter 34

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How does James interpret the nature of Tolstoy's crisis?
The author argues Tolstoy's melancholy was logically called for by the clash between his inner character and outer activities, not merely an accidental vitiation of humors. As a primitive oak of a man, polite civilization's superfluities and insincerities left him unsatisfied. His crisis was getting his soul in order, finding its genuine habitat, and escaping falsehoods into truth—a heterogeneous personality slowly finding unity.
Chapter 35
How does James describe Bunyan's and Tolstoy's redemption compared to healthy-mindedness?
James says neither could become healthy-minded: they had drunk too deeply of bitterness, and their redemption is into a universe two stories deep. Each found a good that broke the edge of his sadness, yet the sadness was preserved as a minor ingredient within the faith that overcame it. They found something welling up in consciousness—a faith, a force that re-infuses willingness to live.
Chapter 35
What did Bunyan say he must sentence to death, and what did it cost him?
Bunyan says he must first pass a sentence of death upon everything called a thing of this life—even reckoning himself, his wife, his children, his health, and his enjoyments as dead to him, and himself dead to them—trusting in God through Christ. Parting with his wife and poor blind child was, he said, like pulling his flesh from his bones.
Chapter 35

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How does James define conversion in general terms?
James defines conversion as the process, gradual or sudden, by which a self hitherto divided and consciously wrong, inferior, and unhappy becomes unified and consciously right, superior, and happy, through a firmer hold upon religious realities. He notes this holds whether or not one believes a direct divine operation is needed to bring about such a moral change.
Chapter 36
Why does James choose Stephen H. Bradley's case as his example?
James selects Bradley because the case shows how inner alterations may reveal one unsuspected depth below another, as if the possibilities of character lay in a series of layers or shells whose existence we had no premonitory knowledge of. Bradley believed he was fully converted at fourteen, yet had a further experience nine years later.
Chapter 36
What happened to Bradley at the Methodist meeting before his experience?
Bradley heard a Methodist preach on the general judgment and later on Revelation's text of the dead standing before God. He trembled involuntarily like Felix, yet felt nothing at heart and did not enjoy religion. Only afterward, at home, did he experience the palpitations and sense of the Holy Spirit he describes.
Chapter 36
How does Bradley describe the physical sensations of his conversion?
Bradley reports his heart beating very quick, a stream resembling air entering his mouth and heart, groaning like a person in distress though in no pain, and feeling unutterably full of God's love and grace. He asked the Lord to give him no more happiness, fearing he could not contain it.
Chapter 36

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According to James, what does it mean to say a man is 'converted'?
James defines conversion in terms of the 'habitual centre of his personal energy': religious ideas that were previously peripheral in a man's consciousness now take a central place, and religious aims form the habitual centre of his energy. He frames this as one aim growing stable enough to expel its rivals definitively from the individual's life.
Chapter 37
What role do formed associations and habits play in changes of mental equilibrium?
James states that formed associations of ideas and habits are usually factors of retardation in such changes of equilibrium, while new information plays an accelerating part. He also cites the slow mutation of instincts and propensities under time's influence, and notes these influences may work subconsciously or half unconsciously.
Chapter 37
Can psychology explain exactly why peripheral aims become central?
James says psychology can give a general description of what happens but cannot accurately account, in a given case, for all the single forces at work. Neither an outside observer nor the Subject can fully explain how particular experiences decisively change one's centre of energy, or why they often must bide their hour. He notes the phenomenon's intense individuality.
Chapter 37

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According to Starbuck, what is conversion in its essence?
Starbuck concludes that conversion is in its essence a normal adolescent phenomenon, incidental to the passage from the child's small universe to the wider intellectual and spiritual life of maturity. The age usually falls between fourteen and seventeen, and the symptoms—sense of incompleteness, brooding, depression, morbid introspection, sense of sin, anxiety about the hereafter, and distress over doubts—parallel ordinary adolescent growth.
Chapter 38
How does Starbuck distinguish conversion from adolescent storm and stress?
By Starbuck's statistics, 'conviction of sin' phenomena last about one fifth as long as the periods of adolescent storm and stress, but are much more intense, with bodily accompaniments like loss of sleep and appetite far more frequent. His essential distinction is that conversion intensifies but shortens the period by bringing the person to a definite crisis.
Chapter 38
Why does James say revival conversions take the form they do?
James says the conversions Starbuck has in mind are mainly those of commonplace persons, kept true to a pre-appointed type by instruction, appeal, and example; their particular form results from suggestion and imitation. In Catholic lands and Episcopalian sects, where sacraments are more relied on, anxiety and conviction of sin are less usual than in sects that encourage revivals.
Chapter 38
How does Leuba define the religious sense, and what does James concede and dispute?
Leuba defines the religious sense as the feeling of un-wholeness, of moral imperfection, of sin, accompanied by yearning after the peace of unity, subordinating theology to morality. James grants this covers many cases, like Hadley's drunkard conversion, but argues Leuba makes the type too exclusive, since objective melancholy—such as Tolstoy's—also burdens people with the lack of rational meaning in the universe.
Chapter 38

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According to James, why can some people never be converted?
James says some persons are constitutionally incapable of conversion: religious ideas cannot become the centre of their spiritual energy. They may be excellent, practical servants of God but not children of his kingdom—either unable to imagine the invisible or lifelong subjects of barrenness and dryness. In some cases the inaptitude is intellectual, caused by inhibitive pessimistic or materialistic beliefs, or by agnostic vetoes on faith.
Chapter 39
What two types of conversion does Starbuck distinguish, and how do they differ?
Starbuck distinguishes the volitional type, where regenerative change is usually gradual, building up new moral and spiritual habits piece by piece, though with critical points of rapid movement, and the type by self-surrender, where subconscious effects are more abundant and often startling. James notes the difference is not radical: even voluntary regeneration contains passages of partial self-surrender, and the last step usually must be left to other forces.
Chapter 39
Why does Starbuck think self-surrender is indispensable at the last moment of conversion?
Starbuck argues the sense of present wrongness is far more distinct than any positive ideal, so conversion is mostly struggling away from sin rather than striving toward righteousness. Conscious will aims at something dimly imagined and may jam the process, like a name you press too hard to recall. Subconscious forces then take the lead, and the better self in posse becomes the organizing centre.
Chapter 39
What analogy does James use to explain the voluntary versus involuntary accomplishment of mental results?
James compares it to recalling a forgotten name: usually you help by mentally running over associated places, persons, and things, but sometimes effort fails and the name seems jammed, and giving up entirely lets it arrive later as if uninvited. A music teacher quoted by Starbuck tells pupils, 'Stop trying and it will do itself!' James calls the two resulting conversion types volitional and by self-surrender.
Chapter 39

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According to James, what two ways can undesirable emotions like fear or despair be removed?
James says there are only two ways to get rid of anger, worry, fear, or despair: either an opposite affection overpoweringly breaks over us, or we become so exhausted with the struggle that we stop, drop down, give up, and no longer care, as the emotional brain-centres strike work and we lapse into temporary apathy.
Chapter 40
How does James describe the divergence between psychology and Christian theology on redemptive forces?
James says both agree there are forces seemingly outside the conscious individual that bring redemption. But psychology calls them subconscious and attributes effects to incubation or cerebration, implying they do not transcend the personality, while Christian theology insists they are direct supernatural operations of the Deity. James leaves this divergence in abeyance, hoping continued inquiry may remove the apparent discord.
Chapter 40
What does James say about the limits of 'the will to believe'?
James argues we can make ourselves more faithful to a belief of which we already have the rudiments, but we cannot create a belief out of whole cloth when our perception actively assures us of the opposite. The better mind then comes as a pure negation of the only mind we have, and we cannot actively will a pure negation.
Chapter 40
How does David Brainerd's conversion illustrate the exhaustion of anxious emotion?
Brainerd describes seeing all his contrivances for salvation as vain, his duties as self-worship, and then losing even his religious affections, feeling disconsolate but not distressed. While attempting prayer in a grove, unspeakable glory opened to him, and he was swallowed up in joy with no thought of his own salvation. James italicizes this as exhaustion of habitual anxious emotion.
Chapter 40

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What did Finney conclude when his conviction of sin suddenly vanished?
Finney writes that he lost all conviction and felt no concern about his soul, and feared he had grieved the Holy Ghost away. He tried in vain to recall his convictions and make himself anxious, but remained quiet and peaceful, which worried him further lest it meant the Spirit had left him.
Chapter 41
How does James describe instantaneous conversion, and why does he value it?
James says that quite independently of any exhaustion of feeling, or even without acute previous feeling, the higher condition can burst through all barriers and sweep in like a sudden flood once it reaches due energy. He calls these the most striking and memorable cases, the instantaneous conversions to which the idea of divine grace has been most peculiarly attached.
Chapter 41
What happened to Henry Alline at sunset on March 26, 1775?
While lamenting his lost condition in the fields, Alline felt a voice ask what all his seeking and reforming had accomplished. He admitted he was no nearer conversion, cried that he was lost, then opened a Bible at random to the 38th Psalm. At the moment he gave all up to God, redeeming love broke into his soul and the burden of guilt was gone.
Chapter 41
What permanent mark did conversion leave on Alline, according to James?
James says Alline became a Christian minister with no book-learning but his Bible, and his life ranked with the most devoted saints for austerity and single-mindedness. Yet he never regained his taste for even innocent carnal pleasures. James classes him with Bunyan and Tolstoy as one on whose soul the iron of melancholy left a permanent imprint.
Chapter 41

Section 424 cards

What did the Oxford graduate say was the fruit of his conversion regarding his appetites?
The Oxford graduate reported that after his conversion his desire for drink and tobacco was completely and permanently abolished. He had been a regular smoker since age twelve and a heavy drinker, yet after his surrender to God he never touched drink again and never wanted it. James cites this as an example of the complete abolition of an ancient appetite as a fruit of conversion.
Chapter 42
What did the Oxford graduate do the day after his conversion, and how did he interpret it?
The day after his conversion he went to the hay-field, drank too much, and came home drunk, having made no promise to abstain. His sister was heartbroken and said he had fallen away instantly. He did not despair, believing God's work in him would not be wasted. He prayed on his knees, surrendered his individuality to God, and from that hour drink lost its hold on him.
Chapter 42
Who was Alphonse Ratisbonne and what makes his conversion notable to James?
Ratisbonne was a freethinking French Jew, twenty-nine years old, who converted to Catholicism in Rome in 1842. James calls it the most curious record of sudden conversion he knows. Ratisbonne was irreligious, hostile to his convert brother's cloth, and had only slight predisposing conditions: a religious medal hung half-jocosely round his neck and a short prayer to the Virgin he could not banish from his mind.
Chapter 42
What did Ratisbonne say he would have thought of a prophecy of his own conversion?
Ratisbonne said that if a prophet had predicted he would adore Christ, lie prostrate in a church, smite his breast before a priest, spend the carnival preparing for baptism, renounce his fortune, hopes, betrothed, family, friends, and attachment to the Jewish people, he would have judged that only someone even madder could believe such senseless folly possible. Yet he calls that folly now his only wisdom and sole happiness.
Chapter 42

Section 434 cards

What happened to Alphonse Ratisbonne during his visit to the church of San Andrea delle Fratte?
He entered the poor, small, empty church while waiting for Monsieur B. Suddenly the church vanished and he saw a vision he identified as the Virgin. He fell prostrate, weeping, and afterward felt himself changed, as if a new person, filled with joy and a sense of sacredness. He later asked for a priest and reported that the bandages of his upbringing fell away.
Chapter 43
According to the chapter, how did the experience affect Ratisbonne's religious knowledge?
He reports that he had never read a book of religion or the Bible, and had barely known the dogma of original sin. Yet after the vision he felt he intuitively perceived religious doctrine's sense and spirit, better than if he saw it. He compares the change to waking from sleep or a person born blind suddenly seeing the light, which he cannot define.
Chapter 43
What did John Wesley conclude about the timing of sanctification from his London society members?
Wesley wrote that in London alone he found 652 Society members clear in their experience, and every one without exception declared deliverance from sin was instantaneous, wrought in a moment. Since not one of so many said it was gradual, he concluded sanctification is commonly, if not always, an instantaneous work.
Chapter 43
How does the chapter contrast Methodism's view of conversion with that of most Protestant sects and the Catholic Church?
Most Protestant sects and the Catholic Church hold that Christ's blood, the sacraments, and ordinary religious duties practically suffice for salvation, even without an acute crisis of despair and surrender. Methodism, by contrast, holds that without such a crisis salvation is only offered, not effectively received, and Christ's sacrifice is incomplete. The author argues Methodism follows the profounder spiritual instinct, though not the healthier-minded one.
Chapter 43

Section 444 cards

How does Edwards explain why despair must precede salvation?
Edwards argues that before God delivers a person from sin and liability to everlasting woe, that person should be given a considerable sense of the evil being escaped, so they can know and feel the importance of salvation and appreciate its value. Since the saved pass through two extremely different states—condemnation, then justification and blessedness—God, dealing with them as rational creatures, makes them sensible of both states in turn.
Chapter 44
What does James call the most important step forward in psychology since his student days?
James calls the 1886 discovery that some subjects have, beyond the ordinary field of consciousness with its centre and margin, a set of extra-marginal memories, thoughts, and feelings—subliminal, in Myers's term—that are conscious facts able to reveal themselves by unmistakable signs. He prizes it because, unlike other advances, it reveals an entirely unsuspected peculiarity in the constitution of human nature.
Chapter 44
What is the 'field of consciousness' and what does its margin do?
The field of consciousness is the total mental state present to thought at any time, with a centre of interest around which less attentively perceived objects fade to an unassignable margin. Fields vary in width by individual and condition. The margin, though inattentively realized, is still there, guiding behavior and determining the next movement of attention, like a magnetic field around a compass needle.
Chapter 44
What effects can a strongly developed subliminal life produce?
James says ordinary fields of consciousness are liable to incursions from the ultra-marginal life whose source the subject does not guess, taking the form of unaccountable impulses to act, inhibitions of action, obsessive ideas, or hallucinations of sight or hearing. Impulses may become automatic speech or writing whose meaning the subject may not understand even while uttering it. Myers names this whole sphere of effects automatism.
Chapter 44

