The Varieties of Religious Experience - Penn State University

The Varieties of Religious Experiencehis truest mission and vocation. There are no successes to be guaranteedand no set orders to be given to individuals, so long as we followthe methods of empirical philosophy.This is my conclusion so far. I know that on some of your mindsit leaves a feeling of wonder that such a method should have beenapplied to such a subject, and this in spite of all those remarks aboutempiricism which I made at the beginning of Lecture XIII. How,you say, can religion, which believes in two worlds and an invisibleorder, be estimated by the adaptation of its fruits to this world’sorder alone? It is its truth, not its utility, you insist, upon which ourverdict ought to depend. If religion is true, its fruits are good fruits,even though in this world they should prove uniformly ill adaptedand full of naught but pathos. It goes back, then, after all, to thequestion of the truth of theology. The plot inevitably thickens uponus; we cannot escape theoretical considerations. I propose, then,that to some degree we face the responsibility. Religious personshave often, though not uniformly, professed to see truth in a specialmanner. That manner is known as mysticism. I will consequentlynow proceed to treat at some length of mystical phenomena, andafter that, though more briefly, I will consider religious philosophy.336