Quotes · Quote card
Quotation from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James
“Medical materialism finishes up Saint Paul by calling his vision on the road to Damascus a discharging lesion of the occipital cortex, he being an epileptic”
The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture I: Religion and Neurology
James caricatures reductive diagnosis before rejecting it as irrelevant to spiritual value.
Citation: "Medical materialism finishes up Saint Paul by calling his vision on the road to Damascus a discharging lesion of the occipital cortex, he being an epileptic" — William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture I: Religion and Neurology. (id the-varieties-of-religious-experience-q1)
Portrait: William James by Alice M. Boughton, c. 1907, platinum print, from the National Portrait Gallery - NPG-NPG 87 37James-000001 (cropped), Alice Boughton, Public domain.
