The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Will to Believe, by William James

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Title: The Will to Believe
and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy

Author: William James

Release Date: May 8, 2009 [EBook #26659]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WILL TO BELIEVE ***

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THE WILL TO BELIEVE

AND OTHER ESSAYS IN

POPULAR PHILOSOPHY

BY WILLIAM JAMES

NEW IMPRESSION

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK

LONDON, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA

1912

_Copyright, 1896_

BY WILLIAM JAMES

First Edition. February, 1807,

Reprinted, May, 1897, September, 1897,
March, 1898, August, 1899, June, 1902,
January, 1903, May, 1904, June, 1905,
March, 1907, April, 1908,
September, 1909, December, 1910,
November, 1911, November, 1912

To

My Old Friend,

CHARLES SANDERS PEIRCE,

To whose philosophic comradeship in old times
and to whose writings in more recent years
I owe more incitement and help than
I can express or repay.

{vii}

PREFACE.

At most of our American Colleges there are Clubs formed by the students
devoted to particular branches of learning; and these clubs have the
laudable custom of inviting once or twice a year some maturer scholar
to address them, the occasion often being made a public one. I have
from time to time accepted such invitations, and afterwards had my
discourse printed in one or other of the Reviews. It has seemed to me
that these addresses might now be worthy of collection in a volume, as
they shed explanatory light upon each other, and taken together express
a tolerably definite philosophic attitude in a very untechnical way.

Were I obliged to give a short name to the attitude in question, I
should call it that of _radical empiricism_, in spite of the fact that
such brief nicknames are nowhere more misleading than in philosophy. I
say 'empiricism,' because it is contented to regard its most assured
conclusions concerning matters of fact as hypothes