Section 454 cards

What does James say post-hypnotic suggestion demonstrates about automatisms?
A hypnotized subject given an order performs it after waking with no recollection of the suggestion, and invents an improvised pretext if the act is eccentric. Visions or voices can likewise be suggested to occur at a set interval after waking, with no inkling of their source. James treats this as the simplest instance of automatism, where the source of the behavior lies outside the primary field of consciousness.
Chapter 45
How were hysterical symptoms explained and cured according to the chapter?
Binet, Janet, Breuer, Freud, and others explored the subliminal consciousness of hysterical patients, revealing buried systems of painful memories leading a parasitic existence outside the primary consciousness. These irrupt into it as hallucinations, pains, convulsions, and paralyses. Alter or abolish these subconscious memories by suggestion and the patient immediately recovers; the symptoms were automatisms in Myers's sense. James says the records sound like fairy-tales but cannot be doubted.
Chapter 45
What psychological explanation does James offer for sudden versus gradual conversion?
Setting aside the question of spiritual value, James notes that instantaneous conversions share peculiarities with other automatisms. He suspects the difference between sudden and gradual converts is not necessarily divine miracle versus something less divine, but a psychological peculiarity: the instantaneous recipient possesses a large region where mental work goes on subliminally, from which invasive experiences abruptly upset the equilibrium of primary consciousness.
Chapter 45
What did Coe's study of seventy-seven converts find about sudden conversion?
Coe tested subjects for hypnotic sensibility and automatisms such as hypnagogic hallucinations and religious dreams. These were much more frequent in converts whose transformation was 'striking.' Disappointed revival candidates mostly belonged to a 'spontaneous,' self-suggesting subclass, while striking cases belonged to a 'passive' subclass; self-suggestion of impossibility had blocked the influence. Coe concluded that emotional sensibility, tendency to automatisms, and passive-type suggestibility together predict sudden conversion.
Chapter 45

Section 464 cards

According to Professor Coe, what is the ultimate test of religious values?
Professor Coe holds that the ultimate test of religious values is nothing psychological and nothing definable in terms of how it happens, but something ethical, definable only in terms of what is attained. James endorses this, noting that what is attained is often a new level of spiritual vitality, a relatively heroic level, with the personality changed and the man born anew.
Chapter 46
What psychological condition does James say is required for instantaneous conversion?
James argues that a developed subliminal self and a leaky or pervious margin to one's conscious fields are a conditio sine qua non of instantaneous conversion. If the subject has no liability to such subconscious activity, or a hard-rinded margin resisting incursions, conversion must be gradual if it occurs, resembling simple growth into new habits.
Chapter 46
How does James answer orthodox Christians who fear subliminal explanation excludes the Deity?
James says frankly that as a psychologist he does not see why reference to a subliminal self necessarily excludes the direct presence of the Deity. It is logically conceivable that if higher spiritual agencies can touch us, the psychological condition of their doing so might be a subconscious region yielding access to them; the waking life's hubbub might close a door the dreamy subliminal leaves ajar.
Chapter 46
What does Luther say about whom Christ's sacrifice saves, and how does James characterize it?
Luther says God is the God of the humble, miserable, oppressed, and desperate, and that Christ died not to justify the righteous but the unrighteous, making them children of God. James reads this as: the more literally lost you are, the more literally you are the being Christ's sacrifice has already saved, and says nothing in Catholic theology has spoken to sick souls so straight.
Chapter 46

Section 474 cards

According to Leuba, what is faith par excellence, and what role do dogmatic beliefs play?
Leuba argues faith par excellence is the "joyous conviction" that all is well, arising when the sense of a narrowly limited ego breaks down and one feels at one with all creation. Dogmatic beliefs are merely casual offshoots of this faith-state, stamped with certainty by affective experience; he calls it a gross error to think their theological content is the faith-state's chief practical value.
Chapter 47
What does James identify as the central feature of the state of assurance?
James says the central feature is loss of all worry, the sense that all is ultimately well, with peace, harmony, and willingness to be even if outer conditions stay the same. Certainty of grace or salvation usually accompanies this in Christians but may be entirely lacking while the affective peace remains, as in the Oxford graduate's case.
Chapter 47
What is the third peculiarity of the assurance state, and how does Edwards illustrate it?
The third peculiarity is an objective change in how the world appears: a sense of clean, beautiful newness within and without, the opposite of the dreadful unreality melancholy patients report. Jonathan Edwards describes everything altered with a calm, sweet appearance of divine glory, and thunder and lightning, once terrifying, becoming sweet to him.
Chapter 47
How does James explain automatisms at revivals, and what spiritual significance do they have?
James says unconsciousness, convulsions, visions, involuntary vocal utterances, and suffocation should be ascribed to the subject having a large subliminal region involving nervous instability. They have no essential spiritual significance, and it has never been proved that converts showing them are more persevering or fruitful than those with quieter changes of heart.
Chapter 47

Section 484 cards

What sensory automatism does James single out as especially frequent in conversion?
James highlights hallucinatory or pseudo-hallucinatory luminous phenomena, which psychologists call photisms. He links them to Saint Paul's blinding heavenly vision and Constantine's cross in the sky, and cites reports from Henry Alline, Colonel Gardiner, President Finney, and Starbuck's collection, including one case where the light seemed to fill a dark room.
Chapter 48
How does James defend the importance of conversion experiences against the charge of transiency?
James argues that backsliding does not diminish conversion's significance. The point of interest, he says, is not duration but the nature and quality of the shift to a higher level. He compares it to love, which reveals new reaches of ideality whether constant or not. He adds that the more striking cases he quoted were in fact permanent, including M. Ratisbonne.
Chapter 48
What does James identify as the most characteristic element of the conversion crisis?
James calls the ecstasy of happiness the most characteristic element of the conversion crisis and the last he discusses. He illustrates it with President Finney's vivid account of waves of liquid love and a baptism of the Holy Ghost, and with Billy Bray's description of his feet saying 'Glory' and 'Amen' as he walks.
Chapter 48
How does James characterize the nature of conversion in the opening testimony?
The opening account explains conversion as the subject working emotions up to the breaking point while resisting their physical manifestations, such as a quickened pulse, then suddenly letting them have full sway over the body. The relief is described as wonderful, and the pleasurable effects of the emotions are experienced to the highest degree.
Chapter 48

Section 494 cards

According to Starbuck's statistics, what percentage of converts reported some backsliding?
Starbuck's data, collected by Miss Johnston from one hundred evangelical church members (over half Methodists), found backsliding reported in nearly all cases: 93 per cent of women and 77 per cent of men. However, only 6 per cent were relapses from the faith itself; most backsliding was merely fluctuation in the ardor of sentiment, and only six reported a change of faith.
Chapter 49
What is Starbuck's conclusion about the permanence of conversion's effect?
Starbuck concludes that conversion brings a changed attitude towards life that is fairly constant and permanent, even though feelings fluctuate. Once persons have passed through conversion and taken a stand for the religious life, they tend to feel identified with it no matter how much their religious enthusiasm declines.
Chapter 49
What two sets of forces does James say shape our moral and practical attitude?
The author argues our moral and practical attitude at any time results from two sets of forces: impulses pushing us one way, and obstructions or inhibitions holding us back. Inhibitions are so constant they become subconscious, but they snap like cobwebs when great emotional excitement supervenes—as when a dandy appears lathered in the street because a house is on fire.
Chapter 49
What does James mean by the 'expulsive power of a higher affection'?
James illustrates it with a self-indulgent woman who yields to every discomfort until maternal excitement makes her face wakefulness and toil without complaint, since pain's inhibitive power is extinguished where her baby's interests are at stake. He argues any strong enough excitement works this way, high or low—even a terrified tiger's ferocity was quelled by fear.
Chapter 49

Section 504 cards

What does James say earnestness means, and what does the strenuous mood aim to do?
The author argues earnestness means willingness to live with energy even though energy brings pain—pain to others or to oneself, it makes little difference. When the strenuous mood is on a person, the aim is to break something, no matter whose or what. Anger, he says, annihilates inhibitions more irresistibly than anything else, making it an invaluable ally of every other passion.
Chapter 50
How does James explain the difference between willing and merely wishing?
The author argues the difference depends solely on the amount of steam-pressure chronically driving the character in the ideal direction, or on ideal excitement transiently acquired. Given enough love, indignation, generosity, or enthusiasm, the cowardly obstructions—conventionality, shyness, laziness, stinginess, demands for precedent and permission—sink away at once, severed like cobwebs and broken like bubbles.
Chapter 50
What evidence does James offer that lower temptations can be permanently annulled?
The author cites documentary cases, most numerous among reformed drunkards: Mr. Hadley, the Jerry McAuley Mission, and the Oxford graduate who got drunk the day after conversion but was permanently cured of drink and pipe thereafter. He adds a Starbuck case whose liquor appetite vanished at once though he spent ten or eleven years in the wilderness, and Colonel Gardiner, cured of sexual temptation in a single hour.
Chapter 50
What does James suggest about the mechanism behind abrupt changes of heart?
The author argues the rapid abolition of ancient impulses resembles results observed from hypnotic suggestion, making it difficult not to believe subliminal influences play the decisive part, as in hypnotism. Suggestive therapeutics records cures of inveterate habits like drunkenness and sexual vice after a few sittings. If God's grace miraculously operates, James suggests it probably operates through the subliminal door, though how remains unexplained.
Chapter 50

Section 514 cards

What four inner conditions make up James's composite picture of saintliness?
James lists: (1) a feeling of being in a wider life than selfish worldly interests, plus a sensible conviction of an Ideal Power; (2) a sense of friendly continuity with that power and willing self-surrender to its control; (3) immense elation and freedom as the confining selfhood melts down; (4) a shift of the emotional centre toward loving, harmonious affections and away from "no" regarding the non-ego.
Chapter 51
What practical consequences does James derive from the saintly inner conditions?
James names four practical fruits: asceticism, where passionate self-surrender may become self-immolation and the saint takes pleasure in sacrifice as proof of loyalty; strength of soul, where patience and fortitude expand and fears vanish; purity, where sensitivity to spiritual discords makes cleansing from brutal and sensual elements imperative; and charity, where ordinary motives to antipathy are inhibited and the saint loves enemies and embraces loathsome beggars.
Chapter 51
How does Voysey describe the security that comes from the sense of God's presence?
Voysey says trustful souls find God's unfailing presence a source of absolute repose and confident calmness, driving away fear of what may befall them. He stresses they are not assured of physical safety or special protection denied to others; rather they are equally ready to be safe or to meet injury, since nothing befalls them without God's will, and if injury comes it is a blessing.
Chapter 51
What does Thoreau's account illustrate about the sense of a friendly Presence?
Thoreau recounts that a few weeks after coming to the woods he briefly doubted whether human neighborhood was essential to a serene life and found solitude somewhat unpleasant. During a gentle rain he suddenly felt sweet, beneficent society in Nature—the pattering drops and every sight and sound—an infinite, unaccountable friendliness sustaining him, making human neighborhood seem insignificant; every pine-needle seemed to befriend him.
Chapter 51

Section 523 cards

What does Dumas's study of circular insanity show about joy and selfishness?
Dumas compares the melancholy and joyous phases of circular insanity, showing selfishness characterizes the one while altruism marks the other. Marie, stingy and useless in melancholy, becomes sympathetic and kind in her happy period, solicitous for other patients and knitting them socks. Dumas says such joyous states hold only unselfish, tender sentiments, closed to envy and hatred.
Chapter 52
How does Richard Weaver describe turning the other cheek to Tom?
Weaver, a former collier and pugilist turned evangelist, recounts that Tom struck him five times after Weaver gave a boy's wagon back. Weaver turned his cheek for a sixth stroke, but Tom turned away cursing. On Monday Tom wept and asked forgiveness; Weaver forgave him, told him to ask God, and they shook hands.
Chapter 52
What question does James raise about the command to love enemies?
James notes 'love your enemies' means active enemies, not merely non-friends, and asks whether it is Oriental hyperbole or sincere and literal. He observes it is seldom taken literally outside intimate relations, then asks whether an emotion so unifying could make enmity irrelevant and conceivably transform the world.
Chapter 52

Section 534 cards

According to James, what three motives drive saintly charity toward the loathsome?
James identifies a mixture of three motives: asceticism, charity pure and simple, and humility—the desire to disclaim distinction and grovel on the common level before God. He says all three were at work when Francis of Assisi and Ignatius Loyola exchanged garments with filthy beggars, and when religious persons consecrate their lives to caring for leprosy and other unpleasant diseases.
Chapter 53
What does James say faith's usual result is, and how does temperament alter it?
James says 'a paradise of inward tranquillity' is faith's usual result, since feeling one's life kept by a trusted power steadies the nerves. The temper differs by constitution: in sombre minds it is resignation and submission, as in Lagneau and Pascal; in cheerful minds it is joyous consent, as in Madame Guyon, who met prison and shipwreck with serenity.
Chapter 53
How does Madame Guyon describe her response to prison and to danger at sea?
Madame Guyon writes that when friends wept over her imprisonment for heresy, she shed no tears, having an entire loss of regard for her own interests and wishing only what God wills. In a sinking carriage and an eleven-day storm, she felt no distinct sense of danger, even taking satisfaction in the thought of drowning if it were her heavenly Father's choice.
Chapter 53
What example of contempt for danger does James take from Frank Bullen?
James quotes Bullen's autobiography 'With Christ at Sea': shortly after his shipboard conversion, Bullen fell head downwards from a boom, hanging by one foot over the foam, certain of eternal life. He says death was a hair's breadth away yet he felt only joy, living 'a whole age of delight' in about five seconds before regaining the boom and singing praises.
Chapter 53

Section 544 cards

What does James call the fundamental act in specifically religious practice?
James argues that the fundamental act in specifically religious, as distinguished from moral, practice is the abandonment of self-responsibility—the transition from tenseness, worry, and self-responsibility to equanimity, receptivity, and peace. He says this comes not by doing but by relaxing and throwing the burden down, and that it antedates theologies and is independent of philosophies.
Chapter 54
How does James describe the saint's sensitivity regarding Purity of Life?
James describes Purity of Life as a religious symptom in which the saintly person becomes exceedingly sensitive to inner inconsistency or discord, so that mixture and confusion grow intolerable. All the mind's objects and occupations must be ordered with reference to the spiritual excitement that is now its keynote; whatever is unspiritual taints the soul and is repugnant. With this exaltation of moral sensibilities comes an ardor of sacrifice of everything unworthy of the beloved deity.
Chapter 54
How did Billy Bray describe giving up tobacco?
Bray said he loved tobacco as much as his meat and would rather go into the mine without dinner than without his pipe. He felt an inner voice calling the pipe 'an idol, a lust,' and Mary Hawke confirmed it was the Lord. He threw the tobacco into the fire and put the pipe under his foot, later also giving up chewing after hearing 'Worship me with clean lips.'
Chapter 54
Why did George Fox and the early Quakers refuse to doff their hats or use titles?
Fox says the Lord forbade him to put off his hat to anyone, high or low, and required him to 'thee' and 'thou' all men and women regardless of rank. He and his followers treated these conventional customs as a lie and a sham, renouncing them as a sacrifice to truth so their acts and professed spirit might be more in accord. This provoked rage, blows, and imprisonments.
Chapter 54

Section 551 cards

What four psychological levels of asceticism does James distinguish?
James lists: asceticism as mere organic hardihood disgusted with too much ease; temperance, simplicity, and chastity as fruits of love of purity shocked by the sensual; such practices as sacrifices happily made to the Deity; and mortifications due to pessimistic feelings about the self combined with theological beliefs about expiation, as if buying freedom or escaping worse suffering.
Chapter 55

