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James, William, 1842-1910

"Varieties of Religious Experience, a Study in Human Nature"

I am aware that it may justly be called
mystical. I am not enough acquainted with philosophy to defend
it from that or any other charge. I feel that in writing of it I
have overlaid it with words rather than put it clearly to your
thought. But, such as it is, I have described it as carefully as
I now am able to do."
Here is another document, even more definite in character, which,
the writer being a Swiss, I translate from the French
original.[28]
[28] I borrow it, with Professor Flournoy's permission, from his
rich collection of psychological documents.

"I was in perfect health: we were on our sixth day of tramping,
and in good training. We had come the day before from Sixt to
Trient by Buet. I felt neither fatigue, hunger, nor thirst, and
my state of mind was equally healthy. I had had at Forlaz good
news from home; I was subject to no anxiety, either near or
remote, for we had a good guide, and there was not a shadow of
uncertainty about the road we should follow. I can best describe
the condition in which I was by calling it a state of
equilibrium. When all at once I experienced a feeling of being
raised above myself, I felt the presence of God--I tell of the
thing just as I was conscious of it--as if his goodness and his
power were penetrating me altogether.


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