William James : Writings 1878-1899 : Psychology, Briefer Course The Will to Believe Talks to Teachers and Students Essays (Library of America)

2501 Pages·1992·7.22 MB·English

by  William James

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Page iii
William James
Writings 18781899
Psychology: Briefer Course
The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy
Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of
Life's Ideals
Selected Essays

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Page iv
Volume arrangement, notes, and chronology copyright © 1992
by Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., New York, N.Y.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced commercially by offset-
lithographic or equivalent copying devices without the
permission of the publisher.
Reprinted by permission of the publisher from Psychology:
Briefer Course; The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular
Philosophy; Talks to Teachers on Psychology; Essays in
Philosophy; Essays in Psychology; Essays in Radical Empiricism;
Pragmatism; and Essays in Religion and Morality by William
James; Frederick H. Burkhardt, General Editor, Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1984, 1979, 1983, 1978,
1983, 1976, 1975, 1982 by the President and Fellows of Harvard
College.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
requirements of the American National Standard for Information
SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI
Z39.481984.
Distributed to the trade in the United States and Canada by the
Viking Press.
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 91-58225
For cataloging information, see end of Notes.
ISBN 0-940450-72-0.
First Printing
The Library of America58
Manufactured in the United States of America

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Page v
GERALD E. MYERS
WROTE THE NOTES AND SELECTED
THE ESSAYS FOR THIS VOLUME

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Page vii
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the National Endowment for
the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation for their generous support of this series.

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Page ix
CONTENTS
Psychology: Briefer Course 1
The Will to Believe and Other Essays in
Popular Philosophy 445
Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to
Students on Some of Life's Ideals 705
Selected Essays 889
Chronology 1139
Note on the Texts 1168
Notes 1178

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Page 1
PSYCHOLOGY:
BRIEFER COURSE

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Page 3
Preface
In preparing the following abridgment of my larger work, the
Principles of Psychology, my chief aim has been to make it more
directly available for class-room use. For this purpose I have
omitted several whole chapters and rewritten others. I have left
out all the polemical and historical matter, all the metaphysical
discussions and purely speculative passages, most of the
quotations, all the book-references, and (I trust) all the
impertinences, of the larger work, leaving to the teacher the
choice of orally restoring as much of this material as may seem to
him good, along with his own remarks on the topics successively
studied. Knowing how ignorant the average student is of
physiology, I have added brief chapters on the various senses. In
this shorter work the general point of view, which I have adopted
as that of 'natural science,' has, I imagine, gained in clearness by
its extrication from so much critical matter and its more simple
and dogmatic statement. About two fifths of the volume is either
new or rewritten, the rest is 'scissors and paste.' I regret to have
been unable to supply chapters on pleasure and pain, æsthetics,
and the moral sense. Possibly the defect may be made up in a
later edition, if such a thing should ever be demanded.
I cannot forbear taking advantage of this preface to make a
statement about the composition of the Principles of Psychology.