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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40307 ***
+
+THE LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES
+
+[Illustration: Photo of William James.]
+
+FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY ALICE BOUGHTON, NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 9, 1907]
+
+
+
+
+THE LETTERS OF
+WILLIAM JAMES
+
+EDITED BY HIS SON
+HENRY JAMES
+
+IN TWO VOLUMES
+VOLUME I
+
+[Illustration: colophon]
+
+THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS
+BOSTON
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
+HENRY JAMES
+
+
+ _To my Mother,
+ gallant and devoted ally
+of my Father's most arduous
+ and happy years,
+this collection of his letters
+ is dedicated._
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+WHETHER William James was compressing his correspondence into brief
+messages, or allowing it to expand into copious letters, he could not
+write a page that was not free, animated, and characteristic. Many of
+his correspondents preserved his letters, and examination of them soon
+showed that it would be possible to make a selection which should not
+only contain certain letters that clearly deserved to be published
+because of their readable quality alone, but should also include letters
+that were biographical in the best sense. For in the case of a man like
+James the biographical question to be answered is not, as with a man of
+affairs: How can his actions be explained? but rather: What manner of
+being was he? What were his background and education? and, above all,
+What were his temperament and the bias of his mind? What native
+instincts, preferences, and limitations of view did he bring with him to
+his business of reading the riddle of the Universe? His own informal
+utterances throw the strongest light on such questions.
+
+In these volumes I have attempted to make such a selection. The task has
+been simplified by the nature of the material, in which the most
+interesting letters were often found, naturally enough, to include the
+most vivid elements of which a picture could be composed. I have added
+such notes as seemed necessary in the interest of clearness; but I have
+tried to leave the reader to his own conclusions. The work was begun in
+1913, but had to be laid aside; and I should regret the delay in
+completing it even more than I do if it were not that very interesting
+letters have come to light during the last three years.
+
+James was a great reader of biographies himself, and pointed again and
+again to the folly of judging a man's ideas by minute logical and
+textual examinations, without apprehending his mental attitude
+sympathetically. He was well aware that every man's philosophy is biased
+by his feelings, and is not due to purely rational processes. He was
+quite incapable himself of the cool kind of abstraction that comes from
+indifference about the issue. Life spoke to him in even more ways than
+to most men, and he responded to its superabundant confusion with
+passion and insatiable curiosity. His spiritual development was a matter
+of intense personal experience.
+
+So students of his books may even find that this collection of informal
+and intimate utterances helps them to understand James as a philosopher
+and psychologist.
+
+I have not included letters that are wholly technical or polemic. Such
+documents belong in a study of James's philosophy, or in a history of
+its origin and influence. However interesting they might be to certain
+readers, their appropriate place is not here.
+
+A good deal of biographical information about William James, his brother
+Henry, and their father has already been given to the public; but
+unfortunately it is scattered, and much of it is cast in a form which
+calls for interpretation or amendment. The elder Henry James left an
+autobiographical fragment which was published in a volume of his
+"Literary Remains," but it was composed purely as a religious record. He
+wrote it in the third person, as if it were the life of one "Stephen
+Dewhurst," and did not try to give a circumstantial report of his youth
+or ancestry. Later, his son Henry wrote two volumes of early
+reminiscences in his turn. In "A Small Boy and Others" and "Notes of a
+Son and Brother" he reproduced the atmosphere of a household of which
+he was the last survivor, and adumbrated the figures of Henry James,
+Senior, and of certain other members of his family with infinite
+subtlety at every turn of the page. But he too wrote without much
+attention to particular facts or the sequence of events, and his two
+volumes were incomplete and occasionally inaccurate with respect to such
+details.
+
+Accordingly I have thought it advisable to restate parts of the family
+record, even though the restatement involves some repetition.
+
+Finally, I should explain that the letters have been reproduced
+_verbatim_, though not _literatim_, except for superscriptions, which
+have often been simplified. As respects spelling and punctuation, the
+manuscripts are not consistent. James wrote rapidly, used abbreviations,
+occasionally "simplified" his spelling, and was inclined to use capital
+letters only for emphasis. Thus he often followed the French custom of
+writing adjectives derived from proper names with small letters--_e.g._
+french literature, european affairs. But when he wrote for publication
+he was too considerate of his reader's attention to distract it with
+such petty irregularities; therefore unimportant peculiarities of
+orthography have generally not been reproduced in this book. On the
+other hand, the phraseology of the manuscripts, even where grammatically
+incomplete, has been kept. Verbal changes have not been made except
+where it was clear that there had been a slip of the pen, and clear what
+had been intended. It is obvious that rhetorical laxities are to be
+expected in letters written as these were. No editor who has attempted
+to "improve away" such defects has ever deserved to be thanked.
+
+Acknowledgments are due, first of all, to the correspondents who have
+generously supplied letters. Several who were most generous and to whom
+I am most indebted have, alas! passed beyond the reach of thanks. I wish
+particularly to record my gratitude here to correspondents too numerous
+to be named who have furnished letters that are not included. Such
+material, though omitted from the book, has been informing and helpful
+to the Editor. One example may be cited--the copious correspondence with
+Mrs. James which covers the period of every briefest separation; but
+extracts from this have been used only when other letters failed. From
+Dr. Dickinson S. Miller, from Professor R. B. Perry, from my mother,
+from my brother William, and from my wife, all of whom have seen the
+material at different stages of its preparation, I have received many
+helpful suggestions, and I gratefully acknowledge my special debt to
+them. President Eliot, Dr. Miller, and Professor G. H. Palmer were,
+each, so kind as to send me memoranda of their impressions and
+recollections. I have embodied parts of the memoranda of the first two
+in my notes; and have quoted from Professor Palmer's minute--about to
+appear in the "Harvard Graduates' Magazine." For all information about
+William James's Barber ancestry I am indebted to the genealogical
+investigations of Mrs. Russell Hastings. Special acknowledgments are due
+to Mr. George B. Ives, who has prepared the topical index.
+
+Finally, I shall be grateful to anyone who will, at any time, advise me
+of the whereabouts of any letters which I have not already had an
+opportunity to examine.
+
+H. J.
+
+_August, 1920._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+I. INTRODUCTION 1-30
+
+_Ancestry--Henry James, Senior--Youth--Education--Certain
+Personal Traits._
+
+
+II. 1861-1864 31-52
+
+_Chemistry and Comparative Anatomy in the Lawrence
+Scientific School._
+
+LETTERS:--
+
+To his Family 33
+
+To Miss Katharine Temple (Mrs. Richard Emmet) 37
+
+To his Family 40
+
+To Katharine James Prince 43
+
+To his Mother 45
+
+To his Sister 49
+
+
+III. 1864-1866 53-70
+
+_The Harvard Medical School--With Louis Agassiz
+to the Amazon._
+
+LETTERS:--
+
+To his Mother 56
+
+To his Parents 57
+
+To his Father 60
+
+To his Father 64
+
+To his Parents 67
+
+
+IV. 1866-1867 71-83
+
+_Medical Studies at Harvard._
+
+LETTERS:--
+
+To Thomas W. Ward 73
+
+To Thomas W. Ward 76
+
+To his Sister 79
+
+To O. W. Holmes, Jr. 82
+
+
+V. 1867-1868 84-139
+
+_Eighteen Months in Germany._
+
+LETTERS:--
+
+To his Parents 86
+
+To his Mother 92
+
+To his Father 95
+
+To O. W. Holmes, Jr. 98
+
+To Henry James 103
+
+To his Sister 108
+
+To his Sister 115
+
+To Thomas W. Ward 118
+
+To Thomas W. Ward 119
+
+To Henry P. Bowditch 120
+
+To O. W. Holmes, Jr. 124
+
+To Thomas W. Ward 127
+
+To his Father 133
+
+To Henry James 136
+
+To his Father 137
+
+
+VI. 1869-1872 140-164
+
+_Invalidism in Cambridge._
+
+LETTERS:--
+
+To Henry P. Bowditch 149
+
+To O. W. Holmes, Jr., and John C. Gray, Jr. 151
+
+To Thomas W. Ward 152
+
+To Henry P. Bowditch 153
+
+To Miss Mary Tappan 156
+
+To Henry James 157
+
+To Henry P. Bowditch 158
+
+To Henry P. Bowditch 161
+
+To Charles Renouvier 163
+
+
+VII. 1872-1878 165-191
+
+_First Years of Teaching._
+
+LETTERS:--
+
+To Henry James 167
+
+[Henry James, Senior, to Henry James] 169
+
+To his Family 172
+
+To his Sister 174
+
+To his Sister 175
+
+To his Sister 177
+
+To Henry James 180
+
+To Miss Theodora Sedgwick 181
+
+To Henry James 182
+
+To Henry James 183
+
+To Charles Renouvier 186
+
+
+VIII. 1878-1883 192-222
+
+_Marriage--Contract for the Psychology--European
+Colleagues--Death of his Parents._
+
+LETTERS:--
+
+To Francis J. Child 196
+
+To Miss Frances R. Morse 197
+
+To Mrs. James 199
+
+To Josiah Royce 202
+
+To Josiah Royce 204
+
+To Charles Renouvier 206
+
+To Charles Renouvier 207
+
+To Mrs. James 210
+
+To Mrs. James 211
+
+To Henry James 217
+
+To his Father 218
+
+To Mrs. James 221
+
+IX. 1883-1890 223-299
+
+_Writing the "Principles of Psychology"--Psychical
+Research--The Place at Chocorua--The Irving
+Street House--The Paris Psychological Congress
+of 1889._
+
+LETTERS:--
+
+To Charles Renouvier 229
+
+To Henry L. Higginson 233
+
+To Henry P. Bowditch 234
+
+To Thomas Davidson 235
+
+To G. H. Howison 237
+
+To E. L. Godkin 240
+
+To E. L. Godkin 240
+
+To Shadworth H. Hodgson 241
+
+To Henry James 242
+
+To Shadworth H. Hodgson 243
+
+To Carl Stumpf 247
+
+To Henry James 250
+
+To W. D. Howells 253
+
+To G. Croom Robertson 254
+
+To Shadworth H. Hodgson 256
+
+To his Sister 259
+
+To Carl Stumpf 262
+
+To Henry P. Bowditch 267
+
+To Henry James 267
+
+To his Sister 269
+
+To Henry James 273
+
+To Charles Waldstein 274
+
+To his Son Henry 275
+
+To his Son Henry 276
+
+To his Son William 278
+
+To Henry James 279
+
+To Miss Grace Norton 282
+
+To G. Croom Robertson 283
+
+To Henry James 283
+
+To E. L. Godkin 283
+
+To Henry James 285
+
+To Mrs. James 287
+
+To Miss Grace Norton 291
+
+To Charles Eliot Norton 292
+
+To Henry Holt 293
+
+To Mrs. James 294
+
+To Henry James 296
+
+To Mrs. Henry Whitman 296
+
+To W. D. Howells 298
+
+
+X. 1890-1893 300-348
+
+_The "Briefer Course" and the Laboratory--A
+Sabbatical Year in Europe._
+
+LETTERS:--
+
+To Mrs. Henry Whitman 303
+
+To G. H. Howison 304
+
+To F. W. H. Myers 305
+
+To W. D. Howells 307
+
+To W. D. Howells 307
+
+To Mrs. Henry Whitman 308
+
+To his Sister 309
+
+To Hugo Münsterberg 312
+
+To Henry Holt 314
+
+To Henry James 314
+
+To Miss Grace Ashburner 315
+
+To Henry James 317
+
+To Miss Mary Tappan 319
+
+To Miss Grace Ashburner 320
+
+To Theodore Flournoy 323
+
+To William M. Salter 326
+
+To James J. Putnam 326
+
+To Miss Grace Ashburner 328
+
+To Josiah Royce 331
+
+To Miss Grace Norton 335
+
+To Miss Margaret Gibbens 338
+
+To Francis Boott 340
+
+To Henry James 342
+
+To François Pillon 343
+
+To Shadworth H. Hodgson 343
+
+To Dickinson S. Miller 344
+
+To Henry James 346
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+William James _Frontispiece_
+
+Henry James, Sr., and his Wife 8
+
+William James at eighteen 20
+
+Pencil Sketch: _A Sleeping Dog_ 52
+
+Pencil Sketch from a Pocket Note-Book: _A Turtle_ 66
+
+Pencil Sketch: _Retreating Figure of a Man_ 83
+
+William James at twenty-five 86
+
+Pencil Sketches from a Pocket Note-Book 108
+
+Pencil Sketch: _An Elephant_ 139
+
+Francis James Child 291
+
+
+
+
+DATES AND FAMILY NAMES
+
+
+ 1842. January 11. Born in New York.
+
+ 1857-58. At School in Boulogne.
+
+ 1859-60. In Geneva.
+
+ 1860-61. Studied painting under William M. Hunt in Newport.
+
+ 1861. Entered the Lawrence Scientific School.
+
+ 1863. Entered the Harvard Medical School.
+
+ 1865-66. Assistant under Louis Agassiz on the Amazon.
+
+ 1867-68. Studied medicine in Germany.
+
+ 1869. M.D. Harvard.
+
+ 1873-76. Instructor in Anatomy and Physiology in Harvard College.
+
+ 1875. Began to give instruction in Psychology.
+
+ 1876. Assistant Professor of Physiology.
+
+ 1878. Married. Undertook to write a treatise on Psychology.
+
+ 1880. Assistant Professor of Philosophy.
+
+ 1882-83. Spent several months visiting European universities
+ and colleagues.
+
+ 1885. Professor of Philosophy. (Between 1889 and 1897 his
+ title was Professor of Psychology.)
+
+ 1890. "Principles of Psychology" appeared.
+
+ 1892-93. European travel.
+
+ 1897. Published "The Will to Believe and other Essays on
+ Popular Philosophy."
+
+ 1899. Published "Talks to Teachers," etc.
+
+ 1899-1902. Broke down in health. Two years in Europe.
+
+ 1901-1902. Gifford Lectures. "The Varieties of Religious Experience."
+
+ 1906. Acting Professor for half-term at Stanford University.
+ (Interrupted by San Francisco earthquake.)
+
+ 1906. Lowell Institute lectures, subsequently published as
+ "Pragmatism."
+
+ 1907. Resigned all active duties at Harvard.
+
+ 1908. Hibbert lectures at Manchester College, Oxford;
+ subsequently published as "A Pluralistic Universe."
+
+ 1910. August 26. Died at Chocorua, N.H.
+
+ (See Appendix in volume II for a full list of books by William
+ James, with their dates.)
+
+William James was the eldest of five children. His brothers and sister,
+with their dates, were: Henry (referred to as "Harry"), 1843-1916; Garth
+Wilkinson (referred to as "Wilky"), 1845-1883; Robertson (referred to as
+"Bob" and "Bobby"), 1846-1910; Alice, 1848-1892.
+
+He had five children. Their dates and the names by which they are
+referred to in the letters are: Henry ("Harry"), 1879; William
+("Billy"), 1882; Hermann, 1884-1885; Margaret Mary ("Peggy," "Peg"),
+1887; Alexander Robertson ("Tweedie," "François"), 1890.
+
+
+
+
+THE LETTERS OF
+
+WILLIAM JAMES
+
+
+
+
+THE LETTERS OF
+
+WILLIAM JAMES
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+_Ancestry--Henry James, Senior--Youth--Education--Certain Personal
+Traits_
+
+
+THE ancestors of William James, with the possible exception of one pair
+of great-great-grandparents, all came to America from Scotland or
+Ireland during the eighteenth century, and settled in the eastern part
+of New York State or in New Jersey. One Irish forefather is known to
+have been descended from Englishmen who had crossed the Irish Channel in
+the time of William of Orange, or thereabouts; but whether the others
+who came from Ireland were more English or Celtic is not clear. In
+America all his ancestors were Protestant, and they appear, without
+exception, to have been people of education and character. In the
+several communities in which they settled they prospered above the
+average. They became farmers, traders, and merchants, and, so far as has
+yet been discovered, there were only two lawyers, and no doctors or
+ministers, among them. They seem to have been reckoned as pious people,
+and several of their number are known to have been generous supporters
+of the churches in which they worshiped; but, if one may judge by the
+scanty records which remain, there is no one among them to whom one can
+point as foreshadowing the inclination to letters and religious
+speculation that manifested itself strongly in William James and his
+father. They were mainly concerned to establish themselves in a new
+country. Inasmuch as they succeeded, lived well, and were respected, it
+is likely that they possessed a fair endowment of both the imagination
+and the solid qualities that one thinks of as appropriately combined in
+the colonists who crossed the ocean in the eighteenth century and did
+well in the new country. But, as to many of them, it is impossible to do
+more than presume this, and impossible to carry presumption any farther.
+
+The last ancestor to arrive in America was William James's paternal
+grandfather. This grandfather, whose name was also William James, came
+from Bally-James-Duff, County Cavan, in the year 1789. He was then
+eighteen years old. He may have left home because his family tried to
+force him into the ministry,--for there is a story to that effect,--or
+he may have had more adventurous reasons. But in any case he arrived in
+a manner which tradition has cherished as wholly becoming to a first
+American ancestor--with a very small sum of money, a Latin grammar in
+which he had already made some progress at home, and a desire to visit
+the field of one of the revolutionary battles. He promptly disposed of
+his money in making this visit. Then, finding himself penniless in
+Albany, he took employment as clerk in a store. He worked his way up
+rapidly; traded on his own account, kept a store, traveled and bought
+land to the westward, engaged as time went on in many enterprises, among
+them being the salt industry of Syracuse (where the principal
+residential street bears his name), prospered exceedingly, and amassed a
+fortune so large, that after his death it provided a liberal
+independence for his widow and each of his eleven children. The
+imagination and sagacity which enabled him to do this inevitably
+involved him in the public affairs of the community in which he lived,
+although he seems never to have held political office. Thus his name
+appears early in the history of the Erie Canal project; and, when that
+great undertaking was completed and the opening of the waterway was
+celebrated in 1823, he delivered the "oration" of the day at Albany. It
+may be found in Munsell's Albany Collections, and considering what were
+the fashions of the time in such matters, ought to be esteemed by a
+modern reader for containing more sense and information than "oratory."
+He was one of the organizers and the first Vice-President of the Albany
+Savings Bank, founded in 1820, and of the Albany Chamber of
+Commerce,--the President, in both instances, being Stephen Van
+Rensselaer. When he died, in 1832, the New York "Evening Post" said of
+him: "He has done more to build up the city [of Albany] than any other
+individual."
+
+Two portraits of the first William James have survived, and present him
+as a man of medium height, rather portly, clean-shaven, hearty,
+friendly, confident, and distinctly Irish.
+
+Unrecorded anecdotes about him are not to be taken literally, but may be
+presumed to be indicative. It is told of him, for instance, that one
+afternoon shortly after he had married for the third time, he saw a lady
+coming up the steps of his house, rose from the table at which he was
+absorbed in work, went to the door and said "he was sorry Mrs. James was
+not in." But the poor lady was herself his newly married wife, and cried
+out to him not to be "so absent-minded." He discovered one day that a
+man with whom he had gone into partnership was cheating, and immediately
+seized him by the collar and marched him through the streets to a
+justice. "When old Billy James came to Syracuse," said a citizen who
+could remember his visits, "things went as _he_ wished."
+
+In his comfortable brick residence on North Pearl Street he kept open
+house and gave a special welcome to members of the Presbyterian
+ministry. One of his sons said of him: "He was certainly a very easy
+parent--weakly, nay painfully sensitive to his children's claims upon
+his sympathy." "The law of the house, within the limits of religious
+decency, was freedom itself."[1] Indeed, there appears to have been only
+one matter in which he was rigorous with his family: his Presbyterianism
+was of the stiffest kind, and in his old age he sacrificed even his
+affections for what he considered the true faith. Theological
+differences estranged him from two of his sons,--William and Henry,--and
+though the old man became reconciled to one of them a few days before
+his death, he left a will which would have cut them both off with small
+annuities if its elaborate provisions had been sustained by the Court.
+
+In 1803 William James married (his third wife) Catherine Barber,[2] a
+daughter of John Barber, of Montgomery, Orange County, New York. The
+Barbers had been active people in the affairs of their day. Catherine's
+grandfather had been a judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and her
+father and her two uncles were all officers in the Revolutionary Army.
+One of the uncles, Francis Barber, had previously graduated from
+Princeton and had conducted a boarding-school for boys at
+"Elizabethtown," New Jersey, at which Alexander Hamilton prepared for
+college. During the war he rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, was
+detailed by Washington to be one of Steuben's four aides, and performed
+other staff-duties. John, Catherine's father, returned to Montgomery
+after the Revolution, was one of the founders of Montgomery Academy, an
+associate judge of the County Court, a member of the state legislature,
+and a church elder for fifty years. In Henry James, Senior's,
+reminiscences there is a passage which describes him as an old man, much
+addicted to the reading of military history, and which contrasts his
+stoicism with his wife's warm and spontaneous temperament and her
+exceptional gift of interesting her grandchildren in conversation.[3]
+
+In the same reminiscences Catherine Barber herself is described as
+having been "a good wife and mother, nothing else--save, to be sure, a
+kindly friend and neighbor" and "the most democratic person by
+temperament I ever knew."[4] She adopted the three children of her
+husband's prior marriages and, by their own account, treated them no
+differently from the five sons and three daughters whom she herself
+bore and brought up. She managed her husband's large house during his
+lifetime, and for twenty-seven years after his death kept it open as a
+home for children, and grandchildren, and cousins as well. This "dear
+gentle lady of many cares" must have been a woman of sound judgment in
+addition to being an embodiment of kindness and generosity in all
+things; for admiration as well as affection and gratitude still attend
+her memory after the lapse of sixty years.
+
+The next generation, eleven in number as has already been said,[5] may
+well have given their widowed mother "many cares." It had been the
+purpose of the first William James to provide that his children (several
+of whom were under age when he died) should qualify themselves by
+industry and experience to enjoy the large patrimony which he expected
+to bequeath to them, and with that in view he left a will which was a
+voluminous compound of restraints and instructions. He showed thereby
+how great were both his confidence in his own judgment and his
+solicitude for the moral welfare of his descendants. But he accomplished
+nothing more, for the courts declared the will to be invalid; and his
+children became financially independent as fast as they came of age.
+Most of them were blessed with a liberal allowance of that combination
+of gayety, volubility, and waywardness which is popularly conceded to
+the Irish; but these qualities, which made them "charming" and
+"interesting" to their contemporaries, did not keep them from
+dissipating both respectable talents and unusual opportunities. Two of
+the men--William, namely, who became an eccentric but highly respected
+figure in the Presbyterian ministry, and Henry of whom more will be
+said shortly--possessed an ardor of intellect that neither disaster nor
+good fortune could corrupt. But on the whole the personalities and
+histories of that generation were such as to have impressed the boyish
+mind of the writer of the following letters and of his younger brother
+like a richly colored social kaleidoscope, dashed, as the patterns
+changed and disintegrated, with amusing flashes of light and occasional
+dark moments of tragedy. After they were all dead and gone, the memory
+of them certainly prompted the author of "The Wings of a Dove" when he
+described Minny Theale's New York forebears as "an extravagant,
+unregulated cluster, with free-living ancestors, handsome dead cousins,
+lurid uncles, beautiful vanished aunts, persons all busts and curls," to
+have known whom and to have belonged to whom "was to have had one's
+small world-space both crowded and enlarged."
+
+It is unnecessary, however, to pause over any but one member of that
+generation.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Henry James, the second son of William and Catherine, was born in 1811.
+He was apparently a boy of unusual activity and animal spirits, but at
+the age of thirteen he met with an accident which maimed him for life.
+He was, at the time, a schoolboy at the Albany Academy, and one of his
+fellow students, Mr. Woolsey Rogers Hopkins, wrote the following account
+of what happened. (The Professor Henry referred to was Joseph Henry,
+later the head of the Smithsonian Institute.)
+
+"On a summer afternoon, the older students would meet Professor Henry in
+the Park, in front of the Academy, where amusements and instruction
+would be given in balloon-flying, the motive power being heated air
+supplied from a tow ball saturated with spirits of turpentine. When one
+of these air-ships took fire, the ball would be dropt for the boys, when
+it was kicked here and there, a roll of fire. [One day when] young James
+had a sprinkling of this [turpentine] on his pantaloons, one of these
+balls was sent into the open window of Mrs. Gilchrist's stable. [James],
+thinking only of conflagration, rushed to the hayloft and stamped out
+the flame, but burned his leg."
+
+The boy was confined to his bed for the next two years, and one leg was
+twice amputated above the knee. He was robust enough to survive this
+long and dire experience of the surgery of the eighteen-twenties, and to
+establish right relations with the world again; but thereafter he could
+live conveniently only in towns where smooth footways and ample
+facilities for transportation were to be had.
+
+In 1830 he graduated from Union College, Schenectady, and in 1835
+entered the Princeton Theological Seminary with the class of '39. By the
+time he had completed two years of his Seminary course, his discontent
+with the orthodox dispensation was no longer to be doubted. He left
+Princeton, and the truth seems to be that he had already conceived some
+measure of the antipathy to all ecclesiasticisms which he expressed with
+abounding scorn and irony throughout all his later years.
+
+[Illustration: Henry James, Sr., and his Wife.]
+
+In 1840 he married Mary Walsh, the sister of a fellow student at
+Princeton, who had shared his religious doubts and had, with him, turned
+his back on the ministry and left the Seminary. She was the daughter of
+James and Mary (Robertson) Walsh of New York City, and was thus
+descended from Hugh Walsh, an Irishman of English extraction who came
+from Killingsley,[6] County Down, in 1764, and settled himself finally
+near Newburgh, and from Alexander Robertson, a Scotchman who came to
+America not long before the Revolution and whose name is borne by the
+school of the Scotch Presbyterian Church in New York City. Mary Walsh
+was a gentle lady, who accommodated her life to all her husband's
+vagaries and presided with cheerful indulgence over the development of
+her five children's divergent and uncompromising personalities. She
+lived entirely for her husband and children, and they, joking her and
+teasing her and adoring her, were devoted to her in return. Several
+contemporaries left accounts of their impressions of her husband without
+saying much about her; and this was natural, for she was not
+self-assertive and was inevitably eclipsed by his richly interesting
+presence. But it is all the more unfortunate that her son Henry, who
+might have done justice, as no one else could, to her good sense and to
+the grace of her mind and character, could not bring himself to include
+an adequate account of her in the "Small Boy and Others." To a reader
+who ventured to regret the omission, he replied sadly, "Oh! my dear
+Boy--that memory is too sacred!" William James spoke of her very seldom
+after her death, but then always with a sort of tender reverence that he
+vouchsafed to no one else. She supplied an element of serenity and
+discretion to the councils of the family of which they were often in
+need; and it would not be a mistake to look to her in trying to account
+for the unusual receptivity of mind and æsthetic sensibility that marked
+her two elder sons.
+
+During the three or four years that followed his marriage Henry James,
+Senior, appears to have spent his time in Albany and New York. In the
+latter city, in the old, or then new, Astor House, his eldest son was
+born on the eleventh of January, 1842. He named the boy William, and a
+few days later brought his friend R. W. Emerson to admire and give his
+blessing to the little philosopher-to-be.[7] Shortly afterwards the
+family moved into a house at No. 2 Washington Place, and there, on April
+15, 1843, the second son, Henry, came into the world. There was thus a
+difference of fifteen months in the ages of William and the younger
+brother, who was also to become famous and who figures largely in the
+correspondence that follows.
+
+William James derived so much from his father and resembled him so
+strikingly in many ways that it is worth while to dwell a little longer
+on the character, manners, and beliefs of the elder Henry James. He was
+not only an impressive and all-pervading presence in the early lives of
+his children, but always continued to be for them the most vivid and
+interesting personality who had crossed the horizon of their experience.
+He was their constant companion, and entered into their interests and
+poured out his own ideas and emotions before them in a way that would
+not have been possible to a nature less spontaneous and affectionate.
+
+His books, written in a style which "to its great dignity of cadence and
+full and homely vocabulary, united a sort of inward palpitating human
+quality, gracious and tender, precise, fierce, scornful, humorous by
+turns, recalling the rich vascular temperament of the old English
+masters rather than that of an American of today,"[8] reveal him richly
+to anyone who has a taste for theological reading. His philosophy is
+summarized in the introduction to "The Literary Remains," and his own
+personality and the very atmosphere of his household are reproduced in
+"A Small Boy and Others," and "Notes of a Son and Brother." Thus what it
+is appropriate to say about him in this place can be given largely in
+either his own words or those of one or the other of his two elder sons.
+
+The intellectual quandary in which Henry James, Senior, found himself in
+early manhood was well described in letters to Emerson in 1842 and 1843.
+"Here I am," he wrote, "these thirty-two years in life, ignorant in all
+outward science, but having patient habits of meditation, which never
+know disgust or weariness, and feeling a force of impulsive love toward
+all humanity which will not let me rest wholly mute, a force which grows
+against all resistance that I can muster against it. What shall I do?
+Shall I get me a little nook in the country and communicate with my
+_living_ kind--not my talking kind--by life only; a word perhaps of that
+communication, a fit word once a year? Or shall I follow some commoner
+method--learn science and bring myself first into man's respect, that I
+may thus the better speak to him? I confess this last theory seems rank
+with earthliness--to belong to days forever past.... I am led, quite
+without any conscious wilfulness either, to seek the _laws_ of these
+appearances that swim round us in God's great museum--to get hold of
+some central _facts_ which may make all other facts properly
+circumferential, and _orderly_ so--and you continually dishearten me by
+your apparent indifference to such law and central facts, by the
+dishonor you seem to cast on our intelligence, as if it stood much in
+our way. Now my conviction is that my intelligence is the necessary
+digestive apparatus for my life; that there is _nihil in vita_--worth
+anything, that is--_quod non prius in intellectu_.... Oh, you man
+without a handle! Shall one never be able to help himself out of you,
+according to his needs, and be dependent only upon your fitful
+tippings-up?"[9]
+
+To a modern ear these words confess not only the mental isolation and
+bewilderment of their author, but also the rarity of the atmosphere in
+which his philosophic impulse was struggling to draw breath. Like many
+other struggling spirits of his time, he fell into a void between two
+epochs. He was a theologian too late to repose on the dogmas and beliefs
+that were accepted by the preceding generation and by the less critical
+multitude of his own contemporaries. He was, in youth, a skeptic--too
+early to avail himself of the methods, discoveries, and perspectives
+which a generation of scientific inquiry conferred upon his children.
+The situation was one which usually resolved itself either into
+permanent skepticism or a more or less unreasoning conformity. In the
+case of Henry James there happened ere long one of those typical
+spiritual crises in which "man's original optimism and self-satisfaction
+get leveled with the dust."[10]
+
+While he was still struggling out of his melancholy state a friend
+introduced him to the works of Swedenborg. By their help he found the
+relief he needed, and a faith that possessed him ever after with the
+intensity of revelation.
