Why Should We Think Upon Things That

[pragmatism's] Only Test Of Probable Truth Is What Works Best In The Way Of Leading Us, What Fits Every Part Of Life Best And Combines With The Collectivity Of Experience's Demands, Nothing Being Omitted.

How Many Of Us Persist In A Precipitate Course Which, But For A Moment Of Heedlessness We Might Never Have Entered Upon, Simply Because We Hate To Change Our Minds.

A Little Cooling Down Of Animal Excitability And Instinct, A Little Loss Of Animal Toughness, A Little Irritable Weakness And Descent Of The Pain-threshold, Will Bring The Worm At The Core Of All Our Usual Springs Of Delight Into Full View, And Turn Us Into Melancholy Metaphysicians.

Religion, Therefore, As I Now Ask You Arbitrarily To Take It, Shall Mean For Us The Feelings, Acts, And Experiences Of Individual Men In Their Solitude, So Far As They Apprehend Themselves To Stand In Relation To Whatever They May Consider The Divine. Since The Relation May Be Either Moral, Physical, Or Ritual, It Is Evident That Out Of Religion In The Sense In Which We Take It, Theologies, Philosophies, And Ecclesiastical Organizations May Secondarily Grow.

To Study The Abnormal Is The Best Way Of Understanding The Normal.