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This book would never have been written had I not been
honored with an appointment as Gifford Lecturer on Natural Religion
at the University of Edinburgh. In casting about me for subjects
of the two courses of ten lectures each for which I thus became
responsible, it seemed to me that the first course might well
be a descriptive one on 'Man's Religious Appetites,' and the
second a metaphysical one on 'Their Satisfaction through Philosophy.'
But the unexpected growth of the psycho-logical matter as I came
to write it out has resulted in the second subject being postponed
entirely, and the description of man's religious constitution
now fills the twenty lectures. In Lecture XX I have suggested
rather than stated my own philosophic conclusions, rnd the reader
who desires immediately to know them should turn to pages 511-519,
and to the 'Postscript' of the book. I hope to be able at some
later day to express them in more explicit form.
In my belief that a large acquaintance with particulars often
makes us wiser than the possession of abstract for-mulas,, however
deep, I have loaded the lectures with concrete examples, and
I have chosen these among the extremer expressions of the religious
temperament. To some readers I may consequently seem, before
they get beyond the middle of the book, to offer a caricature
of
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the subject. Such convulsions of piety, they will say, are
not sane. If, however, they will have the patience to read to
the end, I believe that this unfavorable impres-sion will disappear;
for I there combine the religious impulses with other principles
of common sense which serve as correctives of exaggeration, and
allow the indi-vidual reader to draw as moderate conclusions
as he will.
My thanks for help in writing these lectures are due to Edwin
P. Starbuck, of Stanford University, who made over to me his
large collection of manuscript material; to Henry W. Rankin,
of East Northfield, a friend unseen but proved, to whom I owe
precious information; to Theodore Flourxioy, of Geneva, to Canning
Sculler, of Oxford, and to my colleague Benjamin Rand, for docu-ments;
to my colleague Dickinson S. Miller, and to my friends, Thomas
Wren Ward, of New York, and Win-centy Lutoslawski, late of Cracow,
for important sugges-tions and advice. Finally, to conversations
with the lamented Thomas Davidson and to the use of his books,
at Glenmore, above Keene Valley, I owe more obliga-tions than
I can well express.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY,
March, 1902..
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