ABSTRACT
William James offered a crucial contribution to the empirical analysis of the religious phenomenon. He first dealt with general studies concerning psychology, then moved on to research on the psychology of religion with an empirical outlook. Moreover, James viewed religious belief as a path that went beyond simple evidence, as a genuine and strong will to believe so that even an indecisive stance as far as believing was concerned revealed a negative attitude toward belief itself. James was attracted by the varieties of religious forms, which included both mystic figures and simple believers at the same time. James's classical study on religious experience was defined in 1961 by H. Richard Niebuhr as a milestone of religious thought. James obviously strongly preferred the analysis of personal religion. This brought him close to the position of a well-known and criticized scholar, an expert in the life of Saint Francis of Assisi, the theologian and historian Paul Sabatier.