Section 563 cards

What historical change does James say has swept over the Western world regarding pain?
The author argues that within the past century the Western world has stopped expecting people to face physical pain with equanimity. Enduring or inflicting much pain is no longer expected, and hearing of such cases makes people recoil morally and physically. Even the Catholic Church, where ascetic discipline had fixed traditional prestige as a factor of merit, has largely let it fall into disuse, if not discredit.
Chapter 56
Why does James say moderate courting of the arduous is natural to human nature?
The author argues that the will is complex, involving stimulation, inhibition, habit, and reflective criticism, and leaves a secondary satisfaction or distaste. For most people passive happiness grows slack and intolerable; some austerity, danger, and effort must be mixed in to give existence character and power. Each soul has its own best conditions of efficiency, like a machine's steam-pressure.
Chapter 56
How does James classify John Cennick's asceticism, and what drove it?
Cennick, Methodism's first lay preacher, fasted often, prayed nine times a day, and fed on potatoes, acorns, crabs, and grass, wishing he could live on roots and herbs. James places him under head 4, with a strongly pessimistic element: morbid melancholy and fear, with sacrifices made to purge out sin and buy safety. Cennick found peace with God in 1737.
Chapter 56

Section 574 cards

What does Vianney say about the first step on the path of mortification?
Vianney claims only the first step costs, and that mortification holds a balm and savor one cannot live without once acquainted with it. He holds there is one way to give oneself to God: give entirely, keeping nothing, since the little kept only doubles one and makes one suffer. He then imposed practices on himself such as never smelling a flower or complaining of discomfort.
Chapter 57
How does James characterize the Roman Church's codified system of asceticism?
James says the Roman Church collected all motives toward asceticism and codified them, so anyone seeking Christian perfection finds a practical system in ready-made manuals. Its dominant notion of perfection is negative: avoidance of sin, which proceeds from concupiscence, itself from carnal passions like pride, sensuality, and worldly loves. But James argues that whenever a procedure is codified, the more delicate spirit of it evaporates.
Chapter 57
What does Saint John of the Cross prescribe as the radical remedy, and what result does he promise?
John of the Cross prescribes mortifying the four great natural passions—joy, hope, fear, and grief—depriving them of satisfaction and leaving them in darkness and void. He urges turning not to what is easy but hardest, not to what tastes best but most distasteful, and to despise oneself. He promises that embracing these practices with all one's energy brings, in a short time, great delights and unspeakable consolations.
Chapter 57
What extremes does Suso's self-torture reach, and how does James classify it?
Suso wore a hair shirt and iron chain until he bled, then an undergarment with 150 sharp brass nails turned toward his flesh, sleeping in it through summer heat and insects. He added loops fastening his hands to his throat and gloves studded with brass tacks so that scratching in sleep tore his flesh, which festered; when wounds healed he tore himself again. James calls this the irrational extreme of a psychopathic individual in bodily austerity.
Chapter 57

Section 584 cards

What did Suso do with the iron-needle cross after first blunting its nails?
Suso first blunted the sharp nails slightly against a stone, terrified by the cross on his tender frame. But soon, repenting of what he called his womanly cowardice, he pointed them all again with a file and placed the cross once more on his bare back, where it made his back bloody and seared.
Chapter 58
How does James characterize Suso's case compared with other ascetics?
James calls Suso's case distinctly pathological, but notes he seems to have lacked the alleviation some ascetics enjoyed: an alteration of sensibility capable of actually turning torment into a perverse kind of pleasure. He contrasts this with the founder of the Sacred Heart order, whose love of pain and suffering was described as insatiable.
Chapter 58
Why does James find the contemporary ideal of self-determined conduct hard to reconcile with obedience?
James says secular twentieth-century life holds obedience in no high esteem, treating the individual's duty to determine his own conduct as a best-rooted Protestant social ideal. He confesses it seems a mystery how men with an inner life of their own could think subjection of the will to other finite creatures recommendable, though it evidently meets a profound interior need in many persons.
Chapter 58
According to Catholic writers, how does obedience complete the monastic sacrifice?
Catholic writers conceive obedience primarily as a sacrifice and mode of mortification, in which man is both priest and victim. By poverty he immolates exterior possessions, by chastity his body, and by obedience he completes the sacrifice, giving God his intellect and will, so the entire victim is consumed for God's honor.
Chapter 58

Section 594 cards

What does Saint John Climachus call obedience, and what image illustrates it?
He calls obedience an excuse before God: when God asks why one did something, replying that a Superior ordered it requires no further excuse. He compares a religious under obedience to a passenger on a good vessel with a good pilot, who may sleep in peace because the pilot watches over all; such a person goes to heaven as if sleeping, leaning on Superiors who bear their burdens.
Chapter 59
How does Ignatius Loyola describe the obedient person's relation to the Superior?
Ignatius says he should desire that the Superior oblige him to give up his own judgment and conquer his own mind, recognizing all Superiors as equal before God. He must be like soft wax, a corpse without intelligence or will, a mass of matter, or a stick in an old man's hand, letting himself be placed and used as the Order judges most useful, never requesting particular posts.
Chapter 59
What test does Rodriguez give for whether one is truly poor in spirit?
Rodriguez says one should consider whether one loves poverty's ordinary effects—hunger, thirst, cold, fatigue, and lack of conveniences—and is glad to wear a patched habit, to find something lacking at meals, to be passed by in serving, to receive distasteful food, or to have a cell out of repair. If one avoids rather than loves these things, one has not attained perfect poverty of spirit.
Chapter 59
Why did Ignatius want Superiors to test monks by taking away things they liked?
Rodriguez explains that Ignatius wished Superiors to test monks somewhat as God tested Abraham, putting their poverty and obedience to trial so they might know their degree of virtue and progress further. A monk might be moved from a comfortable room he is attached to, have a favorite book taken away, or exchange his garment for a worse one—otherwise they acquire a kind of property in objects, and the wall of poverty is thrown down.
Chapter 59

Section 604 cards

Why does James say lives based on having are less free than lives of doing or being?
The author argues that possessions act as clogs on spiritual action: 'Only those who have no private interests can follow an ideal straight away,' and 'sloth and cowardice creep in with every dollar or guinea we have to guard.' He cites the soldier who owns only his bare life and the laborer with no rights invested in the future as examples of unhampered freedom.
Chapter 60
How does Francis of Assisi answer the novice who wants to own a psalter?
Francis warns that after the psalter the novice will crave a breviary, then sit 'like a grand prelate' ordering his brother about. He tells him to care not for books and knowledge but for works of goodness, and later denies all such requests, saying a man possesses only so much learning as comes out in action, for every tree is known by its fruits.
Chapter 60
What does James compare incomplete religious surrender to in medical experience?
James compares the incompletely regenerate man to a drunkard or morphine user who asks to be cured but dares not face blank abstinence, hiding drug supplies in his clothing or arranging secret smuggling. Likewise the half-surrendered man keeps his money like a sleeping potion beside a wakeful patient's bed: he throws himself on God but keeps the other help in reserve.
Chapter 60
What did Antoinette Bourignon hear inwardly, and how did her father and Father Laurens respond?
While praying as a young girl she heard, as if another spoke within her: 'Forsake all earthly things. Separate thyself from the love of the creatures. Deny thyself.' She promised by grace to do it but did not know where to begin. Her father refused to let her enter the barefoot Carmelites, saying he would rather see her in her grave; Father Laurens said they take no maids without money.
Chapter 60

Section 614 cards

What did the eighteen-year-old maid take with her when she left home, and why did she discard it?
She took only one penny to buy bread for that day. While leaving, she felt asked 'Where is thy faith? in a penny?' and threw it away, begging God's pardon and saying her faith was not in a penny but in God alone. The author notes the penny was a small financial safeguard but an effective spiritual obstacle, and only when thrown away could she settle into the new equilibrium completely.
Chapter 61
What three 'religious mysteries' does the author identify in the cult of poverty, beyond self-surrender?
The author identifies the mystery of veracity ('Naked came I into the world'—one's bare entity must fight the battle, shams cannot save), the mystery of democracy or equality before God of all creatures (noted as generally more widespread in Mohammedan than Christian lands), which nullifies acquisitiveness, and he distinguishes this from humility—calling it humanity, refusing to enjoy anything others do not share.
Chapter 61
How does the quoted moralist interpret Christ's 'Sell all thou hast and follow me'?
The moralist argues Christ may have meant that if you love mankind absolutely you will not care for possessions. To Christ and any mind with his love for mankind these truths are literal; to lesser natures they become parables. Some people, beginning innocently, are drawn into the vortex by helping mankind, and abandoning their old mode of life becomes like dust in the balance—done gradually and imperceptibly.
Chapter 61
Why does the author say one must 'have been there' to understand religious sentiments?
The author argues one can never fathom an emotion or divine its dictates by standing outside it; each emotion obeys its own logic and makes deductions no other logic can draw. He compares understanding a Briton's loyalty to his king or a German's to his emperor, which no American can attain. For those outside such emotions, the only sound plan is to observe and faithfully record what one sees.
Chapter 61

Section 624 cards

According to James, why do deities become discredited and forgotten?
The author argues deities are chosen for the value of the fruits they seem to yield. Once those fruits seem worthless, conflict with indispensable human ideals, thwart other values, or appear childish, contemptible, or immoral on reflection, the deity grows discredited and is eventually neglected and forgotten. He cites Greek and Roman gods, judged by educated pagans, as an example.
Chapter 62
How does James describe the change in what qualities make a deity credible?
The author argues the moral and religious tone of men alters secularly as insight into nature and social arrangements develop. A deity requiring bleeding sacrifices would now be too sanguinary to be taken seriously, even with historical credentials. Once such cruel appetites were themselves credentials, recommending a god in ages when coarse signs of power were respected.
Chapter 62
What standard does James propose for testing saintliness and the beliefs inspiring it?
James proposes to test saintliness by common sense, using human standards to decide how far the religious life commends itself as an ideal kind of human activity. If it commends itself, theological beliefs inspiring it stand accredited; if not, they are discredited. He calls this the elimination of the humanly unfit and survival of the humanly fittest applied to religious beliefs.
Chapter 62
How does James answer the charge that his empirical method leads to skepticism?
James admits no empiricist can claim exemption from liability to correction, since secular alterations in sentiment make it absurd to think one's own age is beyond correction. But admitting liability to correction differs from wanton doubt. He argues one who acknowledges an imperfect instrument and allows for it is better placed for truth than one claiming infallibility.
Chapter 62

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What two kinds of religion does James insist must be distinguished when judging religious phenomena?
James insists on distinguishing religion as an individual, personal function from religion as an institutional, corporate, or tribal product. He argues that when groups organize into ecclesiastical institutions with corporate ambitions, politics and the lust for dogmatic rule contaminate the originally innocent thing, so the word "religion" becomes equivocal and is wrongly identified with churches.
Chapter 63
According to James, how does a first-hand religious experience evolve through stages?
James argues a genuine first-hand experience first appears as heterodoxy, with the prophet seen as a lonely madman. If contagious, it becomes a labeled heresy; if it triumphs over persecution, it becomes an orthodoxy. Once orthodox, its day of inwardness is over: the faithful live at second hand and stone the prophets in their turn, unless the church co-opts new movements for selfish corporate designs.
Chapter 63
To what does James attribute persecutions like the baiting of Jews and stoning of Quakers?
James argues these acts express aboriginal human neophobia, the pugnacity all share, and an inborn hatred of the alien and non-conforming, rather than the positive piety of the perpetrators. Piety is the mask; the inner force is tribal instinct. He charges such baseness to religion's wicked practical partner, corporate dominion, and bigotries to its intellectual partner, dogmatic dominion.
Chapter 63
What does James say about attaining absolutely fixed truth in religious matters?
James says he disbelieves that mortals can attain absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about religious matters of fact on a given day. He rejects this dogmatic ideal not from love of disorder but from fear of losing truth by pretending to possess it wholly. He believes we can gain more and more truth by moving in the right direction, and asks readers not to harden against his empiricism.
Chapter 63

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According to James, is religion itself to blame for historic atrocities?
James argues religion as such is not to blame for past atrocities; at most piety fails to check natural passions and sometimes supplies hypocritical pretexts. But hypocrisy also imposes obligations and couples restrictions, and once the passion passes, piety may bring repentance the irreligious person would not show. Yet he concedes fanaticism remains a liability he cannot wholly acquit religion of.
Chapter 64
What does James mean by saying saintly virtues are subject to excess?
James argues excess in human faculties usually means one-sidedness or want of balance, not an essential faculty being too strong. Strong affections need a strong will, strong intellect needs strong sympathies. In saints the spiritual faculties are strong, but the apparent extravagance is usually a relative deficiency of intellect; spiritual excitement turns pathological when other interests are too few and the intellect too narrow.
Chapter 64
How does James define fanaticism and its consequences?
James argues fanaticism, when not mere ecclesiastical ambition, is loyalty carried to a convulsive extreme. A narrow, intensely loyal mind idealizes its devotion, becomes jealous for the deity's honor, and resents slights; in narrow minds with active wills this becomes engrossing, so crusades are preached and massacres instigated. He calls intolerance and persecution the besetting sins of the saintly temper, and says freethinkers' charge cannot be unqualifiedly denied.
Chapter 64
What is the 'theopathic' condition, and who exemplifies it?
James describes a theopathic condition as an innocent but one-sided imaginative absorption in the love of God, excluding all practical human interests, found in gentle characters where devoutness is intense and intellect feeble; a mind too narrow has room for only one affection. He offers Margaret Mary Alacoque as example, whose devotion included hallucinations and revelations of Christ's Sacred Heart.
Chapter 64

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What did Christ promise Margaret Mary in the vision about the First Friday devotion?
Christ asked that every first Friday after the week of holy Sacrament be made a special holy day honoring his Heart by general communion and services of amends for indignities received. He promised that his Heart would dilate to shed abundantly the influences of its love upon all who pay these honors, or who bring others to do the same.
Chapter 65
How did Margaret Mary's visions affect her practical usefulness in the convent?
She became increasingly useless about the convent. In the infirmary she showed boundless kindness and heroic charity but little success; in the kitchen everything dropped from her hands and the attempt was abandoned; in the school the girls cherished her but she was too inwardly absorbed to attend properly. The author concludes she was even less a denizen of earth after her visions than before.
Chapter 65
Why does the author judge Saint Teresa's religion as shallow despite her abilities?
The author calls her one of the ablest women on record: powerful practical intellect, admirable descriptive psychology, political and business talent, buoyant disposition, and first-rate style. Yet he confesses his only feeling in reading her is pity that so much vitality of soul found such poor employment, since her religious ideals seem paltry by present standards. He labels her a 'shrew' type—active, unimpassioned, voluble, and egotistical.
Chapter 65
How does the author contrast the church militant with the church fugient regarding purity?
Both pursue the same object—to unify life and simplify the spectacle presented to the soul. The aggressive pietist reaches unity objectively by stamping out disorder, as in prisons, dragonnades, and inquisition methods. The retiring pietist reaches it subjectively, leaving the world's disorder alone but building a smaller world of hermitages, monasteries, and sectarian organizations from which it is eliminated. Saints' lives show successive renunciations of complication.
Chapter 65

