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Varieties of Religious Experience
A Study in Human Nature
CENTENARY EDITION

First published in 1902, The Varieties of Religious Experience initiated the psycho-
logical study of religion, paving the way for Freud and Jung as well as for clinical and
paranormal branches of psychology. Written with humour and erudition, its theories
of conversion, saintliness, ecstasy and mysticism continue to provoke controversy
and enquiry. The book remains the best introduction to James’s thought, demon-
strating his characteristic insistence upon the importance of personal experience and
his almost devotional respect for the mysteries of the human mind. Richly illustrated
with personal accounts of belief and possession, intoxication and near-death experi-
ence, it is of central importance not simply to an understanding of religions, but to
modern psychology and psychiatric medicine.

The Routledge Centenary Edition, entirely reset from the original 1902 edition,
is prefaced with a specially commissioned foreword by the author’s grandson,
Micky James, and by new introductions from James specialists Eugene Taylor and
Jeremy Carrette. It also includes a new expanded index.

William James (1842–1910) physician, psychologist, and philosopher, was a founder
of American experimental psychology, and pioneer in psychical research, experi-
mental psychotherapeutics, and the psychology of religion. He launched C.S.
Peirce’s pragmatism, the first uniquely American philosophy to have international
consequences. His younger brother was Henry Janees, the novelist.

Eugene Taylor is an Executive Faculty member at Saybrook Graduate School and
Research Centre, Lecturer on Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and Senior
Psychologist on the Psychiatry Service at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He
was the 1983 William James Lecturer on the Varieties of Religious Experience at
Harvard Divinity School, and is the author of William James on Exceptional Mental
States (Scribner’s, 1982); the award-winning William James on Consciousness
Beyond the Margin (Princeton, 1996); and a co-editor of Pure Experience: The
Response to William James (Thommes/ Routledge, 1996).

Jeremy Carrette lectures win religious studies at the University of Stirling, and
has written extensively on the psychology of religion. He is the author of Foucault
and Religion: Spiritual Corporality and Political Spirituality (Routledge, 2000) and
editor of Religion and Culture by Michel Foucault (Manchester/ Routledge, 1999).

H

London and New York

Varieties of Religious
Experience
A Study in Human Nature

CENTENARY EDITION

William James

with a foreword by Micky James
and new introductions by
Eugene Taylor and Jeremy Carrette

First published 1902 by Longmans, Green, and Co., New York

This edition first published 2002
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

Foreword © 2002 Micky James
Editorial matter and selection © 2002 Eugene Taylor and Jeremy Carrette
This edition © 2002 Routledge

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISB N 0-415-27809-0

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.

ISBN 0-203-39847-5 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-39936-6 (Adobe eReader Format)
(Print Edition)

Contents

Foreword to the Centenary Edition by Micky James Page xi
Editors’ preface by Eugene Taylor and Jeremy Carrette xiii
Introduction by Eugene Taylor: The Spiritual Roots of James’s

Varieties of Religious Experience xv
Introduction by Jeremy Carrette: The Return to James:

, Religion and the Amnesia of Neuroscience xxxix

Preface from the 1902 Edition 5

THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
BY WILLIAM JAMES

LECTURE I

RELIGION AND NEUROLOGY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Introduction: the course is not anthropological, but deals with per-

sonal documents, 1. Questions of fact and questions of value, 4. In point
of fact, the religious are often neurotic, 6. Criticism of medical materi-
alism, which condemns religion on that account, 10. Theory that religion
has a sexual origin refuted, 11. All states of mind are neurally condi-
tioned, 14. Their significance must be tested not by their origin but by
the value of their fruits, 15. Three criteria of value; origin useless as
a criterion, 18. Advantages of the psychopathic temperament when a
superior intellect goes with it, 22; especially for the religious life, 24.

LECTURE II

CIRCUMSCRIPTION OF THE TOPIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Futility of simple definitions of religion, 26. No one specific “religious

sentiment,” 27. Institutional and personal religion, 28. We confine our-
selves to the personal branch, 29. Definition of religion for the purpose
of these lectures, 31. Meaning of the term “divine,” 31. The divine is

what prompts solemn reactions, 38. Impossible to make our defini-
tions sharp, 39. We must study the more extreme cases, 40. Two ways of
accepting the universe, 41. Religion is more enthusiastic than philos-
ophy, 45. Its characteristic is enthusiasm in solemn emotion, 48. Its
ability to overcome unhappiness, 50. Need of such a faculty from the
biological point of view, 51.

