The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

William Jameswe assume that only one such system of ideas can be true? Theobvious outcome of our total experience is that the world can behandled according to many systems of ideas, and is so handled bydifferent men, and will each time give some characteristic kind ofprofit, for which he cares, to the handler, while at the same timesome other kind of profit has to be omitted or postponed. Sciencegives to all of us telegraphy, electric lighting, and diagnosis, andsucceeds in preventing and curing a certain amount of disease. Religionin the shape of mind-cure gives to some of us serenity, moralpoise, and happiness, and prevents certain forms of disease as wellas science does, or even better in a certain class of persons. Evidently,then, the science and the religion are both of them genuinekeys for unlocking the world’s treasure-house to him who can useeither of them practically. Just as evidently neither is exhaustive orexclusive of the other’s simultaneous use. And why, after all, maynot the world be so complex as to consist of many interpenetratingspheres of reality, which we can thus approach in alternation byusing different conceptions and assuming different attitudes, just asmathematicians handle the same numerical and spatial facts by geometry,by analytical geometry, by algebra, by the calculus, or byquaternions, and each time come out right? On this view religionand science, each verified in its own way from hour to hour andfrom life to life, would be co-eternal. Primitive thought, with itsbelief in individualized personal forces, seems at any rate as far asever from being driven by science from the field to-day. Numbers ofeducated people still find it the directest experimental channel bywhich to carry on their intercourse with reality.65The case of mind-cure lay so ready to my hand that I could notresist the temptation of using it to bring these last truths home toyour attention, but I must content myself to-day with this very brief65 Whether the various spheres or systems are ever to fuse integrally intoone absolute conception, as most philosophers assume that they must, andhow, if so, that conception may best be reached, are questions that only thefuture can answer. What is certain now is the fact of lines of disparate conception,each corresponding to some part of the world’s truth, each verifiedin some degree, each leaving out some part of real experience.115