Consciousness is not a static existence but a system of relations, not independent of its contents. Even the soul is a totality of thought-relations, a process, not being. James is a thorough-going adherent to the belief in observed phenomena, who reminds us of Locke and Hume once again in a new setting. James thinks that if we believe in an omniscient and omnipotent Absolute we will become mere puppets in the hands of an eternally determined Divine will and cannot do anything ourselves for our progress in the future. A deterministic system of absolutism leads us to fatalism, despair and surrender.
All hope is abolished from our life.
Absolutism defeats our aspirations, desires and longings, and disappoints us at every step by making us play-toys in the hands of the Absolute. We are asked to believe what we neither understand nor experience. Absolutistic metaphysics does not provide an object for our immediate faith and belief. James thinks that a philosophy that undermines the validity of our personal experiences cannot stand. So he offers a God of empirical belief, a finite God, not omniscient, not omnipotent, who exists in the midst of many individuals in a universe of real disharmony and diversity.