LECTURE III

THE REALITY OF THE UNSEEN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Percepts versus abstract concepts, 53. Influence of the latter on belief,

54. Kant’s theological Ideas, 55. We have a sense of reality other than
that given by the special senses, 58. Examples of “sense of presence,” 59.
The feeling of unreality, 63. Sense of a divine presence: examples, 65.
Mystical experiences: examples, 69. Other cases of sense of God’s pres-
ence, 70. Convincingness of unreasoned experience, 72. Inferiority of
rationalism in establishing belief, 73. Either enthusiasm or solemnity
may preponderate in the religious attitude of individuals, 75.

LECTURES IV AND V

THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY-MINDEDNESS . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Happiness is man’s chief concern, 78. “Once-born” and “twice-born”

characters, 80. Walt Whitman, 84. Mixed nature of Greek feeling, 86.
Systematic healthy-mindedness, 87. Its reasonableness, 88. Liberal Chris-
tianity shows it, 91. Optimism as encouraged by Popular Science, 92.
The “Mind-cure” movement, 94. Its creed, 97. Cases, 102. Its doctrine
of evil, 106. Its analogy to Lutheran theology, 108. Salvation by relaxa-
tion, 109. Its methods: suggestion, 112; meditation, 115; “recollection,”
116; verification, 118. Diversity of possible schemes of adaptation to the
universe, 122. APPENDIX: Two mind-cure cases, 123.

LECTURE VI AND VII

THE SICK SOUL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Healthy-mindedness and repentance, 127. Essential pluralism of the

healthy-minded philosophy, 131. Morbid-mindedness — its two degrees,
134. The pain-threshold varies in individuals, 135. Insecurity of natural
goods, 136. Failure, or vain success of every life, 138. Pessimism of all
pure naturalism, 140. Hopelessness of Greek and Roman view, 142.
Pathological unhappiness, 144. “Anhedonia,” 145. Querulous melan-
choly, 148. Vital zest is a pure gift, 150. Loss of it makes physical world
look different, 151. Tolstoy, 152. Bunyan, 157. Alline, 159. Morbid
fear, 160. Such cases need a supernatural religion for relief, 162. An-
tagonism of healthy-mindedness and morbidness, 163. The problem of
evil cannot be escaped, 164.

vi C O N T E N T S

LECTURE VIII

THE DIVIDED SELF, AND THE PROCESS OF ITS UNIfiCATION . . . . . . . 132
Heterogeneous personality, 167. Character gradually attains unity, 170.

Examples of divided self, 171. The unity attained need not be religious,
175. “Counter conversion” cases, 177. Other cases, 178. Gradual and
sudden unification, 183. Tolstoy’s recovery, 184. Bunyan’s, 186.

LECTURE IX

CONVERSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
Case of Stephen Bradley, 189. The psychology of character-changes,

193. Emotional excitements make new centres of personal energy, 196.
Schematic ways of representing this, 197. Starbuck likens conversion to
normal moral ripening, 198. Leuba’s ideas, 201. Seemingly unconvertible
persons, 204. Two types of conversion, 205. Subconscious incubation of
motives, 206. Self-surrender, 208. Its importance in religious history,
211. Cases, 212.

LECTURE X

CONVERSION — concluded . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Cases of sudden conversion, 217. Is suddenness essential? 227. No, it

depends on psychological idiosyncrasy, 230. Proved existence of
transmarginal, or subliminal, consciousness, 233. “Automatisms,” 234.
Instantaneous conversions seem due to the possession of an active sub-
conscious self by the subject, 236. The value of conversion depends not
on the process, but on the fruits, 237. These are not superior in sudden
conversion, 238. Professor Coe’s views, 240. Sanctification as a result,
241. Our psychological account does not exclude direct presence of the
Deity, 242. Sense of higher control, 243. Relations of the emotional
“faith-state” to intellectual beliefs, 246. Leuba quoted, 247. Characteris-
tics of the faith-state: sense of truth; the world appears new, 248. Sen-
sory and motor automatisms, 250. Permanency of conversions, 256.

