The author declares that W. James in his monumental work ‘The Variety of Religious Experience’ had manifested himself as religious thinker. On the James’s point of view, the religious feeling could not been explained with analogies with other psychological experience, because there was not a separate religious experience – it was always a variety of feelings in relation to that matter, which human beings “took for god”.
An important input of James was the facet that – thanks to his pragmatic method – he was not inclined to ‘medical materialism’ and did not reject the genuine religious feeling. On the point of view of that American psychologist, even the brightest insights, taken by people as a wonder, could be interpreted as a natural phenomenon of subliminal conscience. The wonder of religious transformation is hidden not in the psychological process as it is, but in a specific spiritual state – ‘sacred state’. Saints bring a creative social power and virtue into the world; and it testifies the pragmatic value of sacred state. Thus, on the point of view of K., James accepted the reality of religious feelings and saw in them a potential for the development of ethic norms and tolerance.