James, Henry, Sr.

James, Henry, Sr.

(1811–82) religious philosopher; born in Albany, N.Y. Heir to a large fortune, he left Princeton Theological Seminary in 1837 and abandoned institutional religion. He was at first attracted to Sandemanism, a pietistic sect encountered on a trip to England, but his writings were more permanently influenced by the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, which interpreted human nature as a collective spiritual being identified with God. James became better known as father of William and Henry James, whose European education he supervised in the 1850s; William edited his posthumous Literary Remains (1886).