Contributor

William James

(1842 - 1910)

At different times in William James’ thirty-five-year academic career he served as a professor of physiology, psychology, and philosophy, educating, among others, Theodore Roosevelt, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Gertrude Stein. Fascinated by the “altered states of consciousness” that all religions inspired cross culturally, he experimented with hypnosis and nitrous-oxide intoxication for his famous work The Varieties of Religious Experience.

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Miscellany

“No concrete test of what is really true has ever been agreed upon,” wrote William James in 1893. “When, indeed, one remembers that the most striking practical application to life of the doctrine of objective certitude has been the conscientious labors of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, one feels less tempted than ever to lend the doctrine a respectful ear.”