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Introduction | |
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Author's Preface | |
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Religion and Neurology | |
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Introduction: the course is not anthropological, but deals with personal documents | |
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Questions of fact and questions of value | |
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In point of fact, the religious are often neurotic | |
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Criticism of medical materialism, which condemns religion on that account | |
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Theory that religion has a sexual origin refuted | |
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All states of mind are neurally conditioned | |
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Their significance must be tested not by their origin but by the value of their fruits | |
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Three criteria of value; origin useless as a criterion | |
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Advantages of the psychopathic temperament when a superior intellect goes with it | |
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Especially for the religious life | |
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Circumscription of the Topic | |
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Futility of simple definitions of religion | |
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No one specific "religious sentiment" | |
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Institutional and personal religion | |
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We confine ourselves to the personal branch | |
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Definition of religion for the purpose of these lectures | |
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Meaning of the term "divine" | |
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The divine is what prompts solemn reactions | |
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Impossible to make our definitions sharp | |
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We must study the more extreme cases | |
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Two ways of accepting the universe | |
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Religion is more enthusiastic than philosophy | |
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Its characteristic is enthusiasm in solemn emotion | |
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Its ability to overcome unhappiness | |
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Need of such a faculty from the biological point of view | |
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The Reality of the Unseen | |
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Percepts versus abstract concepts | |
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Influence of the latter on belief | |
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Kant's theological Ideas | |
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We have a sense of reality other than that given by the special senses | |
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Examples of "sense of presence" | |
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The feeling of unreality | |
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Sense of a divine presence: examples | |
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Mystical experiences: examples | |
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Other cases of sense of God's presence | |
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Convincingness of unreasoned experience | |
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Inferiority of rationalism in establishing belief | |
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Either enthusiasm or solemnity may preponderate in the religious attitude of individuals | |
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The Religion of Healthy-Mindedness | |
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Happiness is man's chief concern | |
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"Once-born" and "twice-born" characters | |
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Walt Whitman | |
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Mixed nature of Greek feeling | |
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Systematic healthy-mindedness | |
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Its reasonableness | |
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Liberal Christianity shows it | |
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Optimism as encouraged by Popular Science | |
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The "Mind-cure" movement | |
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Its creed | |
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Cases | |
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Its doctrine of evil | |
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Its analogy to Lutheran theology | |
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Salvation by relaxation | |
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Its methods: suggestion | |
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Meditation | |
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"Recollection" | |
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Verification | |
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Diversity of possible schemes of adaptation to the universe | |
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Two mind-cure cases | |
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The Sick Soul | |
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Healthy-mindedness and repentance | |
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Essential pluralism of the healthy-minded philosophy | |
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Morbid-mindedness: its two degrees | |
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The pain-threshold varies in individuals | |
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Insecurity of natural goods | |
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Failure, or vain success of every life | |
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Pessimism of all pure naturalism | |
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Hopelessness of Greek and Roman view | |
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Pathological unhappiness | |
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"Anhedonia" | |
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Querulous melancholy | |
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Vital zest is a pure gift | |
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Loss of it makes physical world look different | |
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Tolstoy | |
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Bunyan | |
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Alline | |
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Morbid fear | |
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Such cases need a supernatural religion for relief | |
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Antagonism of healthy-mindedness and morbidness | |
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The problem of evil cannot be escaped | |
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The Divided Self, and the Process of Its Unification | |
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Heterogeneous personality | |
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Character gradually attains unity | |
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Examples of divided self | |
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The unity attained need not be religious | |
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"Counter conversion" cases | |
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Other cases | |
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Gradual and sudden unification | |
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Tolstoy's recovery | |
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Bunyan's | |
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Conversion | |
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Case of Stephen Bradley | |
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The psychology of character-changes | |
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Emotional excitements make new centres of personal energy | |
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Schematic ways of representing this | |
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Starbuck likens conversion to normal moral ripening | |
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Leuba's ideas | |
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Seemingly unconvertible persons | |
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Two types of conversion | |
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Subconscious incubation of motives | |
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Self-surrender | |
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Its importance in religious history | |
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Cases | |
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Conversion--Concluded | |
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Cases of sudden conversion | |
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Is suddenness essential? | |
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No, it depends on psychological idiosyncrasy | |
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Proved existence of transmarginal, or subliminal, consciousness | |
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"Automatisms" | |
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Instantaneous conversions seem due to the possession of an active subconscious self by the subject | |
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The value of conversion depends not on the process, but on the fruits | |
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These are not superior in sudden conversion | |
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Professor Coe's views | |
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Sanctification as a result | |
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Our psychological account does not exclude direct presence of the Deity | |
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Sense of higher control | |
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Relations of the emotional "faith-state" to intellectual beliefs | |
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Leuba quoted | |
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Characteristics of the faith-state: sense of truth; the world appears new | |
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Sensory and motor automatisms | |
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Permanency of conversions | |
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Saintliness | |