LECTURES XI, XII, AND XIII

SAINTLINESS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Sainte-Beuve on the State of Grace, 260. Types of character as due to

the balance of impulses and inhibitions, 261. Sovereign excitements,
262. Irascibility, 264. Effects of higher excitement in general, 266. The
saintly life is ruled by spiritual excitement, 267. This may annul sensual
impulses permanently, 258. Probable subconscious influences involved,
270. Mechanical scheme for representing permanent alteration in char-
acter, 270. Characteristics of saintliness, 271. Sense of reality of a higher
power, 274. Peace of mind, charity, 278. Equanimity, fortitude, etc., 284.

C O N T E N T S vii

Connection of this with relaxation, 289. Purity of life, 290. Asceticism,
296. Obedience, 310. Poverty, 315. The sentiments of democracy and
of humanity, 324. General effects of higher excitements, 325.

LECTURES XIV AND XV

THE VALUE OF SAINTLINESS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
It must be tested by the human value of its fruits, 327. The reality of

the God must, however, also be judged, 328. “Unfit” religions get elimi-
nated by “experience,” 331. Empiricism is not skepticism, 332. Indi-
vidual and tribal religion, 334. Loneliness of religious originators, 335.
Corruption follows success, 337. Extravagances, 339. Excessive devout-
ness, as fanaticism, 340; as theopathic absorption, 343. Excessive purity,
348. Excessive charity, 355. The perfect man is adapted only to the
perfect environment, 356. Saints are leavens, 357. Excesses of asceti-
cism, 360. Asceticism symbolically stands for the heroic life, 363. Mili-
tarism and voluntary poverty as possible equivalents, 365. Pros and cons
of the saintly character, 369. Saints versus “strong” men, 371. Their
social function must be considered, 374. Abstractly the saint is the
highest type, but in the present environment it may fail, so we make
ourselves saints at our peril, 375. The question of theological truth, 377.

LECTURES XVI AND XVII

MYSTICISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
Mysticism defined, 370. Four marks of mystic states, 380. They form a

distinct region of consciousness, 382. Examples of their lower grades,
382. Mysticism and alcohol, 386. “The anæsthetic revelation,” 387.
Religious mysticism, 393. Aspects of Nature, 394. Consciousness of God,
396. “Cosmic consciousness,” 398. Yoga, 400. Buddhistic mysticism,
401. Sufism, 402. Christian mystics, 406. Their sense of revelation, 408.
Tonic effects of mystic states, 414. They describe by negatives, 416.
Sense of union with the Absolute, 419. Mysticism and music, 420.
Three conclusions, 422. (1) Mystical states carry authority for him who
has them, 423. (2) But for no one else, 424. (3) Nevertheless, they
break down the exclusive authority of rationalistic states, 427. They
strengthen monistic and optimistic hypotheses, 428.

LECTURES XVIII

PHILOSOPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Primacy of feeling in religion, philosophy being a secondary function,

430. Intellectualism professes to escape subjective standards in her
theological constructions, 433. “Dogmatic theology,” 436. Criticism of
its account of God’s attributes, 442. “Pragmatism” as a test of the value
of conceptions, 444. God’s metaphysical attributes have no practical

viii C O N T E N T S

significance, 445. His moral attributes are proved by bad arguments;
collapse of systematic theology, 448. Does transcendental indealism fare
better? Its principles, 449. Quotations from John Caird, 450. They are
good as restatements of religious experience, but uncoercive as reasoned
proof, 453. What philosophy can do for religion by transforming herself
into “science of religions,” 455.

LECTURE XIX

OTHER CHARACTERISTICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
Æsthetic elements in religion, 458. Contrast of Catholicism and

Protestantism, 461. Sacrifice and Confession, 462. Prayer, 463. Religion
holds that spiritual work is really effected in prayer, 465. Three degrees
of opinion as to what is effected, 467. First degree, 468. Second degree,
472. Third degree, 474. Automatisms, their frequency among religious
leaders, 478. Jewish cases, 479. Mohammed, 481. Joseph Smith, 482.
Religion and the subconscious region in general, 483.