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What exceptional grace did Louis receive after vowing perpetual chastity?
According to the account, Mary obtained for Louis from God the extraordinary grace of never feeling, during his entire life, the slightest temptation against purity. The text calls this an exceptional favor rarely granted even to saints, and notes it was more marvelous because Louis lived in courts among great people where danger and opportunity were frequent.
Chapter 66
How did Louis behave toward women and social contact as a youth?
At twelve, he would not let his mother's maids of honor enter but listened through a barely opened door and dismissed them. He disliked being alone with his own mother, avoided learning even his great lady relatives by sight, and made a treaty with his father to obey all his wishes if excused from visits to ladies.
Chapter 66
What does James conclude about the worth of Louis's saintly life?
James argues our judgment depends on our conception of God and what conduct pleases him. He says sixteenth-century Catholicism paid little heed to social righteousness, while today helpfulness is deemed essential to worth. The author argues that when the intellect is tiny and ideas of God correspondingly small, the result is repulsive despite heroism: purity is not the one thing needful, and it is better to contract dirt-marks than forfeit usefulness.
Chapter 66
Why does James say saintly non-resistance can be ill adapted to the actual world?
James says perfect conduct involves three terms: actor, objects, and recipients; the best intention fails with false means or wrong recipients. He paraphrases Spencer: saintly conduct would be perfect in an environment where all were saints, but where few are saints and many the reverse, it must be ill adapted. He notes the powers of darkness exploit sympathy and charity, and modern organized charity and constitutional government show the failure of mere almsgiving and the value of resisting evil.
Chapter 66

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What social function does James assign to the saints' excessive charity?
The author argues that saints' extravagance of tenderness is a genuinely creative social force: treating people as worthy stimulates them to become worthy, transforming them by radiant example and expectation. He calls saints authors and increasers of goodness, forerunners like drops ahead of a wave, who keep the rest of us from being as mean as we naturally are. Momentarily they may be duped, but their general function in social evolution is vital.
Chapter 67
How does James compare Utopian socialist and anarchist dreams to saintly belief?
He says the Utopian dreams of social justice held by many contemporary socialists and anarchists, despite being impracticable and ill-adapted to present environmental conditions, are analogous to the saint's belief in an existent kingdom of heaven. They help break the edge of the general reign of hardness and act as slow leavens of a better order.
Chapter 67
Why does James think asceticism deserves rehabilitation despite its excesses?
He distinguishes the general good intention of asceticism from the uselessness of particular acts. In its spiritual meaning, asceticism stands for the essence of the twice-born philosophy: the belief that there is real wrongness in the world which must be squarely met and overcome by the soul's heroic resources, neutralized and cleansed by suffering. The once-born, ultra-optimistic view instead tries to ignore evil, an attempt James calls precarious.
Chapter 67
What does James say about the modern church's attitude toward bodily mortification?
He notes that modern optimism and refinement have changed the church's attitude: a Suso or Saint Peter of Alcantara now seem tragic mountebanks rather than sane men. Catholic teachers always held that health, needed for efficiency in God's service, must not be sacrificed to mortification, and older ascetics tended to stress bodily mortification less. James adds that mortification for mortification's sake is repugnant to liberal Protestants.
Chapter 67

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Why does James say asceticism beats naturalistic optimism as a response to life?
The author argues that optimism is a shallow dodge or lucky personal accident that leaves the general world unhelped, while pain, wrong, and death must be fairly met and overcome. Asceticism voluntarily takes the initiation, treating life as something to sit at in mourning garments, and James says it goes with the profounder way of handling existence.
Chapter 68
What does James mean by the 'moral equivalent of war'?
James argues war is a school of strenuous life and heroism and, being in line with aboriginal instinct, the only school universally available. But since its aim is destruction, he seeks something equally heroic and universal yet compatible with men's spiritual selves. He suggests voluntarily accepted poverty, echoing old monkish poverty-worship, as a candidate.
Chapter 68
How does James distinguish military self-severity from ascetic sainthood?
James quotes an Austrian officer saying war demands contempt for one's own person and that the soldier must be the opposite of a reasoning man, with victory everything. James calls these words literally true, since the soldier's immediate aim is destruction. Yet he finds a world-wide difference in spiritual concomitants between the military type and the ascetic saint.
Chapter 68
What does James say about the modern fear of poverty?
The author argues that English-speaking peoples have grown literally afraid to be poor and despise anyone who elects poverty to simplify and save his inner life, deeming him spiritless. He laments losing the ancient idealization of poverty: liberation from material attachments, the unbribed soul, and the right to fling away life irresponsibly. He calls for thinking men to protest this unmanly, irreligious opinion.
Chapter 68

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According to James, when is wealth better than poverty, and what does it otherwise breed?
James says wealth is better than poverty and ought to be chosen only insofar as it gives time for ideal ends and exercise to ideal energies—and it does so in only a portion of actual cases. Elsewhere, the desire to gain wealth and fear of losing it are chief breeders of cowardice and corruption. He argues that indifference to poverty would free people devoted to unpopular causes from fear of falling stocks, lost promotion, stopped salaries, and closed club doors.
Chapter 69
What does James call the worst moral disease of our civilization?
The author argues that the prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers. He recommends the matter for serious pondering, having just argued that personal indifference to poverty would make people freemen rather than slaves, able to bear witness to the spirit without holding their tongues or fearing to vote reformatory tickets.
Chapter 69
What combination makes the saintly character religious rather than merely temperamental?
James grants that single attributes of saintliness may be temperamental endowments found in non-religious people. But the whole group forms a combination that as such is religious, since it seems to flow from the sense of the divine as from its psychological centre. Whoever strongly possesses this sense thinks the smallest details of the world derive infinite significance from relation to an unseen divine order, yielding superior happiness and steadfastness.
Chapter 69
How does James say we should judge saints, given their possible excesses?
James says saints are not infallible: with narrow intellects they fall into holy excesses—fanaticism, theopathic absorption, self-torment, prudery, scrupulosity, gullibility, and morbid inability to meet the world. We must judge them not sentimentally only and not in isolation, but using our own intellectual standards, placing them in their environment, and estimating total function. He adds that narrowness is often absorbed from one's generation, and essentials must not be confused with accidents.
Chapter 69

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According to James, what two pivots does the feud between saint and strong man revolve upon?
James says the feud revolves on two questions: whether the seen world or the unseen world should be our chief sphere of adaptation, and whether our means of adaptation in the seen world should be aggressiveness or non-resistance. He adds that both worlds and both means must be acknowledged to some degree, so the real issue is one of emphasis, of more or less.
Chapter 70
Why does James argue the saint is abstractly a higher type than the strong man?
Using an empirical, relational view of ideals, James argues the saint is abstractly higher because he is adapted to the highest conceivable society—one of sympathy and fairness with no aggressiveness. In such a millennial society the saint's non-resistant appeals would work and no one would exploit him, whereas the strong man's presence would make that society deteriorate.
Chapter 70
What qualification does James make about sainthood in the actual world?
James insists there is no absoluteness in the excellence of sainthood. Turning from the abstract question to the actual situation, the individual saint may be well or ill adapted according to particular circumstances. Anyone who makes an out-and-out saint of himself does so at his peril, and if he is not a large enough man he may appear more insignificant than a worldling.
Chapter 70
How does James measure success, and what example shows the verdict varies by point of view?
James says success cannot be measured absolutely; the verdict varies with the point of view adopted. From the biological point of view Saint Paul was a failure because he was beheaded, yet he was magnificently adapted to the larger environment of history. So a saint is a success insofar as his example leavens the world toward saintliness, regardless of immediate bad fortune.
Chapter 70

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What four marks does James propose for classifying an experience as mystical?
James proposes four marks: ineffability (the state defies expression and must be directly experienced), noetic quality (it seems to be a state of knowledge, insight into unplumbed truth), transiency (it cannot be sustained long, typically half an hour to an hour or two), and passivity (the will seems in abeyance, sometimes as if grasped by a superior power). The first two, he says, entitle any state to be called mystical.
Chapter 71
How do mystical states differ from phenomena of secondary or alternative personality?
James links passivity to phenomena like prophetic speech, automatic writing, and mediumistic trance. But when those latter conditions are well pronounced, there may be no recollection of them and no significance for the subject's usual inner life—a mere interruption. Mystical states, strictly so called, are never merely interruptive: some memory of their content remains, with a profound sense of importance, and they modify the inner life between recurrences.
Chapter 71
What is the simplest rudiment of mystical experience James describes?
James describes the deepened sense of the significance of a maxim or formula that occasionally sweeps over one—hearing words known all one's life but realizing their full meaning for the first time. He cites Luther, who said that on hearing a fellow-monk repeat 'I believe in the forgiveness of sins,' he saw Scripture in a new light and felt born anew. James notes this sense is not confined to propositions: single words, light, odors, and music can bring it.
Chapter 71
How does James respond to Crichton-Browne's view of 'dreamy states'?
Crichton-Browne named these sudden invasions of vaguely reminiscent consciousness 'dreamy states' and, in his opinion, connected them with disturbances of self-consciousness that occasionally precede epileptic attacks. James calls this a rather absurdly alarmist view of an intrinsically insignificant phenomenon: Crichton-Browne follows it down the ladder to insanity, while James's path pursues the upward ladder. James uses the divergence to show how context makes a phenomenon appear admirable or dreadful.
Chapter 71

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What does James conclude about normal waking consciousness from his nitrous oxide observations?
James argues that normal rational waking consciousness is only one special type of consciousness. Beyond it, separated by the filmiest of screens, lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different, which may be triggered by a stimulus. He insists no account of the universe can be final if it disregards these other forms, since they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality.
Chapter 72
How does James characterize alcohol's relation to mystical consciousness?
The author argues alcohol's sway over mankind comes from stimulating mystical faculties usually crushed by sober facts and criticism. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes, making one momentarily one with truth. He calls drunkenness one bit of the mystic consciousness, to be judged within our opinion of that larger whole.
Chapter 72
What did Symonds experience under chloroform, and what question did it leave him?
Symonds felt his soul become aware of God dealing with him as an intense personal present reality, streaming in like light, in ecstasy. As the anesthetic wore, the sense of relation to God faded, and he shrieked that he could not bear the disillusionment. He asked whether that inner sense of reality was a delusion or an actual experience of what saints feel.
Chapter 72
What is the keynote of James's own mystical insights?
James says his experiences converge on an insight he ascribes some metaphysical significance: the keynote is invariably a reconciliation. It is as if the world's opposites, whose conflict makes all our difficulties, were melted into unity—one species, the nobler, absorbing its opposite into itself. He admits this is a dark saying in common logic but feels it must mean something.
Chapter 72

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How does J. Trevor test whether his mystical experiences are real?
Trevor says he severely questioned their worth and told no one, fearing he was building on phantasies of the brain. But after every questioning and test they stood out as the most real experiences of his life, explaining and unifying all past growth. He argues the spiritual life justifies itself to those who live it, unlike dreams, which vanish on waking.
Chapter 73
What does Dr. R. M. Bucke mean by 'cosmic consciousness'?
Bucke calls it a superaddition of a function as distinct from ordinary self-consciousness as self-consciousness is from animal function. Its prime characteristic is consciousness of the cosmos—the life and order of the universe—plus intellectual enlightenment, moral exaltation and joyousness, and a sense of immortality: not a conviction he shall have eternal life but consciousness that he has it already.
Chapter 73
What did Bucke experience during his own onset of cosmic consciousness?
After an evening of poetry and philosophy, in a hansom cab, he found himself wrapped in a flame-colored cloud and knew the fire was within himself. He felt exultation and intellectual illumination, saw the universe as a living Presence rather than dead matter, and became conscious of possessing eternal life then. The vision lasted seconds but its conviction never left him.
Chapter 73

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According to Vedantists, what is the empirical test of pure superconsciousness?
The Vedantists hold that one may stumble into superconsciousness sporadically without prior discipline, but it is then impure. Their test of purity is empirical, like the test of religion's value: its fruits must be good for life. When a man comes out of Samâdhi, they say he remains enlightened, a sage, a prophet, a saint, with his whole character and life changed and illumined.
Chapter 74
What are the four stages of dhyâna recognized by Buddhists?
The first stage comes through concentration on one point; it excludes desire but keeps discernment and judgment, so it is still intellectual. In the second, intellectual functions drop off and a satisfied sense of unity remains. In the third, satisfaction departs and indifference begins, along with memory and self-consciousness. In the fourth, indifference, memory, and self-consciousness are perfected. James notes the meaning of 'memory' and 'self-consciousness' here is doubtful.
Chapter 74
What analogy does Al-Ghazzali use to distinguish knowing Sufism from being a Sufi?
Al-Ghazzali compares the theorist to a physician who knows the definition of drunkenness and its causes but is not drunk, while the drunken man actually is drunk. He applies this to health, satiety, and abstinence: knowing their definitions differs from being healthy, filled, or abstinent. Likewise, what Sufism teaches by words can be learned by study, but the rest comes only through ecstasy and a pious life.
Chapter 74
What does Al-Ghazzali say is the first condition for a Sufi?
Al-Ghazzali states that the first condition for a Sufi is to purge his heart entirely of all that is not God. The next key of the contemplative life is humble prayers escaping from the fervent soul and meditations on God in which the heart is swallowed up. He calls this only the beginning; the end of Sufism is total absorption in God, with intuitions merely the threshold.
Chapter 74

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What does James call the keynote of all mysticism?
James states that the incommunicableness of the transport is the keynote of all mysticism. Mystical truth exists for the individual who has the transport but for no one else. He compares this to knowledge given in sensations rather than conceptual thought, noting that mystics may deny the senses play any part in the highest type of knowledge their transports yield.
Chapter 75
How does Saint John of the Cross describe the 'union of love'?
Saint John of the Cross says the union of love is reached by 'dark contemplation,' in which the Deity compenetrates the soul so hiddenly that the soul finds no terms, means, or comparison to render the sublimity of the wisdom and delicacy of the spiritual feeling. No images or sensible representations are employed; the soul feels placed in a vast, profound solitude, an immense boundless desert, more delicious the more solitary.
Chapter 75
What does Saint Teresa say about certainty after the orison of union?
Saint Teresa says that during the orison of union the soul is fully awake as regards God but wholly asleep as regards the world and herself, with faculties suspended, and the time is always short. After returning to herself, she cannot doubt she has been in God and God in her; this certitude abides, given by God alone, though she cannot explain how one has certainty about what one does not see.
Chapter 75