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Sainte-Beuve on the State of Grace | |
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Types of character as due to the balance of impulses and inhibitions | |
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Sovereign excitements | |
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Irascibility | |
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Effects of higher excitement in general | |
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The saintly life is ruled by spiritual excitement | |
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This may annul sensual impulses permanently | |
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Probable subconscious influences involved | |
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Mechanical scheme for representing permanent alteration in character | |
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Characteristics of saintliness | |
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Sense of reality of a higher power | |
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Peace of mind, charity | |
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Equanimity, fortitude, etc. | |
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Connection of this with relaxation | |
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Purity of life | |
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Asceticism | |
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Obedience | |
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Poverty | |
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The sentiments of democracy and of humanity | |
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General effects of higher excitements | |
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The Value of Saintliness | |
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It must be tested by the human value of its fruits | |
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The reality of the God must, however, also be judged | |
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"Unfit" religions get eliminated by "experience" | |
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Empiricism is not skepticism | |
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Individual and tribal religion | |
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Loneliness of religious originators | |
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Corruption follows success | |
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Extravagances | |
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Excessive devoutness, as fanaticism | |
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As theopathic absorption | |
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Excessive purity | |
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Excessive charity | |
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The perfect man is adapted only to the perfect environment | |
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Saints are leavens | |
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Excesses of asceticism | |
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Asceticism symbolically stands for the heroic life | |
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Militarism and voluntary poverty as possible equivalents | |
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Pros and cons of the saintly character | |
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Saints versus "strong" men | |
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Their social function must be considered | |
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Abstractly the saint is the highest type, but in the present environment it may fail, so we make ourselves saints at our peril | |
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The question of theological truth | |
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Mysticism | |
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Mysticism defined | |
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Four marks of mystic states | |
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They form a distinct region of consciousness | |
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Examples of their lower grades | |
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Mysticism and alcohol | |
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"The anaesthetic revelation" | |
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Religious mysticism | |
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Aspects of Nature | |
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Consciousness of God | |
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"Cosmic consciousness" | |
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Yoga | |
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Buddhistic mysticism | |
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Sufism | |
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Christian mystics | |
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Their sense of revelation | |
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Tonic effects of mystic states | |
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They describe by negatives | |
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Sense of union with the Absolute | |
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Mysticism and music | |
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Three conclusions | |
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Mystical states carry authority for him who has them | |
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But for no one else | |
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Nevertheless, they break down the exclusive authority of rationalistic states | |
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They strengthen monistic and optimistic hypotheses | |
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Philosophy | |
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Primacy of feeling in religion, philosophy being a secondary function | |
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Intellectualism professes to escape subjective standards in her theological constructions | |
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"Dogmatic theology" | |
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Criticism of its account of God's attributes | |
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"Pragmatism" as a test of the value of conceptions | |
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God's metaphysical attributes have no practical significance | |
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His moral attributes are proved by bad arguments; collapse of systematic theology | |
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Does transcendental idealism fare better? Its principles | |
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Quotations from John Caird | |
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They are good as restatements of religious experience, but uncoercive as reasoned proof | |
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What philosophy can do for religion by transforming herself into "science of religions" | |
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Other Characteristics | |
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AEsthetic elements in religion | |
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Contrast of Catholicism and Protestantism | |
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Sacrifice and Confession | |
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Prayer | |
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Religion holds that spiritual work is really effected in prayer | |
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Three degrees of opinion as to what is effected | |
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First degree | |
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Second degree | |
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Third degree | |
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Automatisms, their frequency among religious leaders | |
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Jewish cases | |
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Mohammed | |
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Joseph Smith | |
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Religion and the subconscious region in general | |
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Conclusions | |
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Summary of religious characteristics | |
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Men's religions need not be identical | |
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"The science of religions" can only suggest, not proclaim, a religious creed | |
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Is religion a "survival" of primitive thought? | |
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Modern science rules out the concept of personality | |
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Anthropomorphism and belief in the personal characterized pre-scientific thought | |
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Personal forces are real, in spite of this | |
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Scientific objects are abstractions, only individualized experiences are concrete | |
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Religion holds by the concrete | |
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Primarily religion is a biological reaction | |
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Its simplest terms are an uneasiness and a deliverance; description of the deliverance | |
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Question of the reality of the higher power | |
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The author's hypotheses | |
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The subconscious self as intermediating between nature and the higher region | |
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The higher region, or "God" | |
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He produces real effects in nature | |
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Postscript | |
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Philosophic position of the present work defined as piecemeal supernaturalism | |
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Criticism of universalistic supernaturalism | |
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Different principles must occasion differences in fact | |
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What differences in fact can God's existence occasion? | |
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The question of immortality | |
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Question of God's uniqueness and infinity: religious experience does not settle this question in the affirmative | |
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The pluralistic hypothesis is more conformed to common sense | |
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Index | |