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Lecture I Shall Have to Try to Persuade You That This Is the Case.

The Varieties of Religious Experience: a Study in Human Nature · William James — chapter 8 of 12 · ~106 words · public domain

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Meanwhile, however, I am sure that for many of my readers this diet is too slender. If supernaturalism and inner union with the divine are true, you think, then not so much permission, as compulsion to believe, ought to be found. Philosophy has always professed to prove religious truth by coercive argument; and the construction of philosophies of this kind has always been one favorite function of the religious life, if we use this term in the large historic sense. But religious philosophy is an enormous subject, and in my next lecture I can only give that brief glance at it which my limits will allow.

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