+
+"The world of his thought had a few elements and no others ever troubled
+him. Those elements were very deep ones and had theological names." So
+wrote his son after he had died.[11] He never achieved a truly
+philosophic formulation of his religious position, and Mr. Howells once
+complained that he had written a book about the "Secret of Swedenborg"
+and had _kept it_. He concerned himself with but one question, conveyed
+but one message; and the only business of his later life was the
+formulation and serene reutterance, in books, occasional lectures, and
+personal correspondence, of his own conception of God and of man's
+proper relation to him. "The usual problem is--given the creation to
+find the Creator. To Mr. James it [was]--given the Creator to find the
+creation. God is; of His being there is no doubt; but who and what are
+we?" So said a critic quoted in the Introduction to the "Literary
+Remains," and William James's own estimate may be quoted from the same
+place (page 12). "I have often," he wrote "tried to imagine what sort of
+a figure my father might have made, had he been born in a genuinely
+theological age, with the best minds about him fermenting with the
+mystery of the Divinity, and the air full of definitions and theories
+and counter-theories, and strenuous reasoning and contentions, about
+God's relation to mankind. Floated on such a congenial tide, furthered
+by sympathetic comrades, and opposed no longer by blank silence but by
+passionate and definite resistance, he would infallibly have developed
+his resources in many ways which, as it was, he never tried; and he
+would have played a prominent, perhaps a momentous and critical, part in
+the struggles of his time, for he was a religious prophet and genius, if
+ever prophet and genius there were. He published an intensely positive,
+radical, and fresh conception of God, and an intensely vital view of our
+connection with him. And nothing shows better the altogether lifeless
+and unintellectual character of the professional theism of our time,
+than the fact that this view, this conception, so vigorously thrown
+down, should not have stirred the faintest tremulation on its stagnant
+pool."
+
+The reader will readily infer that there was nothing conventional, prim,
+or parson-like about this man. The fact is that the devoutly religious
+mind is often quite anarchic in its disregard of all those worldly
+institutions and conventions which do not express human dependence on
+the Creator. Henry James, Senior, dealt with such things in the most
+allusive and paradoxical terms. "I would rather," he once ejaculated,
+"have a son of mine corroded with all the sins of the Decalogue than
+have him perfect!" His prime horror, writes Henry James, was of prigs;
+"he only cared for virtue that was more or less ashamed of itself; and
+nothing could have been of a happier whimsicality than the mixture in
+him, and in all his walk and conversation, of the strongest instinct for
+the human and the liveliest reaction from the literal. The literal
+played in our education as small a part as it perhaps ever played in
+any, and we wholesomely breathed inconsistency and ate and drank
+contradictions.... The moral of all was that we need never fear not to
+be good enough if we were only social enough; a splendid meaning indeed
+being attached to the latter term. Thus we had ever the amusement, since
+I can really call it nothing less, of hearing morality, or moralism, as
+it was more invidiously worded, made hay of in the very interest of
+character and conduct; these things suffering much, it seemed, by their
+association with conscience--the very home of the literal, the haunt of
+so many pedantries."[12]
+
+The erroneous statement that has become current, and that describes
+Henry James, Senior, as a Swedenborgian minister, is a rich absurdity to
+anyone who knew him or his writings. Not only had the churches in
+general sold themselves to the devil, in his view, but the arch-sinners
+in this respect were the Swedenborgian congregations, for they, if any,
+might be expected to know better. A letter which he wrote to the editor
+of the "New Jerusalem Messenger," in 1863, illustrates this and tells
+more about him than could ten pages of description:
+
+ DEAR SIR,--You were good enough, when I called on you at Mr.
+ Appleton's request in New York, to say among other friendly things
+ that you would send me your paper; and I have regularly received it
+ ever since. I thank you for your kindness, but my conscience
+ refuses any longer to sanction its taxation in this way, as I have
+ never been able to read the paper with any pleasure, nor therefore
+ of course with any profit. I presume its editorials are by you, and
+ while I willingly seized upon every evidence they display of an
+ enlarged spirit, I yet find the general drift of the paper so very
+ poverty-stricken in a spiritual regard, as to make it absolutely
+ the least nutritive reading I know. The old sects are notoriously
+ bad enough, but your sect compares with these very much as a heap
+ of dried cod on Long Wharf in Boston compares with the same fish
+ while still enjoying the freedom of the Atlantic Ocean. I remember
+ well the manly strain of your conversation with me in New York, and
+ I know therefore how you must suffer from the control of persons so
+ unworthy as those who have the property of your paper. Why don't
+ you cut the whole concern at once, as a rank offence to every human
+ hope and aspiration? The intercourse I had some years since with
+ the leaders of the sect, on a visit to Boston, made me fully aware
+ of their deplorable want of manhood; but judging from your paper,
+ the whole sect seems spiritually benumbed. Your mature men have an
+ air of childishness and your young men have the aspect of old
+ women. I find it hard above all to imagine the existence of a
+ living woman in the bounds of your sect, whose breasts flow with
+ milk instead of hardening with pedantry. I know such things are of
+ course, but I tell you frankly that these are the sort of questions
+ your paper forces on the unsophisticated mind. I really know
+ nothing so sad and spectral in the shape of literature. It seems
+ composed by skeletons and intended for readers who are content to
+ disown their good flesh and blood, and be moved by some ghastly
+ mechanism. It cannot but prove very unwholesome to you spiritually,
+ to be so nearly connected with all that sadness and silence, where
+ nothing more musical is heard than the occasional jostling of bone
+ by bone. Do come out of it before you wither as an autumn leaf,
+ which no longer rustles in full-veined life on the pliant bough,
+ but rattles instead with emptiness upon the frozen melancholy
+ earth.
+
+ Pardon my freedom; I was impressed by your friendliness towards me,
+ and speak to you therefore in return with all the frankness of
+ friendship.
+
+ Consider me as having any manner and measure of disrespect for your
+ ecclesiastical pretensions, but as being personally, yours
+ cordially,
+
+H. JAMES.[13]
+
+
+
+A diary entry made by his daughter Alice has fortunately been preserved.
+"A week before Father died," says this entry, "I asked him one day
+whether he had thought what he should like to have done about his
+funeral. He was immediately very much interested, not having apparently
+thought of it before; he reflected for some time, and then said with the
+greatest solemnity and looking so majestic: 'Tell him to say only this:
+"Here lies a man, who has thought all his life that the ceremonies
+attending birth, marriage and death were all damned non-sense." Don't
+let him say a word more!'"
+
+Henry James, Senior, lived entirely with his books, his pen, his
+family, and his friends. The first three he could carry about with him,
+and did carry along on numerous restless and extended journeys. From
+friends, even when he left them on the opposite side of the ocean, he
+was never quite separated, for he always maintained a wide
+correspondence, partly theological, partly playful and friendly. He was
+so sociable and so independent and lively a talker, that he entered into
+hearty relations with interesting people wherever he went. Thackeray was
+a familiar visitor at his apartment in Paris when his older children
+were just old enough to remember, and his recollections of Carlyle and
+Emerson will reward any reader whose appetite does not carry him as far
+as the theological disquisitions. "I suppose there was not in his day,"
+said E. L. Godkin, "a more formidable master of English style."[14] In
+his conversation the winning impulsiveness of both his humor and his
+indignation appeared more clearly even than in his writing. He loved to
+talk, not for the sake of oppressing his hearer by an exposition of his
+own views, but in order to stir him up and rouse him to discussion and
+rejoinder. At home he was not above espousing the queerest of opinions,
+if by so doing he could excite his children to gallop after him and ride
+him down. "Meal-times in that pleasant home were exciting. 'The adipose
+and affectionate Wilky,' as his father called him, would say something
+and be instantly corrected or disputed by the little cock-sparrow Bob,
+the youngest, but good-naturedly defend his statement, and then Henry
+(Junior) would emerge from his silence in defence of Wilky. Then Bob
+would be more impertinently insistent, and Mr. James would advance as
+Moderator, and William, the eldest, join in. The voice of the Moderator
+presently would be drowned by the combatants and he soon came down
+vigorously into the arena, and when, in the excited argument, the
+dinner-knives might not be absent from eagerly gesticulating hands, dear
+Mrs. James, more conventional, but bright as well as motherly, would
+look at me, laughingly reassuring, saying, 'Don't be disturbed; they
+won't stab each other. This is usual when the boys come home.' And the
+quiet little sister ate her dinner, smiling, close to the combatants.
+Mr. James considered this debate, within bounds, excellent for the boys.
+In their speech singularly mature and picturesque, as well as vehement,
+the Gaelic (Irish) element in their descent always showed. Even if they
+blundered, they saved themselves by wit."[15] It was certainly to their
+father's talk, to the influence of his "full and homely" idiom, and to
+the attention-arresting whimsicality and humor with which he perverted
+the whole vocabulary of theology and philosophy, that both William and
+Henry owed much of their own wealth of resource in ordinary speech. They
+used often to exaggerate their father's tricks of utterance, for he
+would have been the last man to refuse himself as a whetstone for his
+children's wit, and the business of outdoing the head of the family in
+the matter of language was an exercise familiar to all his sons.[16]
+Whoever knew them will remember that their everyday diction displayed a
+natural command of such words and figures as most men cannot use
+gracefully except when composing with pen in hand.
+
+Finally, with respect to the constancy of Henry James, Senior's,
+presence in the lives of his children, it should be made clear that he
+never had any "business" or profession to interfere with "his almost
+eccentrically home-loving habit." During the years of moving about
+Europe, during the quiet years in Newport, the family was thrown upon
+its inner social resources. The children were constantly with their
+parents and with each other, and they continued all their lives to be
+united by much stronger attachments than usually exist between members
+of one family.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+William James never acknowledged himself as feeling particularly
+indebted to any of the numerous schools and tutors to whom his father's
+oscillations between New York, Europe, and Newport confided him. He was
+sent first to private schools in New York City; but they seem to have
+been considered inadequate to his needs, for he was not allowed to
+remain long in any one. Nor were the changes any less frequent after the
+family moved to Europe (for the second time since his birth) in 1855. He
+was then thirteen years old. The exact sequence of events during the
+next five years of restless movement cannot be determined now, but the
+important points are clear. The family, including by this time three
+younger brothers and a younger sister as well as a devoted maternal
+aunt, remained abroad from 1855 to 1858. London, Paris,
+Boulogne-sur-Mer, and Geneva harbored them for differing periods. In
+London and Paris governesses, tutors, and a private school of the sort
+that admits the irregularly educated children of strangers visiting the
+Continent, administered what must have been a completely discontinuous
+instruction. In Boulogne, William and his younger brother Henry
+attended the _Collège_ through the winter of 1857-58. This term at the
+_Collège de Boulogne_, during which he passed his sixteenth birthday,
+was his earliest experience of thorough teaching, and he once said that
+it gave him his first conception of earnest work. Then, after a year at
+Newport, there was another European migration--this time to Geneva for
+the winter of 1859-60. There William was entered at the "Academy," as
+the present University was still called. He subsequently described
+himself as having reached Geneva "a miserable, home-bred, obscure little
+ignoramus." During the following summer he was sent for a while to
+Bonn-am-Rhein, to learn German. Some Latin, mathematics to the extent of
+the usual school algebra and trigonometry, a smattering of German and an
+excellent familiarity with French--such, in conventional terms, was the
+net result of his education in 1859. He tried to make up for the
+deficiencies in his schooling, and as occasion offered he picked up a
+few words of Greek, attained to a moderate reading knowledge of Italian,
+and a quite complete command of German. But these came later.
+
+[Illustration: William James at eighteen.
+
+From a Daguerreotype.]
+
+He seldom referred to his schooling with anything but contempt, and
+usually dismissed all reference to it by saying that he "never had any."
+But, as is often the case with even those boys who follow a regular
+curriculum, his amusements and excursions beyond the bounds of his
+prescribed studies did more to develop him appropriately than did any of
+his schoolmasters. An interest in exact knowledge showed itself early.
+He once recalled a trivial incident which illustrates this, though he
+apparently remembered it because he realized, young as he was when it
+occurred, that it grew out of a real difference between the cast of his
+mind and the cast of Henry's. As readers of the "Small Boy" will
+remember, Henry, at the ordinarily "tough" age of ten, was already
+animated by a secret passion for authorship, and used to confide his
+literary efforts to folio sheets, which he stored in a copy-book and
+which he tried to conceal from his tormenting brother. But William came
+upon them, and discovered that on one page Henry had made a drawing to
+represent a mother and child clinging to a rock in the midst of a stormy
+ocean and that he had inscribed under it: "The thunder roared and the
+lightning followed!" William saw the meteorological blunder immediately;
+he fairly pounced upon it, and he tormented the sensitive romancer about
+it so unmercifully that the occasion had to be marked by punishments and
+the inauguration of a maternal protectorate over the copy-book. About
+four years later, when he was fifteen years old, his father bought a
+microscope to give him at Christmas. William happened upon the bill for
+it in advance, and was hardly able to contain his excitement until
+Christmas day, so portentous seemed the impending event. Apparently no
+similar experience ever equalled the intensity of this one. He doubtless
+made as good use of the instrument as an unguided boy could. But though
+his proclivities were generously indulged, they were never trained. At
+Geneva he began to study anatomy, but there was no regular instruction
+in osteology; so he borrowed a copy of Sappey's "Anatomie" and got
+permission to visit the Museum and there examine the human skeleton by
+himself.
+
+Clearly, there was profit for him also in the restlessness which
+governed his father's movements and which threw the boy into quickening
+collision with places, people, and ideas at a rate at which such
+contacts are not vouchsafed to many schoolboys. From so far back as his
+nineteenth year (there is no evidence to go by before that) William was
+blessed with an effortless and confirmed cosmopolitanism of
+consciousness; and he had attained to an acquaintance with English and
+French reviews, books, paintings, and public affairs which was
+remarkable not only for its happy ease, but, in one so young, for its
+wide range. The letters which follow show clearly with what expert
+observation he responded, all his life, to changes of scene and to the
+differences between peoples and environments. The fascination of these
+differences never failed for him when he traveled, and his letters from
+abroad give such voluminous proof of his own addiction to what he
+somewhat harshly called "the most barren of exercises, the making of
+international comparisons," that the problem of the editor is to control
+rather than to emphasize the evidence. He began young to be a wide
+reader; soon he became a wide reader in three languages. Above all, he
+was encouraged early to trust his own impulse and pursue his own bent.
+Probably his active and inquiring intelligence could not have been
+permanently cribbed and confined by any schooling, no matter how narrow
+and rigorous. But, as nothing was to be more remarkable about him in his
+maturity than the easy assurance with which he passed from one field of
+inquiry to another, ignoring conventional bounds and precincts, never
+losing his freshness of tone, shedding new light and encouragement
+everywhere, so it is impossible not to believe that the influences and
+circumstances which combined in his youth fostered and corroborated his
+native mobility and detachment of mind.
+
+Meanwhile he had one occupation to which no reference has yet been made,
+but to which he thought, for a while, of devoting himself wholly,
+namely, painting. He began to draw before he had reached his 'teens.
+Henry James said: "As I catch W. J.'s image, from far back, at its most
+characteristic, he sits drawing and drawing, always drawing, especially
+under the lamp-light of the Fourteenth Street back parlor; and not as
+with a plodding patience, which I think would less have affected me, but
+easily, freely, and, as who should say, infallibly: always at the stage
+of finishing off, his head dropped from side to side and his tongue
+rubbing his lower lip. I recover a period during which to see him at all
+was so to see him--the other flights and faculties removed him from my
+view."[17] What was an idle amusement in New York became, when the boy
+was transferred to foreign places and cut off from other amusements, a
+sharpener of observation and a resource for otherwise vacant hours. For
+when the family of young Americans reached St. John's Wood, London, and
+then moved to the Continent, the two elder boys found little to do at
+first except to wander about "in a state of the direst propriety,"
+staring at street scenes, shop-windows, and such "sights" as they were
+old enough to enjoy, and then to buy "water-colors and brushes with
+which to bedaub eternal drawing blocks." In Paris William had better
+lessons in drawing than he had ever had elsewhere, and it seems fair to
+say that he made good use of his opportunity to educate his eye; saw
+good pictures; sketched and copied with zest; and began to show great
+aptitude in his own "daubings." From Bonn, later still, he wrote to his
+Genevese fellow student Charles Ritter: "Je me suis pleinement décidé à
+éssayer le métier de peintre. En un an ou deux je saurais si j'y suis
+propre ou non. Si c'est non, il sera facile de reculer. Il n'y a pas sur
+la terre un objet plus déplorable qu'un méchant artiste."[18]
+
+He applied himself with energy to art for the following year at
+Newport, working daily in the studio of William Hunt, along with his
+stimulating young friend, John La Farge. To what good purpose he had
+drawn and painted from boyhood, and to what point he trained his gift
+that winter, cannot now be measured and defined in words. Paper and
+canvas are the proof of such things, which must be seen rather than
+described; and unfortunately only one canvas and very few drawings have
+been preserved. In the "Notes of a Son and Brother," several random
+sketches are reproduced which will say much to the discerning critic.
+The one canvas that at all indicates the climax of his artistic effort,
+the beautiful and simple portrait of his cousin Katharine Temple, is
+also reproduced in the "Notes"; but a small half-tone gives, alas! only
+an inadequate impression of the quality of the painting. The sketches
+which are included in the following pages will give an idea of the
+felicity of his hand, and of his talent for seeing the living line
+whenever he made sketches or notes from life. He threw these scraps off
+so easily, valuing them not at all, that few were kept. Then, before a
+year had passed (that is to say, in 1861), he had decided not to be a
+painter after all. Thereafter what was remarkable was just that he let
+so genuine a talent remain completely neglected. Except to record an
+observation in the laboratory, to explain the object under discussion to
+a student, or to amuse his children, he soon left pencil and brush quite
+untouched.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The photographs of James reproduced in this book are all excellent
+"likenesses," and one, with his colleague, Royce, caught an attitude
+which suggests the alertness that marked his bearing. He was of medium
+height (about five feet eight and one-half inches), and though he was
+muscular and compact, his frame was slight and he appeared to be
+slender in youth, spare in his last years. His carriage was erect and
+his tread was firm to the end. Until he was over fifty he used to take
+the stairs of his own house two, or even three, steps at a bound. He
+moved rapidly, not to say impatiently, but with an assurance that
+invested his figure with an informal sort of dignity. After he strained
+his heart in the Adirondacks in 1899 he had to habituate himself to a
+moderate pace in walking, but he never learned to make short movements
+and movements of unpremeditated response in a deliberate way. When he
+drove about the hilly roads of the Adirondacks or New Hampshire, he was
+forever springing in and out of the carriage to ease the horses where
+the way was steep. (Indeed it was so intolerable to him to sit in a
+carriage while straining beasts pulled it up grade, that he lost much of
+his enjoyment of driving when he could no longer walk up the hills.)
+Great was his brother Henry's astonishment at Chocorua, in 1904, to see
+that he still got out of a "democrat wagon" by springing lightly from
+the top of the wheel. His doctors had cautioned him against such sudden
+exertions; but he usually jumped without thinking.
+
+In talking he gesticulated very little, but his face and voice were
+unusually expressive. His eyes were of that not very dark shade whose
+depth and color changes with alterations of mood. Mrs. Henry Whitman,
+who knew him well and painted his portrait, called them "irascible blue
+eyes." He talked in a voice that was low-pitched rather than deep--an
+unforgettably agreeable voice, that was admirable for conversation or a
+small lecture-room, although in a very large hall it vibrated and lacked
+resonance. His speech was full of earnest, humorous and tender cadences.
+
+James was always as informal in his dress as the occasion permitted. The
+Norfolk jacket in which he used to lecture to his classes invariably
+figured in college caricatures--as did also his festive neckties. But
+there was nothing that disgusted him more than a "loutish" carelessness
+about appearances. A friend of old days, describing a first meeting with
+him in the late sixties ejaculated, "He was the _cleanest_-looking
+chap!" There seemed to be no flabby or unvitalized fibre in him.
+
+People and conversation excited him--if too many, or too long-continued,
+to the point of irritation and exhaustion. If, as was sometimes the
+case, he was moody and silent in a small company, it was a sign that he
+was overworked and tired out. But when he was roused to vivacity and
+floated on the current of congenial discussion, his enunciation was
+rapid, with occasional pauses while he searched for the right word or
+figure and pursed his lips as though helping the word to come. Then he
+talked spontaneously, humorously, and often extravagantly, just as he
+will appear to have written to his correspondents. Sometimes he was
+vehement, but never ponderous; and he never made anyone, no matter how
+humble, feel that he was trying to "impress." Men and women of all sorts
+felt at ease with him, and anybody who, in Touchstone's phrase,[19] had
+any philosophy in him, was soon expounding his private hopes, faiths,
+and skepticisms to James with gusto. He was, distinctly, not a man who
+required a submissive audience to put him in the vein. A kind of
+admiring attention that made him self-conscious was as certain to reduce
+him to silence as a manly give and take was sure to bring him out. It
+never seemed to occur to him to debate or talk for victory. In Faculty
+meetings he spoke seldom, and he spent very little time on his
+feet--except as called upon--when professional congresses or conferences
+were thrown open to discussion. Similarly, he was seldom at his best at
+large dinners or formal occasions. His best talk might have been
+described by a phrase which he used about his father. It was pat and
+intuitive and had a "smiting" quality. He was never guilty of abusing
+anecdote,--that frequent instrument of social oppression,--but he loved
+and told a good story when it would help the discussion along, and
+showed a fair gift of mimicry in relating one.[20]
+
+Once, in the early days of their acquaintance, François Pillon, who knew
+how affectionately James was attached to Harvard University and
+Cambridge and who assumed that he was a New Englander, asked him about
+the Puritans. James launched upon a vivacious sketch of their sombre
+community, and when he had finished Pillon ejaculated with mingled
+solicitude and astonishment: "Alors! pas un seul bon-vivant parmi vos
+ancêtres!" The story of the solemn-minded student who stemmed the full
+tide of a lecture one day by exclaiming, "But, Doctor, Doctor!--to be
+serious for a moment--," is already well known.
+
+But what counted for the charm and effect of James's conversation more
+than all else was his lively interest in his interlocutor and in every
+fresh idea that developed in talk with him. He made the other man feel
+that he had no desire to pigeon-hole him and dismiss him from further
+consideration, but that he rejoiced in him as a fellow creature, unique
+like himself and forever fascinating. "How delicious," he cried, "is the
+fact that you can't cram individuals under cut-and-dried heads of
+classification!" He fell instinctively into the other man's mental
+stride while he drew him out about his age, occupation, history, family
+circumstances, theories, prejudices, and peculiarities. He abounded in
+sympathy and even enthusiasm for the other's personal aims and peculiar
+ideals.
+
+His first reaction to a new scene or to fresh contact with a foreign
+people was apt to be one of admiration. "How jolly it looks!" he would
+exclaim, "and how superior in such and such ways to that last!" "How
+_good_ they seem!" "How sound and worthy to be given its chance to
+develop is such a civilization!" Restlessness, discriminating moods, and
+a longing for the "simplifications" of home soon followed; but even when
+restlessness and homesickness became acute, their effect was not
+permanent. He was no sooner back in his own home than the peculiar
+virtues of the place and people from whom he had fled shone again as
+unique and precious to the universe. It was good that there should be
+one Oxford, and that it should cling to every ancient peculiarity
+without surrendering to the spirit of the age--and good too that there
+should be one Chautauqua!
+
+For James was perennially "keen" about new things and future things,
+about beginnings and promises. His mind looked forward eagerly. Youth
+never bored him. Anything spontaneous, young, or original was likely to
+excite him. And then he would pour out expressions of approval and
+acclaim. Brilliant students and young authors were often "little
+geniuses"; he guessed that they would "produce something very big before
+long"; they had already arrived at "an important vision," or had "driven
+their spear into the Universe where its ribs are short"; they were going
+to make "perhaps the most original contribution to philosophy that
+anyone had made for a generation."
+
+It must be admitted that his recognition would occasionally have had a
+happier effect had it been less encouraging. But he enjoyed being
+generous and hated to spoil a gift of praise by "stingy"
+qualifications. He might have said that the great point was not to let
+any unique virtue in a man evaporate or be wasted. At any rate, he said,
+that should be seen to in a university. He was quite unconventional in
+recognizing originality, and preferred all the risks involved in hailing
+potentialities that might never come to fruition, to a policy of playing
+safe in his estimates. Yet on the whole he very seldom "fooled himself."
+Few men who have possessed a comparable gift of discovering special
+virtues in different individuals have combined with it so just a sense
+of what could not be expected of those same individuals in the way of
+other virtues.
+
+But there would be danger of misunderstanding if this trait were
+mentioned without an important qualification. The reader will do well,
+in interpreting any judgment of James's to consider whether the book, or
+theory, or man under consideration was new and unrecognized, or was
+already established and secure of a place in men's esteem. In the former
+case, especially if there was anything in the situation to appeal to
+James's natural "inclination to succor the under-dog," his praise was
+likely to be extravagantly expressed and his reservations were apt to be
+withheld. In the latter case he was no less certain to give free rein to
+his critical discernment. Men who knew him as a teacher are likely to
+remember how he encouraged them in their efforts on the one hand, and on
+the other how stimulating to them and enlarging to their mental horizons
+were his free and often destructive comments upon famous books and
+illustrious men.
+
+As a teacher at Harvard for thirty-five years, he influenced the lives
+and thoughts of more than a generation of students who sat in his
+classes. To many of them he was an adviser as well as a teacher, and to
+some he was a lifelong friend. Such was the character of his books and
+public discourses that people of all sorts and conditions from outside
+the University came to him or wrote to him for encouragement and
+counsel. The burden of his message to all was the bracing text which he
+himself loved and lived by--"Son of man, stand upon thy feet and I will
+speak unto thee." He never tried to win disciples, to compel allegiance
+to his own doctrines, or to found a school. But he taught countless
+young men to love philosophy, and helped many a troubled soul besides to
+face the problems of the universe in an independent and gallant spirit.
+He helped them by example as well as by precept, for it was plain to
+everyone who knew him or read him that his genius was ardently
+adventurous and humane.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+1861-1864
+
+_Chemistry and Comparative Anatomy in the Lawrence Scientific School_
+
+
+IN the autumn of 1861 James turned to scientific work, and began what
+was to become a lifelong connection with Cambridge and Harvard
+University by registering for the study of chemistry in the Lawrence
+Scientific School. Among the students who were in the School in his time
+were several who were to be his friends and colleagues in later
+years--Nathaniel S. Shaler, later Professor of Geology and Dean of the
+Scientific School, Alexander Agassiz, engineer, captain of industry,
+eminent biologist, and organizer of the museum that his father had
+founded, the entomologist Samuel H. Scudder, F. W. Putnam, who
+afterwards became Curator of the Peabody Museum of Ethnology and
+Anthropology, and Alpheus Hyatt, the palæontologist, who was Curator of
+the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy at Harvard for many years before his
+death in 1902. The chemical laboratory of the school had just been
+placed under the charge of Charles W. Eliot,--in 1869 to become
+President Eliot,--who writes: "I first came in contact with William
+James in the academic year 1861-62. As I was young and inexperienced, it
+was fortunate for me that there were but fifteen students of chemistry
+in the Scientific School that year, and that I was therefore able to
+devote a good deal of attention to the laboratory work of each student.
+The instruction was given chiefly in the laboratory and was therefore
+individual. James was a very interesting and agreeable pupil, but was
+not wholly devoted to the study of Chemistry. During the two years in
+which he was registered as a student in Chemistry, his work was much
+interfered with by ill-health, or rather by something which I imagined
+to be a delicacy of nervous constitution. His excursions into other
+sciences and realms of thought were not infrequent; his mind was
+excursive, and he liked experimenting, particularly novel
+experimenting.... I received a distinct impression that he possessed
+unusual mental powers, remarkable spirituality, and great personal
+charm.[21] This impression became later useful to Harvard University."
+
+Henry James published many of the few still existing letters which
+William wrote during this time in his "Notes of a Son and Brother."
+Three of them are among the first six selected for inclusion here. The
+fun and extravagance of these early letters is so full of an intimate
+raillery that they should be read in their context in that book, where
+the whole family has been made to live again. The first of the letters
+that follow was written a few weeks after the opening of the autumn term
+in which James began his course in chemistry. The son of Professor
+Benjamin Peirce (the mathematician) of whom it makes mention was the
+brilliant but erratic Charles S. Peirce, to whom other references appear
+in later letters, and whose name James subsequently associated with his
+pragmatism. "Harry," "Wilky" and "Bobby" will be recognized as William's
+younger brothers. Wilky was at the Sanborn School in Concord, thirteen
+miles away. Bobby was in Newport, under the parental roof at 13 Kay
+Street. The Emerson referred to was R. W. Emerson's son, Edward W.
+Emerson, and "Tom" Ward, the Thomas W. Ward of a lifelong friendship and
+of several later letters and allusions.
+
+
+
+
+_To his Family._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Sunday Afternoon, Sept. 16, 1861_.
+
+DEAREST FAMILY,--This morning, as I was busy over the tenth page of a
+letter to Wilky, in he popped and made my labor of no account. I had
+intended to go and see him yesterday, but concluded to delay as I had
+plenty of work to do and did not wish to take the relish off the visits
+by making them frequent when I was not home-sick. Moreover, Emerson and
+Tom Ward were going on, and I thought he would have too much of a good
+thing. But he walked over this morning with, or rather without them, for
+he went astray and arrived very hot and dusty. I gave him a bath and
+took him to dinner and he is now gone to see [Andrew?] Robeson and
+Emerson. His plump corpusculus looks as always. He says it is pretty
+lonely at Concord and he misses Bob's lively and sportive wiles very
+much in the long and lone and dreary evenings, tho' he consoles himself
+by thinking he will have a great time at study. I have at last got to
+feel quite settled and homelike. I write in my new parlor whither I
+moved yesterday. You have no idea what an improvement it is on the old
+affair, worth double the price, and the little bedroom under the roof
+is perfectly delicious, with a charming outlook upon little backyards
+with trees and pretty old brick walls. The sun is upon _this_ room from
+earliest dawn till late in the afternoon--a capital thing in winter.
+
+I like Mrs. Upham's very much. Dark, aristocratic dining-room, with
+royal cheer--"fish, roast-beef, veal-cutlets or pigeons?" says the
+splendid, tall, noble-looking, white-armed, black-eyed Juno of a
+handmaid as you sit down. And for dessert, a choice of three, _three_ of
+the most succulent, unctuous (no, not unctuous, unless you imagine a
+celestial unction without the oil) pie-ey confections, always two plates
+full--my eye! She has an admirable chemical, not mechanical, combination
+of jam and cake and cream, which I recommend to mother if she is ever at
+a loss; though she has no well-stored pantry like that of good old 13
+Kay Street; or if she has, it exists not for miserable me. I get up at
+six, breakfast and study till nine, when I go to school till one, when
+dinner, a short loaf and work again till five, then gymnasium or walk
+till tea, and after that, visit, work, literature, correspondence, etc.,
+etc., till ten, when I "divest myself of my wardrobe" and lay my weary
+head upon my downy pillow and dreamily think of dear old home and Father
+and Mother and brothers and sister and aunt and cousins and all that the
+good old Newport sun shines upon, until consciousness is lost. My time
+last week was fully occupied, and I suspect will be so all winter--I
+hope so.
