PREFACE

This book would never have been written if I had not been honored with an appointment as the Gifford Lecturer The Gifford Lectures are a prestigious series of lectures established in Scotland to promote the study of "Natural Theology"—the study of religious truths through reason and science rather than divine revelation. on Natural Religion at the University of Edinburgh. While searching for subjects for the two courses of ten lectures each for which I became responsible, it seemed to me that the first course might well be a descriptive one on "Man’s Religious inclinations," and the second a philosophical original: "metaphysical" one on "Their Satisfaction through Philosophy." However, the unexpected growth of the psychological material as I began to write it out has resulted in the second subject being postponed entirely. The description of man’s religious makeup original: "constitution" now fills all twenty lectures. In Lecture XX, I have suggested rather than explicitly stated my own philosophical conclusions; the reader who wishes to know them immediately should turn to pages 511–519 and to the "Postscript" of the book. I hope to be able at a later date to express them in a more explicit form.

Because I believe that a broad acquaintance with specific details often makes us wiser than the possession of deep, abstract formulas, I have loaded the lectures with concrete examples. I have chosen these from among the more extreme expressions of the religious temperament. Consequently, to some readers—before they get beyond the middle of the book—I may seem to offer a caricature of