From the history of psychology. 21. Read the article quickly and give a short summary of it:

21. Read the article quickly and give a short summary of it:

William James (1842-1910) is an American psychologist, who developed the philosophy of pragmatism. James was born in New York on January 11, 1842. His father, Henry James, was a theologian. William James attended private schools in the United States and Europe, the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard University, and the Harvard Medical School, from which he received a degree in 1869. Before finishing his medical studies, he went on an exploring expedition in Brazil and also studied physiology in Germany. After three years of retirement due to illness, James became an instructor in physiology at Harvard in 1872. After 1880 he taught psychology and philosophy at Harvard; he left Harvard in 1907 and gave highly successful lectures at Columbia University and the University of Oxford.

James's first book, the monumental Principles of Psychology (1890), established him as one of the most influential thinkers of his time. The work was devoted to the principle of functionalism in psychology, thus removing psychology from its traditional place as a branch of philosophy and establishing it among the laboratory sciences based on experimental method. In the next decade James applied his methods of investigation to philosophical and religious issues. He explored the questions of the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, free will, and ethical values by referring to human religious and moral experience. His views on these subjects were presented in the lectures and essays published in such books as The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897), Human Immortality (1898), and The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). The last-named work is a sympathetic psychological account of religious and mystical experiences.