by Paul J Croce
by embracing “that which Stoicism gives,” in effect, “heaven to- day.” Temple
called this a “higher truth, the purer spirituality,” akin to the “larger, purer
view of the Super natural” that James in 1865 had already hoped would
emerge from a nonreductionist approach to science. His brother Henry
James was enchanted by the boldness of this “pet theory,” while William
himself more thoroughly pursued these ideas that there might be some-
thing truly awesome, even transcendent, circulating within nature itself.64
At the time of his greatest enthusiasm for the Greeks, James boldly spec-
ulated, “if God is dead or at least irrelevant, ditto every thing pertaining to
the ‘Beyond’ ”; and in his impatience with transcendence, he would some-
times even bellow “Damn Divinity & divines.” Yet rather than dwell on crit-
icism of church institutions, he more often wanted to learn from them, in
order to understand “some of the proud absoluteness which made them so
venerable.” Religions with absolute beliefs that rely for their authority on
otherworldly powers transcending the fallible natu ral world have provided
humanity with great confidence, inspiration, and comfort. By contrast, the
religious spirit of the ancients, for all their natu ral grace, provided no such
sturdy reference points, so life’s burdens remained squarely on human
shoulders, with no ability to rely on higher powers for uplift or relief. Each
orientation clearly had shortcomings, but each also had sterling merits;
James’s mediating impulse was compelling and fueled his hope for an out-
look that drew from both. He focused on natu ral settings, in reliance on a
stoical framework, combined with the insights of modern science; and in
that worldly arena, the “sentiment of philanthropy,” a passion to improve
the world, could replicate the absoluteness of traditional religion by simi-
larly reaching toward higher ideals.65
This philanthropic hope was of a piece with his program of future sci-
ence and his eagerness for a larger view of the super natural, and it drew
upon both. This philanthropic impulse was the very spark, fostered by his
father, that had first motivated his own study of science; and its grand goals
would emerge on small scales: it was a sentiment to which every person can
contribute “in proportion to his gifts & the way he uses them.” These human
gifts, set in finite nature, would contribute to ideals shaped in the making,
not derived from fixed absolutes directed by higher forces; James enacted
this goal in his own personal development when resolving to work toward
his own vocational ideal by letting go of short- term results. For each person
with these commitments, “Man is his own Providence . . . and every indi-
vidual a real god” in the sense that Stoics proposed with the fire of Reason
The Ancient Art of Natu ral Grace 173
manifesting especially when individuals live true to their inner citadel.
Within this naturalistic understanding, but with commitment to ideals of
human betterment beyond the everyday, mankind could live with a worldly
Providence, and “get at something absolute without going out of your own
skin.” James’s hope for such a “finite absoluteness” was his raw youthful
spiritual goal, inspired by his admiration for both Stoic philosophy and reli-
gious ideals, and by his naturalistic work in science; and in the 1860s, this
hope suggested the direction of his thinking in both science and religion. 66
James approached religion within, beyond, and even beneath church
life, religion as mankind’s search for meaning “in the ground of the uni-
verse”; out of these mysterious depths, diff er ent religions have emerged
with “all the gods, . . . authoriz[ing]” diff er ent church doctrines, each pro-
viding clues about the cosmic whole. He did not dismiss traditional reli-
gions, as did many of his intellectual peers, but he also maintained that
those traditions do not exhaust ways to find religious meaning. Empirical
methods, generally associated with modern science, could provide still
more clues within this worldly theater of potential hopes and ideals. When
teaching a philosophy class in 1904–5, James linked his youthful program
for future science to an empiricism that could be “interpreted religiously . . .
and . . . moralistic[ally],” just as he had noticed in the ancients. His point
was to set up his approach to gathering the facts of experience by contrast
with most modern empiricism, generally allied with secular or antireli-
gious thinking. Toward the end of his life, in A Pluralistic Universe (1909),
James declared that empiricism, the empiricism of his program of future
science, the “thicker and more radical empiricism” of his mature theoriz-
ing, could readily be a “natu ral ally . . . of the religious life.” He even fore-
cast that if such empiricism could become “associated with religion,” rather
than “with irreligion,” a “new era of religion” would begin, supporting the
more expansive spirituality he had hoped for in his youth. 67
James’s radical empiricism essays defined that approach to empiricism,
and The Va ri e ties applied it, with a method he called his “science of religions.”