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How does James say mystical states should be judged, against medical reduction?
James concedes that pathological conditions such as hysteria and degeneration may have existed in many or possibly all ecstatic cases, but argues this tells us nothing about the value for knowledge of the consciousness induced. To pass spiritual judgment, he says, we must not rest on superficial medical talk but inquire into the states' fruits for life.
Chapter 76
What two philosophical directions does James say mystical states point toward?
James argues that despite repudiating articulate self-description, mystical states assert a distinct theoretic drift: optimism and monism. We pass from ordinary consciousness as from less to more, smallness to vastness, unrest to rest, and they feel reconciling and unifying, appealing to the yes-function rather than the no-function.
Chapter 76
How does James illustrate Teresa's ecstasies forming a new center of spiritual energy?
James quotes Teresa describing the soul emerging from ecstasy full of health and disposed for action, with courage so great it would feel comfort if the body were torn apart for God. She reports heroic resolutions, horror of the world, contempt for honor and money, and pity for those still in darkness.
Chapter 76

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How does Dionysius treat names for the divine, according to James?
The author explains that Dionysius denies all qualifications of the divine not because truth falls short of them but because it infinitely excels them. It is above all names—super-lucent, super-splendent, super-essential, super-sublime. James compares this to Hegel's "Methode der Absoluten Negativität," where mystics approach the positive pole of truth through absolute negation.
Chapter 77
What does James call the great achievement of mysticism?
James states that the great mystic achievement is the overcoming of all usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and become aware of our oneness. He calls this the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed, found in Hinduism, Neoplatonism, Sufism, Christian mysticism, and Whitmanism.
Chapter 77
What does James conclude about the general traits of mystic consciousness?
James sketches the general traits of the mystic range of consciousness: on the whole it is pantheistic and optimistic, or at least the opposite of pessimistic. It is anti-naturalistic and harmonizes best with twice-bornness and so-called other-worldly states of mind. He then asks whether mysticism can be invoked as authoritative—whether it furnishes warrant for the truth of the twice-bornness, supernaturality, and pantheism it favors.
Chapter 77

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What three-part answer does James give about mystical states' authority?
James argues: (1) well-developed mystical states are usually authoritative over the individuals who have them; (2) no authority from them obliges outsiders to accept their revelations uncritically; (3) they break down the pretension of the non-mystical, rationalistic consciousness to be the sole dictator of belief, opening the possibility of other orders of truth.
Chapter 78
Why does James call the mystic 'invulnerable' to rationalist criticism?
James argues mystical experiences are as direct perceptions of fact for those who have them as sensations are for everyone else, so rationalism's grumbling has no jurisdiction. We can imprison or institutionalize the mystic, but cannot change his mind; our own 'rational' beliefs rest on evidence similar in nature to what mystics cite. Faith-state and mystic state are practically convertible terms.
Chapter 78
Why does James doubt the supposed unanimity of mystics?
James says classic religious mysticism is only a 'privileged case,' an extract preserved in schools. The larger mass includes diabolical mysticism in insanity, ascetic and antinomian Christian forms, dualistic Sankhya and monistic Vedanta, non-pantheist Spanish mystics, and naturalistic pantheists like Whitman. The mystical feeling of enlargement has no specific intellectual content, so it cannot favor any special belief.
Chapter 78
What does James say mystical states do to rationalism's claim to sole authority?
James argues mystical states overthrow the pretension of non-mystical states to be sole dictators of belief. They add supersensuous meaning to ordinary data without contradicting the senses, and it remains an open question whether they are superior viewpoints onto a wider world. That wider world would have a mixed constitution, with valid and counterfeit experiences, requiring selection and testing as in ordinary life.
Chapter 78

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What does James say philosophy's task regarding religion is?
James says philosophy's cherished ideal is to escape obscure personal persuasion and reach truth objectively valid for all thinking men. Reason's task is to redeem religion from unwholesome privacy and give its deliverances public status and universal right of way. He believes philosophy will always have opportunity to labor at this task, since we are thinking beings who cannot exclude the intellect from any function.
Chapter 79
How does James describe the relation of feeling to theological formulas?
The author argues that feeling is the deeper source of religion, and that philosophic and theological formulas are secondary products, like translations of a text into another tongue. He doubts any philosophic theology could have been framed in a world with no religious feeling, calling high-flying speculations over-beliefs, buildings-out the intellect performs into directions feeling originally hinted at.
Chapter 79
What kind of intellectualism in religion does James wish to discredit?
James discredits intellectualism that pretends to construct religious objects from logical reason alone, or from reason drawing rigorous inference from non-subjective facts. It calls its conclusions dogmatic theology or philosophy of the absolute, reaches them a priori, and warrants their veracity. Unlike the science of religions, it does not presuppose immediate experiences as its subject-matter.
Chapter 79
According to James, what do all intellectual operations in religion presuppose?
James states that all intellectual operations, whether constructive or comparative and critical, presuppose immediate experiences as their subject-matter. They are interpretative and inductive operations, operations after the fact, consequent upon religious feeling, not coördinate with it, and not independent of what it ascertains. Religious experience spontaneously engenders myths, dogmas, creeds, and theologies.
Chapter 79

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What practical test does James use to judge theology based on pure reason?
James proposes a plain test of fact: theology grounded in pure reason must convince men universally. If it instead only forms sects and schools, as sentiment and mysticism do, it fails its own program of freeing us from personal caprice. He argues philosophy does in fact so fail, and that logical reason finds arguments for convictions our passions or mystical intuitions have already fixed.
Chapter 80
How does James say the traditional proofs for God's existence actually function?
James says the proofs—cosmological, design, moral, and ex consensu gentium—prove nothing rigorously. They confirm those who already believe and fail to correct atheists. He notes idealists since Kant have felt entitled to scout or neglect them, that causation is too obscure to bear theology's weight, and that Darwinian ideas have revolutionized the design argument into suggesting a deity of fortunate escapes from destruction.
Chapter 80
According to the systematic theology James summarizes, what follows from God's aseity?
Because God possesses existence a se, theology deduces by mere logic that he is necessary and absolute, unlimited within and without, infinitely perfect, one and only, spiritual and metaphysically simple—his essence and existence given at one stroke. This excludes potentiality, making him immutable, immense, omnipresent, and eternal, and it means his powers, acts, and attributes are only 'virtual' distinctions from the human point of view.
Chapter 80
How does the summarized theology describe God's freedom and personhood?
God has intelligence and will because we do, and the effect cannot surpass the cause; in him these are eternally in act, knowing and willing himself. Since he must logically love and will himself, he is not free ad intra with the freedom of contrarieties, but is free ad extra regarding creation, which he wills by absolute freedom without needing it. Being substance with intellect, will, and freedom, he is a living, self-sufficient person.
Chapter 80

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According to the chapter, why does God create things ex nihilo rather than from pre-existing matter?
The chapter argues that if created things were made of God's own substance they would be infinite, but they are finite, so they must be non-divine in substance. If made from eternally existing matter, God would be a mere mover of something already caused, contradicting his definition as First Cause. Thus he creates ex nihilo, giving finite substances absolute being additional to himself.
Chapter 81
How does the chapter explain God's relation to moral evil and physical evil?
God can do no evil because he is positive being's fullness and evil is negation. He created physical evil only as a means to wider good, since the good of the whole surpasses the good of the part. Moral evil he cannot will as end or means, contradicting his holiness; by creating free beings he merely permits it, not obliging himself to prevent misuse of freedom.
Chapter 81
What does Peirce's principle of pragmatism say about the meaning of a thought?
The chapter states Peirce's principle: thought's only motive is attaining belief, and beliefs are rules for action. To develop a thought's meaning, determine what conduct it is fitted to produce; that conduct is its sole significance. Any part of a thought making no practical difference is no proper element of its significance. Perfect clearness requires considering what sensations and conduct we should expect from the object.
Chapter 81
What does the author argue about God's metaphysical attributes using the pragmatism principle?
The author argues that God's strictly metaphysical attributes—aseity, necessariness, immateriality, simplicity, indivisibility, actualized infinity, personality apart from moral qualities—are destitute of intelligible significance. They call for no distinctive adaptations of conduct, so it makes no vital religious difference whether they are true. He calls systematic theologians the closet-naturalists of the deity, shuffling dictionary-adjectives aloof from morals and human needs.
Chapter 81

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What does James conclude about dogmatic theology's arguments for God's moral attributes?
James argues the arguments fare as badly as those for God's existence. Post-Kantian idealists reject them entirely, and he claims they have never converted anyone who doubted a good God from the world's moral complexion. He says the book of Job settled the matter: ratiocination is a superficial path, and the sincere religious man rests on a trustful sense of presence despite intellectual perplexity.
Chapter 82
How did Kant's Transcendental Ego differ from what his successors made of it?
For Kant, the Transcendental Ego of Apperception meant only that the "I think them" potentially or actually accompanies all our objects—a depersonalized, universal category with no theological implications. His successors converted this abstract consciousness (Bewusstsein überhaupt) into an infinite concrete self-consciousness, the soul of the world, in which personal selves have their being.
Chapter 82
According to Caird, how does religion resolve the gap between ideal and actual that morality cannot?
Caird holds that social morality, love, and self-sacrifice merge the self only with other finite selves, never the Infinite, so man's ideal destiny seems unrealizable in practice. Religion, he says, changes aspiration into fruition and anticipation into realization, making man an actual partaker of divine life; the Infinite ceases to be a far-off vision and becomes a present reality.
Chapter 82

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According to Caird, when does oneness with the divine begin in the soul?
Caird argues that oneness of mind and will with the divine is not a future hope or aim of religion but its very beginning and birth in the soul. Entering the religious life terminates the struggle; faith, trust, or self-surrender involves identifying the finite with an eternally realized life. Religious progress is then not toward the Infinite but within it, appropriating an inheritance already possessed.
Chapter 83
What does James conclude about proving religious experience through purely intellectual processes?
James concludes, in sad sincerity, that the attempt to demonstrate by purely intellectual processes the truth of the deliverances of direct religious experience is absolutely hopeless. He argues that transcendentalist reasoning, such as Caird's, merely reaffirms individual experience in generalized vocabulary. He points to the plain fact that most scholars, even religiously disposed ones, reject the Hegelian argumentation, citing German rejection and Scottish criticisms.
Chapter 83
What can philosophy do for religion if it becomes a science of religions?
James says philosophy, abandoning metaphysics and deduction for criticism and induction, can eliminate local and accidental elements from religious definitions, remove historic incrustations from dogma and worship, and discard doctrines now known to be scientifically absurd. It can treat remaining conceptions as hypotheses, test and reduce them, refine definitions, mediate between believers, and help bring about consensus—though it must always depend on personal experience and confess its formulas are approximations.
Chapter 83
What role does the aesthetic life play in choosing a religion, per James?
James says the aesthetic life helps determine one's choice of religion. People involuntarily intellectualize religious experience and need formulas as they need fellowship in worship. He notes he spoke too contemptuously of the pragmatic uselessness of the scholastic attributes of deity, since Newman's eloquent enumeration shows their high aesthetic value: epithets lend atmosphere and overtones to devotion, like an organ, marbles, and stained windows in a church.
Chapter 83

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Why does James say Protestantism cannot convert many from Catholicism?
The author argues that aesthetic sentiment makes it rigorously impossible for Protestantism, however spiritually profound, to convert many from the more venerable ecclesiasticism. Catholicism offers richer imaginative pasture—hierarchy, mystery, splendor, multiform appeals—while to Catholic eyes Protestantism shows an almshouse physiognomy. The two, he says, will never understand each other because their centres of emotional energy are too different.
Chapter 84
How does James distinguish confession from sacrifice?
James says confession is not nearly as widespread as sacrifice and corresponds to a more inward, moral stage of sentiment. It belongs to the general system of purgation and cleansing needed for right relations with one's deity. For the confessor, shams end and realities begin: he has exteriorized his rottenness and lives on a basis of veracity, even if he has not actually got rid of it.
Chapter 84
What does James say about prayer for the sick versus for weather?
James holds that in certain environments prayer may contribute to recovery and should be encouraged as a therapeutic measure, since it is a normal factor of moral health whose omission would be deleterious. The weather is different: droughts and storms follow from physical antecedents, and moral appeals cannot avert them. But petitional prayer is only one department of prayer.
Chapter 84
What is Sabatier's view of prayer, which James endorses?
Sabatier calls prayer religion in act—real religion—an intercourse in which a soul in distress enters a conscious, voluntary relation with the mysterious power it depends on. It is not vain words or formula but the soul's movement into personal contact with that power. James says the lectures confirm this: religion consists in consciousness of intercourse with higher powers, and if nothing is transacted, religion is rooted in delusion.
Chapter 84

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According to James, what is the core of living religion?
James argues that the conviction that something is genuinely transacted in the prayerful consciousness is the very core of living religion. Even if criticism limits prayer's effects to the subjective sphere, changing only the praying person's mind, religion must still stand or fall by the persuasion that effects of some sort genuinely occur.
Chapter 85
How does Myers describe prayer and its object in his letter?
Myers calls prayer the attitude of open and earnest expectancy by which we draw in spiritual life. He holds that prayer is not purely subjective but means a real increase in absorption of spiritual power or grace. Asked whom to pray to, he says that does not much matter, since we do not know who is cognizant of it or through what channel grace is given.
Chapter 85
What was George Müller's method of handling his needs?
Müller made his general wants publicly known but kept the details of his temporary necessities private, praying directly to the Lord for relief and expecting answers. He refused to run up bills, even for a week, paying at once for every article as purchased, and he refused to borrow money for his enterprises, wanting visible proof that God still provides.
Chapter 85
What did Müller consider slow supplies to be, and what did he refuse to do?
Müller considered slow-arriving supplies a trial of his faith and patience, believing the Lord would send more means once they were sufficiently tried. He refused to borrow money for any enterprise, arguing that anticipating God by going one's own way weakens faith and makes trust increasingly difficult.
Chapter 85

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What does Dr. Hilty describe as marks of a 'led' life?
Hilty says books and words (sometimes people) arrive exactly when needed; one glides past dangers unaware until they are past; paths one should avoid are hedged with thorns while obstacles vanish; courage and insight appear at the right time; and indifferent or unfriendly persons often render the greatest service. Affairs get settled neither too early nor too late, with tranquillity, patience, and tolerance even of repulsive people.
Chapter 86
How does James distinguish two forms of the prayerful life's effects?
One belief holds that particular events are tempered more favorably toward us by a superintending providence, as reward for reliance. The other holds that cultivating a continuous sense of connection with the power that made things tempers us more favorably for receiving events. In the second, nature's outward face need not alter, but its expressions of meaning do—like looking on a person with love rather than without.
Chapter 86
What does Martineau's sermon say about miracles and seeing God?
Martineau argues the universe looks as it did a thousand years ago; we see what our fathers saw. If we cannot find God in house, roadside, sea, seed, flower, duty, grief, or life's procession, we would not discern him at Eden or Gethsemane either. The problem is not lack of greater miracles but lack of soul to perceive those still allowed; wherever God's hand is, there is miracle.
Chapter 86