+
+This chemical analysis is so bewildering at first that I am entirely
+"muddled and beat"[22] and have to employ most all my time reading up.
+Agassiz gives now a course of lectures in Boston, to which I have been.
+He is evidently a great favorite with his audience and feels so himself.
+But he is an admirable, earnest lecturer, clear as day, and his accent
+is most fascinating. I should like to study under him. Prof. Wyman's
+lectures on [the] Comp[arative] anatomy of vert[ebrates] promise to be
+very good; prosy perhaps a little and monotonous, but plain and packed
+full and well arranged (_nourris_). Eliot I have not seen much of; I
+don't believe he is a _very_ accomplished chemist, but can't tell yet.
+Young [Charles] Atkinson, nephew of Miss Staigg's friend, is a very nice
+boy. I walked over to Brookline yesterday afternoon with him to see his
+aunt, who received me very cordially. There is something extremely good
+about her. The rest of this year's class is nothing wonderful. In last
+year's there is a son of Prof. Peirce, whom I suspect to be a very
+"smart" fellow with a great deal of character, pretty independent and
+violent though. [Storrow] Higginson I like very well. [John] Ropes is
+always out, so I have not seen him again.
+
+We are only about twelve in the laboratory, so that we have a very cosy
+time. I expect to have a winter of "crowded" life. I can be as
+independent as I please, and want to live regardless of the good or bad
+opinion of everyone. I shall have a splendid chance to try, I know, and
+I know too that the "native hue of resolution" has never been of very
+great shade in me hitherto. But I am sure that that feeling is a right
+one, and I mean to live according to it if I can. If I do, I think I
+shall turn out all right.
+
+I stopped this letter before tea, when Wilk the rosy-gilled and
+Higginson came in. I now resume it after tea by the light of a taper and
+that of the moon. This room is without gas and I must get some of the
+jovial Harry's abhorred kerosene tomorrow. Wilk read Harry's letter and
+amused me "metch" by his naïve interpretation of mother's most rational
+request "that I should keep a memorandum of all monies I receive from
+Father." He thought it was that she might know exactly what sums the
+prodigal philosopher really gave out, and that mistrust of his
+generosity caused it. The phrase has a little sound that way, as Harry
+framed it, I confess....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+"Kitty" Temple, next addressed, was the eldest of four Temple cousins,
+who were daughters of Henry James, Senior's, favorite sister. Having
+lost both their parents the Temple children had come to live in Newport
+under the care of their paternal aunt, Mrs. Edmund Tweedie. The fast
+friendship between the elder Jameses and the Tweedies, the relationship
+between the two groups of children and the parity of their ages resulted
+in the Jameses, Temples and Tweedies all living almost as one family.
+"Minny," Kitty's younger sister, was about seventeen years old and was
+the enchanting and most adored of all the charming and freely
+circulating young relatives with whom William had more or less grown up.
+Henry James drew two of his most appealing heroines from her
+image,--Minny Theale in the "Wings of the Dove" and Isabel Archer in
+"The Portrait of a Lady,"--and she is still more authentically revealed
+by references that recur in "Notes of a Son and Brother" and in the
+bundle of her own letters with which that volume beautifully closes. In
+a long-after year William, who was fondly devoted to her, received an
+early letter of hers containing an affectionate reference to himself and
+wrote to the friend who had sent it: "I am deeply thankful to you for
+sending me this letter, which revives all sorts of poignant memories
+and makes her live again in all her lightness and freedom. Few spirits
+have been more free than hers. I find myself wishing so that she could
+know me as I am now. As for knowing her as _she_ is now??!! I find that
+she means as much in the way of human character for me now as she ever
+did, being unique and with no analogue in all my subsequent experience
+of people. Thank you once more for what you have done." At the time of
+the next letter, "Minny" had just cut her hair short, and a photograph
+of her new aspect was the occasion of the badinage about her madness.
+"Dr. Prince" was an alienist to whom another James cousin had lately
+been married.
+
+
+
+
+_To Miss Katharine Temple (Mrs. Richard Emmet)._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, [_Sept. 1861_].
+
+MY DEAR KITTY,--Imagine if you can with what palpitations I tore open
+the rude outer envelope of your precious, long-looked-for missive. I
+read it by the glimmer of the solitary lamp which at eventide lights up
+the gloom of the dark and humid den called Post Office. And as I read on
+unconscious of the emotion I was betraying, a vast crowd collected.
+Profs. Agassiz and Wyman ran with their note-books and proceeded to take
+observations of the greatest scientific import. I with difficulty
+reached my lodgings. When thereout fell the Photograph. Wheeeew! oohoo!
+aha! la-la! [_Marks representing musical flourish_] boisteroso
+triumphissimmo, chassez to the right, cross over, forward two, hornpipe
+and turn summerset! Up came the fire engines; but I proudly waved them
+aside and plunged bareheaded into the chill and gloomy bowels of the
+night, to recover by violent exercise the use of my reasoning faculties,
+which had almost been annihilated by the shock of happiness. As I
+stalked along, an understanding of the words in your letter grew upon
+me, and then I felt, my sober senses returning, that I ought not to be
+so elate. For you certainly bring me bad news enough. Elly's arm broken
+and Minny gone mad should make me rather drop a tear than laugh.
+
+But leaving poor Elly's case for the present, let's speak of Minny and
+her fearful catastrophe. Do you know, Kitty,--now that it 's all over, I
+don't see why I should not tell you,--I have often had flashes of horrid
+doubts about that girl. Occasionally I have caught a glance from her
+furtive eye, a glance so wild, so weird, so strange, that it has frozen
+the innermost marrow in my bones; and again the most sickening feeling
+has come over me as I have noticed fleeting shades of expression on her
+face, so short, but ah! so piercingly pregnant of the mysteries of
+mania--_unhuman_, ghoul-like, fiendish-cunning! Ah me! ah me! Now that
+my worst suspicions have proved true, I feel sad indeed. The well-known,
+how-often fondly-contemplated features tell the whole story in the
+photograph taken, as you say, a few days before the crisis. Madness is
+plainly lurking in that lurid eye, stamps indelibly the arch of the
+nostril and the curve of the lip, and in ambush along the soft curve of
+the cheek it lies ready to burst forth in consuming fire. But oh! still
+is it not pity to think that that fair frame, whilom the chosen fane of
+intellect and heart, clear and white as noonday's beams, should now be a
+vast desert through whose lurid and murky glooms glare but the fitful
+forked lightnings of fuliginous insanity!--Well, Kitty, after all, it is
+but an organic lesion of the gray cortical substance which forms the
+_pia mater_ of the brain, which is very consoling to us all. Was she all
+alone when she did it? Could no one wrest the shears from her vandal
+hand? I declare I fear to return home,--but of course Dr. Prince has
+her by this time. I shall weep as soon as I have finished this letter.
+
+But now, to speak seriously, I am really shocked and grieved at hearing
+of poor little Elly's accident and of her suffering. I suppose she bears
+it though like one of the Amazons of old. I suppose the proper thing for
+me to do would be to tell her how naughty and careless she was to go and
+risk her bones in that unprincipled way, and how it will be a good
+lesson to her for the future about climbing into swings, etc., etc., _ad
+libitum_; but I will leave that to you, as her elder sister (I have no
+doubt you've dosed her already), and convey to her only the expression
+of my warmest condolence and sympathy. I hope to see her getting on
+finely when I come home, which will be shortly. After all it will soon
+be over, and then her arm will be better than ever, twice as strong, and
+who of us are exempt from pain? Take me, for example: you might weep
+tears of blood to see me day after day forced to hold ignited crucibles
+in my naked hands till the eyes of my neighbors water and their throats
+choke with the dense fumes of the burning leather. Yet I ask for no
+commiseration. Nevertheless I bestow it upon poor Elly, to whom give my
+best love and say I look forward to seeing her soon.
+
+And Henrietta the ablebodied and strongminded--your report of her
+constancy touched me more than anything has for a long while. Tell her
+to stick it out for a few days longer and she will be richly rewarded by
+an apple and a chestnut _from Massachusetts_. As for yourself and sister
+in the affair of the wings, 'tis but what I expected,--I am too old now
+to expect much from human nature,--yet after such length of striving to
+please, so many months of incessant devotion, one _must_ feel a slight
+twinge. If your sister can still understand, let her know that I thank
+her for her photograph. Too bad, too bad! With her long locks she would
+still be winning, outwardly, spite of the howling fiends within; but
+they gone, like Samson, she has nothing left.--But now, my dear Kitty, I
+must put an end to my scribbling. This writing in the middle of the week
+is an unheard-of license, for I must work, work, work. Relentless
+Chemistry claims its hapless victim. Excuse all faults of grammar,
+punctuation, spelling and sense on the score of telegraphic haste. Love
+to all and to yourself. Please "remember me" to your aunt Charlotte, and
+believe [me] yours affectionately,
+
+W. J.
+
+
+
+
+_To his Family._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE,
+Sunday afternoon [_Early Nov., 1861_].
+
+DEARLY BELOVED FAMILY,--Wilky and I have just returned from dinner, and
+having completed a concert for the benefit of the inmates of Pasco Hall
+and the Hall next door, turn ourselves, I to writing a word home, he to
+digesting in a "lobbing" position on the sofa. Wilky wrote you a
+complete account of our transactions in Boston yesterday much better
+than I could have done. I suppose you will ratify our action as it
+seemed the only one possible to us. The radiance of Harry's visit[23]
+has not faded yet, and I come upon gleams of it three or four times a
+day in my farings to and fro; but it has never a bit diminished the
+lustre of far-off shining Newport all silver and blue and this heavenly
+group below[24] (all being more or less failures, especially the two
+outside ones),--the more so as the above-mentioned Harry could in no
+wise satisfy my cravings to know of the family and friends, as he did
+not seem to have been on speaking terms with any of them for some time
+past and could tell me nothing of what they did, said, or thought about
+any given subject. Never did I see a so much uninterested creature in
+the affairs of those about him. He is a good soul though in his way,
+too--much more so than the light fantastic Wilky, who has been doing
+nothing but disaster since he has been here, breaking down my good
+resolutions about eating, keeping me from any intellectual exercise,
+ruining my best hat wearing it while dressing, while in his night-gown,
+wishing to wash his face with it on, insisting on sleeping in my bed,
+inflicting on me thereby the pains of crucifixion, and hardly to be
+prevented from taking the said hat to bed with him. The odious creature
+occupied my comfortable armchair all the morning in the position
+represented in the fine plate which accompanies this letter. But one
+more night though and he shall be gone and no thorn shall be in the side
+of the serene and hallowed felicity of expectation in which I shall
+revel until the time comes for going home, home, home to the hearts of
+my infancy and budding youth.
+
+It is not homesickness I have, if by that term be meant a sickness of
+heart and loathing of my present surroundings, but a sentiment far
+transcending this, that makes my hair curl for joy whenever I think of
+home, by which home comes to me as hope, not as regret, and which puts
+roses long faded thence in my old mother's cheeks, mildness in my
+father's voice, flowing graces into my Aunt Kate's movements, babbling
+confidingness into Harry's talk, a straight parting into Robby's hair
+and a heavenly tone into the lovely babe's temper, the elastic graces of
+a kitten into Moses's[25] rusty and rheumatic joints. Aha! Aha! The
+time will come--Thanksgiving in less than two weeks and then, oh,
+then!--probably a cold reception, half repellent, no fatted calf, no
+fresh-baked loaf of spicy bread,--but I dare not think of that side of
+the picture. I will ever hope and trust and my faith shall be justified.
+
+As Wilky has submitted to you a résumé of his future history for the
+next few years, so will I, hoping it will meet your approval. Thus: one
+year study chemistry, then spend one term at home, then one year with
+Wyman, then a medical education, then five or six years with Agassiz,
+then probably death, death, death with inflation and plethora of
+knowledge. This you had better seriously consider. This is a glorious
+day and I think I must close and take a walk. So farewell, farewell
+until a quarter to nine Sunday evening soon! Your bold, your beautiful,
+
+Your Blossom!!
+
+ * * * * *
+
+_Dedicated to Miss Kitty, oh! I beg pardon, to Miss Temple._
+
+The following curious facts were discovered by the Chemist James in some
+of his recent investigations:
+
+At Pensacola, Fla., there is a navy yard, and consequently many officers
+of the U.S.A.
+
+In Pensacola there is a larger proportional number of old maids than in
+any city of the Union.
+
+The ladies of Pensacola, instead of seeking an eligible partner in the
+middle ranks of society, spend their lives in a vain attempt to entrap
+the officers who flirt with them and then leave Pensacola. The moral
+lesson is evident.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The "Kitty" to whom James addressed the next letter was another cousin,
+the daughter of one of his father's elder brothers. Her husband was the
+alienist to whom the reader will remember that the mad Minny was
+consigned in a previous letter. It should also be explained that James's
+two youngest brothers had now entered the Union army, and that one of
+them, Wilky, adjutant of the first colored regiment, had been wounded in
+the charge on Fort Wagner in which Colonel Robert Gould Shaw was killed.
+
+
+
+
+_To Mrs. Katharine James (Mrs. William H.) Prince._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Sept. 12, 1863_.
+
+MY DEAR COUSIN KITTY,--I was very agreeably surprised at getting your
+letter a few days after arriving here, and am heartily glad to find that
+you still remember me and think sometimes of the visit you paid us that
+happy summer. I often think of you, and at such times feel very much
+like renewing our delightful converse. Several times I have been on the
+uttermost _brink_ of writing to you, but somehow or other I have always
+quailed at plunging over. Nature makes us so awkward. I again felt
+several times like going to pay you a short visit,--last winter and this
+spring, I remember,--but hesitated, never having been invited, and being
+entirely ignorant how you would receive me, whether you would chain me
+up in your asylum and scourge me, or what--tho' I believe those good old
+days are over.
+
+When you were at our house, I recollect I was in the first flush of my
+chemical enthusiasm. A year and a half of hard work at it here has
+somewhat dulled my ardor; and after half a year's vegetation at home, I
+am back here again, studying this time Comparative Anatomy. I am obliged
+before the 15th of January to make finally and irrevocably "the choice
+of a profession." I suppose your sex, which has, or should have, its
+bread brought to it, instead of having to go in search of it, has no
+idea of the awful responsibility of such a choice. I have four
+alternatives: Natural History, Medicine, Printing, Beggary. Much may be
+said in favor of each. I have named them in the ascending order of their
+pecuniary invitingness. After all, the great problem of life seems to be
+how to keep body and soul together, and I _have_ to consider lucre. To
+study natural science, I know I should like, but the prospect of
+supporting a family on $600 a year is not one of those rosy dreams of
+the future with which the young are said to be haunted. Medicine would
+pay, and I should still be dealing with subjects which interest me--but
+how much drudgery and of what an unpleasant kind is there! Of all
+departments of Medicine, that to which Dr. Prince devotes himself is, I
+should think, the most interesting. And I should like to see him and his
+patients at Northampton very much before coming to a decision.
+
+The worst of this matter is that everyone must more or less act with
+insufficient knowledge--"go it blind," as they say. Few can afford the
+time to try what suits them. However, a few months will show. I shall be
+most happy some day to avail myself of your very cordial invitation. I
+have heard so much of the beauty of Northampton that I want very much to
+see the place too.
+
+I heard from home day before yesterday that "Wilky was improving daily."
+I hope he is, poor fellow. His wound is a very large and bad one and he
+will be confined to his bed a long while. He bears it like a man. He is
+the best abolitionist you ever saw, and makes a common one, as we are,
+feel very small and shabby. Poor little Bob is before Charleston, too.
+We have not heard from him in a very long while. He made an excellent
+officer in camp here, every one said, and was promoted.
+
+But I must stop. I hope, now that the ice is broken, you will soon feel
+like writing again. And, if you please, eschew all formality in
+addressing me by dropping the title of our relationship before my name.
+As for you, the case is different. My senior, a grave matron,
+quasi-mother of I know not how many scores, not of children, but of live
+lunatics, which is far more exceptional and awe-inspiring, I tremble to
+think I have shown too much levity and familiarity already. Are you very
+different from what you were two years ago? As no word has passed
+between us since then, I suppose I should have begun by congratulating
+you first on your engagement, which is I believe the fashionable thing,
+then on your marriage, tho' I don't rightly know whether that is
+fashionable or not. At any rate I now end. Yours most sincerely,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To his Mother._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, [_circa Sept., 1863_].
+
+MY DEAREST MOTHER,--...To answer the weighty questions which you
+propound: I am glad to leave Newport because I am tired of the place
+itself, and because of the reason which you have very well expressed in
+your letter, the necessity of the whole family being near the arena of
+the future activity of us young men. I recommend Cambridge on account of
+its own pleasantness (though I don't wish to be invidious towards
+Brookline, Longwood, and other places) and because of its economy if I
+or Harry continue to study here much longer....
+
+I feel very much the importance of making soon a final choice of my
+business in life. I stand now at the place where the road forks. One
+branch leads to material comfort, the flesh-pots; but it seems a kind of
+selling of one's soul. The other to mental dignity and independence;
+combined, however, with physical penury. If I myself were the only one
+concerned I should not hesitate an instant in my choice. But it seems
+hard on Mrs. W. J., "that not impossible she," to ask her to share an
+empty purse and a cold hearth. On one side is _science_, upon the other
+_business_ (the honorable, honored and productive business of printing
+seems most attractive), with _medicine_, which partakes of [the]
+advantages of both, between them, but which has drawbacks of its own. I
+confess I hesitate. I fancy there is a fond maternal cowardice which
+would make you and every other mother contemplate with complacency the
+worldly fatness of a son, even if obtained by some sacrifice of his
+"higher nature." But I fear there might be some anguish in looking back
+from the pinnacle of prosperity (_necessarily_ reached, if not by eating
+dirt, at least by renouncing some divine ambrosia) over the life you
+might have led in the pure pursuit of truth. It seems as if one _could_
+not afford to give that up for any bribe, however great. Still, I am
+undecided. The medical term opens tomorrow and between this and the end
+of the term here, I shall have an opportunity of seeing a little into
+medical business. I shall confer with Wyman about the prospects of a
+naturalist and finally decide. I want you to become familiar with the
+notion that I _may_ stick to science, however, and drain away at your
+property for a few years more. If I can get into Agassiz's museum I
+think it not improbable I may receive a salary of $400 to $500 in a
+couple of years. I know some stupider than I who have done so. You see
+in that case how desirable it would be to have a home in Cambridge.
+Anyhow, I am convinced that somewhere in this neighborhood is the place
+for us to rest. These matters have been a good deal on my mind lately,
+and I am very glad to get this chance of pouring them into yours. As
+for the other boys, I don't know. And that idle and useless young
+female, Alice, too, whom we shall have to feed and clothe!... Cambridge
+is all right for business in Boston. Living in Boston or Brookline,
+etc., would be as expensive as Newport if Harry or I stayed here, for we
+could not easily go home every day.
+
+Give my warmest love to Aunt Kate, Father, who I hope will not tumble
+again, and all of them over the way. Recess in three weeks; till then,
+my dearest and best of old mothers, good-bye! Your loving son,
+
+W. J.
+
+[P.S.] Give my best love to Kitty and give _cette petite_ humbug of a
+Minny a hint about writing to me. I hope you liked your shawl.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The physical and nervous frailty, which President Eliot had noticed in
+James during the first winter at the Scientific School, and which later
+manifested itself so seriously as to interfere with his studies, kept
+him from enlisting in the Federal armies during the Civil War. The case
+was too clear to occasion discussion in his letters. He continued as a
+student at the School and, at about the time the foregoing letter was
+written, transferred himself from the Chemical Department to the
+Department of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology, in which Professor
+Jeffries Wyman was teaching. It was in these two subjects that he
+himself was to begin teaching ten years later. The next year (1864-65),
+when he entered the Medical School, Professor Wyman was again his
+instructor.
+
+Jeffries Wyman (1814-1874) was a less widely effective man than Agassiz,
+but his influence counted more in James's student years than did that of
+any other teacher. "All the young men who worked under him," says
+President Eliot, "took him as the type of scientific zeal,
+disinterestedness and candor." N. S. Shaler, an admirable judge of men,
+has recorded his opinion of Wyman in his autobiography, saying: "In some
+ways he was the most perfect naturalist I have ever known ... within the
+limits of his powers he had the best-balanced mind it has been my good
+fortune to come into contact with.... Though he published but little,
+his store of knowledge of the whole field of natural history was
+surprisingly great, and, as I came to find, it greatly exceeded that of
+my master Agassiz in its range and accuracy."[26]
+
+James, who was Wyman's pupil during two critical years, held him in
+particular reverence and affection, and said of him: "Those who year by
+year received part or all of their first year's course of medical
+instruction from him always speak with a sort of worship of their
+preceptor. His extraordinary effect on all who knew him is to be
+accounted for by the one word, character. Never was a man so absolutely
+without detractors. The quality which every one first thinks of in him
+is his extraordinary modesty, of which his unfailing geniality and
+serviceableness, his readiness to confer with and listen to younger
+men--how often did his unmagisterial manner lead them unawares into
+taking dogmatic liberties, which soon resulted in ignominious collapse
+before his quiet wisdom!--were kindred manifestations. Next were his
+integrity, and his complete and simple devotion to objective truth.
+These qualities were what gave him such incomparable fairness of
+judgment in both scientific and worldly matters, and made his opinions
+so weighty even when they were unaccompanied by reasons.... An
+accomplished draughtsman, his love and understanding of art were
+great.... He had if anything too little of the _ego_ in his composition,
+and all his faults were excesses of virtue. A little more restlessness
+of ambition, and a little more willingness to use other people for his
+purposes, would easily have made him more abundantly productive, and
+would have greatly increased the sphere of his effectiveness and fame.
+But his example on us younger men, who had the never-to-be-forgotten
+advantage of working by his side, would then have been, if not less
+potent, at least different from what we now remember it; and we prefer
+to think of him forever as the paragon that he was of goodness,
+disinterestedness, and single-minded love of the truth."[27]
+
+The stream of James's correspondence still flowed entirely for his
+family at this time, and his letters were often facetious accounts of
+his way of life and occupations.
+
+
+
+
+_To his Sister_ (age 15).
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Sept. 13, 1863_.
+
+CHÉRIE CHARMANTE DE BAL,--Notwithstanding the abuse we poured on each
+other before parting and the (on _my_ part) feigned expressions of joy
+at not meeting you again for so many months, it was with the liveliest
+regret that I left Newport before your return. But I was obliged in
+order to get a room here--drove, literally drove to it. That you should
+not have written to me for so long grieves me more than words can
+tell--you who have nothing to do besides. It shows you to have little
+affection and _that_ of a poor quality. I have, however, heard from
+_others_ who tell me that Wilky is doing well, "improving daily," which
+I am very glad indeed to hear. I am glad you had such a pleasant summer.
+I am nicely established in a cosy little room, with a large recess with
+a window in it, containing bed and washstand, separated from the main
+apartment by a rich green silken curtain and a large gilt cornice. This
+gives the whole establishment a splendid look.
+
+I found when I got here that Miss Upham had changed her price to $5.00.
+Great efforts were made by two of us to raise a club, but little
+enthusiasm was shown by anyone else and it fell through. I then, with
+that fine economical instinct which distinguishes me, resolved to take a
+tea and breakfast of bread and milk in my room and only pay Miss Upham
+for dinners. Miss U. is at Swampscott. So I asked to see [her sister]
+Mrs. Wood, to learn the cost of seven dinners. She, with true motherly
+instinct, said that I should only make a slop in my room, and that she
+would rather let me keep on for $4.50, seeing it was me. I said she must
+first consult Miss Upham. She returned from Swampscott saying that Miss
+U. had sworn _she_ would rather pay _me_ a dollar a week than have me go
+away. Ablaze with economic passion, I cried "Done!" trying to make it
+appear as if she had made a formal offer to that effect. But she would
+not admit it, and after much recrimination we were separated, it being
+agreed that I should come for $4.50, _but tell no-one_. (Mind _you_
+don't either.) I now lay my hand on my heart, and confidently look
+towards my mother for that glance of approbation which she _must_
+bestow. Have I not redeemed any weaknesses of the past? Though part of
+my conception failed, yet it was boldly planned and would have been a
+noble stroke.
+
+I have been pretty busy this week. I have a filial feeling towards Wyman
+already. I work in a vast museum, at a table all alone, surrounded by
+skeletons of mastodons, crocodiles, and the like, with the walls hung
+about with monsters and horrors enough to freeze the blood. But I have
+no fear, as most of them are tightly bottled up. Occasionally solemn
+men and women come in to see the museum, and sometimes timid little
+girls (reminding me of thee, beloved, only they are less fashionably
+dressed) who whisper: "Is folks allowed here?" It pains me to remark,
+however, that not all the little girls are of this pleasing type, _most_
+being boldfaced jigs. How does Wilky get on? Is Mayberry gone? How is he
+nursed? Who holds his foot for the doctor? Tell me all about him.
+Everyone here asks about him, and all without exception seem
+enthusiastic about the darkeys. How has Aunt Kate's knee been since her
+return? Sorry indeed was I to leave without seeing her. Give her my best
+love. Is Kitty Temple as angelic as ever? Give my best love to her and
+Minny and the little ones. (My little friend Elly, how often I think of
+her!) Have your lessons with Bradford (the brandy-witness) begun? You
+may well blush. Tell Harry Mr. [Francis J.] Child is here, just as
+usual; Mrs. C. at Swampscott. [C. C.] Salter back, but morose. One or
+two new students, and Prof. [W. W.] Goodwin, who is a very agreeable
+man. Among other students, a son of Ed. Everett [William Everett], very
+intelligent and a capital scholar, studying law. He took honors at
+Cambridge, England. Tucks, _mère & fille_ away, _fils_ here....
+
+I send a photograph of Gen. Sickles for yours and Wilky's amusement. It
+is a part of a great anthropomorphological collection[28] which I am
+going to make. So take care of it, as well as of all the photographs you
+will find in the table drawer in my room. But isn't he a bully boy?
+Harry's handwriting much better. Desecrate my room as little as
+possible. Good-bye, much love to Wilky and all. If he wants nursing send
+for me without hesitation. Love to the Tweedies. Haven't you heard yet
+from Bobby?
+
+Your aff. bro.,
+WM.
+
+[Illustration: Pencil Sketch from a Pocket Note-Book.]
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+1864-1866
+
+_The Harvard Medical School--With Louis Agassiz to the Amazon_
+
+
+IN 1864 the family moved from Newport to Boston, where Henry James,
+Senior, took a house on Ashburton Place (No. 13) for two years, and
+there was no more occasion for family letters. Although James began the
+regular course at the Medical School, he had arrived at no clear
+professional purpose and no selection of any particular field of study.
+The School afforded him some measure of preparation for natural science
+as well as for practice.
+
+Philosophy had undoubtedly begun to beckon him, although its appealing
+gesture lacked authority and did not enlist him in any regular course of
+philosophic studies. In sixty-five he wrote to his brother Henry from
+Brazil saying, "When I get home, I'm going to study philosophy all my
+days." But in many respects his character and tastes matured slowly. The
+instruction offered by Professor Francis Bowen in Harvard College does
+not appear to have excited his interest at all. It cannot have failed to
+excite the irony of his father,--as did everything of the sort that was
+academic and orthodox,--and James would have been aware of this and
+might have been influenced. On the other hand, it was obvious that, in
+the case of his father, who had no connection with church, college or
+school, the consideration and expression of theories and beliefs had
+always been a totally unremunerative occupation; and James had to
+consider how to earn a living. His prospective share of the property
+that had sufficed for his parents was clearly not going to be enough to
+support him in independent leisure. In the way of bread and butter,
+biology and medicine offered more than metaphysical speculation. Last
+and most important, the tide of contemporary inquiry, driven forward by
+the storm of the Darwinian controversy, was setting strongly toward a
+fresh examination of nature. Philosophy must embrace the new reality.
+Everything that was stimulating in contemporary thought urged men to the
+scrutiny of the phenomenal world. "Natural History," which has since
+diversified and amplified itself beyond the use of that appellation, was
+almost romantically "having its day."
+
+ Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie,
+ Und grün des Lebens goldener Baum.[29]
+
+Thus Goethe, and Louis Agassiz, whose lectures James had already
+followed, and with the abundance of whose inspiring activity no other
+scientific energizing could then compare, was fond of quoting the lines.
+
+Under such circumstances it was not strange that James should interrupt
+his medical studies in order to join the expedition which Agassiz was
+preparing to lead to the Amazon.
+
+No richer or more instructive experience could well have offered itself
+to him at twenty-three than this journey to Brazil seemed to promise. He
+was no sooner on the Amazon, however, than it became clear to him that
+he was not intended to be a field-naturalist; and he pictured the stages
+of this self-discovery in long, diary-like letters which he sent home
+to his family. On arriving at Rio he was forced to consider the question
+of his going on or coming home, by an illness that kept him quarantined
+for several uncomfortable weeks, and left him depressed and unable to
+use his eyes during several weeks more. Although he decided in favor of
+continuing with Agassiz, he revealed more and more clearly in his
+letters that he was seeing Brazil with the eye of an adventurer and
+lover of landscape rather than of a geologist or collector, and that the
+months spent in fishing and pickling specimens were to count most for
+him by teaching him what his vocation was _not_. He found that he was
+essentially indifferent to the classification of birds, beasts, and
+fishes, and that he was not made to deal with the riddle of the universe
+from the only angle of approach that was possible in Agassiz's company.
+
+It would be a mistake, however, to let it appear that nine months of
+collecting with Louis Agassiz were nine months wasted. There are some
+men whom it is an education to work under, even though the affair in
+hand be foreign to one's ultimate concern. Agassiz was such an one,
+"recognized by all as one of those naturalists in the unlimited sense,
+one of those folio-copies of mankind, like Linnæus and Cuvier." Thirty
+years after, James could still say of him: "Since Benjamin Franklin we
+had never had among us a person of more popularly impressive type.... He
+was so commanding a presence, so curious and enquiring, so responsive
+and expansive, and so generous and reckless of himself and his own, that
+everyone said immediately, Here is no musty _savant_, but a man, a great
+man, a man on the heroic scale, not to serve whom is avarice and
+sin."[30]--"To see facts and not to argue or _raisonniren_ was what life
+meant for Agassiz," and James, who was already incorrigibly interested
+in the causes, values and purposes of things, and whose education had
+been most unsystematic, profited by his corrective influence. "James,"
+said Agassiz at this time, "some people perhaps consider you a bright
+young man; but when you are fifty years old, if they ever speak of you
+then, what they will say will be this: That James--oh, yes, I know him;
+he used to be a very bright young man!" Such "cold-water therapeutics"
+were gratefully accepted from one who was not only a teacher but a kind
+friend; and James remembered them, and recorded later that "the hours he
+spent with Agassiz so taught him the difference between all possible
+abstractionists and all livers in the light of the world's concrete
+fullness, that he was never able to forget it." Considering with what
+passionate fidelity his own abstractions always face the concrete, this
+is perhaps more of an acknowledgment than at first sight appears.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The Thayer Expedition set sail from New York April 1, 1865. The next
+letter was written from ship-board, still in New York Harbor. The
+"Professor" will be recognized as Louis Agassiz.
