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THE WILL TO BELIEVE [1]
Hypotheses and options, [1]. Pascal's wager, [5]. Clifford's veto, [8]. Psychological causes of belief, [9]. Thesis of the Essay, [11]. Empiricism and absolutism, [12]. Objective certitude and its unattainability, [13]. Two different sorts of risks in believing, [17]. Some risk unavoidable, [19]. Faith may bring forth its own verification, [22]. Logical conditions of religious belief, [25].
IS LIFE WORTH LIVING [32]
Temperamental Optimism and Pessimism, [33]. How reconcile with life one bent on suicide? [38]. Religious melancholy and its cure, [39]. Decay of Natural Theology, [43]. Instinctive antidotes to pessimism, [46]. Religion involves belief in an unseen extension of the world, [51]. Scientific positivism, [52]. Doubt actuates conduct as much as belief does, [54]. To deny certain faiths is logically absurd, for they make their objects true, [56]. Conclusion, [6l].
THE SENTIMENT OF RATIONALITY [63]
Rationality means fluent thinking, [63]. Simplification, [65]. Clearness, [66]. Their antagonism, [66]. Inadequacy of the abstract, [68]. The thought of nonentity, [71]. Mysticism, [74]. Pure theory cannot banish wonder, [75]. The passage to practice may restore the feeling of rationality, [75]. Familiarity and expectancy, [76]. 'Substance,' [80]. A rational world must appear congruous with our powers, [82]. But these differ from man to man, [88]. Faith is one of them, [90]. Inseparable from doubt, [95]. May verify itself, [96]. Its rôle in ethics, [98]. Optimism and pessimism, [101]. Is this a moral universe?—what does the problem mean? [103]. Anaesthesia versus energy, [107]. Active assumption necessary, [107]. Conclusion, [110].
REFLEX ACTION AND THEISM [111]
Prestige of Physiology, [112]. Plan of neural action, [113]. God the mind's adequate object, [116]. Contrast between world as perceived and as conceived, [118]. God, [120]. The mind's three departments, [123]. Science due to a subjective demand, [129]. Theism a mean between two extremes, [134]. Gnosticism, [137]. No intellection except for practical ends, [140]. Conclusion, [142].
THE DILEMMA OF DETERMINISM [145]
Philosophies seek a rational world, [146]. Determinism and Indeterminism defined, [149]. Both are postulates of rationality, [152]. Objections to chance considered, [153]. Determinism involves pessimism, [159]. Escape via Subjectivism, [164]. Subjectivism leads to corruption, [170]. A world with chance in it is morally the less irrational alternative, [176]. Chance not incompatible with an ultimate Providence, [180].
THE MORAL PHILOSOPHER AND THE MORAL LIFE [184]
The moral philosopher postulates a unified system, [185]. Origin of moral judgments, [185]. Goods and ills are created by judgment?, [189]. Obligations are created by demands, [192]. The conflict of ideals, [198]. Its solution, [205]. Impossibility of an abstract system of Ethics, [208]. The easy-going and the strenuous mood, [211]. Connection between Ethics and Religion, [212].
GREAT MEN AND THEIR ENVIRONMENT [216]
Solidarity of causes in the world, [216]. The human mind abstracts in order to explain, [219]. Different cycles of operation in Nature, [220]. Darwin's distinction between causes that produce and causes that preserve a variation, [221]. Physiological causes produce, the environment only adopts or preserves, great men, [225]. When adopted they become social ferments, [226]. Messrs. Spencer and Allen criticised, [232]. Messrs. Wallace and Gryzanowski quoted, [239]. The laws of history, [244]. Mental evolution, [245]. Analogy between original ideas and Darwin's accidental variations, [247]. Criticism of Spencer's views, [251].
THE IMPORTANCE OF INDIVIDUALS [255]
Small differences may be important, [256]. Individual differences are important because they are the causes of social change, [259]. Hero-worship justified, [261].
ON SOME HEGELISMS [263]
The world appears as a pluralism, [264]. Elements of unity in the pluralism, [268]. Hegel's excessive claims, [273]. He makes of negation a bond of union, [273]. The principle of totality, [277]. Monism and pluralism, [279]. The fallacy of accident in Hegel, [280]. The good and the bad infinite, [284]. Negation, [286]. Conclusion, [292].—Note on the Anaesthetic revelation, [294].
WHAT PSYCHICAL RESEARCH HAS ACCOMPLISHED [299]
The unclassified residuum, [299]. The Society for Psychical Research and its history, [303]. Thought-transference, [308]. Gurney's work, [309]. The census of hallucinations, [312]. Mediumship, [313]. The 'subliminal self,' [315]. 'Science' and her counter-presumptions, [317]. The scientific character of Mr. Myers's work, [320]. The mechanical-impersonal view of life versus the personal-romantic view, [324].