How long does it take to read The Will to Believe?
and other essays in popular philosophy
The Will to Believe by William James takes about 6 hours 5 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 6 hours 5 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1897. 332 pages, about 91,300 words.
13 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 10 hours 9 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 6 hours 5 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 48 minutes |
The page count is the median across 15 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
This volume contains the complete texts of two books by America's most important psychologust and philospher. Easy to understand, yet, brilliant and penetrating, the books were written specifically for laymen and they are still stimulating reading for readers concerned with important questions of belief in an age of science. Human Immorality: Two supposed Objections to the Doctrine, reprinted here from the corrected second edition, examines the questions of survival after death, and provides an unusual philosophical rebuttal to the theory that thought and personality necesscarily die with the brain.
Subjects: Belief and doubt, Philosophy, Immortality, Spiritualism and psychical research, Belief, Rationalism and free thought
