Reasoned Argument is a Surface Exhibition from Subconscious Depths

Robert Richardson below describes some of what William James was thinking as James was putting together the Gifford lectures for delivery in 1901-2 at the U. of Edinburgh. These became a book still read today, The Varieties of Religious Experience.

That these feelings - intuitions- come from something other than day-light reason does not disqualify them as valid experiences. James is at some pains to show that these "unreasoned and immediate assurances(s)" are "the deep thing in us, the [reasoned] argument is but a surface exhibition." p 395 William James in the Maelstrom of American Modernism

My point, we (that includes me) often think we have followed inexorably the path of reason when it is really the case that our motivations/conclusions/beliefs come from out of our personal , subconscious depths.