“Immediate luminousness, in short, philosophical reasonableness and moral helpfulness are the only available criteria. Saint Teresa might have had the nervous system of the placidest cow, and it would not now save her theology, if the trial of the theology by these other tests should show it to be contemptible. And conversely if her theology can stand these other tests, it will make no difference how hysterical or nervously off balance Saint Teresa may have been when she was with us here below.”

—  William James

Lecture I, "Religion and Neurology"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

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William James246
American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist 1842–1910

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