LECTURE XX

CONCLUSIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
Summary of religious characteristics, 485. Men’s religions need not

be identical, 487. “The science of religions” can only suggest, not pro-
claim, a religious creed, 489. Is religion a “survival” of primitive thought?
490. Modern science rules out the concept of personality, 491. Anthro-
pomorphism and belief in the personal characterized pre-scientific
thought, 493. Personal forces are real, in spite of this, 498. Scientific
objects are abstractions, only individualized experiences are concrete,
498. Religion holds by the concrete, 500. Primarily religion is a biologi-
cal reaction, 504. Its simplest terms are an uneasiness and a deliverance;
description of the deliverance, 508. Question of the reality of the higher
power, 510. The author’s hypotheses: 1. The subconscious self as inter-
mediating between nature and the higher region, 511; 2. The higher
region, or “God,” 515; 3. He produces real effects in nature, 518.

POSTSCRIPT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
Philosophic position of the present work defined as piecemeal

supernaturalism, 520. Criticism of universalistic supernaturalism, 521.
Different principles must occasion differences in fact, 522. What differ-
ences in fact can God’s existence occasion? 523. The question of im-
mortality, 524. Question of God’s uniqueness and infinity: religious
experience does not settle this question in the affirmative, 525. The
pluralistic hypothesis is more conformed to common sense, 526.

INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407

C O N T E N T S ix

H

Foreword

To the Official Centenary Edition of William James’s
Varieties of Religious Experience

by

Micky James

Greetings,
My having been asked to contribute a few words to this commem-

orative edition of The Varieties becomes a pleasure I tackle not lightly
as I, myself, am a painter, not a scholar. In such lively regard do I
hold the reader who is interested in this topic that I find myself all
but purified in the waters. Your hefty and devoted attention to
William James — to his ideas about religious experience, of course
— but also to his mind and to the man himself, as well, would surely
have blushingly distracted his own. You do him enormous honor.

I never knew my grandfather, William James, born as I was in
1923, the year following his own Alice’s death, she then a widow of
twelve years. I did meet his son, Alexander, who, of course, was my
father, a painter, whose death brought his brothers Harry and Billy,
to our New Hampshire home that February day of 1946. Though
now fifty and more years later, I remember well my uncles’ sundown
arrival. That morning we made my father a coffin from old pine
boards. Placed in the darkening dining room, there he was when
they turned up. Standing there, the three of us, and looking down
on him, I heard Uncle Harry say, “He was the most like Dad.”

And so, in a curious way, I have met Gramps Willie, as we
would affectionately refer to him in our middle-age, which may

xii F O R E W O R D

yet be another reason why I feel so spirited a nearness to all who are
involved in this commemorative edition, you who — intellectually,
sportingly — have given him your all, you who know him so well.

My own dyslexic father, born in the year of The Principles, 1890,
was later to invite upon his father, William, no end of frustration
and despair. From cool Chicorua, William wrote to his brother
Henry the novelist, “Aleck having passed only in French, is back
in hot Cambridge with his tutor. How long, oh Lord, how long?”

Maturing as a cerebral washout in that dynamic house on Irving
Street, my father could hardly have felt little but a cautious dis-
tance from his father. Somewhere deep within, he must have nursed
a lingering wound, for I never heard him speak but once — once
only — of his own loving Dad. While posing for him one day for a
portrait (I was 12), quite out of the blue I asked, “Did your father
have a sense of humor?” He gave me this long look and, slowly
putting down his brushes and palette, he said — and almost joyfully
so — “For chrissake, Yes!” We then returned to our separate tasks.

Until the effect of a poor heart put an end to my dad’s automatic
writing days, it was always William James himself who would speak
through the unconscious hand. Each session would begin, “This is
your loving dad,” and always in William James’s own distinctive
handwriting. But to each guest’s most frequent question, “What’s it
like up there?” immediately the pencil would respond, “Does the
robin tell her hatching secrets to a cow?”

So here we are, and now that I have just about satisfied myself, at
least, that, indeed, I have met that dear man you honor here, here’s
to express my delight in the continuing importance of his work,
and of my family’s warm support of this unique publication. Insofar
as I have been sanctioned by no one in particular, I give the James
family seal of approval to what we shall henceforth call the official
commemorative edition of The Varieties. All in all, it is quite over-
whelming, really.

How unbearably touched he would have been had Mrs Piper
assured him that of a distant day he would be accorded such an
expression of ultimate respect. Could ever a hundredth anniversary
be more sweet!

