William James , Medical materialism, from The Variety of Religious Experiences
Channel: Craig Campbell
Date: 2012-09-14

William James Medical Materialism
Henry James Sr. was a Presbyterian who followed the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg. His son, William James, was born in 1842, the same year Soren Kierkegaard wrote, "let ideality and reality strive against each other to all eternity, so long as there is no consciousness, there is no interest in this struggle". James studied the struggle between ideality and reality in the single individual just as Kierkegaard did. In 1869 James received his M.D. but never practiced medicine due to the onset of depression. 

In 1872 he began teaching at Harvard University and continued until 1907 when he resigned his professorship.  He wrote may books about psychology while teaching and traveling abroad. William wrote The Sentiment of Rationality in 1882, gave an address before the Young Men's Christian Association of Harvard called Is Life Worth Living in 1896, and wrote The Varieties of Religious Experience in 1902. In 1910 he died of heart failure in New Hampshire. Henry James, the author, was William's younger brother. He was born in 1843 and died in 1916. 

The Sentiment of Rationality was included with reprinted articles from other books by William James. Here is a link to that book.
http://archive.org/stream/sentimentration02jamegoog#page/n4/mode/2up

The Varieties of Religious Experience has been read into Librivox.org for your listening enjoyment. There is also a link to the text on the Librivox page.
https://catalog.librivox.org/search.php?title=&author=william+james&status=all&action=Search