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What examples does James give of transient 'ideally perfect' moments in ordinary life?
James cites Father Gratry, who was consoled by a poor drummer in Paris streets whose tattoo seemed ideally perfect, proving 'good is at least possible' since the ideal can be embodied. He also cites Sénancour's Obermann, who felt all man's destined happiness from a blooming jonquil in Paris, sensing a limitless beauty nature has not made actual.
Chapter 87
What does James say is the fundamental religious point about prayer?
James argues that whether prayer's effects are subjective or objective makes no essential difference. The fundamental religious point is that in prayer spiritual energy which would otherwise slumber becomes active, and spiritual work of some kind is really effected. Religious persons assume natural facts connected to their destiny signify divine purposes, and that energy from on high flows in to meet demand.
Chapter 87
Why does James say religious leaders so often have automatisms like visions and voices?
James says you will hardly find a religious leader without recorded automatisms, from Saint Paul to Bernard, Loyola, Luther, Fox, and Wesley. They had them because they had exalted sensibility, and such persons are liable to these things. Such automatisms strengthen beliefs, since incursions from the transmarginal region have peculiar power to increase conviction.
Chapter 87
How does James distinguish leaders subject to habitual inspiration from occasional ones?
James says automatic or semi-automatic composition was only occasional in Buddha, Jesus, Paul (apart from tongues), Augustine, Huss, Luther, and Wesley. It appears frequent or habitual in the Hebrew prophets, Mohammed, some Alexandrians, many minor Catholic saints, Fox, and Joseph Smith, who professed being under a foreign power's direction and serving as its mouthpiece.
Chapter 87

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How does James describe the B-region relative to the A-region of personality?
James calls the level of full sunlit consciousness the A-region and the trans-marginal or subliminal region the B-region. He argues the B-region is obviously the larger part of each of us, being the abode of everything latent and the reservoir of everything that passes unrecorded or unobserved. It harbors inactive memories, obscure passions, intuitions, dreams, automatisms, and, he concludes, is the fountain-head of much that feeds religion.
Chapter 88
What five beliefs and psychological characteristics does James say the religious life includes?
James lists three beliefs: the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it draws chief significance; harmonious union with that higher universe is our true end; and prayer or inner communion with that spirit, be it God or law, is a process wherein work is really done. He adds two psychological characteristics: a new zest adding itself like a gift to life, and an assurance of safety with a temper of peace and loving affections.
Chapter 88
Why does James choose extreme religious examples rather than sober ones?
James acknowledges readers may find his selection perverse and wish he had stuck to soberer examples. He replies that he took the extremer examples as yielding the profounder information, comparing it to learning a science's secrets from expert specialists, even eccentric ones, rather than commonplace pupils. We combine what they tell us with the rest of our wisdom and form our final judgment independently.
Chapter 88
Why does James answer 'No' to whether all men should have identical religious elements?
James argues creatures in such different positions and with such different powers cannot have exactly the same functions and duties. No two of us have identical difficulties, nor should we expect identical solutions. He says if an Emerson were forced to be a Wesley, or a Moody forced to be a Whitman, the total human consciousness of the divine would suffer. Each attitude is a syllable in human nature's total message.
Chapter 88

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Why can the science of religions not dogmatically decide whether religious beliefs are true?
The author argues that other sciences and philosophy are incomplete and full of conflicts. Natural science knows nothing of spiritual presences and is largely materialistic, so its influence goes against recognizing religion. The science of religions itself, encountering many groveling superstitions, easily presumes any religious belief is probably false. Its conclusions are as likely adverse as favorable to religion's truth.
Chapter 89
What does James call the 'Survival theory' and what notion does it express?
The author names the widespread notion that religion is probably an anachronism, a 'survival,' or an atavistic relapse into a mode of thought humanity has outgrown. He says religious anthropologists do little to counteract it. He links it to religion revolving around the individual's interest in his private personal destiny—a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.
Chapter 89
How does James contrast science's attitude with religion's regarding the personal point of view?
The author argues that religion revolves around the individual's interest in his private personal destiny, and the divine meets him on the basis of his personal concerns. Science has repudiated the personal point of view, cataloguing elements and laws indifferent to human anxieties and fates. The God science recognizes must be a God of universal laws, doing wholesale, not retail, business.
Chapter 89

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Why does James reject science's demand to suppress the egotistic elements of experience?
The author argues that cosmic and general terms are only symbols of reality, while private and personal phenomena are realities in the completest sense. A concrete bit of personal experience is a full fact, on the line connecting real events with real events. Describing the world with individual feelings left out, he says, is like offering a printed bill of fare as the equivalent of a solid meal.
Chapter 90
What two parts make up the world of our experience, according to James?
An objective part and a subjective part. The objective part is the sum total of whatever we may at any time be thinking of; the subjective part is the inner state in which the thinking comes to pass. The objective part may be incalculably more extensive, yet the subjective part can never be omitted or suppressed, since its reality and that of our experience are one.
Chapter 90
What does James say is the more constant element of religion, and what varies?
The author argues that feelings and conduct are almost always the same across religions—Stoic, Christian, and Buddhist saints are practically indistinguishable in their lives—while the thoughts and theories religion generates vary greatly and are therefore secondary. To grasp religion's essence, one must look to feelings and conduct, with ideas and symbols forming loop-lines rather than indispensable organs.
Chapter 90
How does James characterize the feelings produced by religion?
As what Kant calls a 'sthenic' affection: an excitement of the cheerful, expansive, dynamogenic order which, like a tonic, freshens our vital powers. It overcomes temperamental melancholy and imparts endurance, zest, meaning, or enchantment to common objects of life. Leuba calls it the 'faith-state'; James calls it biological as well as psychological, and says its total absence, anhedonia, means collapse.
Chapter 90

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What two-part common nucleus does James find beneath all differing creeds?
James answers his first question affirmatively: despite warring gods and formulas, religions meet in a uniform deliverance with two parts. First, an uneasiness—a sense that something is wrong about us as we naturally stand. Second, its solution—a sense that we are saved from that wrongness by making proper connection with higher powers. In more developed minds the wrongness takes a moral character and the salvation a mystical tinge.
Chapter 91
How does James describe the individual's relation to the 'MORE' in salvation?
James formulates it thus: the individual suffering from and criticizing his wrongness is already beyond it and in possible touch with something higher. Alongside the wrong part is a better part, perhaps a helpless germ. When salvation arrives, the man identifies his real being with this germinal higher part, becoming conscious that it is conterminous and continuous with a MORE of the same quality operative in the universe outside him, which he can keep in working touch with and get on board of.
Chapter 91
What does Leuba argue about God, as James quotes him?
James cites Professor Leuba's recent article claiming that so long as men can use their God, they care little who he is or whether he exists at all. Leuba says God is not known or understood but used—as meat-purveyor, moral support, friend, or object of love. If useful, the religious consciousness asks no more; God's existence and nature are irrelevant questions. Not God but life, more life, is the end of religion; love of life is the religious impulse.
Chapter 91
What mediating term does James propose for describing the 'more' scientifically?
Seeking terms psychologists accept, James proposes the subconscious self as the mediating term. Apart from religious considerations, there is literally more life in our total soul than we are aware of. He quotes Myers: each of us is an abiding psychical entity far more extensive than he knows, always with some part unmanifested and some power of expression in reserve. Much of this background is insignificant—imperfect memories, silly jingles, timidities—but genius and religious invasions also originate there.
Chapter 91

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On James's hypothesis, what is the 'hither side' of the 'more' felt in religious experience?
James proposes that the 'more' with which religious experience connects us is, on its hither side, the subconscious continuation of our conscious life. This keeps contact with psychological fact, while vindicating the theologian's claim that the religious man is moved by an external power, since invasions from the subconscious take on objective appearances and suggest external control.
Chapter 92
Why does James say specific revelations leave no fixed result for outsiders?
James argues that those not personally favored with specific revelations must stand outside them and decide that, since they corroborate incompatible theological doctrines, they neutralize one another and leave no fixed result. Following any one of them, or embracing monistic pantheism on non-mystical grounds, is done in the exercise of individual freedom.
Chapter 92
What does James call the 'positive content' of religious experience that he deems literally true?
Disregarding over-beliefs and confining himself to what is common and generic, James identifies the fact that the conscious person is continuous with a wider self through which saving experiences come. This, he says, is literally and objectively true as far as it goes. His own further hypothesis about the farther limits of personality he offers as his own over-belief.
Chapter 92

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How does James distinguish refined from crasser supernaturalism?
James says refined supernaturalism is universalistic: the ideal world has no efficient causality and never interrupts phenomenal events, being only a point of view for judging facts. The crasser or piecemeal variety admits miracles and providential leadings, mixing ideal and real worlds by interpolating ideal influences among the forces determining real events. James places himself among the crasser type.
Chapter 93
Why does James reject universalistic supernaturalism?
The author argues universalistic supernaturalism surrenders too easily to naturalism: it takes physical science at face value and leaves the laws of life as naturalism finds them, with no hope of remedy. It offers only sentiments about life as a whole, which need not be adoring, as systematic pessimism proves. James finds it hard to believe principles exist that make no difference in facts.
Chapter 93
What does James offer as the concrete difference God's existence makes?
James says he has no hypothesis beyond 'prayerful communion,' especially when incursions from the subconscious take part. The appearance is that something ideal, partly ourselves and partly not, exerts influence, raises our centre of personal energy, and produces regenerative effects unattainable otherwise. He adopts the hypothesis that transmundane energies, God if you will, produce immediate effects within the natural world.
Chapter 93
What is James's position on immortality and on God's infinity?
James calls immortality a secondary point he leaves open, noting facts are lacking to prove spirit-return despite respect for Myers, Hodgson, and Hyslop. He says religious experience cannot be cited as unequivocally supporting the infinitist belief; it testifies only that we can experience union with something larger than ourselves. Philosophy and mysticism 'pass to the limit' and identify that something with a unique infinite God.
Chapter 93

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According to James, what must the 'larger power' behind religion be like to meet practical needs?
The author argues that practical religious needs are met by believing in a power beyond each person, continuous with them, friendly to them and their ideals. It must be both other and larger than our conscious selves, but need not be infinite or solitary—it might even be a larger, more godlike self, with the universe possibly a collection of such selves.
Chapter 94
What objection does James say monists raise against a pluralistic, polytheistic view?
Monists argue that without one all-inclusive God, our guarantee of security is imperfect: only in the Absolute is all saved. If different gods each care for their part, some portion of some of us might lack divine protection, so religious consolation would be incomplete—linking back to the possibility of portions of the universe being irretrievably lost.
Chapter 94
How does common sense differ from philosophy and mysticism regarding salvation, per James?
The author argues common sense is less sweeping in its demands than philosophy or mysticism: it can accept the world being partly saved and partly lost. The ordinary moralistic mind makes salvation conditional on each unit doing its part. Partial and conditional salvation is familiar in the abstract; the difficulty is only determining the details.
Chapter 94
Why does James say the mere chance of salvation suffices for practical life?
The author argues that for practical life the chance of salvation is enough, since no fact in human nature is more characteristic than willingness to live on a chance. Citing Edmund Gurney, he says the existence of the chance makes the difference between a life whose keynote is resignation and one whose keynote is hope.
Chapter 94

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What does the index say about the method of judging religion's value?
The index lists "Method of judging value of religion" at pages 18 and 327, and elsewhere states religion is to be tested by fruits, not by origin (pages 10 ff., 331). The author argues that spiritual states are tested for value at page 18, and that religion's truth is to be tested at page 377.
Chapter 95
How does the author respond to the claim that religion is perverted sexuality?
In the footnote, the author argues few conceptions are less instructive than reinterpreting religion as perverted sexuality. He notes some phenomena are undisguisedly amatory, such as sex-deities and obscene rites, and ecstatic union with the Saviour in a few Christian mystics. But he counters that religious language also draws heavily on eating and drinking, so the sexual explanation proves too much.
Chapter 95
What does the index list for mind-cure's sources, methods, and philosophy of evil?
The index lists mind-cure's sources and history at pages 94-97; its opinion of fear at 98; cases at 102-105, 120, 123; its message at 108; its methods at 112-123; that it uses verification at 120-124; and its philosophy of evil at 131.
Chapter 95
What does the index say about mysticism's marks, results, and warrant for truth?
The index lists mysticism's marks at page 380; its theoretic results at 416, 422, 428; that it cannot warrant truth at 422; its results at 425; its relation to the sense of union at 509; and that rationalism's authority is overthrown by mysticism at 428. Mystical states' effects appear at 21 and 414.
Chapter 95

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How does François de Sales describe the 'orison of quietude'?
He compares the soul to a nursing child whose mother lets milk distill into his mouth without his moving his lips. The will should be satisfied simply to suck the milk God pours in and relish its sweetness without even knowing it comes from the Lord. He adds that infants press closer to the breast by little starts, just as the heart makes movements of closer union with God.
Chapter 96
What is James's main objection to the sexual theory of religion?
James argues that even if melancholy and conversion synchronize with adolescence, the entire higher mental life awakens then too, so one might as well call interest in physics or philosophy a sexual perversion. He adds that the religious age par excellence seems to be old age, when sexual life is past, and that the content of religious consciousness is wholly disconnected from sexual consciousness.
Chapter 96
What does James say happens to the sex-theory when it retreats to chemical dependence?
If defenders claim the sex organs merely nourish the brain chemically so it can carry on religious activities, James replies this may be true but is profoundly uninstructive, yielding no consequences for interpreting religion's meaning or value. In that sense, he says, religious life depends just as much on the spleen, pancreas, and kidneys, and the theory evaporates into a vague assertion of mind's dependence on body.
Chapter 96
How does James characterize the 'luxury in woe' and who illustrates it?
James says finding a luxury in woe is very common during adolescence. Marie Bashkirtseff illustrates it, writing that amid depression and suffering she still loves life, enjoys weeping and her despair, finds everything good and pleasant, and senses something inside her above her that is glad of it all—her body weeps while something higher rejoices.
Chapter 96