James acknowledged that many people “believe in a . . . beyond” without
question, but rather than scrutinize the truth or falsity of those beliefs, he
generalized from the “proud absoluteness” of belief in transcendence to de-
fine religion as the human search for something “more,” a broad description
applying to things absolute, either within or beyond our own skin. While
the more is beyond our full comprehension and may very well be beyond
nature, we can access it only through our experience, through attention, in
174 Young William James Thinking
the spirit of Stoicism, to the fires within. In particular— namely, within all
the abundant particulars of va ri e ties of religious practices— the complex
depth of the human mind, in its subconscious subliminal realm, serves as a
“doorway” to potentially “higher powers,” even as those powers have been
understood in vari ous ways in diff er ent cultures. The subliminal is at once a
natu ral fact, a part of human psy chol ogy, and yet as elusive as the transcen-
dent references of religious claims; it is the transcendent within, in effect,
an “inscendent” realm. These depths of consciousness that James studied
in his psy chol ogy and explained in his evaluation of religion effectively ful-
filled his youthful search for finite absoluteness— the subliminal within
human psy chol ogy serving as something absolute without going out of your
own skin indeed.68
With depth psy chol ogy, James identified the site of religious experience,
but he remained as humbly uncertain about what lay beyond the doorway of
consciousness as he had during the uncertainties of his youth; human con-
sciousness in ever greater degrees of complexity lay on the naturalistic
“hither side” of those subliminal depths, but the “farther side” he recog-
nized as a place of compelling mystery. He proposed that re
ligious tradi-
tions and sublime realms of idealism have their origins at that threshold to
mystery, pointing to opportunities for enrichment but also to human limita-
tion; and they offer guidance— positive or negative— throughout the chal-
lenges of life. The religious path James began in the 1860s contributed to
still more of his mature philosophy. For example, pragmatism was at once
an epistemology for orienting inquiry to consequences and an outlook
that “widens the field of search for God”: with the empiricism of his sci-
ence of religion, James was ready to look for the divine beyond august
realms “in the very dirt of private fact. ”69 By contrast, most naturalistic
philosophies simply call off the search. His linkage between inquiry and
mystery, starting with the subconscious boundary between them, also
fostered his awareness that religion was not the only human encounter
with realms of deep significance. In addition, the complexities of nature
would supply the settings for human engagement with countless won ders,
uncertainties, and difficulties; each of these can serve as starting points for
spiritual relations with the world, and each of these has also been ad-
dressed, in degrees, through the pro gress of science. All these human
enterprises— philosophy, religion, and science— can offer insights into the
world of experience, he per sis tently proposed, but no one of them provides
the last word.
The Ancient Art of Natu ral Grace 175
With his psychological evaluation of spiritual experiences, James ad-
mired and made use of materialist inquiry into religion; his objection to
“medical materialism” was directed toward any eagerness to pres ent such
assumptions as reasons for definitive wholesale debunking of religion,
based on positivist confidence in scientific truth. Instead of such absolut-
ism, he regarded each religious tradition as “a syllable in human nature’s
total message”; each “faith- venture” could serve as an experiential re-
source, each another way— but a limited way—to “bring the evidence in,” for
clues about the mysteries of the “more.” The mature James summarized his
own orientation by rewording his 1868 hope for finite absoluteness: his own
theory at once “restores to philosophy the temper of science and of practical
life,” and also “brings the ideal into things,” immaterial ideals understood
within material things, readily experienced in natu ral life, and both appre-
ciated spiritually and evaluated scientifically. It was just this integration of
material and ideal realms that had already attracted him to the Greeks
years before; in 1868, he declared that the ancients were “far greater ‘Posi-
tivists’ than any now,” just as naturalistic, but “greater” because ready to
look for the immaterial factors within the material world. And James wel-
comed modern equivalents. The En glish writer John Morley leavened his
own positivism with “a thoroughly sympathetic intelligence” and “a keen
sense of the beautiful”; in short, as James stated in 1872, Morley had “that
imponderable superfluity, grace,” just like the Greeks. 70 By contrast, mod-
ern scientific enthusiasts increasingly reduced ideals to material forces
with no further concern for wider ranges of human experience.
