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The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: book review





The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902, this edition 2004) is a series of 20 lectures on ‘natural religion’ that psychologist William James conducted at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland from 1901-1902. 

Brother of the writer Henry James, William James (1842-1910) defined 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.’

James, therefore, defined religion, not by the church that people attend, but by what people do in their everyday life. For James, religion was not a ‘single quality’ but a ‘group of qualities’ that form actions. The lectures that form this book, although with radical views at the time, was considered one of the best works of non-fiction in the 20th century for its intellectual thoughts on religious tolerance and respect. 

The 20 lectures cover topics, such as: (1) religion and neurology, (2) circumscription of the topic, (3) the reality of the unseen, (4 & 5) the religion of healthy mindedness, (6 & 7) the sick soul, (8) the divided self, and the process of its unification, (9) conversion, (10) conversion – concluded, (11, 12 & 13) saintliness, (14 & 15) the value of saintliness, (16 & 17) mysticism, (18) philosophy, (19) other characteristics, and (20) conclusions. 

James draws on a number of sources, studies and themes, including a sense of the divince presence, mystical experiences, pathological unhappiness, character changes, characteristics of the faith-state, saintly life, democracy and humanity, fanaticism, cosmic consciousness, meditation, science of religions, religious leaders, and the pluralistic hypothesis.

From the Quaker to the Christian, from Immanuel Kant to Walt Whitman, from the abstract to the absolute, William James ends with theoretical and practical conclusions. For example, he looks for the commonalities: ‘there is a certian uniform deliverance in which religions all appear to meet.’

This is an interesting philosophical and psychological account of religious tolerance and social cohesion, written over a hundred years ago, from the author’s circuitous lifelong pursuit of the examination of a study in human nature. 


MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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