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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 399. 



philosophic theism or in confutation of its 

 adversaries. Mr. James writes: *In all sad 

 sincerity I think we must conclude that the 

 attempt to demonstrate by purely intellectual 

 processes the truth of direct religious experi- 

 ence is absolutely hopeless.' He throws him- 

 self instead upon that experience itseK, de- 

 scribing its vital richness and variety and 

 analyzing its nature with his well-known gifts 

 of psychologic insight and of style. The aim 

 is to keep as close as possible to the recorded 

 facts of personal religious feeling, especially 

 in its most acute and unprompted phases, since 

 there only do we study the power of religion 

 at its source. To this end ecclesiastical and 

 other social forms are left on one side. To 

 this end too the pages teem with extracts from 

 autobiography. Catholic, Protestant, and non- 

 Christian, illustrative of varied forms of spir- 

 itual life. The learning is immense, and the 

 profusion of vital and memorable passages 

 cited makes the volume a treasury in this 

 kind. The author stands by as interpreter, 

 comparer and analyst, and the extracts are 

 woven into a somewhat carefully planned pro- 

 gression of chapters. But he comes not only 

 as a psychologist to describe and classify, but 

 as a philosopher to judge. Indeed the psy- 

 chologist could hardly seize the nature of the 

 religious sentiment without some estimate of 

 its service and meaning in human nature. 

 But here too his appeal is solely to experience. 

 'The religion of healthy-mindedness,' the re- 

 ligion of conflict and remorse, conversion, the 

 asceticism of the saintly life, mysticism, dog- 

 matic theology, rittial, confession and prayer 

 are judged by their fruits alone. Thirty years 

 ago Matthew Arnold laid it dovsm that the 

 basis of religion must be sought in the veri- 

 fiable facts of present human nature and life. 

 Mr. James's attitude is (with one considerable 

 reservation) similar, but it results in a less 

 dry and moralistic conception of that basis. 

 Arnold (though not trained himself in the sci- 

 entific school) wrote in days of belligerent 

 science and saved but little from the siege. 

 The present work, coming as it does from a 

 master of contemporary psychology, marks a 

 point where science has found its way into too 

 many recesses of human nature to remain in 



a militant niood toward any of the great pro- 

 pensities whose roots it finds there. Arnold 

 almost confined himself to the moral element 

 in religion, but we have here an interpretation 

 of what mxist be more broadly called the spir- 

 itual. 



To some critics, no doubt, the book will 

 hardly seem to invite with any emphasis the 

 term scientific; nor even the term philosoph- 

 ical. Not to dwell upon the luiconventional 

 play of wit and imagination in the style, an 

 author who makes so little effort to maintain 

 a systematic rigor of treatment, and who 

 deliberately classes himself as a 'piecemeal 

 supernaturalist,' has chosen, it might seem, 

 to quit the ways of contemporary research. 

 And his supernaturalism might make even a 

 limited comparison with Arnold seem inept. 

 But indeed both what there is of supernatural- 

 ism in the book (and when one tracks it reso- 

 lutely through the various qualifications it 

 proves a somewhat modest quantity) and the 

 indifference to systematic forms, which is in- 

 deed carried to a fault, are connected with 

 the author's conscience and candor as a 

 seeker after fact. He has an evident dread of 

 summary divisions and pert generalizations 

 that 'substitute a rude simplicity for the com- 

 plexity of nature,' and whilst handling and 

 examining such as have been propounded he 

 refuses to be restricted by them. Rejecting 

 the a priori methods of some of his prede- 

 cessors in the Gifford chair, he has more than 

 a usual share of the restless spirit of induc- 

 tion, and will not close the gates whilst but 

 ninety-and-nine of the facts lie safely in the 

 fold. It is the same demand for reality and 

 impatience of formulas thinner than the fact 

 that drives him into what he quaintly calls 

 his ' crass supernaturalism.' " Religion, wher- 

 ever it is an active thing, involves a belief in 

 ideal presences [i. e., exalted but real pres- 

 ences] and a belief that in our prayerful com- 

 munion with them work is done and some- 

 thing real comes to pass." It is the fear of 

 'explaining away,' the distaste for 'mere' and 

 'nothing but,' the sheer fidelity to the spiritual 

 consciousness of which he is interpreter, that 

 forces him, as he conceives, to regard a refer- 

 ence to the supernatural as essential to com- 



