Foreword
To the Official Centenary Edition of William James’s
Varieties of Religious Experience
by
Micky James
Greetings,
My having been asked to contribute a few words to this commem-
orative edition of The Varieties becomes a pleasure I tackle not lightly
as I, myself, am a painter, not a scholar. In such lively regard do I
hold the reader who is interested in this topic that I find myself all
but purified in the waters. Your hefty and devoted attention to
William James — to his ideas about religious experience, of course
— but also to his mind and to the man himself, as well, would surely
have blushingly distracted his own. You do him enormous honor.
I never knew my grandfather, William James, born as I was in
1923, the year following his own Alice’s death, she then a widow of
twelve years. I did meet his son, Alexander, who, of course, was my
father, a painter, whose death brought his brothers Harry and Billy,
to our New Hampshire home that February day of 1946. Though
now fifty and more years later, I remember well my uncles’ sundown
arrival. That morning we made my father a coffin from old pine
boards. Placed in the darkening dining room, there he was when
they turned up. Standing there, the three of us, and looking down
on him, I heard Uncle Harry say, “He was the most like Dad.”
And so, in a curious way, I have met Gramps Willie, as we
would affectionately refer to him in our middle-age, which may
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FOREWORD
yet be another reason why I feel so spirited a nearness to all who are
involved in this commemorative edition, you who — intellectually,
sportingly — have given him your all, you who know him so well.
My own dyslexic father, born in the year of The Principles, 1890,
was later to invite upon his father, William, no end of frustration
and despair. From cool Chicorua, William wrote to his brother
Henry the novelist, “Aleck having passed only in French, is back
in hot Cambridge with his tutor. How long, oh Lord, how long?”
Maturing as a cerebral washout in that dynamic house on Irving
Street, my father could hardly have felt little but a cautious dis-
tance from his father. Somewhere deep within, he must have nursed
a lingering wound, for I never heard him speak but once — once
only — of his own loving Dad. While posing for him one day for a
portrait (I was 12), quite out of the blue I asked, “Did your father
have a sense of humor?” He gave me this long look and, slowly
putting down his brushes and palette, he said — and almost joyfully
so — “For chrissake, Yes!” We then returned to our separate tasks.
Until the effect of a poor heart put an end to my dad’s automatic
writing days, it was always William James himself who would speak
through the unconscious hand. Each session would begin, “This is
your loving dad,” and always in William James’s own distinctive
handwriting. But to each guest’s most frequent question, “What’s it
like up there?” immediately the pencil would respond, “Does the
robin tell her hatching secrets to a cow?”
So here we are, and now that I have just about satisfied myself, at
least, that, indeed, I have met that dear man you honor here, here’s
to express my delight in the continuing importance of his work,
and of my family’s warm support of this unique publication. Insofar
as I have been sanctioned by no one in particular, I give the James
family seal of approval to what we shall henceforth call the official
commemorative edition of The Varieties. All in all, it is quite over-
whelming, really.
How unbearably touched he would have been had Mrs Piper
assured him that of a distant day he would be accorded such an
expression of ultimate respect. Could ever a hundredth anniversary
be more sweet!
Boston, Massachusetts
March 2002
Editor’s Preface
Eugene Taylor and Jeremy Carrette
The Routledge Centenary Edition of William James’s The Varieties
of Religious Experience is based on the revised August 1902 edition,
which according to Fredson Bowers, contains nineteen-plate changes
(Harvard edition, 1985:557) from the original June 1902 edition.
The most significant change occurring in a footnote, in the conclu-
sion, referring to a proposed posthumous work by Frederick Myers.
The revised version contains an extended footnote on Myers’s work
and acknowledges Myers’s explorations of the “subliminal region of
consciousness.” The first edition was published on 9 June 1902,
when James also finished his Gifford Lectures, from which the text
of the book is taken. William James’s Gifford Lectures were deliv-
ered at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, in May and June of
1901 and 1902.
This centenary edition is published in conjunction with a
special international and interdisciplinary centenary conference,
held at Old College, University of Edinburgh on 5–8 July 2002,
commemorating the Gifford Lectures and the publication of The
Varieties of Religious Experience. Routledge will also publish the papers
of this conference.
There have been many editions of The Varieties of Religious
Experience, most notably the 1985 Harvard edition, which provides
many useful additional sources and appendices. However, the aim of
this edition is to bring the reader back to the text in an accessible
form in 2002. The centenary edition is completely reset with new
introductions and a new index. The editors have framed the 2002
edition with two new introductory sections from the point of view
of historical scholarship on James and critical work in the psychology