+
+
+
+
+_To his Mother._
+
+
+[_Mar. 30?_], 1865.
+
+...We have been detained 48 hours on this steamer in port on account of
+different accidents.... A dense fog is raging which will prevent our
+going outside as long as it lasts. Sapristi! c'est embêtant....
+
+The Professor has just been expatiating over the map of South America
+and making projects as if he had Sherman's army at his disposal instead
+of the ten novices he really has. He may get some students at Rio to
+accompany the different parties, which will let them be more numerous.
+I'm sure I hope he will, on account of the language. If each of us has a
+Portuguese companion, he can do things twice as easily. The Prof. now
+sits opposite me with his face all aglow, holding forth to the Captain's
+wife about the imperfect education of the American people. He has talked
+uninterruptedly for a quarter of an hour at least. I know not how she
+reacts; I presume she feels somewhat flattered by the attention,
+however. This morning he made a characteristic speech to Mr. Billings,
+Mr. Watson's friend. Mr. B. had offered to lend him some books. Agassiz:
+"May I enter your state-room and take them when I shall want them, sir?"
+Billings, extending his arm said genially, "Sir, all that I have is
+yours!" To which, Agassiz, far from being overcome, replied, shaking a
+monitory finger at the foolishly generous wight, "Look out, sir, dat I
+take not your skin!" That expresses very well the man. Offering your
+services to Agassiz is as absurd as it would be for a South Carolinian
+to invite General Sherman's soldiers to partake of some refreshment when
+they called at his house....
+
+At this moment Prof. passes behind me and says, "Now today I am going to
+show you a little what I will have _you_ do." Hurray! I have not been
+able to get a word out of the old animal yet about my fate. I'm only
+sorry I can't tell _you_....
+
+
+
+
+_To his Parents._
+
+
+RIO, BRAZIL, _Apr. 21, 1865_.
+
+MY DEAREST PARENTS,--Every one is writing home to catch the steamer
+which leaves Rio on Monday. I do likewise, although, so far, I have very
+little to say to you. You cannot conceive how pleasant it is to feel
+that tomorrow we shall lie in smooth water at Rio and the horrors of
+this voyage will be over. O the vile Sea! the damned Deep! No one has a
+right to write about the "nature of Evil," or to have any opinion about
+evil, who has not been at sea. The awful slough of despond into which
+you are there plunged furnishes too profound an experience not to be a
+fruitful one. I cannot yet say what the fruit is in my case, but I am
+sure some day of an accession of wisdom from it. My sickness did not
+take an actively nauseous form after the first night and second morning;
+but for twelve mortal days I was, body and soul, in a more indescribably
+hopeless, homeless and friendless state than I ever want to be in again.
+We had a head wind and tolerably rough sea all that time. The trade
+winds, which I thought were gentle zephyrs, are hideous moist gales that
+whiten all the waves with foam....
+
+_Sunday Evening._ Yesterday morning at ten o'clock we came to anchor in
+this harbor, sailing right up without a pilot. No words of mine, or of
+any man short of William the divine, can give any idea of the
+magnificence of this harbor and its approaches. The boldest, grandest
+mountains, far and near. The palms and other trees of such vivid green
+as I never saw anywhere else. The town "realizes" my idea of an African
+town in its architecture and effect. Almost everyone is a negro or a
+negress, which words I perceive we don't know the meaning of with us; a
+great many of them are native Africans and tattooed. The men have white
+linen drawers and short shirts of the same kind over them; the women
+wear huge turbans, and have a peculiar rolling gait that I have never
+seen any approach to elsewhere. Their attitudes as they sleep and lie
+about the streets are picturesque to the last degree.
+
+Yesterday was, I think, the day of my life on which I had the most
+outward enjoyment. Nine of us took a boat at about noon and went on
+shore. The strange sights, the pleasure of walking on terra firma, the
+delicious smell of land, compared with the hell of the last three weeks,
+were perfectly intoxicating. Our Portuguese went beautifully,--every
+visage relaxed at the sight of us and grinned from ear to ear. The
+amount of fraternal love that was expressed by bowing and gesture was
+tremendous. We had the best dinner I ever eat. Guess how much it cost.
+140,000 reis--literal fact. Paid for by the rich man of the party. The
+Brazilians are of a pale Indian color, without a particle of red and
+with a very aged expression. They are very polite and obliging. _All_
+wear black beaver hats and glossy black frock coats, which makes them
+look like _des épiciers endimanchés_. We all returned in good order to
+the ship at 11 P.M., and I lay awake most of the night on deck listening
+to the soft notes of the vampire outside of the awning. (Not knowing
+what it was, we'll call it the vampire.) This morning Tom Ward and I
+took another cruise on shore, which was equally new and strange. The
+weather is like Newport. I have not seen the thermometer....
+
+Agassiz just in, delighted with the Emperor's simplicity and the
+precision of his information; but apparently they did not touch upon our
+material prospects. He goes to see the Emperor again tomorrow. Agassiz
+is one of the most fascinating men personally that I ever saw. I could
+listen to him talk by the hour. He is so childlike. Bishop Potter, who
+is sitting opposite me writing, asks me to give his best regards to
+father. I am in such a state of abdominal tumefaction from having eaten
+bananas all day that I can hardly sit down to write. The bananas here
+are no whit better than at home, but _so_ cheap and _so_ filling at the
+price. My fellow "savans" are a very uninteresting crew. Except Tom
+Ward I don't care if I never see one of 'em again. I like Dr. Cotting
+very much and Mrs. Agassiz too. I could babble on all night, but must
+stop somewhere.
+
+Dear old Father, Mother, Aunt Kate, Harry and Alice! You little know
+what thoughts I have had of you since I have been gone. And I have felt
+more sympathy with Bob and Wilk than ever, from the fact of my isolated
+circumstances being more like theirs than the life I have led hitherto.
+Please send them this letter. It is written as much for them as for
+anyone. I hope Harry is rising like a phoenix from his ashes, under
+the new régime. Bless him. I wish he or some person I could talk to were
+along. Thank Aunt Kate once more. Kiss Alice to death. I think Father is
+the _wisest_ of all men whom I know. Give my love to the girls,
+especially the Hoopers. Tell Harry to remember me to T. S. P[erry] and
+to Holmes. Adieu.
+
+Your loving
+W. J.
+
+Give my love to Washburn.
+
+
+
+
+_To his Father._
+
+
+RIO, _June 3, 1865_.
+
+MY DEAREST OLD FATHER AND MY DEAREST OLD EVERYBODY AT HOME,--I've got so
+much to say that I don't well know where to begin.--I sent a letter
+home, I think about a fortnight ago, telling you about my small-pox,
+etc., but as it went by a sailing vessel it is quite likely that this
+may reach you first. That was written from the _maison de santé_ where I
+was lying in the embrace of the loathsome goddess, and from whose hard
+straw bed, eternal chicken and rice, and extortionate prices I was
+released yesterday. The disease is over, and granting the necessity of
+having it, I have reason to think myself most lucky. My face will not
+be marked at all, although at present it presents the appearance of an
+immense ripe raspberry.... My sickness began four weeks ago today. You
+have no idea of the state of bliss into which I have been plunged in the
+last twenty-four hours by the first draughts of my newly gained freedom.
+To be dressed, to walk about, to see my friends and the public, to go
+into the dining-room and order my own dinner, to feel myself growing
+strong and smooth-skinned again, make a very considerable reaction. Now
+that I know I am no longer an object of infection, I am perfectly
+cynical as to my appearance and go into the dining-room here when it is
+at its fullest, having been invited and authorized thereto by the good
+people of the hotel. I shall stay here for a week before returning to my
+quarters, although it is very expensive. But I need a soft bed instead
+of a hammock, and an arm-chair instead of a trunk to sit upon for some
+days yet....
+
+In my last letter, I said something about coming home sooner than I
+expected. Since then, I have thought the matter over seriously and
+conscientiously every day, and it has resulted in my determining so to
+do. My coming was a mistake, a mistake as regards what I anticipated,
+and a pretty expensive one both for you, dear old Father, and for the
+dear generous old Aunt Kate. I find that by staying I shall learn next
+to nothing of natural history as I care about learning it. My whole work
+will be mechanical, finding objects and packing them, and working so
+hard at that and in traveling that no time at all will be found for
+studying their structure. The affair reduces itself thus to so many
+months spent in physical exercise. Can I afford this? _First_,
+pecuniarily? No! Instead of costing the $600 or $700 Agassiz told me
+twelve months of it would cost, the expense will be nearer to triple
+that amount....
+
+_Secondly_, I can't afford the excursion mentally (though that is not
+exactly the adjective to use). I said to myself before I came away: "W.
+J., in this excursion you will learn to know yourself and your resources
+somewhat more intimately than you do now, and will come back with your
+character considerably evolved and established." This has come true
+sooner, and in a somewhat different way, than I expected. I am now
+certain that my forte is not to go on exploring expeditions. I have no
+inward spur goading me forwards on that line, as I have on several
+speculative lines. I am convinced now, for good, that I am cut out for a
+speculative rather than an active life,--I speak now only of my
+_quality_; as for my _quantity_, I became convinced some time ago and
+reconciled to the notion, that I was one of the very lightest of
+featherweights. Now why not be reconciled with my deficiencies? By
+accepting them your actions cease to be at cross-purposes with your
+faculties, and you are so much nearer to peace of mind. On the steamer I
+began to read Humboldt's Travels. Hardly had I opened the book when I
+seemed to become illuminated. "Good Heavens, when such men are provided
+to do the work of traveling, exploring, and observing for humanity, men
+who gravitate into their work as the air does into our lungs, what need,
+what _business_ have we outsiders to pant after them and toilsomely try
+to serve as their substitutes? There are men to do all the work which
+the world requires without the talent of any one being strained." Men's
+activities are occupied in two ways: in grappling with external
+circumstances, and in striving to set things at one in their own
+topsy-turvy mind.
+
+You must know, dear Father, what I mean, tho' I can't must[er] strength
+of brain enough now to express myself with precision. The grit and
+energy of some men are called forth by the resistance of the world. But
+as for myself, I seem to have no spirit whatever of that kind, no pride
+which makes me ashamed to say, "I can't do that." But I have a mental
+pride and shame which, although they seem more egotistical than the
+other kind, are still the only things that can stir my blood. These
+lines seem to satisfy me, although to many they would appear the height
+of indolence and contemptibleness: "Ne forçons point notre talent,--Nous
+ne ferions rien avec grâce,--Jamais un lourdaud, quoi-qu'il fasse,--Ne
+deviendra un galant." Now all the time I should be gone on this
+expedition I should have a pining after books and study as I have had
+hitherto, and a feeling that this work was not in my path and was so
+much waste of life. I had misgivings to this effect before starting; but
+I was so filled with enthusiasm, and the romance of the thing seemed so
+great, that I stifled them. Here on the ground the romance vanishes and
+the misgivings float up. I have determined to listen to them this time.
+I said that my act was an expensive mistake as regards what I
+anticipated, but I have got this other _edification_ from it. It has to
+be got some time, and perhaps only through some great mistake; for there
+are some familiar axioms which the individual only seems able to learn
+the meaning of through his individual experience. I don't know whether I
+have expressed myself so as to let you understand exactly how I feel. O
+my dear, affectionate, wise old Father, how I longed to see you while I
+lay there with the small-pox,[31] first revolving these things over! and
+how I longed to confer with you in a more confiding way than I often do
+at home! When I get there I can explain the gaps. As this letter does
+not sail till next Saturday (this is Sunday), I will stop for the
+present, as I feel quite tired out....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+It was not feasible for James to leave the expedition and return home
+immediately, and soon after the last letter was written, his returning
+health and eyesight brought with them a more cheerful mood. He
+determined to stay in Brazil for a few months longer.
+
+
+
+
+_To his Father._
+
+
+RIVER SOLIMOES (AMAZON),
+_Sept. 12-15, 1865_.
+
+MY DEAREST DADDY,--Great was my joy the other evening, on arriving at
+Manaos, to get a batch of letters from you.... I could do no more then
+than merely "accuse" the reception. Now I can manage to sweat out a few
+lines of reply. It is noon and the heat is frightful. We have all come
+to the conclusion that, for _us_ at least, there will be no hell
+hereafter. We have all become regular alembics, and the heat grows upon
+you, I find. Nevertheless it is not the dead, sickening heat of home. It
+is more like a lively baking, and the nights remain cool. We are just
+entering on the mosquito country, and I suspect our suffering will be
+great from them and the flies. While the steamboat is in motion we don't
+have them, but when she stops you can hardly open your mouth without
+getting it full of them. Poor Mr. Bourkhardt is awfully poisoned and
+swollen up by bites he got ten days ago on a bayou. At the same time
+with the mosquitoes, the other living things seem to increase; so it has
+its good side. The river is much narrower--about two miles wide perhaps
+or three (I'm no judge)--very darkly muddy and swirling rapidly down
+past the beautiful woods and islands. We are all going up as far as
+Tabatinga, when the Professor and Madam, with some others, go into Peru
+to the Mountains, while Bourget and I will get a canoe and some men and
+spend a month on the river between Tabatinga and Ega. Bourget is a very
+dog, yapping and yelping at every one, but a very hard-working
+collector, and I can get along very well with him. We shall have a very
+gypsy-like, if a very uncomfortable time. The best of this river is that
+you can't bathe in it on account of the numerous anthropophagous fishes
+who bite mouthfuls out of you. Tom Ward _may_ possibly be out and at
+Manaos by the time we get back there at the end of October. Heaven grant
+he may, poor fellow! I'd rather see him than any one on this continent.
+Agassiz is perfectly delighted with him, his intelligence and his
+energy, thinks him in fact much the best man of the expedition.
+
+I see no reason to regret my determination to stay. "On contrary," as
+Agassiz says, as I begin to use my eyes a little every day, I feel like
+an entirely new being. Everything revives within and without, and I now
+feel sure that I shall learn. I have profited a great deal by hearing
+Agassiz talk, not so much by what he says, for never did a man utter a
+greater amount of humbug, but by learning the way of feeling of such a
+vast practical engine as he is. No one sees farther into a
+generalization than his own knowledge of details extends, and you have a
+greater feeling of weight and solidity about the movement of Agassiz's
+mind, owing to the continual presence of this great background of
+special facts, than about the mind of any other man I know. He has a
+great personal tact too, and I see that in all his talks with me he is
+pitching into my loose and superficial way of thinking.... Now that I am
+become more intimate with him, and can talk more freely to him, I
+delight to be with him. I only saw his defects at first, but now his
+wonderful qualities throw them quite in the background. I am convinced
+that he is the man to do me good. He will certainly have earned a
+holiday when he gets home. I never saw a man work so hard. Physically,
+intellectually and socially he has done the work of ten different men
+since he has been in Brazil; the only danger is of his overdoing it....
+
+I am beginning to get impatient with the Brazilian sleepiness and
+ignorance. These Indians are particularly exasperating by their laziness
+and stolidity. It would be amusing if it were not so infuriating to see
+how impossible it is to make one hurry, no matter how imminent the
+emergency. How queer and how exhilarating all those home letters were,
+with their accounts of what every one was doing, doing, doing. To me,
+just awakening from my life of forced idleness and from an atmosphere of
+Brazilian inanity, it seemed as if a little window had been opened and a
+life-giving blast of one of our October nor'westers had blown into my
+lungs for half an hour. I had no idea before of the real greatness of
+American energy. They wood up the steamer here for instance at the rate
+(accurately counted) of eight to twelve logs a minute. It takes them two
+and one-half hours to put in as much wood as would go in at home in less
+than fifteen minutes.
+
+[Illustration: A Pencil Sketch from a Pocket Note-Book.]
+
+Every note from home makes me proud of our country.... I have not been
+able to look at the papers, but I have heard a good deal. I do hope our
+people will not be such fools as to hang Jeff. Davis for treason. Can
+any one believe in revenge now? And if not for that, for what else
+should we hang the poor wretch? Lincoln's violent death did more to
+endear him to those indifferent and unfriendly to him than the whole
+prosperous remainder of his life could have done; and so will Jeff's
+if he is hung. Poor old Abe! What is it that moves you so about his
+simple, unprejudiced, unpretending, honest career? I can't tell why, but
+albeit unused to the melting mood, I can hardly ever think of Abraham
+Lincoln without feeling on the point of blubbering. Is it that he seems
+the representative of pure simple human nature against all conventional
+additions?...
+
+
+
+
+_To his Parents._
+
+
+TEFFÉ (AMAZON), _Oct. 21, 1865_.
+
+...I left the party up at Saõ Paulo the 20th of last month and got here
+the 16th of this, having gone up two rivers, the Içá and Jutay, and made
+collections of fishes which were very satisfactory to the Prof. as they
+contained almost one hundred new species. On the whole it was a most
+original month, and one which from its strangeness I shall remember to
+my dying day; much discomfort from insects and rain, much ecstasy from
+the lovely landscape, much hard work and heat, a very disagreeable
+companion, J---- [added to the party in Brazil], the very best of fare,
+turtle and fresh fish every day, and running through all a delightful
+savor of freedom and gypsy-hood which sweetened all that might have been
+unpleasant. We slept on the beaches every night and fraternized with the
+Indians, who are socially very agreeable, but mentally a most barren
+people. I suppose they are the most exclusively practical race in the
+world. When I get home I shall bore you with all kinds of stories about
+them. I found the rest of the party at this most beautiful little place
+in a wonderful picturesque house. It was right pleasant to meet them
+again. The Prof. has been working himself out and is thin and nervous.
+That good woman, Mrs. Agassiz, is perfectly well. The boys, poor
+fellows, have all their legs in an awful condition from a kind of mite
+called "muguim" which gets under the skin and makes dreadful sores. You
+can't walk in the woods without getting them on you, and poor Hunney
+[Hunnewell] is ulcerated very badly. They have no mosquitoes though
+here.
+
+Since last night we have had everything packed--our packing-work, its
+volume, its dirtyness, and its misery is wonderful. Twenty-nine full
+barrels of specimens from here, and hardly one tight barrel among them.
+The burly execrations of the burly Dexter when at the cooper's work
+would make your hair shiver. But when a good barrel presents itself,
+then the calm joy almost makes amends for the past. Dexter says he has
+the same feeling for a decent barrel that he has for a beautiful woman.
+When the steamer comes we are going down to Manaos, where we expect the
+gunboat which the government has promised the Prof. Dexter and Tal go up
+the Rio Negro for a month. The rest of us are going to the Madeira River
+in the steamer. I don't know what I shall do exactly, but there will
+probably be some canoeing to be done, in which case I'm ready; tho' the
+rainy season is beginning, which makes canoe traveling very
+uncomfortable. We shall be at Parâ by the middle of December certainly.
+I am very anxious to learn whether the New York and Brazilian steamers
+are to run. We may learn at Manaos, where there is also a chance for
+letters for us, and American papers. Why can't you send the "North
+American," with Father's and Harry's articles? It would be worth any
+price to me.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+_22nd Oct._
+
+On board the old homestead, viz., Steamer Icamiaba. The only haven of
+rest we have in this country, and then only when she is in motion; for
+when we stop at a place, the Prof. is sure to come around and say how
+very desirable it would be to get a large number of fishes from this
+place, and willy-nilly you must trudge. I wrote in my last letter
+something about the possibility of my wishing to go down South again
+with the Professor. I don't think there is any more probability of it
+than of my wishing to explore Central Africa. If there is anything I
+hate, it is collecting. I don't think it is suited to my genius at all;
+but for that very reason this little exercise in it I am having here is
+the better for me. I am getting to be very practical, orderly, and
+businesslike. That fine disorder which used to prevail in my precincts,
+and which used to make Mother heave a beautiful sigh when she entered my
+room, is treated by the people with whom I am here as a heinous crime,
+and I feel very sensitive and ashamed about it. The 22nd of
+October!--what glorious weather you are having at home now, and how we
+should all like to be wound up by one day of it! I have often longed for
+a good, black, sour, sleety, sloshy winter's day in Washington Street.
+Oh, the bliss of standing on such a day half way between Roxbury and
+Boston and having all the horse-cars pass you full! It will be splendid
+to get home in mid-winter and revel in the cold.
+
+I am delighted to hear how well Wilky is, and to hear from him. I wish
+Bob would write me a line--and only one letter from Alice in all this
+time--shame! Oh, the lovely white child! How the red man of the forest
+would like to hug her to his bosom once more! I proposed, beloved Alice,
+to write thee a long letter by this steamer describing my wonderful
+adventures with the wild Indians, and the tiger [jaguar?], and various
+details which interest thy lovely female mind; but I feel so darned
+heavy and seedy this morning that I cannot pump up the flow of words,
+and the letter goes on with the steamer from Manaos this evening. This
+expedition has been far less adventurous and far more picturesque than
+I expected. I have not yet seen a single snake wild here. The adventure
+with the tiger consisted in his approaching to within 30 paces of our
+mosquito net, and roaring so as to wake us, and then keeping us awake
+most of the rest of the night by roaring far and near. I confess I felt
+some skeert, on being suddenly awoke by him, tho' when I had laid me
+down I had mocked the apprehensions of Tal about tigers. The adventure
+with the wild Indians consisted in our seeing two of them naked at a
+distance on the edge of the forest. On shouting to them in Lingoa Geral
+they ran away. It gave me a very peculiar and unexpected thrilling
+sensation to come thus suddenly upon these children of Nature. But I now
+tell you in confidence, my beloved white child, what you must not tell
+any of the rest of the family (for it would spoil the adventure), that
+we discovered a few hours later that these wild Indians were a couple of
+mulattoes belonging to another canoe, who had been in bathing.
+
+I shall have to stop now. Do you still go to school at Miss Clapp's? For
+Heaven's sake write to me, Bal! Tell Harry if he sees [John] Bancroft to
+tell him Bourkhardt is much better, having found an Indian remedy of
+great efficacy. Please give my best love to the Tweedies, Temples,
+Washburns, La Farges, Paine, Childs, Elly Van Buren and in fact
+everybody who is in any way connected with me. Best of love to Aunt
+Kate, Wilk and Bob, Harry and all the family. I pine for Harry's
+literary _efforts_ and to see a number or so of the "Nation." You can't
+send too many magazines or papers--Care of James B. Bond, Parâ.
+
+W. J.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+1866-1867
+
+_Medical Studies at Harvard_
+
+
+JAMES returned from Brazil in March, 1866, and immediately entered the
+Massachusetts General Hospital for a summer's service as undergraduate
+interne. In the autumn he left the Hospital and resumed his studies in
+the Harvard Medical School.
+
+The Faculty of the School then included Dr. O. W. Holmes and Professor
+Jeffries Wyman. Charles Ed. Brown-Séquard was lecturing on the pathology
+of the nervous system. During the years of James's interrupted course a
+number of men attended the school who were to be his friends and
+colleagues for many years thereafter--among them William G. Farlow,
+subsequently Professor of Cryptogamic Botany and a Cambridge neighbor
+for forty years, and Charles P. Putnam and James J. Putnam--two brothers
+in whose company he was later to spend many Adirondack vacations and to
+whom he became warmly attached. Henry P. Bowditch, whose instinct for
+physiological inquiry was already vigorous, and who was destined to
+become a leader of research in America, and the teacher and inspirer of
+a generation of younger investigators, was another Medical School
+contemporary with whom he formed an enduring friendship.
+
+The instruction given in the Harvard Medical School in the sixties was
+as good as any obtainable in America, but it fell short of what is
+nowadays reckoned as essential for a medical education to an extent that
+none but a modern student of medicine can understand. The emphasis was
+still on lectures, demonstrations and reading, and the pupil's rôle was
+an almost completely passive one. James, according to the testimony of
+one of his classmates, made a solitary exception to the practice of the
+class by attempting to keep a graphic record of his microscopic studies
+in histology and pathology. When questioned about this long after, he
+admitted that he believed himself to have been the only student of his
+time in the Medical School who took the trouble to make drawings from
+the microscopic field with regularity.
+
+The teaching of Pasteur and Lister had not then revolutionized medicine.
+Modern bacteriology and the possibilities of aseptic surgery were yet to
+be understood. Surgeons who operated in the amphitheatre of the
+Massachusetts General Hospital could still take pride in appearing in
+blood-soiled gowns, much as a fisherman scorns a brand-new outfit and
+sports his weather-rusted old clothes. The demonstrations of even Dr.
+Henry J. Bigelow, a skillful operator who was then a leader in his
+profession, filled James with a horror which he never forgot.
+
+On the other hand, the discovery of anesthesia, which made possible an
+enlarged and humane use of animals for experimental inquiry, and such
+illuminating reports and investigations as those of Claude Bernard,
+Helmholtz, Virchow and Ludwig were giving a great impetus to the
+investigation of bodily processes and functions, and a study of these
+was a possible next step in James's evolution. He had already been
+unusually well grounded in comparative anatomy by Agassiz and Jeffries
+Wyman. He was gravitating surely, even if he did not yet realize it
+clearly, toward philosophy. Whenever he more or less consciously
+projected himself forward, it must have seemed to him that the
+examination of processes in the living body, for which he was already
+prepared, might be related, in an enlightening way, to the philosophic
+pursuits that were beginning to invite him. Physiology therefore
+commanded both his respect and his curiosity, and he turned in that
+direction rather than toward what he then saw surgery and the practice
+of internal medicine to be.
+
+During the winter of 1866-67 he lived with his parents in the house[32]
+in Quincy Street, Cambridge, in which they had settled themselves, and
+worked regularly at the Medical School. He had come back from the year
+of mere animal existence on the Amazon in excellent physical condition.
+
+Of the four letters which follow, two were written to Thomas W. Ward,
+who, it will be remembered, had been a member of the Amazon Expedition,
+and who, after getting back to New York, had entered the great Baring
+banking house of which his father, Samuel Ward, was the American
+partner. O. W. Holmes, Jr., will be recognized as the present Associate
+Justice of the United States Supreme Court. In no one did James find
+more sympathetic philosophic companionship at this period.
+
+
+
+
+_To Thomas W. Ward._
+
+
+BOSTON, _Mar. 27, 1866_.
+
+MEO CARO COMPADRE,--I have been intending to write you every night for
+the last month, but the strange epistolary inertia which always weighs
+down upon me has kept me from it until now. I have had news of you two
+or three times from my father having met yours, and from Dexter, who
+said he had met you in New York. I am very curious to know how you find
+your occupation to suit you, and if you find the dust of daily drudgery
+to obscure at all the visions of your far-off-future power. From what
+Dexter said I am afraid they do a little. We had given up Allen[33] as
+gone to the fishes; but the poor Devil arrived last week after a
+98-days' passage!!! I never felt gladder for anything in my life. He had
+a horrible time at sea, being within 160 miles of New York and then
+blown back as far as St. Thomas. He says most of his collections arrived
+at Bahia spoiled by the sun. He was sixteen days crossing a limestone
+desert on which nothing grew but cacti; so there was no shade at noon,
+and the thermometer at 98°. His health has been improved by the voyage,
+however, and he thinks it is better now than when he left for Brazil.
+Nevertheless he is going to give up natural history for the present and
+adopt some out-of-door life till he gets decidedly better, which he says
+he has been slowly but steadily doing for some years past. Poor Allen!
+None of us have been sold as badly as he. If I had not been to Brazil, I
+would go again to do what I have done, knowing beforehand what it would
+be. Allen says _he_ would not, on any account.
+
+I have been studying now for about two weeks, and think I shall be much
+more interested in it than before. It was some time before I could get
+settled down to reading. But now I do it quite naturally, and even
+_thinking_ is beginning not to feel like a wholly abnormal process; all
+which, as you may imagine, is very agreeable--altho' I confess that as
+yet the philosophical _rouages_ of my mind have not attained even to the
+degree of lubrication they had before I left. I shan't apologize for the
+egotistical pronoun, for I suppose, my dear old Thomas, that you will be
+interested to compare my experience since my return with yours, and
+learn something from it if possible--even as I would with yours. I spent
+the first month of my return in nothing but "social intercourse," having
+the two Temple girls and Elly Van Buren in the house for a fortnight,
+and being obliged to escort them about to parties, etc., nearly every
+night. The consequences were a falling in love with every girl I
+met--succeeded now by a reaction which makes me, and will make me for a
+long time, decline every invitation. I feel now somehow as if I had
+settled down upon a steady track that I shall not have much temptation
+to slip off of, for a good many months at any rate. I am conscious of a
+desire I never had before so strongly or so permanently, of narrowing
+and deepening the channel of my intellectual activity, of economizing my
+feeble energies and consequently treating with more _respect_ the few
+things I shall devote them to. This temper may be a transient one; mais
+pour peu qu'il dure un an ou deux, to fix the shorter term! I'm sure it
+will give a tone to my mind it lacked before. As for the disrespect with
+which you treat the worthy problems that you turn your back upon, I
+don't see now exactly how you get over that; but something tells me
+that, practically, my salvation depends for the present on following
+some such plan. And, I am sure that, in the majority of men at any rate,
+the process of growing into a calm mental state is not one of leveling,
+but of going around, difficulties. The problem they solve is not one of
+being, but of method. They reach a point from which the view within
+certain limits is harmonious, and they keep within those limits; they
+find as it were a centre of oscillation in which they may be at rest.
+Now whether any other kind of solution is possible, I don't know. Many
+men will say not; but I feel somehow, now, as if I had no right to an
+opinion on any subject, no right to open my mouth before others until I
+know some _one_ thing as thoroughly as it can be known, no matter how
+insignificant it may be. After that I shall perhaps be able to think on
+general subjects.--The only fellow here I care anything about is
+Holmes, who is on the whole a first-rate article, and one which improves
+by wear. He is perhaps too exclusively intellectual, but sees things so
+easily and clearly and talks so admirably that it's a treat to be with
+him. T. S. Perry is also flourishing in health and spirits. Ed[ward]
+Emerson I have not yet seen. I made the acquaintance the other day of
+Miss Fanny Dixwell of Cambridge (the eldest), do you know her? She is
+decidedly AI, and (so far) the best girl I have known. I should like if
+possible to confine my whole life to her, Ellen Hooper, Sara
+Sedgwick,[34] Holmes, Harry, and the Medical School, for an indefinite
+period, letting no breath of extraneous air enter.
+
+There, I hope that's a confession of faith. I wish you would write me a
+similar or even more "developed" one, for I really want to know how the
+building up into flesh and blood of the wide-sweeping plans that the
+solitudes of Brazil gave birth to seems to alter them. Write soon, and
+I'll answer soon; for I think, Chéri de Thomas, que ce doux commerce que
+nous avons mené tant d'années ought not all of a sudden to die out. I'd
+give a great deal to see you, but see no prospect of getting to New York
+for a long time. Our family spends six months at Swampscott from the
+first of May. I shall have a room in town. What chance is there of your
+being able to pay us a visit at Swampscott in my vacation (from July 15
+to Sept. 15)? Ever your friend
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To Thomas W. Ward._
+
+
+BOSTON, _June 8, 1866_.
