William James’s purpose is to defend the fact that we can have a belief without having evidence of its truth or its existence. Specifically, he wants to defend having religious faith even when we don’t have enough evidence of religious truth or existence.
He’s proposing a justification of faith, and defending our right to have religious believes, no matter the logic of it. He’s saying that people are afraid to say that they have the right to believe in anything that can be remotely tempting to them. That people are afraid to believe in religion and religious matters, even though our logic and our mind is telling us otherwise.
People are afraid to believe in religion because they’re not thinking about it from an abstract point of view but because