Defining Religion and Personal Experience

From The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
James brackets institutional religion to focus on the feelings, acts, and experiences of individuals in solitude as they apprehend themselves in relation to whatever they consider the divine.
Lectures II-III, Circumscription of the Topic

Contains James's famous working definition: "the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine."

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Lecture II

Distinguishes personal from institutional religion and defends taking the extreme, articulate cases as most revealing.

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