ABSTRACT
William James’s classic study of religious experience, with its seminal and suggestive treatment of mysticism, appeared in 1902 as the result of his 1901–02 Gifford Lectures.1 It was one manifestation among many of a new interest in the experiential aspect of religion arising in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Roman Catholic counterparts to James included, not surprisingly, some Jesuits, perhaps most notably the Frenchman Auguste-François Poulain, the author of the treatise, The Graces of Interior Prayer.2 The shift in sensibility indicated by James’s work led Jesuits, along with other Catholics, to discover aspects of their spiritual heritage that had lain unrecognised amid Enlightenment rationalism and the political conflicts that faced Catholic Christianity in the long nineteenth century.
