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The Varieties of Religious Experience. A Study in Human Nature. Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-1902. 
William James
London, 1902
 
One of the most influential works on the psychology and philosophy of religion.
 
First edition, first printing, preceding the American edition  – the hallmarks being: no “First Edition June 1902” on the verso of the title page, misspelled “Nietsche” on page 38, and 32 pages of ads in the rear.
 
Original publisher’s cloth, top edge gilt.  Covers and spine moderately rubbed with light scattered stains.  Corners lightly bumped, spine a shade toned.  Paper label chipped and rubbed, but still largely legible.  Textblock neatly strengthened.  Old owner signature on first leaf with various pencil/pen notes at margins throughout.  Discreet English bookseller’s label inside front cover.  Withal, a nice copy of an important book – Very Good. 
 
‘One of the many spiritual confessions that William James records in Varieties is one on the “sick soul”… The “French correspondent” in this section describes being in a generally pessimistic mood, unsure what to do with himself.  Then suddenly, one evening, he goes into his dressing room and “there fell upon me without any warning, just as if it came out of darkness, a horrible fear of my own existence.”  It is followed by a vision of “an epileptic patient whom I had seen in the asylum, a black-haired youth with greenish skin, entirely idiotic.”  He feels that he might become that patient, and further, that it is entirely out of his control whether that would happen.  “I became a mass of quivering fear,” he continues.  A general feeling of insecurity clung to him for months…
 
It turns out that this particular account of existential collapse, though anonymous, was actually written by James himself.  It describes one of the depressive episodes to which he was prone.  (He confessed the fact a couple of years after the publication of Varieties, the book version of his Gifford Lectures of 1901.)  The incident provides us with a window into the soul of the American philosopher and psychologist.’(Vernon)
 
Of additional note about the significance of this book…
 
‘James responded to the cultural and social ferment of the late 19th century with the Gifford lectures, given in Edinburgh during 1901-02.  When he turned these talks into a book, James placed himself at the crossroads of psychology and religion to articulate an approach to religious experience that would help liberate the American mind at the beginning of the 20th century from its puritan restrictions by advancing a pluralistic view of belief inspired by American traditions of tolerance…he was obsessed by the problem of expressing individual consciousness through language; this is just one of the principal themes of Varieties…
 
Using potted biographies of well-known writers and thinkers, including Tolstoy and John Bunyan, William James concludes a long and fascinating exploration of the “healthy mind,” the “sick soul,” and the “divided self,” with closing chapters on mysticism, saintliness, atonement and conversion.  Here, too, he presented an account of God as a finite being, inextricably caught up in world affairs, and linked to human activity and ambitions.’(McCrum)