WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy cover

The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy

Chapter 53: Transcriber's notes:
By William James
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

Essays, Letters & SpeechesPhilosophy & EthicsReligion/Spirituality

About This Book

A collection of philosophical essays argues for a permissive account of religious faith and practical belief, defending the right to adopt beliefs when evidence is inconclusive but the decision is a living, forced, and momentous option. It develops a radical empiricist stance that treats monism as a hypothesis and accepts pluralism and irreducible givenness in experience. Several pieces examine the psychology and ethics of belief, critique strict evidentialism and pure rationalism, and propose pragmatic standards for assessing religious and moral hypotheses by their practical consequences. Other essays address issues of determinism, reason's limits, and the interplay between intellectual inquiry and personal commitment.


NAKED, the, 281.

Natural theology, 40-4.

Nature, 20, 41-4, 56.

Negation, as used by Hegel, 273.

Newman, 10.

Nitrous oxide, 294.

Nonentity, 72.


OBJECTIVE evidence, 13, 15, 16.

Obligation, 192-7.

Occult phenomena, 300; examples of, 323.

Omar Khayam, 160.

Optimism, 60, 102, 163.

Options offered to belief, 3, 11, 27.

Origin of moral judgments, 186-8.

'Other,' in Hegel, 283.


PARSIMONY, law of, 132.

Partaking, 268, 270, 275, 291.

Pascal's wager, 5, 11.

Personality, 324, 327.

Pessimism, 39, 40, 47, 60, 100, 101, 161, 167.

Philosophy, 65; depends on personal

demands, 93; makes world unreal,

39; seeks unification, 67-70; the

ultimate, 110; its contradictions, 16.

Physiology, its prestige, 112.

Piper, Mrs., 314, 319.

Plato, 268

Pluralism, vi, 151, 178, 192, 264, 267.

Positivism, 54, 108

Possibilities, 151, 181-2, 292, 294.

Postulates, 91-2.

Powers, our powers as congruous with the world, 86.

Providence, 180.

Psychical research, what it has accomplished, 299-327;

Society for, 303, 305, 325.

Pugnacity, 49, 51.


QUESTIONS, three, in Ethics, 185.


RATIONALISM, 12, 30.

Rationality, the sentiment of, 63-110;

limits of theoretic, 65-74; mystical,

74; practical, 82-4; postulates of, 152.


Rational order of world, 118, 125, 147.

Reflex action and theism, 111-144.

Reflex action defined, 113; it refutes gnosticism, 140-1.

Regret, judgments of, 159.

Religion, natural, 52; of humanity, 198.

Religious hypothesis, 25, 28, 51.

Religious minds, 40.

Renan, 170, 172.

Renouvier, 143.

Risks of belief or disbelief, ix, 26; rules for minimizing, 94.

Romantic view of world, 324.

Romanticism, 172-3.

Rousseau, 4, 33, 87.

Ruskin, 37.


SALTER, 62.

Scepticism, 12, 23, 109.

Scholasticism, 13.

Schopenhauer, 72, 169.

Science, 10, 21; its recency, 52-4;

due to peculiar desire, 129-132, 147;

its disbelief of the occult, 317-320;

its negation of personality, 324-6;

cannot decide question of determinism, 152.

Science of Ethics, 208-210.

Selection of great men, 226.

Sentiment of rationality, 63.

Seriousness, 86.

Shakespeare, 32, 235.

Sidgwick, 303, 307.

Sigwart, 120, 148.

Society for psychical research, 303; its 'Proceedings,' 305, 325.

Sociology, 259.

Solitude, moral, 191.

Space, 265.

Spencer, 168, 218, 232-235, 246, 251, 260.

Stephen, L., 1.

Stephen, Sir J., 1, 30, 212.

Stoics, 274.

Strenuous mood, 211, 213.

Subjectivism, 165, 170.

'Subliminal self,' 315, 321.

Substance, 80.

Suicide, 38, 50, 60.

System in philosophy, 13, 185, 199.


TELEPATHY, 10, 309.

Theism, and reflex action, 111-144.

Theism, 127, 134-6; see 'God.'

Theology, natural, 41; Calvinistic, 45.

Theoretic faculty, 128.

Thought-transference, 309.

Thomson, 35-7, 45, 46.

Toleration, 30.

Tolstoi, 188.

'Totality,' the principle of, 277.

Triadic structure of mind, 123.

Truth, criteria of, 15; and error, 18; moral, 190-1.


UNITARIANS, 126, 133.

Unknowable, the, 68, 81.

Universe = M + x, 101; its rationality, 125, 137.

Unseen world, 51, 54, 56, 61.

Utopias, 168.


VALUE, judgments of, 103.

Variations, in heredity, etc., 225, 249.

Vaudois, 48.

Veddah, 258.

Verification of theories, 95, 105-8.

Vivisection, 58.


WALDENSES, 47-9.

Wallace, 239, 304,

Whitman, 33, 64, 74.

Wordsworth, 60.

World, its ambiguity, 76; the invisible,

51, 54, 56; two orders of, 118.

Worth, judgments of, 103.

Wright, 52.


X., Miss, 314.


ZOLA, 172.

Zöllner, 15.




By the Same Author


THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY.
2 vols. 8vo. New York: Henry Holt & Co. London;
Macmillan & Co. 1890

PSYCHOLOGY: BRIEFER COURSE (TEXT BOOK).
12mo. New York: Henry Holt & Co. London:
Macmillan & Co. 1892.

THE WILL TO BELIEVE, AND OTHER ESSAYS
IN POPULAR PHILOSOPHY.
12mo. New York, London. Bombay and Calcutta:
Longmans, Green & Co. 1897.

HUMAN IMMORTALITY: TWO SUPPOSED
OBJECTIONS TO THE DOCTRINE.
16mo. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1898.

TALKS TO TEACHERS ON PSYCHOLOGY: AND
TO STUDENTS ON SOME OF LIFE'S IDEALS.
12mo. New York: Henry Holt & Co. London,
Bombay and Calcutta: Longmans, Green & Co. 1899.

THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE:
A STUDY IN HUMAN NATURE.
Gifford Lectures delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-1902.
8vo. New York, London, Bombay and Calcutta:
Longmans, Green & Co. 1902.

PRAGMATISM: A NEW NAME FOR SOME OLD
WAYS OF THINKING: POPULAR LECTURES ON PHILOSOPHY.
New York, London, Bombay and Calcutta:
Longmans, Green & Co. 1907.

A PLURALISTIC UNIVERSE: HIBBERT
LECTURES AT MANCHESTER COLLEGE ON THE
PRESENT SITUATION IN PHILOSOPHY.
New York, London, Bombay, and Calcutta:
Longmans, Green & Co. 1909.

THE MEANING OF TRUTH; A SEQUEL TO "PRAGMATISM."
New York, London, Bombay, and Calcutta;
Longmans, Green & Co. 1909.

THE LITERARY REMAINS OF HENRY JAMES
Edited, with an Introduction, by WILLIAM JAMES.
With Portrait. Crown 8vo. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Co. 1885.





Transcriber's notes:

Page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. They have been located where page breaks occurred in the original book, in accordance with Project Gutenberg's FAQ-V-99. For its Index, a page number has been placed only at the start of that section. In the HTML version of this book, page numbers are placed in the left margin.

Footnotes are indicated by numbers enclosed in square brackets, e.g. [2]. They have been renumbered sequentially and moved to the end of their respective chapters.