+
+CHÉRI DE THOMAS,--I cannot exactly say I _hasten_ to reply to your
+letter. I have thought of you about every day since I received it, and
+given you a Brazilian hug therewith, and wanted to write to you; but
+having been in a pretty unsettled theoretical condition myself, from
+which I hoped some positive conclusions might emerge worthy to be
+presented to you as the last word on the Kosmos and the human soul, I
+deferred writing from day to day, thinking that better than to offer you
+the crude and premature spawning of my intelligence. In vain! the
+conclusions never have emerged, and I see that, if I am _ever_ to write
+you, I must do it on the spur of the moment, with all my dullness thick
+upon me.
+
+I have just read your letter over again, and am grieved afresh at your
+melancholy tone about yourself. You ask why I am quiet, while you are so
+restless. Partly from the original constitution of things, I suppose;
+partly because I am less quiet than you suppose; only I once heard a
+proverb about a man consuming his own smoke, and I do so particularly in
+your presence because you, being so much more turbid, produce a reaction
+in me; partly because I am a few years older than you, and have not
+solved, but grown callous (I hear your sneer) to, many of the problems
+that now torture you. The _chief_ reason is the original constitution of
+things, which generated me with fewer sympathies and wants than you, and
+also perhaps with a certain tranquil confidence in the right ordering of
+the Whole, which makes me indifferent in some circumstances where you
+would fret. Yours the nobler, mine the happier part! I _think_, too,
+that much of your uneasiness comes from that to which you allude in your
+letter--your oscillatoriness, and your regarding each oscillation as
+something final as long as it lasts. There is nothing more certain than
+that every man's life (except perhaps Harry Quincy's) is a line that
+continuously oscillates on every side of its direction; and if you
+would be more confident that any state of tension you may at any time
+find yourself in will inevitably relieve _itself_, sooner or later, you
+would spare yourself much anxiety. I myself have felt in the last six
+months more and more certain that each man's constitution limits him to
+a certain amount of emotion and action, and that, if he insists on going
+under a higher pressure than normal for three months, for instance, he
+will pay for it by passing the next three months below par. So the best
+way is to keep moving steadily and regularly, as your mind becomes thus
+deliciously appeased (as you imagine mine to be; ah! Tom, what damned
+fools we are!). If you feel below par now, don't think your life is
+deserting you forever. You are just as sure to be up again as you are,
+when elated, sure to be down again. Six months, or any given cycle of
+time, is sure to see you produce a certain amount, and your fretful
+anxiety when in a stagnant mood is frivolous. The good time will come
+again, as it has come; and go too. I think we ought to be independent of
+our moods, look on them as external, for they come to us unbidden, and
+feel if possible neither elated nor depressed, but keep our eyes upon
+our work and, if we have done the best we could _in that given
+condition_, be satisfied.
+
+I don't know whether all this solemn wisdom of mine seems to you
+anything better than conceited irrelevance. I began the other day to
+read the thoughts of Marcus Aurelius, translated by Long, published by
+Ticknor, which, if you have not read, I advise you to read, slowly. I
+only read two or three pages a day, and am only half through the book.
+He certainly had an invincible soul; and it seems to me that any man who
+can, like him, grasp the love of a "life according to nature," _i.e._, a
+life in which your individual will becomes so harmonized to nature's
+will as cheerfully to acquiesce in whatever she assigns to you, knowing
+that you serve _some_ purpose in her vast machinery which will never be
+revealed to you--any man who can do this will, I say, be a pleasing
+spectacle, no matter what his lot in life. I think old Mark's perpetual
+yearnings for patience and equanimity and kindliness would do your heart
+good.--I have come to feel lately, more and more (I can't tell though
+whether it will be permanent) like paying my footing in the world in a
+very humble way, (driving my physicking trade like any other tenth-rate
+man), and then living my free life in my leisure hours entirely within
+my own breast as a thing the world has nothing to do with; and living it
+easily and patiently, without feeling responsible for its future.
+
+I will now, my dear old Tom, stop my crudities. Although these notions
+and others have of late led me to a pretty practical contentment, I
+cannot help feeling as if I were insulting Heaven by offering them about
+as if they had an absolute worth. Still, as I am willing to take them
+all back whenever it seems right, you will excuse my apparent conceit.
+Besides, they may suggest some practical point of view to you.
+
+The family is at Swampscott. I have a room in Bowdoin Street for the
+secular part of the week. We have a very nice house in Swampscott.... I
+am anxiously waiting your arrival on Class Day. I expect you to spend
+all your time with me either here or in Swampscott, when we shall, I
+trust, patch up the Kosmos satisfactorily and rescue it from its present
+fragmentary condition....
+
+
+
+
+_To his Sister._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Nov. 14, 1866_.
+
+CHÉRIE DE JEUNE BALLE,--I am just in from town in the keen, cold and eke
+beauteous moonlight, which by the above qualities makes me think of
+thee, to whom, nor to whose aunt, have I (not) yet written. (I don't
+understand the grammar of the not.)
+
+Your first question is, "where have I been?" "To C. S. Peirce's lecture,
+which I could not understand a word of, but rather enjoyed the sensation
+of listening to for an hour." I then turned to O. W. Holmes's and
+wrangled with him for another hour.
+
+You may thank your stars that you are not in a place where you have to
+ride in such full horse-cars as these. I rode half way out with my
+"form" entirely out of the car overhanging the road, my feet alone being
+on the same vertical line as any part of the car, there being just room
+for them on the step. Aunt Kate may, and probably _will_, have shoot
+through her prolific mind the supposish: "How wrong in him to do sich!
+for if, while in that posish, he should have a sudden stroke of
+paralysis, or faint, his nerveless fingers relaxing their grasp of the
+rail, he would fall prostrate to the ground and bust." To which I reply
+that, when I go so far as to have a stroke of paralysis, I shall not
+mind going a step farther and getting bruised.
+
+Your next question probably is "_how_ are and _where_ are father and
+mother?"... I think father seems more lively for a few days past and
+cracks jokes with Harry, etc. Mother is recovering from one of her
+indispositions, which she bears like an angel, doing any amount of work
+at the same time, putting up cornices and raking out the garret-room
+like a little buffalo.
+
+Your next question is "wherever is Harry?" I answer: "He is to
+Ashburner's, to a tea-squall in favor of Miss Haggerty." I declined. He
+is well. We have had nothing but invitations (6) in 3 or 4 days. One, a
+painted one, from "Mrs. L----," whoever she may be. I replied that
+domestic affliction prevented me from going, but I would take a
+pecuniary equivalent instead, viz: To 1 oyster stew 30 cts., 1 chicken
+salad 0.50, 1 roll 0.02, 3 ice creams at 20 cts. 0.60, 6 small cakes at
+0.05, 0.30, 1 pear $1.50, 1 lb. confectionery 0.50.
+
+ 6 glasses hock at 0.50 $3.00
+ 3 glasses sherry at 30 0.90
+ Salad spilt on floor 5.00
+ Dish of do., broken 3.00
+ Damage to carpet & Miss L----'s dress frm. do 75.00
+ 3 glasses broken 1.20
+ Curtains set fire to in dressing-room 40.00
+ Other injury frm. fire in room 250.00
+ Injury to house frm. water pumped upon it by
+ steam fire-engine come to put out fire 5000.00
+ Miscellaneous 0.35
+ -------
+ 5300.00
+
+I expect momentarily her reply with a check, and when it comes will take
+you and Aunt Kate on a tour in Europe and have you examined by the
+leading physicians and surgeons of that country. M---- L---- came out
+here and dined with us yesterday of her own accord. I no longer doubt
+what I always suspected, her _penchant_ for me, and I don't blame her
+for it. Elly Temple staid here two days, too. She scratched, smote,
+beat, and kicked me so that I shall dread to meet her again. What an
+awful time Bob & Co. must have had at sea! and how anxious you must have
+been about them.
+
+With best love to Aunt Kate and yourself believe me your af. bro.
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To O. W. Holmes, Jr._
+
+
+[A pencil memorandum, Winter of 1866-67?]
+
+Why I'm blest if I'm a Materialist:
+
+The materialist posits an X for his ultimate principle.
+
+Were he satisfied to inhabit this vacuous X, I should not at present try
+to disturb him.
+
+But that atmosphere is too rare; so he spends all his time on the road
+between it and sensible realities, engaged in the laudable pursuit of
+degrading every (sensibly) higher thing into a (sensibly) lower. He thus
+accomplishes an immensely great positively conceived and felt result,
+and it availeth little to naturalize the sensible impression of this
+that he should at the end put in his little caveat that, after all, the
+low denomination is as unreal as the unreduced higher ones were. In the
+confession of ignorance is nothing which the mind can close upon and
+clutch--it's a vanishing negation; while the pretension of knowledge is
+full of positive, massively-felt contents. The former kicks the beam.
+What balm is it, when instead of my High you have given me a Low, to
+tell me that the Low is good for nothing?
+
+If you take my $1000 gold and give me greenbacks, I feel unreconciled
+still, even when you have assured me that the greenbacks are
+counterfeit. Or what comfort is it to me now to be told that a billion
+years hence greenbacks and gold will have the same value? especially
+when that is explained to be zero? How anyone can say that this
+pennyworth of negation can so balance these tons of affirmation as to
+make the naturalist _feel_ like anyone else--I confess it's a mystery to
+me.
+
+But as a man's happiness depends on his feeling, I think materialism
+inconsistent with a high degree thereof, and in this sense maintained
+that a materialist should not be an optimist, using the latter word to
+signify one whose philosophy authenticates, by guaranteeing the
+objective significance of, his most pleasurable feelings.
+
+You have transferred the question of optimism to a wider field, where I
+can't well follow it now. The term would have to be defined first, and
+then I think it would take me ten or twelve years of hard study to form
+any opinion as to the truth of your second premise.--I send the above
+remarks on "materialism," because they were what I was groping for the
+other evening, but could not say till you were gone and I in bed. To
+conclude:
+
+_Corruptio optimistorum pessima!_
+
+[Illustration: Pencil Sketch from a Pocket Note-Book.]
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+1867-1868
+
+_Eighteen Months in Germany_
+
+
+IN the spring of 1867 James interrupted his course at the Medical School
+again. He was impelled to do this, partly by the pressure of a
+conviction that his health required him to stop work or continue
+elsewhere under different conditions, and partly by a desire to learn
+German and study physiology in the German laboratories. He knew a little
+German already, and it seemed reasonable to suppose that if he went
+abroad immediately he would have time to familiarize himself with the
+language during a pleasant and restful summer and would be ready to
+enter one of the universities in the autumn. He sailed in April and
+spent the summer in Dresden and Bohemia. But his health became worse
+instead of better.
+
+It is unnecessary to detail the record of a long illness by selecting
+for this book the passages of his correspondence in which James sooner
+or later revealed what his condition was. It would also be idle to
+inquire closely about the causes of his illness, considering that, for
+one reason, James was completely puzzled and baffled himself. Insomnia,
+digestive disorders, eye-troubles, weakness of the back, and sometimes
+deep depression of spirits followed each other or afflicted him
+simultaneously. If his trouble was in part nervous, it was a reality
+none the less. A photograph that was taken of him at about this period
+recorded the aspect of a very ill man. If his introspective genius made
+things worse for him for a while, it probably did more to pull him
+through in the end than the--to our present-day understanding--harsh and
+unnecessary treatments, regimens, water-cures, courses of exercise,
+galvanisms, and blistering to which he subjected himself.
+
+On the other hand, the illness which began in 1867, and which limited
+James's activities and occupations for several years, had another
+effect. It overtook him when he was only twenty-five years old, and
+threw him heavily upon his inner moral and intellectual resources. It
+caught him alone and among strangers, more or less prostrated him, and
+defeated his plans just at a time of life when he was beginning, with
+the eagerness of youth and philosophic genius combined, to reckon over
+each fresh experience into the terms of a possible answer to the riddles
+of life and death, predestination, freedom, and responsibility. It gave
+a personal intimacy and intensity to the deepest problems that
+philosophy and religion can present to man's understanding. This illness
+may perhaps have prevented James from becoming a physiological
+investigator. But clearly it developed and deepened the bed in which the
+stream of his philosophic life was to flow.
+
+He sailed for Europe in April, and went almost directly to Dresden,
+where he found quarters in a _pension_ presided over by an amiable Frau
+Spannenberg. He spent his mornings, and often his evenings, reading and
+studying German. He made an excursion to Bad-Teplitz in Bohemia, but the
+"cure" there did not greatly relieve his back, and the baths made him
+feel "as if his brain had been boiled,"[35] so he returned to Frau
+Spannenberg's. In the early autumn he moved to Berlin, attended a few
+lectures at the University there, and read a good deal on the physiology
+of the nervous system; but he was unable to work in the laboratories,
+and found it expedient to return to Teplitz at the end of January
+(1868). What he did thereafter will appear as the letters proceed.
+
+
+
+
+_To his Parents._
+
+
+DRESDEN, _May 27, 1867_.
+
+...Though I have been just a little over two weeks settled in Dresden, I
+hardly know anything about it or about Germany yet. Nothing but
+confused, vague and probably erroneous impressions of the people, owing
+chiefly to my imperfect knowledge of the language. In the first place
+there is not the slightest touch of the romantic, picturesque, or even
+_foreign_ about living here. I think there is very little absolutely in
+the place to give such impressions, and I think I have outgrown my old
+susceptibility to them. Whereas in old times I used to notice every
+window, door-handle and smell as having a peculiar and exotic charm,
+every old street and house as filled with historic life and mystery,
+they are now to me streets and houses and nothing more. The heyday of
+youth is o'er! Alack the day! My traveling has been accompanied with
+hardly more astonishment or excitement than would accompany a journey to
+Chicago....
+
+[Illustration: William James at twenty-five.
+
+From a Photograph]
+
+The place which has most invited me to live in it is Strasburg. The
+people all speak both French and German, each with the other's accent,
+and the environs are ravishing. The Saxons are a very short and
+ill-favored race, both sexes, not light-haired as the Rhinelanders, and
+most eccentrically toothed. Many of the young officers, however, are
+very good-looking fellows. The poor people wear old greasy caps and
+black coats, and no collars, but black cravats as in England, and look
+very ugly. The great number of _old_ men and women here has struck me
+very much. Can it be that we have so few at home? or do we keep them
+indoors? Or do the Germans show their age so much sooner? I know not.
+The Americans I have met have been a poor crowd. The English I have seen
+have been distinguished by their pure and clean appearance, and by an
+awkwardness which in a certain way appeals to your sympathies. They have
+the faculty of _blushing_ which is denied to the French and
+comparatively to the Germans, and in spite of all my prejudices I feel
+more akin to them than to the others.
+
+I have, since I wrote my last letter, led a perfectly monotonous life.
+Read all the morning, go out for a walk and a lounge in a concert garden
+in the afternoon, and read after tea. I am quite well satisfied with my
+progress in the noble German tongue, which has been steady, although,
+since the first day I wrote to you about [it], not brilliant. Its
+difficulties are I think quite unjustifiably great for a modern
+language--it is in fact without _any_ of the modern improvements. I read
+the little newspapers, which Dr. Semler takes, carefully from beginning
+to end; and what with the other newspapers I see at a reading-room, the
+talk I hear, and a little other reading, I have a quite vague and
+confused but very wonderful impression of the strange difference between
+the whole German way of thinking and ours; and in my as yet crude fancy
+it seems to be connected with the grammatical structure of the sentences
+and the endless power of making new words by combination. I have just
+been reading Hegel's chapter on epic poetry in his "Aesthetik," and
+[the] truly monstrous sentences therein were quite a revelation to me.
+It seems to me that the expression corresponds much more closely to the
+spontaneous and impromptu mode of thought than in our Latinized
+tongues--that the language allows and invites speculation and
+expatiation without limit. As soon as the first glimmering of an idea
+has dawned upon you, there is no reason why you should not begin to
+inscribe, for you can wallow round and round as you proceed, affixing
+limitations, lugging in definitions and explanations as fast as they
+suggest each other, and need never go back to reshape your beginning.
+While with us you will, as a rule, come to grief if you begin your
+sentence without a pretty distinct idea of what the whole is going to
+be. Then the endless power of word-multiplication by composition, and of
+making adjectives of whole phrases must allow you to _fix_, and to fix
+in a most homely, pregnant form, a host of evanescent shades of meaning
+(most of which would with us be lost), as fast as they flash upon the
+mind. And from these successive approximations the final form of the
+thought may be more easily and surely distilled than if it had to be all
+formed in one's head before it could get even an approximate expression.
+
+However, I don't pretend to say that these hasty impressions are
+correct. They may be the mere creations of a distempered fancy. At any
+rate, I am sure that German is the native tongue of all Wilky-isms, and
+that in Germany [Wilky] would be one of the first authors of the age for
+style. The mischief of it is that, instead of using these approximations
+as such, the people let them stand permanently, and as they can make
+them with so little trouble, there arises in literature and talk an
+entangled mass of crudity and barbarism that spoils everything. They get
+accustomed to such elephantine ways of saying things that they don't
+mind it at all, and I have had more amusement out of the newspaper than
+I ever derived from the text of "Punch." I wish I could remember some of
+the expressions. Yesterday, for instance, the paper said the Emperor of
+Austria's message was more _atomistisch_ than _dynamisch_--this, in a
+peppery little political article, shows what scholastic expressions the
+people are accustomed to. The context gave no explanation. Then, a
+couple of days ago, in a review of some histories of German literature,
+the surprising depth of one author was praised, altho' it was granted
+"that _here and there_ he had not succeeded in lighting up the ultimate
+life-spring (_Lebensgrund_) of the phenomena." Of another that "_without
+entirely losing sight of what was human_ (_menschlich_) in the
+phenomena, he had accomplished a work of extraordinarily logical
+development and luminous procedure (_Gang_)." Imagine entirely leaving
+out the human in a history of _literature_!...
+
+ * * * * *
+
+_May 30._
+
+The pleasant spinster from Hamburg I mentioned in my last letter as
+being so well read, has, I find, "drawn the line" of her information at
+geography and physical science. She comes out strong in Sanscrit and
+Greek literature (which she knows of course by translations), and in
+church history, but she drives me frantic by her endless talking about
+America, in the course of which she continually leaps without any
+warning from New York to Rio de Janeiro and thence to Valparaiso. She
+has friends in each of these localities, and it is apparently a fixed
+conviction of hers that they take tea together every evening. At first I
+tried to show her that these places were all far apart and that the ways
+of one were not those of the others, and from her apparent comprehension
+and submission I used to fancy I had succeeded; but it was only the
+elastic and transient bowing of the reed before the gale. A rather
+amusing incident occurred the other evening. I was speaking of the
+different classes of people that made up our population, and endeavoring
+to give a keen analysis of the Irish character, when she asked me to
+tell her something about a people we had with us called "Yankees," about
+whom she had heard such strange stories, and who seemed to be, if
+report were true, of all the peoples in the world the very worst (_das
+allerschlimmste_). What was their genesis and what were they? Imagine
+the feelings of the poor old lady, who had asked the question merely
+from a wish to please me by her intelligent interest in our affairs,
+when the truth was told her....
+
+The other afternoon I fell into conversation with a tall and rather
+aristocratic-looking old gentleman with a gray moustache, who spoke very
+good French, at a beer garden, and found out afterwards that he was no
+less a person than the illustrious Kaulbach. Strangely enough, we quite
+accidentally got on the subject of the Gallery. He spoke of several of
+the pictures, but said nothing that was not commonplace. I have as yet
+only had a mere glimpse at the Gallery, but will do it thoroughly before
+I leave. I'd give anything if Harry could see some of the Venetian
+things there, and the Shepherds' Adoration of Correggio, which he
+probably knows, or rather _méconnaît_, by prints which give nought but
+the rather unpleasant and, unless you are let into the secret,
+motivelessly eccentric drawing. But it would take Victor Hugo to find
+the proper antithetic epithets to describe the combined gladness and
+solemnity of the painting, its innocence and its depth. I have always
+had, I don't know why, a prejudice against Correggio; but I never saw a
+painting before that breathed out so easily such a moral poetry. It
+seems to me to kill Rafael's celebrated Madonna right out. Although that
+too is a good "piece." I find myself in the Gallery much too disposed to
+exalt one thing at the expense of its neighbors, which is very unjust to
+them; but by taking it easily and letting the pictures do their own work
+I think it will all come right. Mr. Paul Veronese had _eyes_, anyhow. I
+am sure it would be the making of John La Farge to come abroad, alone,
+if no other way. Dis lui, Henry, que je lui écrirai tantôt à ce sujet.
+
+I have been having a literary debauch to start in the language with, but
+am getting down again to medicine. The enthusiastic, oratorical and
+eloquent Schiller, the wise and exquisite Goethe, and the virile and
+human Lessing have in turn held me entranced by their _Dramal_. Je te
+recommande, Henry, "Emilia Galotti" comme étude. C'est serré comme du
+chêne, rapide comme l'avalanche, toute la retenue et la vigueur de
+Merimée, et au fond un gros coeur dont la tendresse comprimée
+n'échappe que par des phrases dont la sobriété même déchire, ou bien par
+du bitter irony. Lessing seems to have a religious feeling that people
+miss in Goethe, and seems to be a great deal deeper than Schiller,
+though, of course, he is a far more homespun character. I have been
+reading Goethe's "Italienische Reise." It is perfectly fascinating; but
+you can read very little of it at a time, it is so damnably tedious, and
+you can't bear to skip. Paradoxical as it may appear, there is a deal of
+_naïveté_ in the old cuss. Attends donc un peu que mon grand article sur
+Goethe apparaisse dans "L'Américain du Nord!"
+
+I expect T. S. Perry here in a fortnight on his way from Venice. You may
+imagine with what joy. I have just been interrupted by the supper, which
+takes place at nine P.M. and consists of beer, eggs, herrings, ham, and
+bread and butter, and is not displeasing to the carnal man. I have been
+writing a most infernally long letter, for which I apologize. It will be
+the last time. The fact is I have so few resources here that I am driven
+to write. Tell Alice that there are two Miss Twomblys from Boylston
+Street living here, one exceedingly pretty. She doubtless, by her
+feminine system of espionage, knows who they are, though I know none of
+their friends and they none of mine. I got mother's letter and the
+"Nation" with great joy soon after my arrival. I read Father's article,
+but with much the old result. I am desirous of reading his article in
+the N. A. R. and hope he will not delay to send it when it appears.
+Heaps of love all round.
+
+
+
+
+_To his Mother._
+
+
+DRESDEN, _June 12, 1867_.
+
+DEAREST MOTHER,--I have been reading a considerable deal of German, and
+in a very desultory way, as I want to get accustomed to a variety of
+styles, so as to be able to read any book at sight, skipping the
+useless; and I may say that I now begin to have that power whenever the
+book is writ in a style at all adapted to the requirements of the human,
+as distinguished from the German, mind. The profounder and more
+philosophical German requires, however, that you should bring all the
+resources of your nature, of every kind, to a focus, and hurl them again
+and again on the sentence, till at last you feel something give way, as
+it were, and the Idea begins to unravel itself. As for speaking, that is
+a very different matter and advances much more slowly....
+
+Life is so monotonous in this place that unless I make some
+philosophical discoveries, or unless _something_ happens, my letters
+will have to be both few and short. I get up and have breakfast, which
+means a big cup of cocoa and some bread and butter with an egg, if I
+want it, at eight. I read till half-past one, when dinner, which is
+generally quite a decent meal; after dinner a nap, more _Germanorum_ and
+more read till the sun gets low enough to go out, when out I
+go--generally to the Grosser Garten, a lovely park outside the town
+where the sun slants over the greenest meadows and sends his shafts
+between the great trees in a most wholesome manner. There are some spots
+where the trees are close together, and in their classic gloom you find
+mossy statues, so that you feel as if you belonged to the last century.
+Often I go and sit on a terrace which overlooks the Elbe and, with my
+eyes bent upon the lordly cliffs far down the river on the other side,
+with strains of the sweetest music in my ear, and with pint after pint
+of beer successively finding their way into the fastnesses of my
+interior, I enjoy most delightful reveries, _au nombre desquels_ those
+concerning my home and my sister are not the least frequent.
+
+In the house (which stands on a corner) my great resource when time
+hangs heavy on my hands is to sit in the window and examine my
+neighbors. The houses are all four stories high and composed of separate
+flats, as in Paris. I live in the 3me. Diagonally opposite is a young
+ladies' boarding-school where the _young_ ladies, very young they are,
+are wont to relax from their studies by kissing their hands, etc., etc.,
+etc., to a young English lout, who has been here in the house, and
+myself. Said lout left for England yesterday, for which I heartily thank
+him, and I shall now monopolize the attention of the school. We rather
+_had_ them, for we had a telescope to observe them by. Not one was
+good-looking. There has, however, lately arisen in the Christian
+Strasse, just under my window, a most ravishing apparition, and I begin
+to think my heart will not wither wholly away. About eighteen, hair like
+night, and _such_ eyes! Their mute-appealing, love-lorn look goes
+through and through me. Every day for the last week, after dinner, have
+I sat in my window and she in hers. I with the telescope! she with those
+eyes! and we communing with each other!! I will try to make a likeness
+of her and send with this letter, but I may not succeed.[36] She has
+only one defect, which is the length of her nose. If that were only an
+inch and a half shorter, I should propose at once to her Mother for it;
+but religious difference might intervene, so it is better as it is.
+
+I am expecting T. S. Perry any day now, you may imagine how
+impatiently.... Tell Harry I have been reading some essays by Fr. Theod.
+Vischer, the _bedeutende Esthetiker_, on Strauss, on Goethe's "Faust"
+and its critics, etc., etc., which have much interested me. He is a
+splendid writer for style and matter--as brilliant as any of the
+non-absolutely-harlequin Frenchmen. The foundation of the thought is, or
+at least appears to be to my untutored mind, Hegelian; but they were
+published in 1844 and he may have changed. His "Aesthetik" henceforward
+appears in the list of "books which I must some day read." Some of the
+commentaries there quoted on "Faust" are incredibly monstrous for
+ponderous imbecility and seeing everything in the universe and out of
+it, except the point. I read this morning an Essay of Kuno Fischer's on
+Lessing's "Nathan"--one of the parasitic and analytic sort on the whole,
+but still very readable. The way these cusses slip so fluently off into
+the "Ideal," the "Jenseitige," the "Inner," etc., etc., and undertake to
+give a _logical_ explanation of everything which is so palpably trumped
+up _after_ the facts, and the reasoning of which is so grotesquely
+incapable of going an inch into the future, is both disgusting and
+disheartening. You never saw such a mania for going deep into the bowels
+of truth, with such an absolute lack of intuition and perception of the
+skin thereof. To hear the grass grow from morn till night is their
+happy occupation. There is something that strikes me as corrupt,
+immodest in this incessant taste for explaining things in this
+mechanical way; but the era of it may be past now--I don't know. I speak
+only of æsthetic matters, of course. The political moment both here and
+in Austria is extremely interesting to one who has a political sense,
+and even I am beginning to have an opinion--and one all in favor of
+Prussia's victory and supremacy as a great practical stride towards
+civilization. I think the French tone in the last quarrel deserved a
+degrading and stinging humiliation as much as anything in history ever
+did, and I'm very sorry they did not get it. Of course there's no end of
+bunkum and inflation here, too, but it is practically a healthy
+thing....
+
+
+
+
+_To his Father._
+
+
+BERLIN, _Sept. 5, 1867_.
+
+MY BELOVED OLD DAD,--...I think it will be just as well for you not to
+say anything to any of the others about what I shall tell you of my
+condition hitherto, as it will only give them useless pain, and poor
+Harry especially (who evidently from his letters runs much into that
+utterly useless emotion, sympathy, with me) had better remain
+ignorant.... My confinement to my room and inability to indulge in any
+social intercourse drove me necessarily into reading a great deal, which
+in my half-starved and weak condition was very bad for me, making me
+irritable and tremulous in a way I have never before experienced. Two
+evenings which I spent out, one at Gerlach's, the other at Thies's,
+aggravated my dorsal symptoms very much, and as I still clung to the
+hope of amelioration from repose, I avoided going out to the houses
+where it was possible. Although I cannot exactly say that I got
+low-spirited, yet thoughts of the pistol, the dagger and the bowl began
+to usurp an unduly large part of my attention, and I began to think that
+some change, even if a hazardous one, was necessary. It was at that time
+that Dr. Carus advised Teplitz. While there, owing to the weakening
+effects of the baths, both back and stomach got worse if anything; but
+the beautiful country and a number of drives which I thought myself
+justified in taking made me happy as a king.... I have purposely
+hitherto written fallacious accounts of my state home, to produce a
+pleasant impression on you all--but you may rely on the present one as
+literally certain, and as it makes the others after all only
+_premature_, I don't see what will be the use of impairing the family
+confidence in my letters by saying anything about it to them. I have no
+doubt that you will consider the Teplitz expenditure justified, as I do.
+My sickness has added some other items in the way of medicine and cab
+hire to the expenses of my life in Dresden, but nothing _very_
+considerable. So much for biz.
+
+I have read your article, which I got in Teplitz, several times
+carefully. I must confess that the darkness which to me has always hung
+over what you have written on these subjects is hardly at all cleared
+up. Every sentence seems written from a point of view which I nowhere
+get within range of, and on the other hand ignores all sorts of
+questions which are visible from my present view. My questions, I know,
+belong to the Understanding, and I suppose deal entirely with the
+"natural constitution" of things; but I find it impossible to step out
+from them into relation with "spiritual" facts, and the very language
+you use _ontologically_ is also so extensively rooted in the finite and
+phenomenal that I cannot avoid accepting it as it were in its mechanical
+sense, when it becomes to me devoid of significance. I feel myself in
+fact more and more drifting towards the sensationalism closed in by
+skepticism--but the skepticism will keep bursting out in the very midst
+of it, too, from time to time; so that I cannot help thinking I may one
+day get a glimpse of things through the ontological window. At present
+it is walled up. I can understand now no more than ever the world-wide
+gulf you put between "Head" and "Heart"; to me they are inextricably
+entangled together, and seem to grow from a common stem--and _no_ theory
+of creation seems to me to make things clearer. I cannot logically
+understand _your_ theory. You posit first a phenomenal Nature in which
+the _alienation_ is produced (but phenomenal to _what_? to the already
+unconsciously existing creature?), and from this effected alienation a
+_real_ movement of return follows. But how _can_ the real movement have
+its rise in the phenomenal? And if it does not, it seems to me the
+creation is the very arbitrary one you inveigh against; and the whole
+process is a mere circle of the creator described within his own being
+and returning to the starting-point. I cannot understand what you mean
+by the descent of the creator into nature; you don't explain it, and it
+seems to be the kernel of the whole.
+
+You speak sometimes of our natural life as our whole conscious life;
+sometimes of our consciousness as composed of both elements, finite and
+infinite. If our _real_ life is unconscious, I don't see how you can
+occupy in the final result a different place from the Stoics, for
+instance. These are points on which I have never understood your
+position, and they will doubtless make you smile at my stupidity; but I
+cannot help it. I ought not to write about them in such a hurry, for I
+have been expecting every moment to see Tom Dwight come in, with whom I
+promised to go to the theatre. I arrived here late last night. My back
+will prevent my studying physiology this winter at Leipsig, which I
+rather hoped to do. I shall stay here if I can. If unable to live here
+and cultivate the society of the natives without a greater moral and
+dorsal effort than my shattered frame will admit, I will retreat to
+Vienna where, knowing so many Americans, I shall find social relaxation
+without much expense of strength. Dwight has come. Much love from your
+affectionate,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To O. W. Holmes, Jr._
+
+
+BERLIN, _Sept. 17, 1867_.
