The Varieties of Religious Experience - A Study in Human Nature

1902. Reprint, with revisions (the first edition was in the same year). xii, 534pp. Top edge gilt. William James (1842-1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, he is considered to be one of the leading thinkers of the late 19th century. The present book comprises his Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion, delivered at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1901 and 1902. The lectures concerned the psychological study of individual private religious experiences and mysticism, and used a range of examples to identify commonalities in religious experiences across traditions. The book is bound in the original greyish blue cloth covered boards with a paper title label on the spine. The case of the book is very good condition with shelf wear and some soiling to the boards. The spine is noticeably faded and is brown in colour and there is lighter fading around the edges of the boards. The cloth on the corner tips is worn and the spine ends are bumped with damage and a some loss to the cloth. There is a split of about 3/4" in the cloth on the top of the front spine edge and a thin split of about 3" near the middle of the front spine edge. The title label on the spine is very worn and the wording of the title is now indistinct. The contents are tight and clean with faint traces of an erased name on the front free endpaper. PLEASE NOTE: This is a fairly heavy book and extra postage may apply for delivery outside the UK.…