mony of a crowd of religious enthusiasts of all ages is
accepted at practically face value. Thus, a religious writer who
experiences the fairly common feeling of exaltation during a storm at
sea, and explains his carelessness of danger as resulting from his
"certainty of eternal life,"[4] is gravely cited as evidence of the
working of the religious consciousness. What, then, are we to make of
those who experience a similar feeling, but who are without the
certainty of eternal life? The declaration of St. Ignatius that a single
hour of meditation taught him more of the truth of "heavenly things than
all the teachings of the doctors" is given as evidence of mystic
illumination.[5] So with numerous other cases. We are even informed that
"nitrous oxide and ether, especially nitrous oxide, when sufficiently
diluted with air, stimulate the mystical consciousness in an
extraordinary degree."[6] There seems no reason why the same claim
should not be made on behalf of whisky. If one were not assured to the
contrary, one might conclude that Professor James wrote this volume to
poke fun at the whole tribe of mystics and their followers.

The use made by Professor James of his long list of cases is the more
remarkable, since he quite correctly points out that there are no
religious feelings, only feelings directed towards a religious end. But
if this be so, how are we justified in taking the accounts of religious
visionaries as correct descriptions of the nature of their own mental
states? Clearly, we need a study of these cases quite apart from the
mystical interpretation of them. Instead of a study Professor James
presents us with a catalogue--useful from a documentary point of view,
but useless to any other end. And he is so averse to subjecting his
examples to analysis that, when the extravagance of certain cases are
glaring, he warns us that it is unfair to impute narrowness of mind as a
vice of the individual, because in "religious and theological matters he
probably absorbs his narrowness from his generation."[7] Granted; only
one would like to know what reason there is for not deriving virtues as
well as vices from the same source? And, deeper enquiry still, may not
the religious interpretation itself be a product of the special
environment of the period?

The study of religious phenomena from the point of view above indicated
is of first-rate importance. But although much has been said,
parenthetically and inferentially,