+
+MY DEAR WENDLE,--I was put in the possession, this morning, by a
+graceful and unusual attention on the part of the postman, of a letter
+from home containing, amongst other valuable matter, a precious specimen
+of manuscript signed "O. W. H. Jr." covering just one page of small note
+paper belonging to a letter written by Minny Temple!!!!! Now I myself am
+not proud,--poverty, misery and philosophy have together brought me to a
+pass where there are few actions so shabby that I would not commit them
+if thereby I could relieve in any measure my estate, or lighten the
+trouble of living,--but, by Jove, Sir! there _is_ a point, _sunt_ certi
+denique fines, down to which it seems to me hardly worth while to
+condescend--better give up altogether.--I do not intend any personal
+application. Men differ, thank Heaven! and there may be some constituted
+in such a fearful and wonderful manner, that to write to a friend after
+six months, in another person's letter, hail him as "one of the pillars
+on which life rests," and after twelve lines stop short, seems to them
+an action replete with beauty and credit. To me it is otherwise. And if
+perchance, O Wendy boy, there lurked in any cranny of _thy_ breast a
+spark of consciousness, a germ of shame at the paltriness of thy
+procedure as thou inditedst that pitiful apology for a letter, I would
+fain fan it, nourish it, till thy whole being should become one
+incarnate blush, one crater of humiliation. Mind, I should not have
+found fault with you if you had not written at all. There would have
+been a fine brutality about that which would have commanded respect
+rather than otherwise--certainly not _pity_. 'Tis that, _writing_, THAT
+should be the result. Bah!
+
+But I will change the subject, as I do not wish to provoke you to
+recrimination in your next letter. Let it be as substantial and
+succulent as the last, with its hollow hyperbolic expression of esteem,
+was the opposite, and I assure you that the past shall be forgotten.--I
+am, as you have probably been made aware, "a mere wreck," bodily. I left
+home without telling anyone about it, because, hoping I might get well,
+I wanted to keep it a secret from Alice and the boys till it was over. I
+thought of telling you "in confidence," but refrained, partly because
+walls have ears, partly from a morbid pride, mostly because of the habit
+of secrecy that had grown on me in six months. I dare say Harry has kept
+you supplied with information respecting my history up to the present
+time, and perhaps read you portions of my letters. My history, internal
+and external, since I have been in Germany, has been totally uneventful.
+The external, with the exception of three R. R. voyages (to and from
+Teplitz and to Berlin), resembles that of a sea anemone; and the
+internal, notwithstanding the stimulus of a new language and country,
+has contracted the same hue of stagnation. A tedious egotism seems to be
+the only mental plant that flourishes in sickness and solitude; and when
+the bodily condition is such that muscular and cerebral activity not
+only remain _unexcited_, but are _solicited_, by an idiotic hope of
+recovery, to crass indolence, the "elasticity" of one's spirits can't be
+expected to be very great. Since I have been here I have admired Harry's
+pluck more and more. _Pain_, however intense, is light and life,
+compared to a condition where hibernation would be the ideal of conduct,
+and where your "conscience," in the form of an aspiration towards
+recovery, rebukes every tendency towards motion, excitement or life as a
+culpable excess. The deadness of spirit thereby produced "must be felt
+to be appreciated."
+
+I have been in this city ten days and hope to stay all winter. I have
+got a comfortable room near the University and will attempt to follow
+some of the lectures. My wish was to study physiology practically, but I
+shall not be able. The number of subjects and fractions of subjects on
+which courses of lectures are given here and at the other universities
+would make you stare. Berlin is a "live" place, with a fine, tall,
+intelligent-looking population, infinitely better-looking than that of
+Dresden. I like the Germans very much, so far (which is not far at all)
+as I have got to know them. The apophthegm, "a fat man consequently a
+good man," has much of truth in it. The Germans come out strong on their
+abdomens,--even when these are not vast in capacity, one feels that they
+are of mighty powerful construction, and play a much weightier part in
+the economy of the man than with us,--affording a massive, immovable
+background to the consciousness, over which, as on the surface of a deep
+and tranquil sea, the motley images contributed by the other senses to
+life's drama glide and play without raising more than a pleasant
+ripple,--while with _us_, who have no such voluminous background, they
+forever touch bottom, or come out on the other side, or kick up such a
+tempest and fury that we enjoy no repose. The Germans have leisure,
+kindness to strangers, a sort of square honesty, and an absence of false
+shame and damned pecuniary pretension that makes intercourse with them
+very agreeable. The language is infernal; and I seem to be making no
+progress beyond the stage in which one just begins to misunderstand and
+to make one's self misunderstood. The scientific literature is even
+richer than I thought. In literature proper, Goethe's "Faust" seems to
+me almost worth learning the language for.
+
+I wish I could communicate to you some startling discoveries regarding
+our dilapidated old friend the Kosmos, made since I have been here. But
+I actually haven't had a fresh idea. And my reading until six weeks ago,
+having been all in German, covered very little ground. For the past six
+weeks I have, by medical order, been relaxing my brain on French
+fiction, and am just returning to the realities of life, German and
+Science. If you want to be consoled, refreshed, and reconciled to the
+Kosmos, the whole from a strictly abdominal point of view, read "L'Ami
+Fritz," and "Les Confessions d'un Joueur de Clarinette," etc., by
+Erckmann-Chatrian. They are books of gold, so don't read them till you
+are just in the mood and all other wisdom is of no avail. Then they will
+open the skies to you.
+
+On looking back over this letter I perceive I have unwittingly been
+betrayed into a more gloomy tone than I intended, and than would convey
+a faithful impression of my usual mental condition--in which occur
+moments of keen enjoyment. The contemplation of my letter of credit
+alone makes me chuckle for hours. If I ever have leisure I will write an
+additional Bridgewater, illustrating the Beneficence and Ingenuity,
+etc., in providing me with a letter of credit when so many poor devils
+have none. There, I have again unintentionally fallen into a vein of
+irony--I do not mean it. I am full of hope in the future.
+
+My back, etc., are far better since I have been in Teplitz; in fact I
+feel like a new man. I have several excellent letters to people here,
+and when they return from the country, when T. S. Perry arrives for the
+winter, when the lectures get a-going, and I get thinking again, when
+long letters from you and the rest of my "_friends_" (ha! ha!) arrive
+regularly at short intervals--I shall mock the state of kings. You had
+better believe I have thought of you with affection at intervals since I
+have been away, and prized your qualities of head, heart, and person,
+and my priceless luck in possessing your confidence and friendship in a
+way I never did at home; and cursed myself that I didn't make more of
+you when I was by you, but, like the base Indian, threw evening after
+evening away which I might have spent in your bosom, sitting in your
+whitely-lit-up room, drinking in your profound wisdom, your golden
+jibes, your costly imagery, listening to your shuddering laughter,
+baptizing myself afresh, in short, in your friendship--the thought of
+all this makes me even now forget your epistolary peculiarities. But
+pray, my dear old Wendell, let me have _one_ letter from you--tell me
+how your law business gets on, of your adventures, thoughts, discoveries
+(even though but of mares' nests, they will be interesting to your
+Williams); books read, good stories heard, girls fallen in love
+with--nothing can fail to please me, except your failing to write.
+Please give my love to John Gray, Jim Higginson and Henry Bowditch. Tell
+H. B. I will write to him very soon; but that is no reason why he should
+not write to me without waiting, and tell me about himself and medicine
+in Boston. Give my very best regards also to your father, mother and
+sister. And believe me ever your friend,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+P. S. Why can't you write me the result of your study of the _vis viva_
+question? I have not thought of it since I left. I wish very much you
+would, if the trouble be not too great. Anyhow you could write the
+central formulas without explication, and oblige yours. Excuse the
+scrawliness of this too hurriedly written letter.
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry James._
+
+
+BERLIN, _Sept. 26, 1867_.
+
+BELOVED 'ARRY,--I hope you will not be severely disappointed on opening
+this fat envelope to find it is not all _letter_. I will first explain
+to you the nature of the enclosed document and then proceed to personal
+matters. The other day, as I was sitting alone with my deeply breached
+letter of credit, beweeping my outcast state, and wondering what I could
+possibly do for a living, it flashed across me that I might write a
+"notice" of H. Grimm's novel which I had just been reading. To conceive
+with me is to execute, as you well know. And after sweating fearfully
+for three days, erasing, tearing my hair, copying, recopying, etc.,
+etc., I have just succeeded in finishing the enclosed. I want you to
+read it, and if, after correcting the style and thoughts, with the aid
+of Mother, Alice and Father, and rewriting it if possible, you judge it
+to be capable of interesting in any degree anyone in the world but H.
+Grimm, himself, to send it to the "Nation" or the "Round Table."
+
+I feel that a living is hardly worth being gained at this price. Style
+is not my forte, and to strike the mean between pomposity and vulgar
+familiarity is indeed difficult. Still, an the rich guerdon accrue, an
+but ten beauteous dollars lie down on their green and glossy backs
+within the family treasury in consequence of my exertions, I shall feel
+glad that I have made them. I have not seen Grimm yet as he is in
+Switzerland. In his writings he is possessed of real imagination and
+eloquence, chiefly in an ethical line, and the novel is really
+_distingué_, somewhat as Cherbuliez's are, only with rather a deficiency
+on the physical and animal side. He is, to my taste, too idealistic, and
+Father would scout him for his arrant moralism. Goethe seems to have
+mainly suckled him, and the manner of this book is precisely that of
+"Wilhelm Meister" or "Elective Affinities." There is something not
+exactly _robust_ about him, but, _per contra_, great delicacy and an
+extreme belief in the existence and worth of truth and desire to attain
+it justly and impartially. In short, a rather painstaking liberality and
+want of careless animal spirits--which, by the bye, seem to be rather
+characteristics of the rising generation. But enough of him. The notice
+was mere taskwork. I could not get up a spark of interest in it, and I
+should not think it would be _d'actualité_ for the "Nation." Still, I
+could think of nothing else to do, and was bound to do something.[37]
+...
+
+I am a new man since I have been here, both from the ruddy hues of
+health which mantle on my back, and from the influence of this live city
+on my spirits. Dresden was a place in which it always seemed afternoon;
+and as I used to sit in my cool and darksome room, and see through the
+ancient window the long dusty sunbeams slanting past the roof angles
+opposite down into the deep well of a street, and hear the distant
+droning of the market and think of no reason why it should not thus
+continue _in secula seculorum_, I used to have the same sort of feeling
+as that which now comes over me when I remember days passed in
+Grandma's old house in Albany. Here, on the other hand, it is just like
+home. Berlin, I suppose, is the most American-looking city in Europe. In
+the quarter which I inhabit, the streets are all at right angles, very
+broad, with dusty trees growing in them, houses all new and flat-roofed,
+covered with stucco, and of every imaginable irregularity in height,
+bleak, ugly, unsettled-looking--_werdend_. Germany is, I find, as a
+whole (I hardly think more experience will change my opinion), very
+nearly related to our country, and the German nature and ours so akin in
+fundamental qualities, that to come here is not much of an experience.
+There is a general colorlessness and bleakness about the outside look of
+life, and in artistic matters a wide-spread manifestation of the very
+same creative spirit that designs our kerosene-lamp models, for
+instance, at home. Nothing in short that is worth making a pilgrimage to
+see. To travel in Italy, in Egypt, or in the Tropics, may make creation
+widen to one's view; but to one of our race all that is _peculiar_ in
+Germany is mental, and _that_ Germany can be brought to us....
+
+(_After dinner._) I have just been out to dine. I am gradually getting
+acquainted with all the different restaurants in the neighborhood, of
+which there are an endless number, and will presently choose one for
+good,--certainly not the one where I went today, where I paid 25
+_Groschen_ for a soup, chicken and potatoes, and was almost prevented
+from breathing by the damned condescension of the waiters. I fairly sigh
+for a home table. I used to find a rather pleasant excitement in dining
+"round," that is long since played out. Could I but find some of the
+honest, florid and ornate ministers that wait on you at the Parker
+House, here, I would stick to their establishment, no matter what the
+fare. These indifferent reptiles here, dressed in cast-off
+wedding-suits, insolent and disobliging and always trying to cheat you
+in the change, are the plague of my life. After dinner I took quite a
+long walk under the Linden and round by the Palace and Museum. There are
+great numbers of statues (a great many of them "equestrian") here, and
+you have no idea how they light up the place. What you say about the
+change of the seasons wakens an echo in my soul. Today is really a
+harbinger of winter, and felt like an October day at home, with a
+northwest wind, cold and crisp with a white light, and the red leaves
+falling and blowing everywhere. I expect T. S. Perry in a week. We shall
+have a very good large parlor and bedroom, _together_, in this house,
+and steer off in fine style right into the bowels of the winter. I
+expect it to be a stiff one, as everyone speaks of it here with a
+certain solemnity....
+
+I wish you would articulately display to me in your future letters the
+names of all the books you have been reading. "A great many books, none
+but good ones," is provokingly vague. On looking back at what _I_ have
+read since I left home, it shows exceeding small, owing in great part I
+suppose to its being in German. I have just got settled down
+again--after a nearly-two-months' debauch on French fiction, during
+which time Mrs. Sand, the fresh, the bright, the free; the somewhat
+shrill but doughty Balzac, who has risen considerably in my esteem or
+rather in my affection; Théophile Gautier the good, the golden-mouthed,
+in turn captivated my attention; not to speak of the peerless
+Erckmann-Chatrian, who renews one's belief in the succulent harmonies of
+creation--and a host of others. I lately read Diderot, "OEuvres
+Choisies," 2 vols., which are entertaining to the utmost from their
+animal spirits and the comic modes of thinking, speaking and behaving of
+the time. Think of meeting continually such delicious sentences as
+this,--he is speaking of the educability of beasts,--"Et peut-on savoir
+jusqu'où l'usage des mains porterait les singes s'ils avaient le loisir
+comme la faculté d'inventer, et si la frayeur continuelle que leur
+inspirent les hommes ne les retenait dans l'abrutissement"!!! But I must
+pull up, as I have to write to Father still....
+
+Adieu, lots of love from your aff.
+
+WILHELM.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The preceding letter shows James as but recently arrived in Berlin and
+as arranging himself there for a winter of physiology at the University.
+He was soon joined by his young compatriot Thomas Sergeant Perry, an
+intimate friend of earlier Newport days and of the subsequent Boston and
+Cambridge years, and the two young Americans set up joint lodgings at
+Number 12 in the Mittelstrasse. Although James's main purpose was to
+work at the University, he was luckily not without social resources.
+George Bancroft, the historian and former Secretary of the Navy and
+Minister to England, was at this time representing the United States in
+Berlin and was an old family acquaintance. His and another hospitable
+family, the Louis Thieses, who had been Cambridge neighbors and whose
+house in Quincy Street the James parents had acquired upon Mr. Thies's
+return to his native land, were a link with home, and at the same time
+rendered hospitable services to James by helping him to a few German
+acquaintances. By far the most congenial and interesting of these was
+Herman Grimm, the son of the younger of the universally beloved brothers
+of the Fairy Tales. Herman Grimm had married Gisela von Arnim, the
+daughter of Goethe's Bettina, and was at this time a man of just past
+forty years. Professor of the History of Art in the University of
+Berlin, essayist, author of "The Life of Michael Angelo" and of Lectures
+on Goethe as well as of several works of fiction, Grimm was a versatile
+and charming specimen of that "learned" Germany which we now think of as
+flourishing most amiably during the generation that preceded the
+Franco-Prussian War. The easy and cordial way in which his household
+accepted James appears, as in the next letter, to have been richly
+appreciated.
+
+
+
+
+_To his Sister._
+
+
+BERLIN, _Oct. 17, 1867_.
+
+Your excellent long letter of September 5 reached me in due time. If
+about that time you felt yourself strongly hugged by some invisible
+spiritual agency, you may now know that it was _me_. What would not I
+give if you could pay me a visit here! Since I last wrote home the
+lingual Rubicon has been passed, and I find to my surprise that I can
+speak German--certainly not in an ornamental manner, but there is hardly
+anything which I would not dare to attempt to _begin_ to say and be
+pretty sure that a kind providence would pull me through, somehow or
+other. I made the discovery at my first visit to Grimm a fortnight ago,
+and have confirmed it several times since. I can likewise understand
+educated people perfectly. I feel my German as old Moses used to feel
+his oats, and for ten days past have walked along the street dandling my
+head in a fatuous manner that rivets the attention of the public. The
+University lectures were to have begun this week, but the lazy
+professors have put it off to the last of the month.
+
+[Illustration: Pencil Sketches from a Pocket Note-Book.]
+
+I will describe to you the manner in which I spent yesterday. _Ex uno
+disce omnes_--(a German proverb). I awoke at half-past eight at the
+manly voice of T. S. Perry caroling his morning hymn from his
+neighboring bed--if the instrument of torture the Germans sleep in be
+worthy of that name. After some preliminary conversation we arose,
+performed our washing, each in a couple of tumblers full of water in a
+little basin of this shape [sketch], donned our clothes, and stepped
+into our SALON into which the morning sun was streaming and adding its
+genial warmth to that of the great porcelain stove, into which the maid
+had put the handful of fuel (which, when ignited, makes the stove
+radiate heat for twelve hours) the while we slumbered. T. S. P. found on
+the table a letter from [Moorfield] Storey, which the same vigilant maid
+had placed there, and I the morning paper, full of excitement about the
+Italian affairs and the diabolical designs of Napoleon on Germany. After
+a breakfast of cocoa, eggs and excellent rolls, I finished the paper,
+and took up my regular reading, while T. S. P. worked at his German
+lesson. I finished the chapter in a treatise on Galvanism which bears
+the neat and concise title of [_not deciphered_].
+
+By 10 o'clock T. S. P. had gone to his German lesson, and it was about
+time for me to rig up to go to Grimm's to dine, having received a kind
+invitation the day before. As I passed through the pleasant wood called
+the "Thiergarten," which was filled with gay civil and military
+cavaliers, I looked hard for the imposing equestrian figure of the Hon.
+Geo. Bancroft; but he was not to be seen. I got safely to Grimm's, and
+in a moment the other guest arrived. Herr Professor----, whose name I
+could not catch,[38] a man of a type I have never met before. He is
+writing now a life of Schleiermacher of which one volume is published. A
+soft fat man with black hair (somewhat the type of the photographs of
+Renan), of a totally uncertain age between 25 and 40, with little bits
+of green eyes swimming in their fat-filled orbits, and the rest of his
+face quite "realizing one's idea" of the infant Bacchus. I, with my
+usual want of enterprise, have neglected hitherto to provide myself with
+a swallow-tailed coat; but I had a resplendent fresh-biled shirt and
+collar, while the Professor, who wore the "obligatory coat," etc., had
+an exceedingly grimy shirt and collar and a rusty old rag of a cravat.
+Which of us most violated the proprieties I know not, but your feminine
+nature will decide. Grimm wore a yellowish, greenish, brownish coat
+whose big collar and cuffs and enormous flaps made me strongly suspect
+it had been the property of the brothers Grimm, who had worn it on state
+occasions, and dying, bequeathed it to Herman. The dinner was very good.
+The Prof. was overflowing with information with regard to everything
+knowable and unknowable. He is the first man I have ever met of a class,
+which must be common here, of men to whom learning has become as natural
+as breathing. A learned man at home is in a measure isolated; his study
+is carried on in private, at reserved hours. To the public he appears as
+a citizen and neighbor, etc., and they know at most _about_ him that he
+is addicted to this or that study; his intellectual occupation always
+has something of a put-on character, and remains external at least to
+some part of his being. Whereas this cuss seemed to me to be nothing if
+not a professor ... [_line not deciphered_] as if he were able to stand
+towards the rest of society _merely_ in the relation of a man learned in
+this or that branch--and never for a moment forget the interests or put
+off the instincts of his specialty. If he should meet people or
+circumstances that could in no measure be dealt with on that ground, he
+would pass on and ignore them, instead of being obliged, like an
+American, to sink for the time the specialty. He talked and laughed
+incessantly at table, related the whole history of Buddhism to Mrs.
+Grimm, and I know not what other points of religious history. After
+dinner Mrs. Grimm went, at the suggestion of her husband, to take a nap
+... [_line not deciphered_] while G. and the Professor engaged in a hot
+controversy about the natural primitive forms of religion, Grimm
+inclining to the view that the historically first form must have been
+monotheistic. I noticed the Professor's replies grow rather languid,
+when suddenly his fat head dropped forward, and G. cried out that he had
+better take a good square nap in the arm-chair. He eagerly snatched at
+the proposal. Grimm got him a clean handkerchief, which he threw over
+his face, and presently he seemed to slumber. Grimm woke him in ten
+minutes to take some coffee. He rose, refreshed like a giant, and
+proceeded to fight with Grimm about the identity of Homer. Grimm has
+just been studying the question and thinks that the poems of Homer
+_must_ have been composed in a _written_ language. From there through a
+discussion about the madness of Hamlet--G. being convinced that
+Shakespeare _meant_ to mystify the reader, and intentionally constructed
+a riddle. The sun waned low and I took my leave in company with the
+Prof. We parted at the corner, _without_ the Prof. telling me (as an
+honest, hospitable American would have done) that he would be happy to
+see me at his domicile, so that I know not whether I shall be able to
+continue acquainted with a man I would fain know more of.
+
+I got into a droschke and, coming home, found T. S. P. in the room, and
+while telling him of the events of the dinner was interrupted by the
+entrance of the Rev. H. W. Foote of Stone Chapel.... The excellent
+little man had presented himself a few evenings before, bringing me from
+Dresden a very characteristic note from Elizabeth Peabody (in which
+among other things she says she is "on the wing for Italy"--she is as
+_folâtre_ a creature as your friend Mrs. W----), and we have dined
+together every day since, and had agreed to go to hear "Fidelio"
+together at the Opera that evening. Foote is really a good man and I
+shall prosecute his friendship every moment of his stay here; seems to
+have his mind open to every interest, and has a sweet modesty that
+endears him to the heart. He goes home next month. I advise Harry to
+call and see him; I know he will sympathize with him. T. S. P. never
+grows weary of repeating a pun of Ware's about him in Italy, who, when
+asked what had become of Foote (they traveled for a time together),
+replied: "I left him at the Hotel, hand in glove with the Bootts."
+
+"Fidelio" was truly musical. After it, I went to Zennig's restaurant (it
+was over by quarter before nine), where I had made a rendez-vous with a
+young Doctor to whom Mr. Thies had given me a letter. Having been away
+from Berlin, I had seen him for the first time the day before yesterday.
+He is a very swell young Jew with a gorgeous cravat, blue-black whiskers
+and oily ringlets, not prepossessing; and we had made this appointment.
+I waited half an hour and, the faithless Israelite not appearing, came
+home, and after reading a few hours went to bed.
+
+_Two hours later._ I have just come in from dinner, a ceremony which I
+perform at the aforesaid Zennig's, Unter den Linden. (By the bye, you
+must not be led by that name to imagine, as I always used to, an avenue
+over-shadowed by patriarchal lime trees, whose branches form a long
+arch. The "Linden" are two rows of small, scrubby, abortive
+horse-chestnuts, beeches, limes and others, planted like the trees in
+Commonwealth Avenue.) Zennig's is a table-d'hôte, so-called
+notwithstanding the unities of hour and table are violated. You have
+soup, three courses, and dessert or coffee and cheese for 12-1/2
+Groschen if you buy 14 tickets, and I shall probably dine there all
+winter. We dined with Foote today, who spoke among other things of a new
+English novel whose heroine "had the bust and arms of the Venus of
+Milo." T. S. P. remarked that her having the arms might account for the
+Venus herself being without them.
+
+I enclose you the photograph of an actress here with whom I am in love.
+A neat coiffure, is it not? I also send you a couple more of my own
+precious portraits. I got them taken to fulfill a promise I had made to
+a young Bohemian lady at Teplitz, the niece of the landlady. Sweet Anna
+Adamowiz! (pronounce--_vitch_), which means descendant of Adam.--She
+belongs consequently to one of the very first families in Bohemia. I
+used to drive dull care away by writing her short notes in the Bohemian
+tongue such as; "Navzdy budes v me mysli Irohm pamatkou," _i.e._,
+forever bloomest thou in my memory;--"dej mne tooji bodo biznu," give me
+your photograph; and isolated phrases as "Mlaxik, Dicka, pritel,
+pritelkyne," _i.e._, Jüngling, Mädchen, Freund, Freundinn; "mi luja," I
+love, etc. These were carried to her by the chambermaid, and the style,
+a little more florid than was absolutely _required_ by mere courtesy,
+was excused by her on the ground of my limited acquaintance with the
+subtleties of the language. Besides, the sentiments were on the whole
+good and the error, if any, in the right direction. When she gave me her
+photograph (which I regret to say she spelt "fotokraft"!!!!) she made me
+promise to send her mine. _Hence_ mine.
+
+I have been this afternoon to get a dress-coat measured, which will
+doubtless be a comfort to you to know. I must now stop. G--
+
+ * * * * *
+
+I had got as far as the above _G_ when the faithless Israelite of
+yesterday evening came in. He gave a satisfactory explanation of his
+absence and has been making a very pleasant visit. He is coming back at
+nine o'clock to take us (after the German mode of exercising
+hospitality) to a tavern to meet some of his boon companions. I reckon
+he is a better fellow than he seemed at first sight. I will leave this
+letter open till tomorrow to let you know what happens at the tavern,
+and whether the boon companions are old-clothes men, or Christian
+gentlemen. Good-night, my darling sister! Sei tausend mal von mir
+geküsst.[39] Give my best love to Father, Mother, Aunt Kate, the boys
+and everyone. Ever yr. loving bro.,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+11 P.M. Decidedly the Jew rises in my estimation. He treated us in the
+German fashion to a veal cutlet and a glass of beer which we paid for
+ourselves. His boon companions were apparently Christians of a
+half-baked sort. One who sat next to me was half drunk [and] insisted on
+talking the most hideous English. T. S. P., who necessarily took small
+part in the conversation, endeavored to explain to Selberg that he was a
+"skeleton at the banquet," but could not get through. I came to his
+assistance, but forgot, of course, the word "Skelett," and found nothing
+better to say than that he was a _vertebral column_ at their banquet,
+which classical allusion I do not think was understood by the Jew. The
+young men did not behave with the politeness and attention to us which
+would have been shown to two Germans by a similar crowd at home.
+Selberg himself however improved every minute, and I have no doubt will
+turn out a capital fellow. Excuse these scraps of paper,
+
+W. J. Good night.
+
+
+
+
+_To his Sister._
+
+
+BERLIN, _Nov. 19, 1867_.
+
+SÜSS BALCHEN!--I stump wearily up the three flights of stairs after my
+dinner to this lone room where no human company but a ghastly lithograph
+of Johannes Müller and a grinning skull are to cheer me. Out in the
+street the slaw and fine rain is falling as if it would never stop--the
+sky is low and murky, and the streets filled with water and that finely
+worked-up paste of mud which never is seen on our continent. For some
+time past I have thought with longing of the brightness and freshness of
+my home in New England--of the extraordinary, and in ordinary moments
+little appreciated, but
+sometimes-coming-across-you-and-striking-you-with-an-unexpected-sense-of-rich-privilege
+blessings of a mother's love (excuse my somewhat German style)--of the
+advantage of having a youthful-hearted though bald-headed father who
+looks at the Kosmos as if it had some life in it--of the delicious and
+respectable meals in the family circle with the aforesaid father telling
+touching horse-car anecdotes,[40] and the serene Harry dealing his snubs
+around--with a clean female handmaiden to wait, and an open fire to
+toast one's self at afterwards instead of one of these pallid porcelain
+monuments here,--with a whole country around you full of friends and
+acquaintances in whose company you can refresh your social nature, a
+library of books in the house and a still bigger one over the way,--and
+all the rest of it. The longer I live, the more inclined am I to value
+the domestic affections and to be satisfied with the domestic and
+citizenly virtues (probably only for the reason that I am temporarily
+debarred from exercising any of them, I blush to think). At any rate I
+feel _now_ and _here_ the absence of any object with which to start up
+some sympathy, and the feeling is real and unpleasant while it lasts.
+
+I ought not, I confess, to sing in this tune _today_, for before dinner
+I made a call on a young lady here (named Frl. Bornemann) whom I had met
+at Mrs. Grimm's and whom Mrs. G. had advised me to go and see. She lives
+with her brother, an _Advocat_. They are rich orflings, and I had really
+a friendly visit there and hope it may ripen into familiarity. I got on
+tolerably well with the German--only making one laughable mistake, viz.
+in talking of the shower of meteors, _Stern-schnuppen_, the other night
+to speak of the "Stern-schnupfen" (_Schnupfen_ = snuffles, catarrh). And
+this visit is the occasion of my writing this week to you. Frl. B. is
+intimate with Miss Thies, and hearing that we lived in their house, she
+was seized with an extremely German desire to have some ivy leaves or
+other leaves from the garden to surprise Miss Thies with on Christmas.
+Your young female heart will probably beat responsive to the project and
+_infallibly_ by return mail send the leaves. She only wants one or two.
+You might also send a board from the flooring, some old grass and bits
+of hay from the front "lawn," or cut out an eye from the "gal" who is so
+much "struck with them babies"[41] in the parlor. They would all awaken
+tender memories, I have no doubt. Now do not delay even for one day to
+execute this, Alice! but set about it now with this letter in your
+hand. You see there is no time to lose, and I am very anxious not to
+disappoint the excellent young lady.
+
+The few commissions and questions I have sent home have been so
+unnoticed and disregarded that I hardly hope for success this time. It
+has always been the way with me, however, from birth upwards, and Heaven
+forbid that I should now begin to complain! But lo! I here send another
+commission. I definitely appoint by name my father H. James, Senior,
+author of Substance & Shadder, etc., to perform it; and solemnly charge
+all the rest of you to be as lions in his path, as thorns upon his side,
+as lumps in his mashed potatoes, until he do it or write me Nay. 'Tis to
+send by post Cousin's lectures on Kant, and that other French
+translation of a German introduction to Kant, which he bought last
+winter! By return of mail! And if not convenient to send the books, to
+write me the name of the author of the last-mentioned one, which I have
+forgotten. It behooves me to learn something of the "Philosopher of
+Königsberg," and I want these to ease the way. I sincerely hope that
+these words may not be utterly thrown away.
