The Will to Believe

In 1896 William James delivered before the Philosophical Clubs of Yale and Brown an essay called *The Will to Believe* — a defence of religious commitment against the demand that no proposition be accepted on insufficient evidence. He argued that there is a special class of options that cannot be decided on purely intellectual grounds, and that in those cases our 'passional nature' may rightly choose. The essay remains one of the two or three most discussed defences of religious belief in modern philosophy.

In 1897 James gathered that essay with nine others into the present volume. The collection includes meditations on whether life is worth living, the sentiment of rationality, the dilemma of determinism, the foundations of ethics, great men and their environment, psychical research, and the limits of Hegelian metaphysics.

This edition reproduces the complete 1897 first-edition text — James's Preface and all ten essays in his original order. A short editor's preface places the volume in its biographical and intellectual context.