Synthesized answer
James suggests that "religious impulses" are the fundamental drivers of belief, acting as the "original body of truth" [5]. These impulses are inarticulate and immediate assurances that are not rationally or logically deducible [5, 3]. "Common sense," on the other hand, appears to be related to the systems of ideas and conceptual frameworks that our minds frame to interpret experiences [2].
While "common sense" questions the need to assume only one system of ideas can be true and acknowledges that the world can be handled and profit derived from multiple systems [2], it does not seem to be directly combined with "religious impulses" in the provided passages. The passages indicate that "religious impulses" precede and impress upon our "articulately verbalized philosophy," which is then a "showy translation" of these deeper feelings [5]. Critical arguments, representing a form of reasoned thought, vainly attempt to change faith that is based on these immediate assurances [1]. Therefore, rather than being combined, "religious impulses" appear to be the foundation upon which reasoned systems, potentially including those associated with "common sense," are built or validated [5].
Synthesized from the book passages below. Chat with the book on Feynman for follow-up.
From the book
up the original body of truth, and our articulately verbalized philosophy is but its showy translation into formulas. The unreasoned and immediate assurance is the deep thing in us, the reasoned argument is but a surface exhibition. Instinct leads, intelligence does but follow. If a person feels the presence of a living God after the fashion shown by my quotations, your critical arguments, be they never so superior, will vainly set themselves to change his faith. Please observe, however, that I do not yet say that it is _better_ that the subconscious and non‐rational should thus hold…
al ways as this, to give them up at word of command for more scientific therapeutics. What are we to think of all this? Has science made too wide a claim? I believe that the claims of the sectarian scientist are, to say the least, premature. The experiences which we have been studying during this hour (and a great many other kinds of religious experiences are like them) plainly show the universe to be a more many‐sided affair than any sect, even the scientific sect, allows for. What, in the end, are all our verifications but experiences that agree with more or less isolated systems of…
gerness and impulse, it adds to life an enchantment which is not rationally or logically deducible from anything else. This enchantment, coming as a gift when it does come,—a gift of our organism, the physiologists will tell us, a gift of God’s grace, the theologians say,—is either there or not there for us, and there are persons who can no more become possessed by it than they can fall in love with a given woman by mere word of command. Religious feeling is thus an absolute addition to the Subject’s range of life. It gives him a new sphere of power. When the outward battle is lost,…
hearted to merit so good a name. But what matters it in the end whether we call such a state of mind religious or not? It is too insignificant for our instruction in any case; and its very possessor wrote it down in terms which he would not have used unless he had been thinking of more energetically religious moods in others, with which he found himself unable to compete. It is with these more energetic states that our sole business lies, and we can perfectly well afford to let the minor notes and the uncertain border go. It was the extremer cases that I had in mind a little while ago…
r dust in libraries, for the simple reason that our generation has ceased to believe in the kind of God it argued for. Whatever sort of a being God may be, we _know_ to‐day that he is nevermore that mere external inventor of “contrivances” intended to make manifest his “glory” in which our great‐grandfathers took such satisfaction, though just how we know this we cannot possibly make clear by words either to others or to ourselves. I defy any of you here fully to account for your persuasion that if a God exist he must be a more cosmic and tragic personage than that Being. The truth is…