LECTURE I – RELIGION AND NEUROLOGY

• Questions of fact and questions of value
• In point of fact, the religious are often neurotic
• Criticism of medical materialism, which condemns religion on that account
• Theory that religion has a sexual origin refuted
• All states of mind are neurally conditioned
• Their significance must be tested not by their origin but by the value of their fruits
• Three criteria of value; origin useless as a criterion
• Advantages of the psychopathic temperament when a superior intellect goes with it – especially for the religious life.

LECTURE II – CIRCUMSCRIPTION OF THE TOPIC

• No one specific religious sentiment
• Institutional and personal religion
• We confine ourselves to the personal branch
• Definition of religion for the purpose of these lectures
• Meaning of the term “divine”
• The divine is what prompts SOLEMN reactions
• Impossible to make our definitions sharp
• We must study the more extreme cases
• Two ways of accepting the universe
• Religion is more enthusiastic than philosophy
• Its characteristic is enthusiasm in solemn emotion
• Its ability to overcome unhappiness
• Need of such a faculty from the biological point of view.

LECTURE III – THE REALITY OF THE UNSEEN

• Influence of the latter on belief-
• Kant’s theological Ideas
• We have a sense of reality other than that given by the special senses
• Examples of “sense of presence”
• The feeling of unreality
• Sense of a divine presence: examples
• Mystical experiences: examples
• Other cases of sense of God’s presence
• Convincingness of unreasoned experienc
• Inferiority of rationalism in establishing belief
• Either enthusiasm or solemnity may preponderate in the religious attitude of individuals.

LECTURES IV AND V – THE RELIGION OF HEALTHY–MINDEDNESS

• “Once-born” and “twice-born” characters
• Walt Whitman– Mixed nature of Greek feeling
• Systematic healthy-mindedness
• Its reasonableness
• Liberal Christianity shows it
• Optimism as encouraged by Popular Science
• The “Mind-cure” movement
• Its creed
• Cases Its doctrine of evil
• Its analogy to Lutheran theology
• Salvation by relaxation
• Its methods:
• suggestion
• meditation
• “recollection”
• verification
• Diversity of possible schemes of adaptation to the universe
• APPENDIX: TWO
• Mind-cure cases.

LECTURES VI AND VII – THE SICK SOUL

• Essential pluralism of the healthy-minded philosophy
• Morbid-mindedness: its two degrees
• The pain-threshold varies in individuals
• Insecurity of natural goods
• Failure, or vain success of every life
• Pessimism of all pure naturalism
• Hopelessness of Greek and Roman view
• Pathological unhappiness
• “Anhedonia”
• Querulous melancholy
• Vital zest is a pure gift
• Loss of it makes physical world look different
• Tolstoy
• Bunyan
• Alline
• Morbid fear
• Such cases need a supernatural religion for relief
• Antagonism of healthy-mindedness and morbidness-
• The problem of evil cannot be escaped.

LECTURE VIII – THE DIVIDED SELF, AND THE PROCESS OF ITS UNIFICATION

• Character gradually attains unity
• Examples of divided self
• The unity attained need not be religious
• “Counter conversion” cases
• Other cases
• Gradual and sudden unification
• Tolstoy’s recovery
• Bunyan’s.

LECTURE IX – CONVERSION

• The psychology of character-changes
• Emotional excitements make new centres of personal energy
• Schematic ways of representing this
• Starbuck likens conversion to normal moral ripening
• Leuba’s ideas
• Seemingly unconvertible persons
• Two types of conversion
• Subconscious incubation of motives
• Self-surrenderIts importance in religious history
• Cases.

LECTURE X – CONVERSION–concluded

• Is suddenness essential?
• No, it depends on psychological idiosyncrasy
• Proved existence of transmarginal, or subliminal, consciousness
• “Automatisms”
• Instantaneous conversions seem due to the possession of an active subconscious self by the subject
• The value of conversion depends not on the process, but on the fruits
• These are not superior in sudden conversion
• Professor Coe’s views
• Sanctification as a result
• Our psychological account does not exclude direct presence of the Deity
• Sense of higher control
• Relations of the emotional “faith-state” to intellectual beliefs
• Leuba quoted
• Characteristics of the faith-state: sense of truth; the world appears new
• Sensory and motor automatisms
• Permanency of conversions.