The Cosmic Kinship of Science and Religion
Even with his alternative ideas, James noticed ways that traditional reli-
gions also engaged in some mingling of the natu ral with the transcendent,
at least in theologies of immanence, but even within the grandest claims for
absolutism. “We have no revelation but through man,” James was already
declaring in 1868, paraphrasing Max Müller, whose works in the history of
languages and religion he had started reading five years before, because
“ every thing we know & are is through men,” including dramatic religious
experiences. Like the empirical facts of scientific inquiry, such spiritual expe-
riences are the raw material for religious beliefs; but even the most transcen-
dent beliefs need to be transmitted through some human experience. This
was a version of his lifelong deflation of abstract ideals as he maintained that
any person’s “[i]deal is made up of traits suggested by past men’s words and
176 Young William James Thinking
actions.” He both attended to the constructed character of ideals and main-
tained their importance; so he did not treat such inquiries as reasons to
dismiss the efforts, since, “however mean man may be, man is the best we
know.” This was not a statement of regret in the spirit of settling for flawed
human beings; instead, he felt an exuberance for his fellow striving pri-
mates, adding enthusiastically, “I like human nature.” He even went on to call
The Va ri e ties of Religious Experience “A Study in Human Nature,” clearly an-
nouncing his naturalistic path into the topic. In “The Will to Believe,” he
paraphrased his youthful observations still more sharply: for most people,
“faith is faith in someone else’s faith.” This would form the basis for the
whole framework of his study of religious experiences: most people rely on
religious institutions and their found ers for their spiritual direction; this is
religion “at second- hand,” derived from someone else indeed. By contrast,
his own focus would be on religious figures who have had “direct personal
communion” with spiritual depths at first hand, encounters with what he
called the experience of “more” beyond the everyday, and with boldness to
inspire followers.71 Even these profound experiences, even those claimed to
be transcendent, must pass through very human material; James was eager
to understand the construction of those exalted beliefs and ideals, based on
that experiential “more,” whether beyond or within—or both.
Ancient finite absoluteness and religious traditions, along with scientific
investigations, all reflect the primal human urge to find depths of meaning
in the world; and young James’s “deference [without] adoption” about reli-
gion served pragmatically to foster appreciation of such depths no matter
the sources. His support of the importance of religion in general came with
distance from par tic u lar traditional religions. His positions grew not from
opposition to traditions but from investigation beneath them, through
depth psy chol ogy, to find their sources and relations. In his youth, depth of
history directed his attention to this psychological perspective; he was at-
tracted to the ancients for examples of just that kind of “ mother sea and
fountain- head of all religions,” which he would describe in The Va ri e ties as
the “absolute realities” that diff er ent religions have put humanity “in con-
tact with.” James was subscribing to an early, historically based version of
what phi los o pher of science and religion Ian Barbour describes as the “iden-
tity of essence” theory of diverse religions, with commonalities despite “dif-
fering cultural forms”; however, with James’s emphasis on experience over
abstraction, he would talk more of commo
nality of source material rather
than identity of essence. Scholarship in the history of religions in James’s
The Ancient Art of Natu ral Grace 177
own time already supported his psychological interpretations with its sug-
gestion of the kindred functions of spiritual paths across cultures and across
times. He was very conversant with the growing lit er a ture, reading Max
Müller, adding books on ancient religion to his reading lists, and learning
from Charles Rockwell Lanman and meetings of the Harvard History of
Religions Club. Alongside his fascination with the ancient art and philoso-
phy of the Mediterranean, he was also attracted to ancient South Asian “vedic
religion” at the roots of Hinduism with mingling of material and immate-
rial parts of life. As with the Western examples he studied more closely,
“Vedic doctrine seems to have been both a doctrine of nature and of men’s
fates.” In his young adulthood, when he was often troubled but also reach-
ing for the confidence to let go of waiting on results, he even enlisted the
Hindu concept of maya, or illusions of the physical world, to characterize
the source of one of his more intense moments of personal crisis.72 This
Eastern spiritual path likewise took attention away from feeling anxious
about results; by following one’s own destiny (or karma), results would flow
without direct effort toward their realization.
Although modern progressive thought has often dismissed ancient
“nature-lore” as primitive thinking, James as a young man already detected
within it “the germ of the philosophy, science & religion of later times,” emerg-
ing in the ancient world still “conglomerated,” without modern disciplinary
bound aries, and therefore with enduring clues about their relation. He was
persuaded that mainstream religions, along with other products of the
human mind and heart, “can be traced & referred to some part of a trunk . . .
whence they had branched off.” The harmonies that James found in the
ancients likewise pointed to the ongoing undivided relation of science and
religion and kindred domains of human activity. In recent times, however,
these dimensions of life have separated, he observed, into “two branches . . .
so differentiated as to be antagonistic”— namely religious and humanistic