clearly within its proper bounds.
[Compare p. 130 above.]

[364] Such a notion is suggested in my Ingersoll Lecture On Human
Immortality, Boston and London, 1899.

Upholders of the monistic view will say to such a polytheism (which, by
the way, has always been the real religion of common people, and is so
still to-day) that unless there be one all-inclusive God, our guarantee
of security is left imperfect. In the Absolute, and in the Absolute
only, ALL is saved. If there be different gods, each caring for his
part, some portion of some of us might not be covered with divine
protection, and our religious consolation would thus fail to be
complete. It goes back to what was said on pages 129-131, about the
possibility of there being portions of the universe that may
irretrievably be lost. Common sense is less sweeping in its demands
than philosophy or mysticism have been wont to be, and can suffer the
notion of this world being partly saved and partly lost. The ordinary
moralistic state of mind makes the salvation of the world conditional
upon the success with which each unit does its part. Partial and
conditional salvation is in fact a most familiar notion when taken in
the abstract, the only difficulty being to determine the details. Some
men are even disinterested enough to be willing to be in the unsaved
remnant as far as their persons go, if only they can be persuaded that
their cause will prevail--all of us are willing, whenever our
activity-excitement rises sufficiently high. I think, in fact, that a
final philosophy of religion will have to consider the pluralistic
hypothesis more seriously than it has hitherto been willing to consider
it. For practical life at any rate, the CHANCE of salvation is enough.
No fact in human nature is more characteristic than its willingness to
live on a chance. The existence of the chance makes the difference, as
Edmund Gurney says, between a life of which the keynote is resignation
and a life of which the keynote is hope.[365] But all these statements
are unsatisfactory from their brevity, and I can only say that I hope
to return to the same questions in another book.

[365] Tertium Quid, 1887, p. 99. See also pp. 148, 149.

WILLIAM JAMES (1842-1910)

A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR OF "THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE"

The road by which William James arrived at his position of leadership
among American philosophers was, during his childhood, youth and early
ma