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What does Dr. Goddard conclude about mind-cure cures in his 1899 study?
Dr. H. H. Goddard, after wide study, concludes that cures by mind-cure exist but are in no respect different from those officially recognized in medicine as cures by suggestion. He holds that a vast amount of material shows the mind's powerful influence in disease, and that many failures only strengthen the argument, since striking successes must counterbalance them.
Chapter 97
How does Harnack describe Jesus's attitude toward sickness and evil?
Harnack argues Jesus felt about evil and disease much as mind-curers do. Jesus calls sickness sickness and health health, treats all wretchedness as dreadful and belonging to Satan's kingdom, never asks whether the sick deserve cure, never calls sickness a beneficent infliction, and points to casting out devils as the sense and seal of his mission.
Chapter 97
What three explanations of the mind-cure phenomenon does James list?
James lists the theistic explanation—divine grace creating a new nature once the old is sincerely given up; the pantheistic explanation, held by most mind-curers—the narrower private self merging into the wider self or spirit of the universe, one's own subconscious self, once mistrust and anxiety are removed; and the medico-materialistic explanation—simpler cerebral processes acting freely when higher ones are shunted out.
Chapter 97
What does James say mind-cure was a reaction against?
James suggests mind-cure might briefly be called a reaction against the religion of chronic anxiety that marked the earlier part of the century in evangelical circles of England and America. He notes works like Cautionary Verses for Children show how evangelical protestantism's muse, fixed on danger, had drifted from original gospel freedom.
Chapter 97

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How did the churches traditionally regard sickness, according to the chapter?
The chapter says churches have generally treated sickness as a visitation sent by God for our good—as chastisement, warning, or an opportunity to exercise virtue, and in the Catholic Church to earn "merit." A quoted Catholic writer calls illness the most excellent corporeal mortification, imposed directly by God, and says patience in a long illness is mortification's masterpiece. On this view disease should be submissively accepted and might even be blasphemous to wish away.
Chapter 98
What is the mind-cure movement's fundamental article of faith about disease?
The chapter states that in mind-cure circles the fundamental article of faith is that disease should never be accepted—it is wholly of the pit. God wants us to be absolutely healthy, and we should not tolerate ourselves on any lower terms. This contrasts sharply with the churchly view that disease should be submissively accepted. The chapter also mentions Dr. J. A. Dowie, a Scottish Baptist preacher whose "Leaves of Healing" were in their sixth volume in 1900.
Chapter 98
How does the chapter contrast Greek pessimism with the oriental and modern variety?
The chapter says the difference is that the Greeks had not discovered that the pathetic mood may be idealized and figure as a higher form of sensibility. Their spirit was too essentially masculine for pessimism to be elaborated or lengthily dwelt on in classic literature; they would have despised a life set wholly in a minor key. The discovery that the enduring emphasis may be laid on this world's pain and failure was reserved for races more complex and, so to speak, more feminine. Yet the Hellenes' outlook was still blackly pessimistic.
Chapter 98
What does the chapter say about the God that emerges from certain life experiences?
The chapter says the God of many men is little more than their court of appeal against the world's damnatory judgment on their failures. To our own consciousness there is usually a residuum of worth left after our sins are told off—our capacity to acknowledge and regret them is the germ of a better self in posse. But the world deals with us in actu, not in posse, and never takes account of this hidden germ. So we turn to the All-knower, who knows our bad but also this good, and who is just.
Chapter 98

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What does James say falling out of love has in common with falling in love?
The author argues that both may follow the same type: a latent process of unconscious preparation often precedes a sudden awakening to the fact that the mischief is irretrievably done. He offers a first-person narrative of a man who fell violently in love with a coquettish girl, secretly knew she was unfit to be his wife, and yet was consumed by feverish obsession.
Chapter 99
How does James describe the final trigger in a counter-conversion?
He compares it to the proverbial last straw on the camel's burden, or the touch of a needle that makes salt suddenly crystallize from a supersaturated fluid. A very small additional stimulus can overthrow the mind into a new equilibrium once preparation and incubation have gone far enough, as in Tolstoy's account of S., who stopped praying after one remark from his brother.
Chapter 99
What did Gourdon conclude about Augustine's garden conversion?
Gourdon analyzed Augustine's writings immediately after A.D. 386 and concluded that the Confessions account is premature. The garden crisis marked a definitive conversion from his former life, but it was to neo-platonic spiritualism and only a halfway stage toward Christianity. Gourdon holds that Augustine did not fully and radically embrace the latter until four years later.
Chapter 99
What does Emerson call the theological problems of youth?
Emerson says young people are diseased with problems of original sin, origin of evil, predestination, and the like. He claims these never presented a practical difficulty to any man and never darkened across any man's road who did not go out of his way to seek them. He calls them the soul's mumps, measles, and whooping-coughs.
Chapter 99

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How does James explain the sudden resolution of the divided self in the opening case?
James calls it an unusually clear example of two levels of personality, inconsistent in their dictates yet long balanced against each other, filling life with discord. At last, not gradually but in a sudden crisis, the unstable equilibrium is resolved, so unexpectedly that the writer describes it as if some outside power laid hold of him.
Chapter 100
What hypothesis does Starbuck offer for sudden changes of character?
Starbuck conceives all such sudden changes as results of special cerebral functions unconsciously developing until ready to play a controlling part, when they irrupt into conscious life. James says he seems right and will make as much use as he can of this hypothesis of subconscious incubation when treating sudden conversion.
Chapter 100
What warning does Jonathan Edwards give about conversion narratives?
Edwards argues a commonly accepted rule greatly influences how people form notions of their own experience. Their experience first appears a confused chaos, but they select parts resembling the expected steps, dwell on them until conspicuous, and neglect others until obscure, straining experience into conformity with an established scheme. Ministers dealing with such people tend to do the same.
Chapter 100
What does Finney emphasize in his conversion account?
Finney italicizes the volitional element: salvation seemed an offer to be accepted, requiring only his consent to give up sins and accept Christ. He vowed to accept it that day or die in the attempt, then struggled in the woods, unable to pray, until his pride was revealed and he cried out that he would not leave the place.
Chapter 100

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How does James describe the relation of self-surrender and new determination in conversion?
James cites Starbuck's view that self-surrender and new determination, though they seem like different experiences, are really the same thing: self-surrender sees the change in terms of the old self, while determination sees it in terms of the new. James frames this as a change of equilibrium, with new psychic energies moving toward the personal centre and old ones receding to the margin.
Chapter 101
What does James admit about the limits of subconscious incubation as an explanation?
James says candor obliges him to confess that some bursts into consciousness are not easily shown to result from prolonged subconscious incubation. He names cases like Mr. Bradley, M. Ratisbonne, possibly Colonel Gardiner and Saint Paul, which might instead be ascribed to a physiological nerve storm or, if useful and rational, to a mystical or theological hypothesis. He calls the subject really complex.
Chapter 101
What does James mean by calling some conversion 'light' experiences metaphorical?
In footnote 139 James says reports of sensorial photism shade into metaphorical accounts of new spiritual illumination. Brainerd explicitly denies seeing external brightness, describing instead a new inward apprehension of God. James also treats the Starbuck case of darkness being lit up during prayer, and the case of peace coming like a flash of light, as probably metaphorical rather than literal visual phenomena.
Chapter 101
How does James use Emerson's contrast between the 'regal' soul and Crump?
James quotes Emerson praising a soul whose acts are regal and graceful, saying one should not sourly prefer Crump with his grunting resistance to his native devils. James agrees but adds that Crump may really be the better Crump for his inner discords and second birth, and the once-born regal character may fall short of what he individually might be without some Crump-like capacity for compunction.
Chapter 101

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What does Starbuck say happens to the connection between higher and lower cerebral centres in conversion?
Starbuck describes conversion physiologically as a radical cutting off of the connection between higher and lower cerebral centres. The association-centres tied to spiritual life become severed from the lower ones. Correspondents report temptations still assailing them from without, but nothing within responding, or a wall of brass blocking Satan's darts. James accepts such functional exclusions must occur in the brain, but says introspectively their cause is simply the degree of spiritual excitement becoming sovereign.
Chapter 102
How does James use the many-sided solid analogy to explain mental revolutions?
James likens the mind to a many-sided solid that can lie flat on different surfaces. Pried up by a lever from surface A, it lingers unstably halfway, and if the lever stops it tumbles back or relapses under gravity. But if it rotates far enough that its centre of gravity passes beyond A, it falls onto surface B and stays permanently, immune to further pull from A's direction.
Chapter 102
What does James say the higher excitabilities chiefly give, and what can release it?
James argues the great thing the higher excitabilities give is courage, and that adding or subtracting a certain amount of it makes a different man and a different life. Various excitements let courage loose: trustful hope, inspiring example, love, and wrath. In some people courage is natively so high that mere danger triggers it, though for most men danger inhibits action. Skobeleff and Garibaldi are cited as danger-seeking examples.
Chapter 102
What does James say about fear as a converter of criminals, and what example illustrates indecision?
James argues great passions annul ordinary inhibitions of conscience, and conversely no criminal's impulse is so fixed that some other intense emotion cannot overpower it, with fear usually the most available. Fear stands for conscience and can be classed a 'higher affection'; belief in near death or judgment quickly puts one's moral house in order, which old-fashioned hell-fire Christianity exploited for repentance. Benjamin Constant illustrates the opposite: unable to give up anything, his all-round amiability makes his career hopeless.
Chapter 102

Section 1032 cards

In James's lever metaphor, what determines whether a new life becomes irreversible?
James compares emotional influences to a lever and old habits to gravity's initial pull. So long as the emotional influence fails to reach a certain pitch of efficacy, the changes it produces remain unstable and the man relapses into his original attitude. But when the new emotion attains a certain intensity, a critical point is passed and an irreversible revolution ensues, equivalent to producing a new nature.
Chapter 103
How does Towianski justify letting a muddy dog jump on him?
Towianski says the dog showed great fellow-feeling and joy at his recognition. Driving it off would wound its feelings and do it a moral injury—an offense not only to the dog but to all spirits on its level. The damage to his coat is nothing compared to the wrong of remaining indifferent to its friendship. He adds that we should lighten animals' condition and facilitate the union of all spirits.
Chapter 103

Section 1043 cards

What three steps does the small group in Starbuck's case claim entire salvation involves?
The woman belonged to a small group claiming that entire salvation involves three steps rather than two: conversion, sanctification, and a third called 'crucifixion' or 'perfect redemption.' This third step seems to relate to sanctification as sanctification relates to conversion. She said the Spirit told her to stop attending church and holiness meetings and stay in her room to be taught.
Chapter 104
What example of devotion does Vambéry describe in a Persian dervish?
Vambéry describes a dervish in Persia who vowed thirty years earlier to use his speech only to utter the name of his favorite, Ali. He spoke no other word to his wife, children, or friends, expressed all wants by repeating 'Ali,' and eventually raced through the streets shrieking 'Ali' and throwing his stick in the air. He was venerated everywhere as a saint.
Chapter 104
What circles did Suso mark out for himself, and what did they signify?
At the start of his interior life, after confession, Suso marked out three circles as a spiritual intrenchment. The first was his cell, chapel, and choir, where he felt completely secure. The second was the whole monastery up to the outer gate. The third was the gate itself, where he had to stand on guard; outside these circles he felt like a hunted wild animal needing all its cunning.
Chapter 104

Section 1054 cards

How does John G. Paton survive among hostile Melanesian cannibals, according to the chapter?
The chapter says Paton preserves a 'charmed life' through a victorious combination of non-resistance with personal authority, so that no one ever dares actually to strike him. Native converts inspired by him showed analogous virtue: a Christian chief and four companions approached a hostile village unarmed, caught or evaded thrown spears without returning them, and the heathen were overawed and listened to the Gospel.
Chapter 105
What austerities does Saint Teresa report Saint Peter practiced?
Teresa says Peter passed forty years sleeping no more than an hour and a half a day, always on his knees or feet, snatching sleep sitting with his head against a piece of wood. His cell was only four and a half feet long, he never raised his hood or wore shoes, wore scant sackcloth, sometimes ate once in three days or went eight days without food, and kept extreme poverty and mortification.
Chapter 105
What does Tennyson say about his waking trance experiences?
Tennyson reports a kind of waking trance he had frequently since boyhood when alone, induced by repeating his own name silently. Individuality seemed to dissolve into boundless being—not confused but the clearest, surest state, beyond words, where death seemed almost laughable and loss of personality seemed no extinction but the only true life. He told Tyndall it was no delusion but transcendent wonder with absolute clearness of mind.
Chapter 105
What does the chapter say about the vanity of saints?
Quoting Ramakrishna, the chapter notes that the vanities of all others may die out, but the vanity of a saint regarding his own sainthood is hard indeed to wear away. Elsewhere the author argues that 'daft' saints inspire a queer aversion, but when comparing saints with strong men one must choose individuals on the same intellectual level—the under-witted strong man being the bully or hooligan.
Chapter 105

Section 1064 cards

What does James suggest about the origin of Hegel's sense of a perfected Being?
The author argues that Hegel's sense of a perfected Being, with all otherness soaked up into itself, likely came from the prominence in his consciousness of mystical moods of the kind most persons keep subliminal. James says this notion is thoroughly characteristic of the mystical level, and that the task of making it articulate was surely set to Hegel's intellect by mystical feeling.
Chapter 106
How does Xenos Clark describe the anesthetic revelation's relation to time and logic?
Clark calls the revelation non-emotional and utterly flat. He says it shows the present is pushed on by the past and sucked forward by the future's vacuity, all precedence and presupposition, so questioning is forever too late. Logic finds in life no propulsion, only momentum; the revelation adds that it goes because it is and was a-going. At recovery from anesthesia one glimpses the eternal process just starting.
Chapter 106
What does Blood say the Anesthetic Revelation teaches about purpose and safety?
Blood describes it as initiation into the Immemorial Mystery of the Open Secret of Being, the Inevitable Vortex of Continuity, which knows no end, beginning, or purpose, and is not for love or hate, joy or sorrow. It inspires exultation rather than fear and a sense of central safety: the Kingdom is within, all days are judgment days, but there is no climacteric purpose of eternity nor any scheme of the whole.
Chapter 106
In the English woman's ether account, what did she understand about her suffering?
She dreamed of a great Being traveling on a path of lightning made of innumerable spirits, herself among them, bending his course by means of her hurt. At the acutest point she saw things she later forgot, things no one could remember while retaining sanity. Waking, she felt she had served God more distinctly and purely than ever before, as the means of his achieving something, to the exact extent of her capacity for suffering.
Chapter 106

Section 1074 cards

In the ether dream, what answer explains the absence of God's love?
The dreamer hears an answer saying "Knowledge and Love are One, and the measure is suffering." He had wondered why, going so deep, he saw only God's relentlessness and nothing of the love of God. He gives the words as they came to him, and afterward wakes into what seemed a dream world compared with the reality he was leaving.
Chapter 107
What did the dreamer conclude about the price paid by the suffering seer or genius?
He glimpsed the eternal necessity and vicariousness of suffering, the veiled and incommunicable nature of the worst sufferings, and the passivity of genius as instrumental and defenseless. He also saw the impossibility of discovery without its price, and finally the excess of what the suffering seer or genius pays over what his generation gains, illustrated by the lac-of-rupees parable.
Chapter 107
How does Miss Ethel D. Puffer explain the loss of the sense of self in rapturous experiences?
James cites her essay The Loss of Personality, which attributes the vanishing sense of self and the feeling of immediate unity with the object to the disappearance, in these rapturous experiences, of the motor adjustments that habitually intermediate between the constant background of consciousness (the Self) and the object in the foreground. James says her account illuminates psychological conditions but fails to explain the rapture or revelation-value.
Chapter 107
According to James, what is the essential mark of mystical states, and what phenomena does he set aside?
James states that consciousness of illumination is the essential mark of mystical states. He deliberately omits visual and auditory hallucinations, verbal and graphic automatisms, levitation, stigmatization, and healing of disease, since these have no essential mystical significance: they occur without any consciousness of illumination, often in persons of non-mystical mind.
Chapter 107