+
+I got a letter from Mother the day after I wrote last week to Harry,
+without date, but written after the Tweedies' visit. I got this morning
+a "Nation" and the "advertisement" to Father's Essay on Swedenborg. In
+the latter the old lyre is twanged with a greater freshness and force
+than ever, so that even T. S. Perry was made to vibrate in unison with
+it. I wrote to Father three weeks ago respecting his former article. I
+hope the letter is by this time in his hands. I am very sorry the fat
+one went astray. It contained, _inter alia_, an account of my
+expenditure up to its time of writing. I would give a good deal to be
+able to enjoy as you are all doing the society of Venerable Brother
+Robertson. It is a great pity that we should get so estranged by
+separation from each other. I wish, now he's at home, he would once
+write to me. I have got tolerably well to work, and enjoy my lectures at
+the University intensely. Are the "Rainbows for Children" I see noticed
+in the "Nation" that old book by Mrs. Tappan? I hope Harry is not the
+person therein mentioned as having palmed off on Godkin a translation
+from the German as an original article on Thorwaldsen. You have not told
+me a word about the Tappans since I quit. I am very glad to hear of Aunt
+Kate's leg being so much better and staying so. Tell her I hope it has
+not been improving at the expense of her heart, as her long silence
+sometimes makes me shudderingly fear.
+
+Adieu. 1000 kisses to all, not forgetting Ellen.[42]
+
+Ever your Bruder, W. J.
+
+
+
+
+_To Thomas W. Ward._
+
+
+[Fragment of a letter from Berlin,
+_circa Nov. 1867?_]
+
+...I have begun going to the physiological lectures at the University.
+There are in all seven courses and four lectures. I take five courses
+and three lectures. There is a bully physiological laboratory, the sight
+of which, inaccessible as it is to me in my present condition, gave me a
+sharp pang. I have blocked out some reading in physiology and psychology
+which I hope to execute this winter--though reading German is still
+disgustingly slow.... It seems to me that perhaps the time has come for
+psychology to begin to be a science--some measurements have already been
+made in the region lying between the physical changes in the nerves and
+the appearance of consciousness-at (in the shape of sense perceptions),
+and more may come of it. I am going on to study what is already known,
+and perhaps may be able to do some work at it. Helmholtz and a man named
+Wundt at Heidelberg are working at it, and I hope I live through this
+winter to go to them in the summer. From all this talk you probably
+think I am working straight ahead--towards a definite aim. Alas, no! I
+finger book-covers as ineffectually as ever. The fact is, this sickness
+takes all the spring, physical and mental, out of a man....
+
+
+
+
+_To Thomas W. Ward._
+
+
+BERLIN, _Nov. 7, 1867_.
+
+...If six years ago I could have felt the same satisfied belief in the
+worthiness of a life devoted to simple, patient, monotonous, scientific
+labor day after day (without reference to its results) and at the same
+time have had some inkling of the importance and nature of _education_
+(_i.e._, getting orderly habits of thought, and by intense exercise in a
+variety of different subjects, getting the mind supple and delicate and
+firm), I might be now on the path to accomplishing something some day,
+even if my health had turned out no better than it is. But my habits of
+mind have been so bad that I feel as if the greater part of the last ten
+years had been worse than wasted, and now have so little surplus of
+physical vigor as to shrink from trying to retrieve them. Too late! too
+late! If I had been _drilled_ further in mathematics, physics,
+chemistry, logic, and the history of metaphysics, and had established,
+even if only in my memory, a firm and thoroughly familiar _basis_ of
+knowledge in all these sciences (like the basis of human anatomy one
+gets in studying medicine), to which I should involuntarily refer all
+subsequently acquired facts and thoughts,--instead of having now to
+keep going back and picking up loose ends of these elements, and wasting
+whole hours in looking to see how the new facts are related to them, or
+whether they are related to them at all,--I might be steadily
+advancing.--But enough! Excuse the damned whine of this letter; I had no
+idea whatever of writing it when I sat down, but I am in a mood of
+indigestion and blueness. I would not send you the letter at all, were
+it not that I thought it might tempt you soon to write to me. You have
+no idea, my dear old Tom, how I long to hear a word about you....
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry P. Bowditch._
+
+
+BERLIN, _Dec. 12, 1867_.
+
+BESTER HEINRICH,--I have arrived safely on this side of the ocean and
+hasten to inform you of the fact.--What a fine pair of young men we are
+to write so punctually and constantly to each other!--I will not gall
+you by any sarcasms, however (I naturally think you are more to blame
+than myself), because (as you naturally are of a similar way of
+thinking) you might recriminate at great length in your next and much
+other to-me-more-agreeable matter be crowded out of your letter. Suffice
+[it] to say that I have thought of you continually, and with
+undiminished affection, since that bright April morn when we parted; but
+I am of such an invincibly inert nature as regards letter-writing that
+it takes a combination of outward and inward circumstances and motives
+that hardly ever happens, to start me. I wrote you a letter last summer,
+but destroyed it because I was in such doleful dumps while writing it
+that it would have given you too unpleasant an impression....
+
+I live near the University, and attend all the lectures on physiology
+that are given there, but am unable to do anything in the Laboratory, or
+to attend the cliniques or Virchow's lectures and demonstrations, etc.
+Du Bois-Raymond, an irascible man of about forty-five, gives a very good
+and clear, yea, brilliant, series of five lectures a week, and two
+ambitious young Jews give six more between them which are almost as
+instructive. The opportunities for study here are superb, it seems to
+me. Whatever they may be in Paris, they can_not_ be better. The
+physiological laboratory, with its endless array of machinery, frogs,
+dogs, etc., etc., almost "bursts my gizzard," when I go by it, with
+vexation. The German language is not child's play. I have lately begun
+to understand almost everything I hear said around me; but I still speak
+"with a slight foreign accent," as you may suppose--and, with all my
+practice in reading, do not think I can read more than half as fast as
+in English. It is very discouraging to get over so little ground. But a
+steady boring away is bound to fetch it, I suppose; and it seems to me
+it is worth the trouble.
+
+The general level of thoroughness and exactness in scientific work here
+is beyond praise; and the abundance of books on every division of every
+subject something we English have no idea of. It all comes from the
+thorough mode of educating the people from childhood up. The _Staats
+Examina_, before passing which no doctor can practise here in Prussia,
+exact an amount of physiological, and what we at home call "merely
+theoretical" knowledge of the candidate, which a young doctor at home
+would claim and receive especial distinction for having made himself
+master of. But the men here think it but fair; gird about their loins
+and set about working their way through. The general impression the
+Germans make on me is not at all that of a remarkably intellectually
+gifted people; and if they are not so, their eminence must come solely
+from their habits of conscientious and plodding work. It may be that
+their expressionless faces do their minds injustice. I don't know enough
+of them to decide. But I know the work is a large factor in the result.
+It makes one repine at the way he has been brought up, to come here.
+Unhappily most of us come too late to profit by what we see. Bad habits
+are formed, and life hurries us on too much to stop and drill. But it
+seems to me that the fact of so many American students being here of
+late years (they outnumber greatly all other foreign students) ought to
+have a good influence on the training of the succeeding generation with
+us. Tuck, Dwight, Dick Derby, Quincy, Townsend, and Heaven knows how
+many more are in Vienna. Tuck and Dwight write me that they are getting
+on remarkably well. I saw them both here in September and think T. D.
+improves a good deal as he grows older.
+
+Berlin is a bleak and unfriendly place. The inhabitants are rude and
+graceless, but must conceal a solid worth beneath it. I only know seven
+of them, and they are of the _élite_. It is very hard getting acquainted
+with them, as you have to make all the advances yourself; and your
+antagonist shifts so between friendliness and a drill sergeant's formal
+politeness that you never know exactly on what footing you stand with
+him. These Prussians bow in the most amusing way you ever saw,--as if an
+invisible hand suddenly punched them in the abdomen and an equally
+invisible foot forthwith kicked them in the rear,--one time and two
+motions, and they do it 100 times a day.
+
+But enough of national gossip--let us return to that about individuals.
+Oh! that I could see thy prominent nose and thy sagacious eyes at this
+moment relieved against the back of that empty arm-chair that stands
+opposite this table. Oh! that we might once again sit apart from the
+fretful and insipid herd of our congeners, and take counsel together
+concerning the world and life--our lives in particular, and all life in
+general. How the shy goddess would tremble in her hiding-places at the
+sound of our unerringly approaching voices. And how you would pour into
+my astonished ear all that is new and wonderful about pathology and
+microscopical research, all that is sound and neat about operative
+surgery, while I would recite the most thrilling chapters of Kolliker's
+"Entwickelungs-geschichte," or Helmholtz's
+"Innervationsfortpflanzungsgeschwindigkeitsbestimmungen"! I suppose you
+have been rolling on like a great growing snowball through the vast
+fields of medical knowledge and are fairly out of the long tunnel of low
+spirits that leads there by this time. It is only three months since I
+have taken up medical reading, as I made all sorts of excursions into
+the language when I came here, and, owing to the slowness of progression
+I spoke of above, I have not got over much ground. Of course I can never
+hope to practise; but I shall graduate on my return, and perhaps pick up
+a precarious and needy living by doing work for medical periodicals or
+something of that kind--though I hate writing as I do the foul fiend.
+But I don't want to break off connexion with biological science. I can't
+be a teacher of physiology, pathology, or anatomy; for I can't do
+laboratory work, much less microscopical or anatomical. I may get
+better, but hardly before it will be too late for me to begin school
+again.
+
+I'll tell you what let's do! Set up a partnership, you to run around and
+attend to the patients while I will stay at home and, reading everything
+imaginable in English, German, and French, distil it in a concentrated
+form into your mind. This division of labor will give the firm an
+immense advantage over all of our wooden-headed contemporaries. For, in
+your person, it will have more experience than any one else has time to
+acquire; and in mine, more learning. We will divide the profits equally,
+of course; and he who survives the other (you, probably) will inherit
+the whole. Does not the idea tempt you? If you don't like it, I'll go
+you halves in the profits in any other feasible way. Seriously, you see
+I have no very definite plans for the future; but I have enough to keep
+body and soul together for some years to come, and I see no need of
+providing for more. This talk of course is only for your "private ear."
+I want you to write immediately on receipt of this,--for if you don't
+then, you never will,--and tell me all about what you've been doing and
+learning and what your future plans are. Also, gossip about the School
+and Hospital. I have not had a chance to talk medicine with any one but
+Dwight and Tuck (for a week), and hunger thereafter.... Believe me, ever
+til deth, your friend
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+T. S. Perry of '66, who lives with me here, reminds me of a story to
+tell you. He lived with Architect Ware in Paris, and Ware received a
+visit from Dr. Bowditch and Mr. Dixwell last summer. The concierge woman
+was terribly impressed by the personal majesty of your uncles,
+particularly of Dr. Bowditch, of whom she said: "Il a le grand air, tout
+à fait comme Christophe Colomb!" It would be curious to understand
+exactly who and what she thought C. C. was, or whether she would have
+thought Mr. Dixwell like Americus Vespucius if she had known _him_.
+
+
+
+
+_To O. W. Holmes, Jr._
+
+
+BERLIN, _Jan. 3, 1868_.
+
+MY DEAR WENDLE,--Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten, dass ich so
+traurig bin, tonight. The ghosts of the past all start from their
+unquiet graves and keep dancing a senseless whirligig around me so
+that, after trying in vain to read three books, to sleep, or to think, I
+clutch the pen and ink and resolve to work off the fit by a few lines to
+one of the most obtrusive ghosts of all--namely the tall and lank one of
+Charles Street. Good golly! how I would prefer to have about twenty-four
+hours talk with you up in that whitely lit-up room--without the sun
+rising or the firmament revolving so as to put the gas out, without
+sleep, food, clothing or shelter except your whiskey bottle, of which,
+or the like of which, I have not partaken since I have been in these
+longitudes! I should like to have you opposite me in any mood, whether
+the facetiously excursive, the metaphysically discursive, the personally
+confidential, or the jadedly _cursive_ and argumentative--so that the
+oyster-shells which enclose my being might slowly turn open on their
+rigid hinges under the radiation, and the critter within loll out his
+dried-up gills into the circumfused ichor of life, till they grew so fat
+as not to know themselves again. I feel as if a talk with you of any
+kind could not fail to set me on my legs again for three weeks at least.
+I have been chewing on two or three dried-up old cuds of ideas I brought
+from America with me, till they have disappeared, and the nudity of the
+Kosmos has got beyond anything I have as yet experienced. I have not
+succeeded in finding any companion yet, and I feel the want of some
+outward stimulus to my Soul. There is a man named Grimm here whom my
+soul loves, but in the way Emerson speaks of, _i.e._ like those people
+we meet on staircases, etc., and who always ignore our feelings towards
+them. I don't think we shall ever be able to establish a straight line
+of communication between us.
+
+I don't know how it is I am able to take so little interest in reading
+this winter. I marked out a number of books when I first came here, to
+finish. What with their heaviness and the damnable slowness with which
+the Dutch still goes, they weigh on me like a haystack. I loathe the
+thought of them; and yet they have poisoned my slave of a conscience so
+that I can't enjoy anything else. I have reached an age when practical
+work of some kind clamors to be done--and I must still wait!
+
+There! Having worked off that pent-up gall of six weeks' accumulation I
+feel more genial. I wish I could have some news of you--now that the
+postage is lowered to such a ridiculous figure (and no letter is double)
+there remains no _shadow_ of an excuse for not writing--but, still, I
+don't expect anything from you. I suppose you are sinking ever deeper
+into the sloughs of the law--yet I ween the Eternal Mystery still from
+time to time gives her goad another turn in the raw she once established
+between your ribs. Don't let it heal over yet. When I get home let's
+establish a philosophical society to have regular meetings and discuss
+none but the very tallest and broadest questions--to be composed of none
+but the very topmost cream of Boston manhood. It will give each one a
+chance to air his own opinion in a grammatical form, and to sneer and
+chuckle when he goes home at what damned fools all the other members
+are--and may grow into something very important after a sufficient
+number of years.
+
+The German character is without mountains or valleys; its favorite food
+is roast veal; and in other lines it prefers whatever may be the
+analogue thereof--all which gives life here a certain flatness to the
+high-tuned American taste. I don't think any one need care much about
+coming here unless he wants to dig very deeply into some exclusive
+specialty. I have been reading nothing of any interest but some chapters
+of physiology. There has a good deal been doing here of late on the
+physiology of the senses, overlapping perception, and consequently, in
+a measure, the psychological field. I am wading my way towards it, and
+if in course of time I strike on anything exhilarating, I'll let you
+know.
+
+I'll now pull up. I don't know whether you take it as a compliment that
+I should only write to you when in the dismalest of dumps--perhaps you
+ought to--you, the one emergent peak, to which I cling when all the rest
+of the world has sunk beneath the wave. Believe me, my Wendly boy, what
+poor possibility of friendship abides in the crazy frame of W. J.
+meanders about thy neighborhood. Good-bye! Keep the same bold front as
+ever to the Common Enemy--and don't forget your ally,
+
+W. J.
+
+That is, after all, all I wanted to write you and it may float the rest
+of the letter. Pray give my warm regards to your father, mother and
+sister; and my love to the honest Gray and to Jim Higginson.
+
+[_Written on the outside of the envelope._]
+
+_Jan. 4._ By a strange coincidence, after writing this last night, I
+received yours this morning. Not to sacrifice the postage-stamps which
+are already on the envelope (Economical W!) I don't reopen it. But I
+will write you again soon. Meanwhile, bless your heart! thank you!
+_Vide_ Shakespeare: sonnet XXLX.
+
+
+
+
+_To Thomas W. Ward._
+
+
+BERLIN, _Jan. --, 1868_.
+
+...It made me feel quite sad to hear you talk about the inward deadness
+and listlessness into which you had again fallen in New York. Bate not a
+jot of heart nor hope, but steer right onward. Take for granted that
+you've got a temperament from which you must make up your mind to
+expect twenty times as much anguish as other people need to get along
+with. Regard it as something as external to you as possible, like the
+curl of your hair. Remember when old December's darkness is everywhere
+about you, that the world is really in every minutest point as full of
+life as in the most joyous morning you ever lived through; that the sun
+is whanging down, and the waves dancing, and the gulls skimming down at
+the mouth of the Amazon, for instance, as freshly as in the first
+morning of creation; and the hour is just as fit as any hour that ever
+was for a new gospel of cheer to be preached. I am sure that one can, by
+merely thinking of these matters of fact, limit the power of one's evil
+moods over one's way of looking at the Kosmos.
+
+I am very glad that you think the methodical habits you must stick to in
+book-keeping are going to be good discipline to you. I confess to having
+had a little feeling of spite when I heard you had gone back on science;
+for I had always thought you would one day emerge into deep and clear
+water there--by keeping on long enough. But I really don't think it so
+_all_-important what our occupation is, so long as we do respectably and
+keep a clean bosom. Whatever we are _not_ doing is pretty sure to come
+to us at intervals, in the midst of our toil, and fill us with pungent
+regrets that it is lost to us. I have felt so about zoölogy whenever I
+was not studying it, about anthropology when studying physiology, about
+practical medicine lately, now that I am cut off from it, etc., etc.,
+etc.; and I conclude that that sort of nostalgia is a necessary incident
+of our having imaginations, and we must expect it more or less whatever
+we are about. I don't mean to say that in some occupations we should not
+have less of it though.
+
+My dear old Thomas, you have always sardonically greeted me as the man
+of calm and clockwork feelings. The reason is that your own vehemence
+and irregularity was so much greater, that it involuntarily, no matter
+what my private mood might have been, threw me into an outwardly
+antagonistic one in which I endeavored to be a clog to your mobility, as
+it were. So I fancy you have always given me credit for less sympathy
+with you and understanding of your feelings than I really have had. All
+last winter, for instance, when I was on the continual verge of suicide,
+it used to amuse me to hear you chaff my animal contentment. The
+appearance of it arose from my reaction against what seemed to me your
+unduly _noisy_ and demonstrative despair. The fact is, I think, that we
+have both gone through a good deal of similar trouble; we resemble each
+other in being both persons of rather wide sympathies, not particularly
+logical in the processes of our minds, and of mobile temperament; though
+your physical temperament being so much more tremendous than mine makes
+a great quantitative difference both in your favor, and against you, as
+the case may be.
+
+Well, neither of us wishes to be a mere loafer; each wishes a work which
+shall by its mere _exercise_ interest him and at the same time allow him
+to feel that through it he takes hold of the reality of things--whatever
+that may be--in some measure. Now the first requisite is hard for us to
+fill, by reason of our wide sympathy and mobility; we can only choose a
+business in which the evil of feeling restless shall be at a minimum,
+and then go ahead and make the best of it. That minimum will grow less
+every year.--In this connection I will again refer to a poem you
+probably know: "A Grammarian's Funeral," by R. Browning, in "Men and
+Women." It always strengthens my backbone to read it, and I think the
+feeling it expresses of throwing upon eternity the responsibility of
+making good your one-sidedness somehow or other ("Leave _now_ for dogs
+and apes, Man has forever") is a gallant one, and fit to be trusted if
+one-sided activity is in itself at all respectable.
+
+The other requirement is hard theoretically, though practically not so
+hard as the first. All I can tell you is the thought that with me
+outlasts all others, and onto which, like a rock, I find myself washed
+up when the waves of doubt are weltering over all the rest of the world;
+and that is the thought of my having a will, and of my belonging to a
+brotherhood of men possessed of a capacity for pleasure and pain of
+different kinds. For even at one's lowest ebb of belief, the fact
+remains empirically certain (and by our will we can, if not _absolutely_
+refrain from looking beyond that empirical fact, at least practically
+and _on the whole_ accept it and let it suffice us)--that men suffer and
+enjoy. And if we have to give up all hope of seeing into the purposes of
+God, or to give up theoretically the idea of final causes, and of God
+anyhow as vain and leading to nothing for us, we can, by our will, make
+the enjoyment of our brothers stand us in the stead of a final cause;
+and through a knowledge of the fact that that enjoyment on the whole
+depends on what individuals accomplish, lead a life so active, and so
+sustained by a clean conscience as not to need to fret much. Individuals
+can add to the welfare of the race in a variety of ways. You may delight
+its senses or "taste" by some production of luxury or art, comfort it by
+discovering some moral truth, relieve its pain by concocting a new
+patent medicine, save its labor by a bit of machinery, or by some new
+application of a natural product. You may open a road, help start some
+social or business institution, contribute your mite in _any_ way to the
+mass of the work which each generation subtracts from the task of the
+next; and you will come into _real_ relations with your brothers--with
+some of them at least.
+
+I know that in a certain point of view, and the most popular one, this
+seems a cold activity for our affections, a stone instead of bread. We
+long for sympathy, for a purely _personal_ communication, first with the
+soul of the world, and then with the soul of our fellows. And happy are
+they who think, or know, that they have got them! But to those who must
+confess with bitter anguish that they are perfectly isolated from the
+soul of the world, and that the closest human love encloses a potential
+germ of estrangement or hatred, that all _personal_ relation is finite,
+conditional, mixed (_vide_ in Dana's "Household Book of Poetry," stanzas
+by C. P. Cranch, "Thought is deeper than speech," etc., etc.), it may
+not prove such an unfruitful substitute. At least, when you have added
+to the property of the race, even if no one knows your name, yet it is
+certain that, without what you have done, some individuals must needs be
+acting now in a somewhat different manner. You have modified their life;
+you are in _real_ relation with them; you have in so far forth entered
+into their being. And is that such an unworthy stake to set up for our
+good, after all? Who are these men anyhow? Our predecessors, even apart
+from the physical link of generation, have made us what we are. Every
+thought you now have and every act and intention owes its complexion to
+the acts of your dead and living brothers. _Everything_ we know and are
+is through men. We have no revelation but through man. Every sentiment
+that warms your gizzard, every brave act that ever made your pulse bound
+and your nostril open to a confident breath was a man's act. However
+mean a man may be, man is _the best we know_; and your loathing as you
+turn from what you probably call the vulgarity of human life--your
+homesick yearning for a _Better_, somewhere--is furnished by your
+manhood; your ideal is made up of traits suggested by past men's words
+and actions. Your manhood shuts you in forever, bounds all your thoughts
+like an overarching sky--and all the Good and True and High and Dear
+that you know by virtue of your sharing in it. They are the Natural
+Product of our Race. So that it seems to me that a sympathy with men as
+such, and a desire to contribute to the weal of a species, which,
+whatever may be said of it, contains All that we acknowledge as good,
+may very well form an external interest sufficient to keep one's moral
+pot boiling in a very lively manner to a good old age. The idea, in
+short, of becoming an accomplice in a sort of "Mankind its own God or
+Providence" scheme is a _practical_ one.
+
+I don't mean, by any means, to affirm that we must come to that, I only
+say it is _a_ mode of envisaging life; which is capable of affording
+moral support--and may at any rate help to bridge over the despair of
+skeptical intervals. I confess that, in the lonesome gloom which beset
+me for a couple of months last summer, the only feeling that kept me
+from giving up was that by waiting and living, by hook or crook, long
+enough, I might make my _nick_, however small a one, in the raw stuff
+the race has got to shape, and so assert my reality. The stoic feeling
+of being a sentinel obeying orders without knowing the general's plans
+is a noble one. And so is the divine enthusiasm of moral culture
+(Channing, etc.), and I think that, successively, they may all help to
+ballast the same man.
+
+What a preacher I'm getting to be! I had no idea when I sat down to
+begin this long letter that I was going to be carried away so far. I
+feel like a humbug whenever I endeavor to enunciate moral truths,
+because I am at bottom so skeptical. But I resolved to throw off
+"_views_" to you, because I know how stimulated you are likely to be by
+any accidental point of view or formula which you may not exactly have
+struck on before (_e.g._, what you write me of the effect of that
+sentence of your mother's about marrying). I had no idea this morning
+that I had so many of the elements of a Pascal in me. Excuse the
+presumption.--But to go back. I think that in business as well as in
+science one can have this philanthropic aspiration satisfied. I have
+been growing lately to feel that a great mistake of my past life--which
+has been prejudicial to my education, and by telling me which, and by
+making me understand it some years ago, some one might have conferred a
+great benefit on me--is an impatience of _results_. Inexperience of life
+is the cause of it, and I imagine it is generally an American
+characteristic. I think you suffer from it. Results should not be too
+voluntarily aimed at or too busily thought of. They are _sure_ to float
+up of their own accord, from a long enough daily work at a given matter;
+and I think the work as a mere occupation ought to be the primary
+interest with us. At least, I am sure this is so in the intellectual
+realm, and I strongly suspect it is the secret of German prowess
+therein. Have confidence, even when you seem to yourself to be making no
+progress, that, if you but go on in your own uninteresting way, they
+must bloom out in their good time. Ouf, my dear old Tom! I think I must
+pull up. I have no time or energy left to gossip to thee of our life
+here....
+
+
+
+
+_To his Father._
+
+
+TEPLITZ, _Jan. 22, 1868_.
+
+MY DEAR DAD,--Don't allow yourself to be shocked with surprise on
+reading the above date till you hear the reasons which have brought me
+here at this singular season. They are grounded in the increasing wear
+and tear of my life in Berlin, and in my growing impatience to get well
+enough to be able to do some work in the summer.... I find myself
+getting more interested in physiology and nourishing a hope that I _may_
+be able to make its study (and perhaps its teaching) my profession; and,
+joining the thought that if I came to Teplitz now for three weeks I
+could have still another turn at it, if necessary, in April,--before the
+summer semester at Heidelberg began,--to the consciousness that in my
+present condition I was doing worse than wasting time at Berlin, I took
+advantage of a fine sunshiny morning four days ago, packed my trunk,
+said good-bye to T. S. Perry, and took the railroad for this place. I
+hope you won't think from seeing me back here that my loudly trumpeted
+improvement in the autumn was fallacious. On the contrary, I feel more
+than ever, now that I am back in presence of my old measures of strength
+(distances, etc.), how substantial that improvement was--only it has not
+yet bridged the way up to complete soundness.
+
+I have been feeling for a month past that I ought to come here, but an
+effeminate shrinking from loneliness and so forth, and the inhuman
+blackness of the weather kept me from it. Now that I am here, I am only
+sorry I deferred it so long. I found the _Fürstenbad_ open, and with
+four other "cure-guests" in it. All its varletry, male and female, fat
+as wood-chucks from their winter's repose; a theatre (!) going in town
+three times a week; the head waiter of the restaurant where in the
+summer I used, for the price of a glass of milk, to read the "Times" and
+the "Independence Belge," no longer wearing the pallid look of stern and
+desperate _business_ with which he used to scud around among the crowded
+tables, and which used to make me stand in mortal fear of him, but
+appearing as a comfortable and red-cheeked human being with even greater
+conversational gifts than usual; every one moreover glad to see me,
+etc., etc. The veil of winter has been lifted for a week and the buried
+spring [has] peeped out and taken a-breathing before her time. Today
+everything is a-dripping, the earth has a moving smell, and the sky is
+full of spots of melting blue. If such weather but lasts, the time will
+pass here very quickly. I have brought a lot of good books, and if their
+interest wanes have the whole circulating library to fall back on. So
+much for Teplitz.
+
+Sunday before last Mrs. Bancroft told me that the most beautiful woman
+in Berlin had asked after me with affection and expressed a desire to
+see me. After making me guess in vain she told me that it was Mrs.
+Lieutenant Pertz, _née_ Emma Wilkinson.[43] I went to see her and found
+her looking hardly a day older or different, and certainly very
+good-looking, though probably Mrs. B.'s description was exaggerated. She
+had the sweetest and simplest of manners and asked all about the family,
+to whom she sends her love. She told me nothing particular about her own
+family which we did not know, except that Jamie had an aquiline nose.
+She has three fine children, much more of the British than the German
+type, and it was right pleasant to see her. She has very handsome brown
+eyes. Nice manners are a very charming thing, and some of the ladies
+here might set a good example to some _other_ young ladies I might
+mention (who do not live 100 miles from Quincy Street); Fräulein
+Borneman, for example. Let Alice cultivate a manner clinging yet
+self-sustained, reserved yet confidential; let her face beam with
+serious beauty, and glow with quiet delight at having you speak to her;
+let her exhibit short glimpses of a soul _with wings_, as it were (but
+very short ones); let her voice be musical and the tones of her voice
+full of caressing, and every movement of her full of grace, and you have
+no idea how lovely she will become.... I am sorry Wilky has had a
+relapse of his fever. He and Bob are still the working ones of the
+family (Harry too, though!), but I hope my day will yet come. Give him
+and Bob a great deal of love for me. Life in Teplitz is favorable to
+letter-writing and I will write to Bob next week. Love to every one
+else, from yours ever,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry James._
+
+
+FÜRSTENBAD, TEPLITZ, _Mar. 4, 1868_.
+
+...I have been admitted to the intimacy of a family here named G----,
+who keep a hotel and restaurant. Immense, bulky, garrulous, kind-hearted
+woman, father with thick red face, little eyes and snow-white hair, two
+daughters of about twenty. The whole conversation and tea-taking there
+reminded me so exactly of Erckmann-Chatrian's stories that I wanted to
+get a stenographer and a photographer to take them down. The great,
+thick remarks, all about housekeeping and domestic economy of some sort
+or other; the jokes; the masses of eatables, from the awful swine soup
+(tasting of nothing I could think of but the perspiration of the animal
+and which the terrible mother forced me to gulp down by accusing me,
+whenever I grew pale and faltered, of not relishing their food), through
+the sausages (liver sausages, blood sausages, and more), to the beer and
+wine; then the masses of odoriferous cheese, which I refused in spite of
+all attacks, entreaties and accusations, and then heard, oh, horrors!
+with somewhat the feeling I suppose with which a criminal hears the
+judge pass sentence of death upon him,--then heard an order given for
+some more sausages to be brought in to me instead; the air of religious
+earnestness with which the eating of the father was talked about, how
+the mother told the daughter not to give him so much wine, because he
+never enjoyed his beer so much after it, while he with his silver
+spectacles and pointing with his pudgy forefinger to the lines, read out
+of the newspaper half aloud to himself; the immense long room with walls
+of dark wood, the big old-fashioned china stove at each end of it, etc.,
+etc.,--all brought up the _Taverne du Jambon de Mayence_ into my
+mind....
+
+[W. J.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The water-cure at Teplitz worked no cure; but James repaired to
+Heidelberg in the spring, to hear Helmholtz lecture and with the hope of
+following the medical courses during the summer semester. Once more he
+had to stop work, and for a while he returned to Berlin. From there he
+traveled by way of Geneva, stopping characteristically for only the very
+briefest of glances at the familiar scenes of his school-days, and
+hurrying on to spend the latter part of the summer at another
+watering-place, Divonne in Savoy. The following brief letter seems to
+have been written there, and is interesting as a first reference to
+Charles Renouvier, a French philosopher who later exercised an important
+influence on James's thinking.
+
+
+
+
+_To his Father._
+
+
+[DIVONNE?], _Oct. 5, 1868_.
+
+DEAR FATHER,--...I have not been doing much studying lately, nor indeed
+for some time past, though I manage to keep something _dribbling_ all
+the while. I began the other day Kant's "Kritik," which is written
+crabbedly enough, but which strikes me so far as almost the sturdiest
+and _honestest_ piece of work I ever saw. Whether right or wrong (and it
+is pretty clearly wrong in a great many details of its _Analytik_ part,
+however the rest may be), there it stands like a great snag or mark to
+which everything metaphysical or psychological must be _referred_. I
+wish I had read it earlier. It is very slow reading and I shall only
+give it a couple of hours daily.
