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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 | |