Section 1084 cards

How does James argue order and disorder relate to human perception of the world?
The author argues that order and disorder are purely human inventions. We are interested in certain useful, aesthetic, or moral arrangements and selectively work over the world's contents, finding orderly patterns amid chaos. He illustrates with throwing a thousand beans at random and eliminating some to leave almost any proposed geometric pattern, noting infinitely more things are 'unadapted' than 'adapted' in the world.
Chapter 108
What is Max Nordau's explanation of mysticism, and how does James respond?
Nordau seeks to undermine all mysticism by explaining sudden perception of hidden significance as arising from abundant uncompleted associations in a degenerate brain, giving a vague sense of leading further without definite useful consequence. James calls this plausible for certain feelings of significance, but argues the higher mystical flights, with their positiveness and abruptness, are surely not such merely negative products, and more reasonably ascribed to inroads from the subconscious life.
Chapter 108
What does the design argument invoke to avoid pessimistic consequences, according to James?
James notes that any state of things, even the ruins of the Lisbon earthquake, could be teleologically interpreted as divinely planned. To avoid such pessimistic consequences and save its beneficent designer, the design argument invokes two restrictive principles: first, a physical principle that Nature's forces tend only to disorder and destruction, which James says recent biology makes more improbable; second, an anthropomorphic principle that no arrangement 'disorderly' for us could have been designed, which he calls a mere assumption.
Chapter 108
What does Fielding's work say about creeds in relation to religion?
James cites H. Fielding's The Hearts of Men, which argues for the secondary character of intellectual constructions and the primacy of feeling and instinct in founding religious beliefs. Fielding says creeds are the grammar of religion, as grammar is to speech: words express our wants, and grammar is theory formed afterwards. Speech never proceeded from grammar but the reverse; as speech changes from unknown causes, grammar must follow.
Chapter 108

Section 1094 cards

Why does James say the physico-theological argument fails as proof?
James argues that the facts of order on which the physico-theological argument rests can easily be interpreted as arbitrary human products. This does not constitute an argument against God, but it means the argument for God fails to be a knock-down proof of his existence. It will convince only those who already believe in him on other grounds.
Chapter 109
What does James say about arguing hell fire from pure logic?
James notes that pragmatically God's most important attribute is his punitive justice, but asks who would dare maintain that hell fire or its equivalent is rendered certain by pure logic. Theology has largely based the doctrine on revelation and increasingly substitutes conventional criminal-law ideas for a priori reason. James finds it incredible that the universe's beams and rafters were laid in technicalities of criminality, and says such argument weakens religion.
Chapter 109
Why does James not answer Royce's arguments in these lectures?
James calls Royce's arguments for a concrete individual Soul of the world the most persuasive he knows, citing Religious Aspect of Philosophy, The Conception of God, and The World and the Individual. He admits the momentary evasion: the lectures are cast in a popular mould with no room for subtle metaphysical discussion. For tactical purposes it suffices to note that no religious philosophy has actually convinced the mass of thinkers. He hopes a later volume may address Royce technically.
Chapter 109
How does James contrast characters regarding confusion and stimulation?
James says the intellectual difference is practically as important as the analogous difference in character. Some characters resent confusion and must live in purity, consistency, and simplicity. Others require superabundance, over-pressure, stimulation, and many superficial relations. He notes some men would suffer a syncope if all their debts were paid and duties fulfilled, finding a day stripped so bare appalling; similarly some require amounts of ease, elegance, and social recognition that others would see as lying and sophistication.
Chapter 109

Section 1104 cards

What does James say about classifying someone as once-born or twice-born?
The author argues the distinction is often arbitrary: how long one drinks the consciousness of evil, and when one short-circuits it, are matters of amount and degree. He holds the twice-born outlook is wider and completer, since evil is not evaded but sublated in higher religious cheer, yet both types reach union with the divine with the same practical significance.
Chapter 110
How does the Mormon letter describe the means of revelation to the Church President?
A Mormon correspondent writes that the President claims recent revelations from heaven. These come through dreams of sleep or waking visions of the mind, by voices without visional appearance, or by actual manifestations of the Holy Presence before the eye. The Church holds that God has come in person and spoken to its prophet, seer, and revelator.
Chapter 110
What does James's friend report about automatic writing and psychophysical theory?
A first-rate psychologist subject to graphic automatism tells James the sense of independent actuation in his arm is so distinct that he abandons his prior theory that we have no feeling of the discharge downwards of voluntary motor-centres. He reasons we must normally have such a feeling, or the sense of its absence would not be so striking.
Chapter 110
What does Christian Wolff's account of the sun illustrate for James?
Wolff expounds the sun's utility as evidence of God's design: it orders earthly conditions so creatures may inhabit the surface, gives daylight for work and for beasts to find food, lets us see near and far things, marks midday for setting clocks, and underlies sun-dials. James cites this as baby-like faith in Nature's personal, human character.
Chapter 110

Section 1114 cards

According to Wolff, what uses does water serve in human life?
Wolff says water is the universal drink of man and beasts, and that artificial drinks like beer and wine could not be made without it. He also notes its use in cleaning household utensils and clothing, and that grindstones must be kept wet. He concludes God made water as a means to make the earth an excellent dwelling for men and beasts.
Chapter 111
How does Derham defend hills and valleys as beneficial to mankind?
Derham argues hills suit some weak constitutions while valleys suit others, letting the feeble shift abode for health. Hills also screen against cold northern and easterly winds and reflect sunbeams. Finally, hills are the source of fountains and rivers; without them water would stagnate, stink, and drown land. He calls them a noble work of the Creator.
Chapter 111
What does Van Helmont's weapon-salve theory claim cures a wound?
Van Helmont holds that if a bloodstained weapon or a splinter dipped in the patient's blood is immersed in the ointment while the wound is bound up, the wound heals. The blood on the weapon contains the wounded man's spirit, which the ointment rouses to cure the blood in his body by drawing out the dolorous impression. He credits the bull's fat's power to the bull's posthumous revenge.
Chapter 111
What does James say about the pre-seventeenth-century mode of explaining nature?
James says this mode of thought prevailed until the seventeenth century, citing Aristotle's explanation of the lever by the miraculous character of circular motion, Herodotus on the sun moving south because cold drives it over Libya, and Augustine's wonder at chaff, fire, and charcoal. He argues such aspects as naturalness, sympathies, and destructiveness were inevitably how things first fastened human attention.
Chapter 111

Section 1124 cards

How does James suggest the conflict between scientific and religious facts might end?
The author argues the divorce between scientist facts and religious facts may not be eternal. He notes that hypnotism gave scientists a framework to accept healings as "suggestion," and possession as "hystero-demonopathy." He suggests final human opinion might revert to a more personal style, following a spiral rather than a straight line, making the impersonal scientific view possibly a temporary eccentricity rather than a final triumph.
Chapter 112
What does Ribot say religion tends to become, according to James?
Ribot describes religion's evaporation as the growing predominance of the rational intellectual element and the fading of the emotional element. What survives is a vague respect for the unknowable x, a relic of fear, and attraction toward the ideal, a relic of love. In short, religion tends to turn into religious philosophy—the one a theoretic construction of ratiocination, the other the living work of inspired persons.
Chapter 112
What does James say is the undifferentiated germ of all the higher faiths?
James identifies a vague expansive impulse—readiness for great things and the sense that the world's importance and wonderfulness suit their production. He says trust in our dreams of ambition, faith in our country's expansive destinies, and faith in God's providence all spring from the onrush of sanguine impulses and the sense of the exceedingness of the possible over the real.
Chapter 112
How does James criticize attempts to make religion a purely conservative social force?
James says such attempts, like those of Professor Baldwin and Mr. H. R. Marshall, show a failure to recognize that the stronghold of religion lies in individuality. He also criticizes letting religion evaporate into intellectual terms, asking whether martyrs would have sung in flames for a mere "inevitable inference," and notes that original religious men like Saint Francis, Luther, and Behmen were usually enemies of the intellect's pretension to meddle with religious things.
Chapter 112

Section 1134 cards

What does Vivekananda say about purity and perfection in the Advaita teaching?
Vivekananda teaches that one is not to become pure, since one is pure already, and not to become perfect, since one is that already. Every good thought or act simply tears the veil, letting the purity, Infinity, and God behind manifest. Knowledge is described as a lower step, a degradation, because "We are It already."
Chapter 113
How does the spiritualist correspondent in the Flournoy Collection describe what spiritualism did for her?
She says spiritualism saved her, revealed at a critical moment, teaching her to detach from worldly things and hope in things to come. Through it she sees even the most criminal and those who hurt her as undeveloped brothers owed assistance, love, and forgiveness. She learned to lose her temper over nothing, despise no one, and pray for all.
Chapter 113
How does the Higher Law passage describe the shift to a higher plane of consciousness?
It calls the shift a distinct act of consciousness, not vague, twilight, or semi-conscious, not ecstasy, trance, Vedantic super-consciousness, self-hypnotization, or hypnotism. It is a calm, sane, rational, common-sense shifting from sense-perception to seership, from thought of self to a higher realm. One can compel a nervous lower self to be calm by the exercise of power.
Chapter 113
What criticism does James make of the Absolute's inability to do piecework?
James argues that transcendental idealism's Absolute can only work with an entire world, the smallest unit it can handle, whereas finite minds need help at single points within this world. Our difficulties and ideals are piecemeal, but the Absolute can do no piecework, so it cannot lift any particular weight or private burden.
Chapter 113

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Text used: Project Gutenberg eBook #621 (Public domain in the United States). Generated from the full text; cards paraphrase the source.

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All questions and answers

What two orders of inquiry does James distinguish concerning religion?

Why does James say he will draw on common, familiar documents?

Why did the book's plan change from two courses to twenty lectures on one subject?

How does James answer readers who fear his examples caricature religion?

What two orders of question does James distinguish in studying religion?

Why does James study religious geniuses rather than conventional believers?

What pathological traits does James attribute to religious leaders, and with what example?

How does James answer the charge that analyzing religion biologically degrades it?

Why does James say pleading organic causation against spiritual value is illogical?

On what two grounds does James say we actually judge states of mind superior?

What does James mean by the Philip drunk and Philip sober example?

What three criteria does James propose for judging religious phenomena?

Why does James call medical materialists 'belated dogmatists'?

How does Saint Teresa distinguish genuine visions from diabolical deception?

Why does James think studying morbid conditions helps us understand normal mental life?

What does James say happens when superior intellect combines with psychopathic temperament?

How does James treat the term 'religious sentiment'?

Why does James refuse to begin with a precise definition of religion's essence?

How does William James define religion for the purposes of his lectures?

What two branches divide the religious field, according to James?

Why does James claim personal religion is more fundamental than theology or ecclesiasticism?

How does James handle religious systems like Buddhism that lack a personal God?

Why does James hesitate to call every total reaction on life a religion?

What does James say Emerson leaves undecided about the universe's soul?

Why does James call godless creeds like Emersonian optimism and Buddhistic pessimism religions?

What distinguishes religious sadness from mere melancholy, according to James?

How does James define 'divine' for the purposes of these lectures?

Why does James prefer to study only extreme religious cases?

What does James say distinguishes religion from pure morality in accepting the universe?

How does James contrast Stoic and Christian acceptance of the universe?

How does James distinguish the Christian writer's impulse from Marcus Aurelius's?

According to the Theologia Germanica, what is true repentance and its outcome?

What does James call the practically important differentia of religion?

How does James contrast moralistic and Christian spurning of sick-room attitudes?

According to James, what distinguishes religious happiness from ordinary happiness?

Why does James criticize Havelock Ellis's definition of religion?

What does James's image of Guido Reni's St. Michael painting illustrate?

Why does James prefer to study religion's most extreme examples first?

According to Kant, what practical meaning do words like God, soul, and immortality have?

What does James mean by the 'sense of reality' in human consciousness?

How does James use the bar-of-iron analogy to illustrate belief?

What is Plato's 'true order of going' toward absolute Beauty?

What did the first correspondent feel on the night after his tactile hallucination?

How did the correspondent's sense-of-presence experiences differ in emotional quality?

According to James, in what form do many religious persons possess the objects of their belief?

What did the scientific man's account show about the feeling of reality, and what happened to it over time?

In the clergyman's account, what did the hilltop experience do to his faith and his early conception of God?

In the Swiss writer's account, what were his physical and mental conditions, and what did he insist about the experience's sensory content?

What does James say about the convincingness of feelings of God's reality?

How does James define rationalism and its four required grounds for belief?

According to James, how does rationalism compare to intuition in founding belief?

What examples of the chronic sense of God's presence does James give from Starbuck's collection?

According to James, what is the relationship between instinct and reasoned argument in religion?

Does James claim the subconscious and non-rational should hold primacy in religion?

What two moods does James say a man's religion involves, and how do they vary?

How does James contrast the sombre and sanguine onlookers' views of religious peace?

How does Francis W. Newman describe the 'once-born' in their approach to God?

According to Edward Everett Hale, what advantage did his simple religious upbringing give him?

How does Dr. Bucke characterize Walt Whitman's temperament and emotional range?

What does the author argue about the once-born temperament and its limits?

How did early Greeks regard good and evil, per James?

How does James defend systematic healthy-mindedness from the charge of dishonesty?

What shift within Christianity does James describe over the past fifty years?

How does James say evolutionism functions religiously for the healthy-minded?

What does the sixty-seven-year-old correspondent say about sin and religion?

What is the Mind-cure movement and what does James credit it with?

How does the mind-cure's view of the lower nature's vice differ from Christian theology?

How does the mind-cure define 'fearthought' and 'worry'?

How does the mind-cure's pantheistic view of man's higher nature differ from ordinary Christianity?

In the first correspondent's account, what does she claim about fatigue and illness?

What did the second correspondent say was the one thing that impressed her most?

How does the second correspondent describe bodily health in relation to the inward attitude?

How does James characterize mind-cure's treatment of evil compared with philosophers and Evangelicals?

What slogan summarizes the mind-cure system's optimism, and what does it claim thoughts do?

How does James compare the mind-cure movement to the Lutheran and Wesleyan movements?

What anti-moralistic method does James say succeeds where conscious effort fails?

What does James say about the word "suggestion" as an explanation of mind-cure methods?

What makes an idea suggestive to an individual, according to the chapter?

What happens to a religion's suggestive power once it becomes official and established?