Philosophy is a somewhat mysterious subject to the general student and reader. What is it about? Why should people devote themselves to a subject seemingly so remote and so fruitless? What is the relation, if any, between the study of philosophy and that practical consolation which is popularly associated with the subject? The present volume is designed to answer these and like questions in terms which are intelligible to the uninitiated.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1936

This out- of-print classic returns, in a new paperback edition, through the Vanderbilt Library of American Philosophy. Designed to serve as both a systematic account of James's development and a repository of selections from his unpublished writings, the one-volume work (which forms the basis for this new paperback edition) offers a brief and convenient sourcebook of James's thought, set forth in terms that require no previous familiarity with technical problems of philosophy and psychology.