The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature

“There thus seems to be no one elementary religious emotion, but only a common storehouse of emotions upon which religious objects may draw, so there might conceivably also prove to be no one specific and essential kind of religious object, and no one specific and essential religious act.”

James takes a radical view of religion in his psychological study. He broadens the definition to extend beyond major religious institutions and, instead, embraces individualized experiences. This means that James accepts that any human experience that connects the individual to a sense of primal truth falls under the category of religion. This connects to the theme Pluralism and Universal Experience.

“Like love, like wrath, like hope, ambition, jealousy, like every other instinctive eagerness and impulse, it adds to life an enchantment which is not rationally or logically deducible from anything else.”

In this passage, James develops a definition of religion and identifies the importance of studying religious revelations. He suggests that religion occupies a psychological state that is as important as other mental processes. James’s pragmatic view asserts that The Functional Value of Religion is worth the attention of the scientific community. The “enchantment” he describes in this quote refers to an important utility of experience.

“The sanest and best of us are of one clay with lunatics and prison inmates, and death finally runs the robustest of us down.”

James proposes that all humans experience a divisiveness that they often try to patch in other ways. Morality (See: Index of Terms), for example, serves as a bandage but does not heal the wound. Religion is unique in its ability to unify the spirit toward a singular aim.