r inner
experience makes us cognizant of a spiritual world. The advance of
psychological research does not deal kindly with this contention, and
such works as Leuba's "Psychology of Religious Mysticism" give a
rational explanation of the mystic state. Moreover, James did not give
his support to monotheism. "That vast literature of proofs of God's
existence," he stated, "drawn from the order of nature, which a century
ago seemed so overwhelmingly convincing, today does little more than
gather dust in the libraries, for the simple reason that our generation
has ceased to believe in the kind of God it argued for. Whatever sort of
God may be, we know today that he is nevermore that mere external
inventor of 'contrivances' intended to make manifest his 'glory' in
which our great-grandfathers took such satisfaction."

James claimed to be a pluralist in the sense that there are several or
many spiritual beings above us, and his writings lead one to believe
that he was not convinced that man, as a distinct personality, survives
the grave.

Royce rejected all the current arguments for God and immortality and
argues for the mysticism of internal experience. Eucken offers no
support to theologians; and Bergson does not seem to express a clear
belief in a personal god or personal immortality.

Coming to the more popular of contemporary philosophers one finds that,
just as the Greek philosophers reasoned outside the pale of the then
held beliefs which were theistic, so do these modern philosophers reach
conclusions that are outside the pale of organized religion of today.
George Santayana is a materialist and sceptic who, in his "Reason in
Religion," reveals his scepticism and frowns upon personal immortality.
"It is pathetic," he comments, "to observe how lowly are the motives
that religion, even the highest, attributes to the deity, and from what
a hard-pressed and bitter existence they have been drawn. To be given
the best morsel, to be remembered, to be praised, to be obeyed blindly
and punctiliously, these have been thought points of honor with the
gods, for which they would dispense favors and punishments on the most
exhorbitant scale.... The idea that religion contains a literal, not a
symbolic, representation of truth and life is simply an impossible idea.
Whoever entertains it has not come within the region of profitable
philosophizing on that subject."

Bertrand Russell, considered by some the keenest philosophical min