LECTURES XI, XII, AND XIII – SAINTLINESS

• Types of character as due to the balance of impulses and inhibitions
• Sovereign excitements
• Irascibility
• Effects of higher excitement in general
• The saintly life is ruled by spiritual excitement
• This may annul sensual impulses permanently
• Probable subconscious influences involved
• Mechanical scheme for representing permanent alteration in character
• Characteristics of saintliness
• Sense of reality of a higher power
• Peace of mind, charity
• Equanimity, fortitude, etc
• Connection of this with relaxation
• Purity of life
• Asceticism
• Obedience
• Poverty
• The sentiments of democracy and of humanity
• General effects of higher excitements.

LECTURES XIV AND XV – THE VALUE OF SAINTLINESS

• The reality of the God must, however, also be judged
• “Unfit” religions get eliminated by “experience”
• Empiricism is not skepticism
• Individual and tribal religion
• Loneliness of religious originators
• Corruption follows success
• Extravagances
• Excessive devoutness, as fanaticism
• As theopathic absorption
• Excessive purity
• Excessive charity
• The perfect man is adapted only to the perfect environment
• Saints are leavens
• Excesses of asceticism
• Asceticism symbolically stands for the heroic life
• Militarism and voluntary poverty as possible equivalents
• Pros and cons of the saintly character
• Saints versus “strong” men
• Their social function must be considered
• Abstractly the saint is the highest type, but in the present environment it may fail, so we make ourselves saints at our peril
• The question of theological truth.

LECTURES XVI AND XVII – MYSTICISM

• Four marks of mystic states
• They form a distinct region of consciousness
• Examples of their lower grades
• Mysticism and alcohol
• “The anaesthetic revelation”
• Religious mysticism
• Aspects of Nature-
• Consciousness of God
• “Cosmic consciousness”
• Yoga
• Buddhistic mysticism-
• Sufism
• Christian mystics
• Their sense of revelation
• Tonic effects of mystic states
• They describe by negatives
• Sense of union with the Absolute
• Mysticism and music
• Three conclusions
  • (1) Mystical states carry authority for him who has them
  • (2) But for no one else
  • (3) Nevertheless, they break down the exclusive authority of rationalistic states
• They strengthen monistic and optimistic hypotheses.

LECTURE XVIII – PHILOSOPHY

• Intellectualism professes to escape objective standards in her theological constructions
• “Dogmatic theology”
• Criticism of its account of God’s attributes
• “Pragmatism” as a test of the value of conceptions
• God’s metaphysical attributes have no practical significance
• His moral attributes are proved by bad arguments; collapse of systematic theology
• Does transcendental idealism fare better? Its principles
• Quotations from John Caird
• They are good as restatements of religious experience, but uncoercive as reasoned proof
• What philosophy CAN do for religion by transforming herself into “science of religions.”

LECTURE XIX – OTHER CHARACTERISTICS

• Contrast of Catholicism and Protestantism
• Sacrifice and Confession
• Prayer
• Religion holds that spiritual work is really effected in prayer
• Three degrees of opinion as to what is effected, First degree, Second degree, Third degree
• Automatisms, their frequency among religious leaders
  • Jewish cases
  • Mohammed
  • Joseph Smith
• Religion and the subconscious region in general.

LECTURE XX – CONCLUSIONS

• Men’s religions need not be identical
• “The science of religions” can only suggest, not proclaims a religious creed
• Is religion a “survival” of primitive thought?
• Modern science rules out the concept of personality
• Anthropomorphism and belief in the personal characterized pre-scientific thought-
• Personal forces are real, in spite of this
• Scientific objects are abstractions, only individualized experiences are concrete
• Religion holds by the concrete
• Primarily religion is a biological reaction
• Its simplest terms are an uneasiness and a deliverance; description of the deliverance-
• Question of the reality of the higher power
• The author’s hypotheses:
  • 1. The subconscious self as intermediating between nature and the higher region–
  • 2. The higher region, or “God”–
  • 3. He produces real effects in nature.