In the introduction to his book, The Sell in Trans[ormation, Herbert Fingarette quotes the saying from Chuang-Tse, "Cease striving; then there will be self-transformation." That quote is an apt beginning to the study of William James from the point of view of the drive for meaning. In Fingarette's work, the ego in its organizing function represents "an autonomous drive toward meaning," ~ and it is one of the basic assumptions of Fingarette's analysis that "the disposition to increase the meaningfulness of life is fundamental to the human being." e After clarifying his concepts of meaning and meaninglessness, Fingarette spends the rest of the book exemplifying the self-transformation which the drive for meaning brings about, moving from the preparatory stage of blame to a fascinating discussion of mystic selflessness.
In this discussion I am not proposing that Fingarette is James rewritten, nor that we should read Fingarette's categories into James's perceptive analysis of religious experiences. But it does seem to me that James with his strong background in psychology was attempting to explicate the processes by which an individual could find meaning in life. Many of James's addresses are directed to that point -"Is Life Worth Living?," "What Makes a Life Significant?," "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings," and so forth. That James used the area of religious experiences in which to state his position should not restrict us to believing that in religion alone did James think meaning could be found. The unification of the inner-self with which James is concemed can come about in many ways, and religious insight is only one of the many. 3 On this point James and Fingarette agree.
In my analysis [ will be using the discussion in Fingarette as background around which to organize the development of James's studies of religious experience. However, it will become evident as we study James in the light of his discussion of meaning or integration in life that the model he employs in speaking of "subconscious" and psychological activity is a mechanistic, horizonal model rather than "superego-ego-id" model with which we are