Boston, Massachusetts
March 2002

Editor’s Preface

Eugene Taylor and Jeremy Carrette

The Routledge Centenary Edition of William James’s The Varieties
of Religious Experience is based on the revised August 1902 edition,
which according to Fredson Bowers, contains nineteen-plate changes
(Harvard edition, 1985:557) from the original June 1902 edition.
The most significant change occurring in a footnote, in the conclu-
sion, referring to a proposed posthumous work by Frederick Myers.
The revised version contains an extended footnote on Myers’s work
and acknowledges Myers’s explorations of the “subliminal region of
consciousness.” The first edition was published on 9 June 1902,
when James also finished his Gifford Lectures, from which the text
of the book is taken. William James’s Gifford Lectures were deliv-
ered at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, in May and June of
1901 and 1902.

This centenary edition is published in conjunction with a
special international and interdisciplinary centenary conference,
held at Old College, University of Edinburgh on 5– 8 July 2002,
commemorating the Gifford Lectures and the publication of The
Varieties of Religious Experience. Routledge will also publish the papers
of this conference.

There have been many editions of The Varieties of Religious
Experience, most notably the 1985 Harvard edition, which provides
many useful additional sources and appendices. However, the aim of
this edition is to bring the reader back to the text in an accessible
form in 2002. The centenary edition is completely reset with new
introductions and a new index. The editors have framed the 2002
edition with two new introductory sections from the point of view
of historical scholarship on James and critical work in the psychology

xiv E D I T O R S ’ P R E F A C E

of religion one hundred years after the first edition. The editors
wish to valorise James scholarship from two different but related
positions of scholarship and seek to emphasise the continuing
importance of the text for scholarship in the twenty-first century.

We are grateful to Micky James, William James’s grandson, for
agreeing to write a foreword to the centenary edition and for the
James family’s seal of approval.

I N T R O D U C T I O N : S E C T I O N O N E xv

Introduction: Section One1

The Spiritual Roots of James’s
Varieties of Religious Experience

Eugene Taylor, PhD
Saybrook Institute and Harvard University

“Divinity lies all around us, but society remains too hidebound to accept
that fact.”

William James

The search for the spiritual origins of William James’s Varieties
of Religious Experience, a work first published in 1902, begins with
the first salvo of the transcendentalist movement, launched in 1821
at commencement ceremonies at Harvard College in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. A controversial assertion, at best, but one, I claim,
that reflects not only the literary and intellectual origins of the
work, but the genesis in James’s mind of a certain point of view about
the nature of human experience. And that point of view is this: that
God, or whatever we take to be the divine, comes to us not through
what is above and outside, but through our innards — through our
spiritual interiors; through what is highest and most holy in ourselves.

1 We stand on the shoulders of giants: William James, L’experience religieuse, essai de
Psychologie descriptive. Traduit avec l’autorisation de l’auteur par Frank Abauzit; preface
d’Emile Boutroux. Paris: F. Alcan; Geneve: H. Kundig, 1906; von Georg Wobbermin, Die
religiose Erfahrung in ihrer Mannigfaltigkeit: Materialien und Studien zu einer Psychologie und
Pathologie des religiosen. Lebens von William James; Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1914; Barzun,
Jacques, Forward to The Varieties. New York: New American Library, 1958; Nock, Arthur
Darby, Introduction to The Varieties. Glasgow: Fountain Books, 1960; Niebuhr, Reinhold,
Introduction to The Varieties. New York, Collier 1961; Ratner, Joseph, Introduction to The
Varieties. Enlarged ed., with appendices. New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1963; Din
va ravan / Vilyam Jaymz; Tarjamah-i Mahdi Qaimi. [Persian]. Qum: Dar al-Fikr [1359 i.e.
1980]; Marty, Martin, Introduction to The varieties. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England;
New York, N.Y.: Penguin Books, 1985; Smith, J. E. Introduction to The Varieties. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985.

xvi I N T R O D U C T I O N : S E C T I O N O N E

The event was the reading of a Master’s Thesis by Sampson
Reed, a divinity student and follower of the religious tracts of the
eighteenth century Swedish scientist and interpreter of theological
revelations, Emanuel Swedenborg.2 Reed delivered his essay en-
titled “Oration on Genius,” a charismatic and oracular work that
extolled not the European tradition of rationalism, but the inner
intuitive spiritual gifts of great geniuses who inspire the rest of us to
heights never before achieved. Emerson, as Class Day Poet, sat in
the audience and declared it “native gold.”3

