Table of Contents

THE WILL TO BELIEVE Hypotheses and options Pascal's wager Clifford's veto Psychological causes of belief Thesis of the Essay Empiricism and absolutism Objective certitude and its unattainability Two different sorts of risks in believing Some risk unavoidable Faith may bring forth its own verification Logical conditions of religious belief IS LIFE WORTH LIVING Temperamental Optimism and Pessimism How reconcile with life one bent on suicide? Religious melancholy and its cure Decay of Natural Theology Instinctive antidotes to pessimism Religion involves belief in an unseen extension of the world Scientific positivism Doubt actuates conduct as much as belief does "To deny certain faiths is logically absurd, for they make their objects true" Conclusion THE SENTIMENT OF RATIONALITY Rationality means fluent thinking Simplification Clearness Their antagonism Inadequacy of the abstract The thought of nonentity Mysticism Pure theory cannot banish wonder The passage to practice may restore the feeling of rationality Familiarity and expectancy Substance' A rational world must appear congruous with our powers But these differ from man to man Faith is one of them Inseparable from doubt May verify itself Its role in ethics Optimism and pessimism Is this a moral universe??what does the problem mean? Anaesthesia versus energy Active assumption necessary Conclusion REFLEX ACTION AND THEISM Prestige of Physiology Plan of neural action God the mind's adequate object Contrast between world as perceived and as conceived God The mind's three departments Science due to a subjective demand Theism a mean between two extremes Gnosticism No intellection except for practical ends Conclusion THE DILEMMA OF DETERMINISM Philosophies seek a rational world Determinism and Indeterminism defined Both are postulates of rationality Objections to chance considered Determinism involves pessimism Escape via Subjectivism Subjectivism leads to corruption A world with chance in it is morally the less irrational alternative Chance not incompatible with an ultimate Providence THE MORAL PHILOSOPHER AND THE MORAL LIFE The moral philosopher postulates a unified system Origin of moral judgments Goods and ills are created by judgments Obligations are created by demands The conflict of ideals Its solution Impossibility of an abstract system of Ethics The easy-going and the strenuous mood Connection between Ethics and Religion GREAT MEN AND THEIR ENVIRONMENT Solidarity of causes in the world The human mind abstracts in order to explain Different cycles of operation in Nature Darwin's distinction between causes that preserve a variation "Physiological causes produce, the environment only adopts or preserves, great men" When adopted they become social ferments Messrs. Spencer and Allen criticised Messrs. Wallace and Gryzanowski quoted The laws of history Mental evolution Analogy between original ideas and Darwin's accidental variations Criticism of Spencer's views THE IMPORTANCE OF INDIVIDUALS Small differences may be important Individual differences are important because they are the causes of social change Hero-worship justified ON SOME HEGELISMS The world appears as a pluralism Elements of unity in the pluralism Hegel's excessive claims He makes of negation a bond of union The principle of totality Monism and pluralism The fallacy of accident in Hegel The good and the bad infinite Negation Conclusion ?Note on the Anaesthetic revelation WHAT PSYCHICAL RESEARCH HAS ACCOMPLISHED The unclassified residuum The Society for Psychical Research and its history Thought-transference Gurney's work The census of hallucinations Mediumship The 'subliminal self' Science' and her counter-presumptions The scientific character of Mr. Myer's work The mechanical-impersonal view of life versus the personal-romantic view INDEX