"Religion in this way is absolutely indestructible."

Cross Currents, Fall, 2003 by William James

To Henry William Rankin

Edinburgh, June 16. 1901

Dear Mr. Rankin,

I have received all your letters and missives, inclusive of the letter which you think I must have lost, some months back. I Professor-ed you because I had read your name printed with that title in a Newspaper letter from East Northfield, and supposed that, by courtesy at any rate, that title was conferred upon you by a public opinion to which I liked to conform.

I have given 9 of my lectures and am to give the 10th to morrow. They have been a success, to judge by the numbers of the audience (300 odd) and their non-diminution towards the end. No previous "Giffords" have drawn near so many. It will please you to know that I am stronger & tougher than when I began, too; so a great load is off my mind. You have been so extraordinarily brotherly to me in writing of your convictions & in furnishing me ideas, that I feel ashamed of my churlish and chary replies. You, however, have forgiven me. Now at the end of this first course I feel my "matter" taking firmer shape, and it will please you less to hear me say that I believe myself to be (probably) permanently incapable of believing the Christian scheme of vicarious salvation, and wedded to a more continuously evolutionary mode of thought. The reasons you from time to time have given me, never better expressed than in your letter before the last, have somehow failed to convince. In these lectures the ground I am taking is this: The mother sea and fountain head of all religions lies in the mystical experiences of the individual, taking the word mystical in a very wide sense. All theologies, and all ecclesiasticisms are secondary growths superimposed; and the experiences make such flexible combinations with the intellectual prepossessions of their subjects, that one may almost say that they have no proper intellectual deliverance of their own, but belong to a region deeper, & more vital and practical than than that which the intellectual inhabits. For this they are also indestructible by intellectual arguments and criticisms. I attach the mystical or religious consciousness to the possession of an extended subliminal self with a thin partition through which messages make irruption. We are thus made convincingly aware of the presence of a sphere of life larger and more powerful than our usual consciousness, with which the latter is nevertheless continuous. The impressions and impulsions and emotions and excitements which we thence receive help us to live, they found invincible assurance of a world beyond the senses, they melt our hearts and communicate significance and value to everything and make us happy. They do this for the individual who has them, and other individuals follow him. Religion in this way is absolutely indestructible. Philosophy and theology give their conceptual interpretations of this experiential life. The farther margin of the subliminal field being unknown, it can be treated as by Transcendental Idealism, as an Absolute mind with a part of which we coalesce, or by Xian theology, as a distinct deity acting on us. Something not our immediate self, does act on our life! So I seem doubtless to my audience to be blowing hot & cold, explaining away Xianity, yet defending the more general basis from which I say it proceeds. I fear that these brief words may be misleading, but I let them go! When the book comes out you will get a truer idea.

Believe me, with profound regard, yours always truly, Wm. James