To be open. A reflection by W. James


God is real since he produces real effects. The real effects in question, so far as I have as yet admitted them, are exerted on the personal centres of energy of the various subjects, but the spontaneous faith of most of the subjects is that they embrace a wider sphere than this. Most religious men believe (or ‘know’, if they be mystical) that not only they themselves but also the whole universe of beings to whom the God is present, are secure in his paternal hands. There is a sense, a dimension, they are sure, in which we are all saved, in spite of the gates of hell and all adverse terrestrial appearances. God’s existence is the guarantee of an ideal order that shall be permanently preserved. This world may indeed, as science secures us, some day burn up or freeze; but if it is part of his order, the old ideals are sure to be brought elsewhere to fruition, so that where God is, tragedy is only provisional and partial, and shipwreck and dissolution are not the absolutely final things. Only when this further step of faith concerning God is taken, and remote objective consequences are predicted, does religion, as it seems to me, get wholly free from the first immediate subjective experiences, and bring a real hypothesis into play. A good hypothesis in science must have other properties than those of the phenomenon that is immediately evoked to explain; otherwise it is not prolific enough. God, meaning only what enters into the religious man’s experience of union, falls short of being a hypothesis of this more useful order. He needs to enter into the wider cosmic relations in order to justify the subject’s absolute confidence and peace. 


William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience. A Study in Human Nature, edited and introduced by Martin Marty, New York: Penguin Books, 1985, 517-518.

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