Emerson’s involvement with the local Swedenborgian ministers
was deeply entwined with his own developing career, first as an
undergraduate at Harvard College and later as a young minister
after he had interned under William Ellery Channing and been
approbated to preach by the Unitarians. The “Oration on Genius,”
which Reed turned into a little book called Growth of the Mind
(1826), subsequently became the model for Emerson’s own first
book Nature (1836).4

The main, inspiring concept Emerson borrowed from Swedenborg
was the concept of correspondences — that every element in nature
is somewhere reflected in the life of the soul. Later transcendent-
alists would turn this into what was to become the main theme of
a national environmental movement — that God speaks to man
through nature. In other words, if we are to see Divinity shine
clearly within, we must protect and nurture our natural surround-
ings. William James would later be the first to enunciate such a
heroic undertaking in his Varieties as “the moral equivalent of war.”5

Other Swedenborgian ideas taken up by the transcendentalists
included the Doctrine of Use, which influenced James’s later

2 Sigstedt, Cyriel Sigrid, The Swedenborg epic; The life and works of Emanuel Swedenborg.
New York: Bookman Associates, 1952. Swedenborgian thought had a significant influence
on nineteenth century popular American culture. Block, Marguerita, The New Church in the
New World: A study of Swedenborgianism in America. New York: H. Holt & Co., 1932.

3 Miller, Perry (ed) The transcendentalists: An anthology. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1950.

4 Taylor, E. I., Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Swedenborgian and Transcendentalist con-
nection. In R. Larsen (ed), Emanuel Swedenborg; The vision continues. (300th anniversary
volume). New York: The Swedenborg Foundation, 1988. 127–136; Reprinted in J. rence
(ed) Testimony to the Invisible. San Francisco; J. Appleseed and Co., 1995.

5 Taylor, E. I., William James and His Interpreters on the Moral Equivalent of War.
Unpublished ms.

I N T R O D U C T I O N : S E C T I O N O N E xvii

definition of pragmatism; the action of Divine Providence, which
became James’s later doctrine of tychism; the influx of divine power
into the field of normal waking consciousness, which was James’s
later statement on mystical awakening; and the concept of ration-
ality.6 This was not the mere rationality of the logicians, however;
it was reason, based on our intuitions and their visible effects in
action.

Eventually, in the work of some transcendentalist writers, poets,
and visual artists, Swedenborgian and transcendentalist thought
became so fused that only a concatanated name can really apply
to the spiritual teachings of the era. It was a Swedenbiorgian and
transcendentalist milieu. It was Swedenborgian and transcendent-
alist thought. It was a Swedenborgian and transcendentalist world
view.

By the mid 1840s, Emerson’s Swedenborgianism became signifi-
cantly influenced by the ideas of Henry James, Sr, errant, utopian
socialist, father to William James the psychologist and Henry
the novelist Calvinist and later Swedenborgian philosopher of reli-
gion, who was an aspiring nineteenth century literary figure in his
own right. Emerson and James, Sr. met in New York through Horace
Greeley and Albert Brisbane, where Emerson was adopted into
the James family and had the family guest room named after him;
meanwhile christening the young William over his crib and thereby
becoming by family lore William’s official God Father.7

When the James family went abroad, Emerson, in turn, intro-
duced Henry James, Sr. to Thomas Carlyle, where the Elder James
met philosophers, writers, statesmen, and socialites who were to
become significant in William and Henry’s subsequent careers. For
William, these included such figures as the utilitarian John Stewart
Mill and the empiricist, Alexander Bain, both of whose ideas figured
in the birth of American pragmatism.

After an intensely debilitating spiritual episode in 1844, through
Carlyle, Henry James Sr. was also led to the physician and translator
of Swedenborg’s scientific and medical writings, James John Garth

6 Taylor, E. I., The Spiritual Currents of American Pragmatism. Eight Lectures for the
Swedenborg Society at Harvard University, Oct. ’01–June ’02. In honor of the Centenary of
James’s Varieties. Swedenborg Chapel, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

7 Habegger, Alfred. The father: A life of Henry James, Sr. New York: …