+
+I got a little book by a number of authors, "L'Année 1867
+Philosophique," which may interest you if you have not got it already.
+The introduction, a review of the state of philosophy in France for some
+years back, is by one Charles Renouvier, of whom I never heard before
+but who, for vigor of style and compression, going to the core of half a
+dozen things in a single sentence, so different from the namby-pamby
+diffusiveness of most Frenchmen, is unequaled by anyone. He takes his
+stand on Kant. I have not read the rest of the book.
+
+Here I stop and take my douche. I will be as economical as I can this
+winter in details, and next summer will see us together. I wish I had
+the inclination to write, or anything to write about, as Harry has. I
+feel ashamed of fattening on the common purse when all the other boys
+are working, but writing seems for me next to impossible. Lots of love
+to all. Yours,
+
+W. J.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The "cure" at Divonne was as profitless as had been the similar
+experiments at Teplitz. So instead of staying abroad for the winter,
+James turned his face homeward almost immediately. After a fortnight's
+companionship with H. P. Bowditch in Paris, he embarked on November 7
+for America, disappointed in the chief hopes with which he had landed in
+Europe eighteen months before, but much matured in character and
+thought, and resolved to seek his health and his career at home.
+
+[Illustration: Pencil Sketch from a Pocket Note-Book.]
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+1869-1872
+
+_Invalidism in Cambridge_
+
+
+THE return to Cambridge from Germany in November, 1868, marked the
+beginning of four outwardly uneventful years. James spent them under his
+father's roof. His family and intimate friends were usually close at
+hand; the stream of his correspondence shrank to almost nothing. The few
+letters that have been preserved do incomplete justice to this period,
+but can, fortunately, be supplemented by other documents.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+James obtained his medical degree easily enough in June, 1869; but he
+had no thought of engaging in the practice of medicine. He wanted to go
+on with physiology; but he was not strong enough to work in a
+laboratory. Condemned to sedentary occupations, and without any definite
+responsibilities, he seemed, to his own jaundiced vision, to be
+declining into a desultory and profitless idleness.
+
+In this he was hardly fair to himself or to the conditions. It is true
+that he had no remunerative occupation, and that he could look forward
+to no well-defined professional career for which he could be preparing
+and training himself. He was, also, handicapped by the fact that
+sometimes he could not use his eyes for more than two hours a day. On
+the other hand, he would probably not have been happy in any
+professional harness into which he could then have fitted, and was
+really more fortunate in having leisure to read and discuss and fill
+note-books forced upon him between his twenty-seventh and thirty-first
+years. Such leisure has been the unattained goal of many another man
+with a mind not one tenth so curious and speculative as his; and few men
+who have attained it have made as good use of their free time as James
+made of the years 1869 to 1872.
+
+His eyes were weak, to be sure, and his letters usually bewail his
+inability to use them more. But, skipping as he had trained himself to,
+and snatching at every opportunity, he somehow got over a great deal of
+reading in neurology, physiology of the nervous system, and psychology.
+He was not confined to the books that were on the shelves of the Quincy
+Street house, but could borrow from the excellent Harvard and Boston
+libraries without inconvenience. At times, when he was able to read for
+several hours a day, he used, as he put it, "to keep himself from using
+his mind too much" by turning to non-professional literature in German,
+French, and English. One letter to his brother (June 1, 1869) affords
+material for reflection upon the range and power of assimilation of a
+mind which could seek such relaxation. "I have," he writes in this
+letter, "been reading for recreation, since you left, a good many German
+books: Steffens and C. P. Moritz's autobiographies, some lyric poetry,
+W. Humboldt's letters, Schmidt's history of German literature, etc.,
+which have brought to a head the slowly maturing feeling of German
+culture.... Reading of the revival, or rather the birth, of German
+literature--Kant, Schiller, Goethe, Jacobi, Fichte, Schelling, [the]
+Schlegels, Tieck, Richter, Herder, Steffens, W. Humboldt, and a number
+of others--puts one into a real classical period. These men were all
+interesting as men, each standing as a type or representative of a
+certain way of taking life, and beginning at the bottom--taking nothing
+for granted. In England, the only parallel I can think of is Coleridge,
+and in France, Rousseau and Diderot. If the heroes and heroines of all
+of Ste.-Beuve's gossip had had a tenth part of the _significance_ of
+these and their male and female friends, bad readers like myself would
+never think of growing impatient with him as an old debauchee." A diary
+entry made by his sister Alice, a few years later says: "In old days,
+when [William's] eyes were bad, and I used to begin to tell him
+something which I thought of interest from whatever book I might be
+reading ... he would invariably say, 'I glanced into that book yesterday
+and read that.'"[44]
+
+He had already formed the habit of making marginal notes, of writing
+down summaries of his reading, and of formulating his ideas on
+paper--the admirable practice, in short, of confiding in note-books and
+addressing himself freely to the waste-basket. For instance: "In 1869,
+when still a medical student, he began to write an essay showing how
+almost everyone who speculated about brain processes illicitly
+interpolated into his account of them links derived from the entirely
+heterogeneous universe of Feeling. Spencer, Hodgson (in his 'Time and
+Space'), Maudsley, Lockhart, Clarke, Bain, Dr. Carpenter, and other
+authors were cited as having been guilty of the confusion. The writing
+was soon stopped because he perceived that the view which he was
+upholding against these authors was a pure conception, with no proofs to
+be adduced of its reality."[45]
+
+He kept some of his memoranda in a series of the alphabetized
+blank-books which used to be sold under the name of "Todd's Index Rerum"
+during the sixties, and which were devised to facilitate indexing and
+reference. He continued to make entries in these books until 1890, and
+perhaps later. He also filled copy-books and pocket note-books, of which
+a few mutilated but interesting fragments remain. In these he sometimes
+copied out quotations, sometimes noted comments on his reading,
+sometimes tried to clothe an idea of his own in precise words.
+Occasionally he made diary-like entries that show how familiar a
+companion he was making of the note-book. He was already at his ease in
+the practice of the Baconian maxim that reading maketh a full man,
+conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.
+
+A few book-notices or reviews did reach the public. Seven are listed
+under the years 1868 to 1872 in Professor R. B. Perry's "List of
+Published Writings." Although the matter of these reviews is seldom of
+present-day interest, the curious reader will find sentences and
+paragraphs in them that are prophetic of passages in James's later
+writings, and will observe that he already commanded a style that
+expressed the color and quality of his thought.[46]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Considering that James, while still in his twenties, had found such
+resources within himself, and had learned how to occupy himself in ways
+so appropriate to the development of his best faculties, it would seem
+that he need not have labored under any sense of frustration and
+impotence. But such a feeling undoubtedly did weigh heavily upon him
+during more or less of the whole period between his winter in Berlin and
+1872. And it was indeed due in great part to something else than the
+mere fact that he could not yet feel the rungs of the ladder of any
+particular career under his feet. No reader of the "Varieties of
+Religious Experience" can have doubted that he had known religious
+despondency himself as well as observed the distress of it in others.
+The problem of the moral constitution of things, the question of man's
+relation to the Universe,--whether significant or impotent and
+meaningless,--these had clearly come home to him as more than questions
+of metaphysical discourse. It was during this period that such doubts
+invaded his consciousness in a way that was personal and intimate and,
+for the time being, oppressive. He was tormented by misgivings which
+almost paralyzed his naturally buoyant spirit. Bad health, a feeling of
+the purposelessness of his own particular existence, his philosophic
+doubts and his constant preoccupation with them, all these combined to
+plunge him into a state of morbid depression. He seems to have hidden
+the depth of it from those who were about him. He even had an experience
+of that kind of melancholy "which takes the form of panic fear." When he
+wrote the chapter on the "sick soul" thirty years later, he put into it
+an account of this experience. He still disguised it as the report of an
+anonymous "French correspondent." Subsequently he admitted to M. Abauzit
+that the passage was really the story of his own case,[47] and it may be
+repeated here, for the words of the fictitious French correspondent, who
+was really James, are the most authentic statement that could be given.
+They will be found at page 160 of the "Varieties of Religious
+Experience."
+
+"Whilst in this state of philosophic pessimism and general depression
+of spirits about my prospects, I went one evening into a dressing-room
+in the twilight, to procure some article that was there; when suddenly
+there fell upon me without any warning, just as if it came out of the
+darkness, a horrible fear of my own existence. Simultaneously there
+arose in my mind the image of an epileptic patient whom I had seen in
+the asylum, a black-haired youth with greenish skin, entirely idiotic,
+who used to sit all day on one of the benches, or rather shelves,
+against the wall, with his knees drawn up against his chin, and the
+coarse gray undershirt, which was his only garment, drawn over them,
+inclosing his entire figure. He sat there like a sort of sculptured
+Egyptian cat or Peruvian mummy, moving nothing but his black eyes and
+looking absolutely non-human. This image and my fear entered into a
+species of combination with each other. _That shape am I_, I felt,
+potentially. Nothing that I possess can defend me against that fate, if
+the hour for it should strike for me as it struck for him. There was
+such a horror of him, and such a perception of my own merely momentary
+discrepancy from him, that it was as if something hitherto solid within
+my breast gave way entirely, and I became a mass of quivering fear.
+After this the universe was changed for me altogether. I awoke morning
+after morning with a horrible dread at the pit of my stomach, and with a
+sense of the insecurity of life that I never knew before, and that I
+have never felt since. It was like a revelation; and although the
+immediate feelings passed away, the experience has made me sympathetic
+with the morbid feelings of others ever since. It gradually faded, but
+for months I was unable to go out into the dark alone.
+
+"In general I dreaded to be left alone. I remember wondering how other
+people could live, how I myself had ever lived, so unconscious of that
+pit of insecurity beneath the surface of life. My mother in particular,
+a very cheerful person, seemed to me a perfect paradox in her
+unconsciousness of danger, which you may well believe I was very careful
+not to disturb by revelations of my own state of mind. I have always
+thought that this experience of melancholia of mine had a religious
+bearing.... I mean that the fear was so invasive and powerful that, if I
+had not clung to scripture-texts like _The eternal God is my refuge_,
+etc., _Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy-laden_, etc., _I am
+the Resurrection and the Life_, etc., I think I should have grown really
+insane."
+
+The date of this experience cannot and need not be fixed exactly. It was
+undoubtedly later than the Berlin winter and after the return to
+Cambridge. Perhaps it was during the winter of 1869-70, for one of the
+note-books contains an entry dated April 30, 1870, in which James's
+resolution and self-confidence appear to be reasserting themselves. This
+entry must be quoted too. It is not only illuminating with respect to
+1870, but suggests parts of the "Psychology" and of the philosophic
+essays that later gave comfort and courage to unnumbered readers.
+
+"I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. I finished the first
+part of Renouvier's second "Essais" and see no reason why his definition
+of Free Will--"the sustaining of a thought _because I choose to_ when I
+might have other thoughts"--need be the definition of an illusion. At
+any rate, I will assume for the present--until next year--that it is no
+illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.
+For the remainder of the year, I will abstain from the mere speculation
+and contemplative _Grüblei_[48] in which my nature takes most delight,
+and voluntarily cultivate the feeling of moral freedom, by reading books
+favorable to it, as well as by acting. After the first of January, my
+callow skin being somewhat fledged, I may perhaps return to metaphysical
+study and skepticism without danger to my powers of action. For the
+present then remember: care little for speculation; much for the _form_
+of my action; recollect that only when habits of order are formed can we
+advance to really interesting fields of action--and consequently
+accumulate grain on grain of willful choice like a very miser; never
+forgetting how one link dropped undoes an indefinite number. _Principiis
+obsta_--Today has furnished the exceptionally passionate initiative
+which Bain posits as needful for the acquisition of habits. I will see
+to the sequel. Not in maxims, not in _Anschauungen_,[49] but in
+accumulated _acts_ of thought lies salvation. _Passer outre._ Hitherto,
+when I have felt like taking a free initiative, like daring to act
+originally, without carefully waiting for contemplation of the external
+world to determine all for me, suicide seemed the most manly form to put
+my daring into; now, I will go a step further with my will, not only act
+with it, but believe as well; believe in my individual reality and
+creative power. My belief, to be sure, _can't_ be optimistic--but I will
+posit life (the real, the good) in the self-governing _resistance_ of
+the ego to the world. Life shall [be built in][50] doing and suffering
+and creating."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The next letter was written from Cambridge during the winter following
+the return from Germany, and while James was completing the work
+necessary to entitle him to a medical degree.[51] The reader will
+recognize "the firm of B & J" as the medical partnership proposed to
+Bowditch in the letter of December 12, 1867.
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry P. Bowditch._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Jan. 24, 1869_.
+
+MY DEAR HENRY,--I am in receipt of two letters from yez (dates
+forgotten) wherein you speak of having received my money and paid my
+bills and of Fleury's book. You're a gentleman in all respects. You said
+nothing about whether the pounds when reduced back to francs and Thalers
+made exactly the original sum from which the pounds were calculated. If
+it was but five centimes under and you have concealed it, I shall brand
+you as a villain where'er I go. So out with the truth. Do I still owe
+you anything?...
+
+I have just been quit by Chas. S. Peirce, with whom I have been talking
+about a couple of articles in the St. Louis "Journal of Speculative
+Philosophy" by him, which I have just read. They are exceedingly bold,
+subtle and incomprehensible, and I can't say that his vocal elucidations
+helped me a great deal to their understanding, but they nevertheless
+interest me strangely. The poor cuss sees no chance of getting a
+professorship anywhere, and is likely to go into the observatory for
+good. It seems a great pity that as original a man as he is, who is
+willing and able to devote the powers of his life to logic and
+metaphysics, should be starved out of a career, when there are lots of
+professorships of the sort to be given in the country to "safe,"
+orthodox men. He has had good reason, I know, to feel a little
+discouraged about the prospect, but I think he ought to hang on, as a
+German would do, till he grows gray....
+
+I saw Wyman a few weeks ago. He said his Indian collecting, etc., took
+up all his working time now. Do you keep your room above the freezing
+point or can't the thing be done? Have you made any bosom friends among
+French students, or do you find the superficial accidents of language
+and breeding to hold you wider apart than the deep force of your common
+humanity can draw you together? It's deuced discouraging to find how
+this is almost certain to be the case.
+
+The older I grow, the more important does it seem to me for the interest
+of science and of the sick, and of the firm of B. & J., that you should
+take charge of a big state lunatic asylum. Think of the interesting
+cases, and of the autopsies! And if you once took firm root, say at
+Somerville, I should feel assured of a refuge in my old and destitute
+days, for you certainly would not be treacherous enough to spurn me from
+the door when I presented myself--on the pretext that I was only
+shamming dementia. Think of the matter seriously.
+
+I read a little while ago Chambers's "Clinical Lectures," which are
+exceedingly interesting and able. The lectures on indigestion in the
+volume are worth, in quality, ten such books as that Guipon I left in
+Paris, though more limited in subject. I have been trying to get "Hilton
+on Rest and Pain," which you recommended, from the Athenæum, but, _more
+librorum_, when you want 'em, it keeps "out." ...
+
+I hope this letter is _décousue_ enough for you. What is a man to write
+when a reef is being taken in his existence, and absence from thought
+and life is all he aspires to. Better times will come, though, and with
+them better letters. Good-bye! Ever yours,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To O. W. Holmes, Jr., and John C. Gray, Jr._
+
+
+[_Winter of 1868-69._]
+
+Gents!--entry-thieves--chevaliers d'industrie--well-dressed
+swindlers--confidence men--wolves in sheep's clothing--asses in lion's
+skin--gentlemanly pickpockets--beware! The hand of the law is already on
+your throats and waits but a wink to be tightened. All the resources of
+the immensely powerful Corporation of Harvard University have been set
+in motion, and concealment of your miserable selves or of the almost
+equally miserable (though not _as such_ miserable) goloshes which you
+stole from our entry on Sunday night is as impossible as would be the
+concealment of the State House. The motive of your precipitate departure
+from the house became immediately evident to the remaining guests. But
+they resolved to _ignore_ the matter provided the overshoes were
+replaced within a week; if not, no _considerations whatever_ will
+prevent Messrs. Gurney & Perry[52] from proceeding to treat you with the
+utmost severity of the law. It is high time that some of these genteel
+adventurers should be made an example of, and your offence just comes in
+time to make the cup of public and private forbearance overflow. My
+father and self have pledged our lives, our fortunes and our sacred
+honor to see the thing through with Gurney and Perry, as the credit of
+our house is involved and we might ourselves have been losers, not only
+from you but from the aforesaid G. & P., who have been heard to go about
+openly declaring that "if they had known the party was going to be
+_that_ kind of an affair, d--d if they would not have started off
+earlier themselves with some of those aristocratic James overcoats,
+hats, gloves and canes!"
+
+So let me as a friend advise you to send the swag back. No questions
+will be asked--Mum's the word.
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To Thomas W. Ward._
+
+
+_March_ [?], 1869.
+
+...I had great movings of my bowels toward thee lately--the distant,
+cynical isolation in which we live with our heart's best brothers
+sometimes comes over me with a deep bitterness, and I had a little while
+ago an experience of life which woke up the spiritual monad within me as
+has not happened more than once or twice before in my life. "Malgré la
+vue des misères où nous vivons et qui nous tiennent par la gorge," there
+is an inextinguishable spark which will, when we least expect it, flash
+out and reveal the existence, at least, of something real--of reason at
+the bottom of things. I can't tell you how it was now. I'm swamped in an
+empirical philosophy.[53] I feel that we are Nature through and through,
+that we are wholly conditioned, that not a wiggle of our will happens
+save as the result of physical laws; and yet, notwithstanding, we are
+_en rapport_ with reason.--How to conceive it? Who knows? I'm convinced
+that the defensive tactics of the French "spiritualists" fighting a
+steady retreat before materialism will never do anything.--It is not
+that we are all nature _but_ some point which is reason, but that all is
+nature _and_ all is reason too. We shall see, damn it, we shall see!...
+
+[W. J.]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+"The Bootts," with whom "architect Ware" reported the Reverend Mr. Foote
+to be hand in glove in Italy in 1867, reappear in the following letter.
+Francis Boott (Harvard 1832) had early been left a widower, and had just
+returned from a long European residence which he had devoted to the
+education of his charming and gifted daughter "Lizzie," later to become
+the wife of Frank Duveneck of Cincinnati, the painter and sculptor.
+Boott was about the age of Henry James, Senior, but the intimacy which
+began at Pomfret during the summer of 1869 ripened into one of those
+whole-family friendships which obliterate differences of age. Later,
+although both the elder Jameses and young Mrs. Duveneck had died,
+William and Boott saw each other frequently in Cambridge. The beautiful
+little commemorative address which James delivered after Boott's death
+has been included in the volume of "Memories and Studies."
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry P. Bowditch._
+
+
+POMFRET, CONN., _Aug. 12, 1869_.
+
+...I have been at this place since July 1st with my family. There are a
+few farmhouses close together on the same road, which take boarders. We
+are in the best of them, and very pleasant it is. The country is
+beautifully hilly and fertile, and the climate deliciously windy and
+cool. I came here resolved to lead the life of an absolute caterpillar,
+and have succeeded very well so far, spending most of my time swinging
+in a hammock under the pine trees in front of the house, and having
+hardly read fifty pages of anything in the whole six weeks. It has told
+on me most advantageously. I am far better every way than when I came,
+and am beginning to walk about quite actively. Maybe it's the beginning
+of a final rise to health, but I'm so sick of prophesying that I won't
+say anything about it till it gets more confirmed. One thing is sure,
+however, that I've given the policy of "rest" a fair trial and shall
+consider myself justified next winter in going about visiting and to
+concerts, etc., regardless of the fatigue.
+
+I am forgetting all this while to tell you that I passed my examination
+with no difficulty and am entitled to write myself M.D., if I choose.
+Buckingham's midwifery gave me some embarrassment, but the rest was
+trifling enough. So there is one epoch of my life closed, and a pretty
+important one, I feel it, both in its scientific "yield" and in its
+general educational value as enabling me to see a little the inside
+workings of an important profession and to learn from it, as an average
+example, how all the work of human society is performed. I feel a good
+deal of intellectual hunger nowadays, and if my health would allow, I
+think there is little doubt that I should make a creditable use of my
+freedom, in pretty hard study. I hope, even as it is, not to have to
+remain absolutely idle--and shall try to make whatever reading I can do
+bear on psychological subjects....
+
+Wendell Holmes and John Gray were on here last Saturday and Sunday, and
+seemed in very jolly spirits at being turned out to pasture from their
+Boston pen. I should think Wendell worked too hard. Gray is going to
+Lenox for a fortnight, but W. is to take no vacation.
+
+During the month of July we had the good fortune to have as fellow
+boarders Mr. Boott and his daughter from Boston. Miss B., although not
+overpoweringly beautiful, is one of the very best members of her sex I
+ever met. She spent the first eighteen years of her life in Europe, and
+has of course Italian, French and German at her fingers' ends, and I
+never realized before how much a good education (I mean in its common
+sense of a wide information) added to the charms of a woman. She has a
+great talent for drawing, and was very busy painting here, which, as she
+is in just about the same helpless state in which I was when I abandoned
+the art, made her particularly interesting to me. You had better come
+home soon and make her acquaintance--for you know these first-class
+young spinsters do not _always_ keep for ever, although on the whole
+they tend to, in Boston.
+
+The successors to the Bootts in this house are Gen. Casey (of "Infantry
+Tactics" notoriety) and spouse. He is an amiable but mildish old
+gentleman, and about thirty years older than his wife. I'm glad, on the
+whole, that General Grant, and not he, was our commander in the late
+war.
+
+If you want some good light German reading, let me advise you to try at
+least the first half of Jung-Stilling's autobiography. He was a pious
+German who lived through the latter half of the last century, and wrote
+with the utmost vividness and naïveté all his experiences, that the
+glory of God's Providence might be increased. I read it with great
+delight a few weeks since; it merits the adjective _fresh_ as well as
+most books.
+
+I saw Jeffries Wyman a short time before leaving. He said he had heard
+from you. I'd give much to hear from your lips an account of your plans,
+hopes and so forth, as well as the _Ergebnisse_ of the past year. I was
+truly glad to hear of your determination to stick to physiology. However
+discouraging the work of each day may seem, stick at it long enough, and
+you'll wake up some morning--a physiologist--just as the man who takes a
+daily drink finds himself unexpectedly a drunkard. I wish I'd asked you
+sooner to send me a photograph of Bernard and Vulpian--or any other
+Parisian medical men worth having--is it too late now?--and too late for
+Pflüger? I address this still to Bonn, supposing they'll send it after
+you if you've gone.
+
+Write soon to yours affectionately,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To Miss Mary Tappan._
+
+
+_Sunday, April 26_ [1870?].
+
+MY DEAR MARY,--Mother says she met you in town this morning, looking
+more lovely than ever, but--_with your bonnet on the back of your head!_
+
+I hope that this is a mistake. Mother's eyesight is growing fallacious
+and frequently leads her to see what she would like to see. I cannot
+think that you would submit to be swayed in your own views of right
+bonnet-wearing by the mere vociferation of persons like her and Alice,
+especially when you had heard _me_ expressly say I agreed with you that
+the forehead is the truly ladylike place for a bonnet. Enough!---- I
+waded out to Cambridge from your party. If you enjoyed yourselves as
+much as I did (but I'm afraid you didn't) you will keep on giving them.
+Somehow your part of the town is very inaccessible to me or I should
+frequently bore you. Hoping, in spite of this fearful mother story
+today, that you are still unsophisticated, I am always yours
+affectionately,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+You need not answer this.
+
+[_Across top of first page_]
+
+Written two days ago--kept back from diffidence--sent now because
+anything is better than this dead silence between us!
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry James._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _May 7, 1870_.
+
+DEAR HARRY,--'Tis Saturday evening, ten minutes past six of the clock
+and a cold and rainy day (Indian winter, as T. S. P. calls such). I had
+a fire lighted in my grate this afternoon. There is nevertheless a
+broken blue spot in the eastern clouds as I look out, and the grass and
+buds have started visibly since the morning. The trees are half-way
+out--you of course have long had them in full leaf--and the early green
+is like a bath to the eyes. Father is gone to Newport for a day, and is
+expected back within the hour. My jaw is aching badly in consequence of
+a tooth I had out two days ago, the which refused to be pulled, was
+broken, but finally extracted, and has left its neighbors prone to ache
+since. I hope it won't last much longer. I spent the morning, part of it
+at least, in fishing the "Revues Germaniques" up from [the] cellar,
+looking over their contents, and placing them volumewise, and flat, in
+the two top shelves of the big library bookcase _vice_ Thies's good old
+books just removed, the shelves being too low to take any of our books
+upright. I feel melancholy as a whip-poor-will and took up pen and paper
+to sigh melodiously to you. But sighs are hard to express in words. We
+have been three weeks now without hearing from you, and if a letter does
+not come tomorrow or Monday, I don't know what'll become of us. Howells
+brought, a week ago, a long letter you had written to him on the eve of
+leaving Malvern, so our next will be from London....
+
+My! how I long to see you, and feel of you, and talk things over. I have
+at last, I think, begun to rise out of the sloughs of the past three
+months.... What a blessing this change of seasons is, as you used to
+say, especially in the spring. The winter is man's enemy, he must exert
+himself against it to live, or it will squeeze him in one night out of
+existence. So it is hateful to a sick man, and all the greater is the
+peace of the latter when it yields to a time when nature seems to
+coöperate with life and float one passively on. But I hear Father
+arriving and I must go down to hear his usual _compte rendu_.[54]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+_Sunday_, 3 P.M.
+
+No letter from you this morning.... It seems to me that all a man has to
+depend on in this world, is, in the last resort, mere brute power of
+resistance. I can't bring myself, as so many men seem able to, to blink
+the evil out of sight, and gloss it over. It's as real as the good, and
+if it is denied, good must be denied too. It must be accepted and hated,
+and resisted while there's breath in our bodies....
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry P. Bowditch._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Dec. 29, 1870_.
+
+MY DEAR HENRY,--Your letter written from Leipzig just before the
+declaration of war reached me in the country. I have thought of you and
+of answering you, abundantly, ever since; but have mostly been
+prevented by sheer physical _imbecillitas_. Now I am ashamed of such a
+state, and shall write you a page or so a day till the letter is
+finished. I have had no idea all this time where or what you have been,
+traveler, student, or medical army officer. You may imagine how excited
+I was at the beginning of the war. I had not dared to hope for such a
+complete triumph of poetic justice as occurred. Now I feel much less
+interested in the success of the Germans, first because I think it's
+time that the principle of territorial conquest were abolished, second
+because success will redound to the credit of autocratic government
+there, and good as that may happen to be in the particular junctures,
+it's unsafe and pernicious in the long run. Moreover, if France succeeds
+in beating off the Germans now, I should think there would be some
+chance of the peace being kept between them hereafter--the French will
+have gained an insight they never had of the horrors of a war of
+conquest, and some degree of loathing for it in the abstract; and they
+will not have to fight to regain their honor. Moreover, I should like to
+see the republic succeed. But if Alsace and Lorraine be taken, there
+_must_ be another war, for them and for honor. On the other hand,
+justice seems to demand a permanent penalty for the political immorality
+of France. So that there will be enough good to console one for the bad,
+whichever way it turns out....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+31st.
+
+As I said, I have no idea of how the war may have affected your
+movements and occupations. It did my heart good to hear of the solid and
+businesslike way in which you were working at Leipzig, and I should
+think [that], with Ludwig and the laboratory, you would feel like giving
+it another winter--though the other attractions of Berlin and Vienna
+must pull you rather strongly away. I heard a rumor the other day that
+Lombard's place was being kept for you here. I hope it's true, for your
+sake and that of Boston. Thank you very much for the photographs of
+Ludwig and Fechner. I have enjoyed Ludwig's face very much, he must be a
+good fellow; and Fechner, down to below the orbits, has a strange
+resemblance to Jeffries Wyman. I have quite a decent nucleus of a
+physiognomical collection now, and any further contributions it may
+please you to make to it will be most thankfully received.
+
+J. Wyman I have not seen since his return. Such is the state of brutal
+social isolation which characterizes this community! Partly sickness,
+partly a morbid shrinking from the society of anyone who is alive
+intellectually are to blame, however, in my case. I, as I wrote, am long
+since dead and buried in that respect. I fill my belly for about four
+hours daily with husks,--newspapers, novels and biographies, but thought
+is tabooed,--and you can imagine that conversation with Wyman should
+only intensify the sense of my degradation.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+_Jan. 23, 1871._
+
+Since my last date I have been unable to write until today, and now, I
+think, to make sure of the letter going at all, I had better cut it
+short and send it off to your father to direct. I have indeed nothing
+particular to communicate, and only want to give you assurance of my
+undying affection. This morning 4 degrees below zero, and N.W. wind.
+Don't you wish you were here to enjoy the sunshine of it? A batch of
+telegrams in the "Advertiser," showing that France must soon throw up
+the sponge. Faidherbe licked at St. Quentin, Bourbaki pursued, Chanzy
+almost disintegrated, and Paris frozen and starved out. Well, so be it!
+only the German liberals will have the harder battle to fight at home
+for the next twenty years. I suspect that England, irresolute and
+unhandsome as is the figure she makes externally, is today in a
+healthier state than any country in Europe. She is renovating herself
+socially, and although she may be eclipsed during these days of
+"militarismus," yet when they depart, as surely they must some time,
+from sheer exhaustion, she will be ready to take the lead by influence.
+I know of no news here to tell you. I suppose you get the "Nation,"
+which keeps up well, notwithstanding its monotony. I shall be expecting
+to fold you to my bosom some time next summer. Heaven speed the day!
+Write me as soon as you get this. You haven't the same excuse for
+silence that I have. Speak of your work, your plans and the war. Good
+bye, old fellow, and believe me, ever your friend,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry P. Bowditch._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Apr. 8, 1871_.
+
+...So the gallant Gauls are shooting each other again! I wish we knew
+what it all meant. From the apparent generality of the movement in
+Paris, it seems as if it must be something more dignified than it at
+first appeared. But can anything great be expected now from a nation
+between the two factions of which there is such hopeless enmity and
+mistrust as between the religious and the revolutionary parties in
+France? No mediation is possible between them. In England, America and
+Germany, a regular advance is possible, because each man confides in his
+brothers. However great the superficial differences of opinion, there is
+at bottom a trust in the power of the deep forces of human nature to
+work out their salvation, and the minority is contented to bide its
+time. But in France, nothing of the sort; no one feels secure against
+what he considers evil, by any guaranty but force; and if his opponents
+get uppermost, he thinks all is forever lost. How much Catholic
+education is to answer for this and how much national idiosyncrasy, it
+is hard to say. But I am inclined to think the latter is a large factor.
+The want of true sympathy in the French character, their love of
+external mechanical order, their satisfaction in police-regulation,
+their everlasting cry of "traitor," all point to it. But, on the other
+hand, protestantism would seem to have a good deal to do with the
+fundamental cohesiveness of society in the countries of Germanic blood.
+For what may be called the revolutionary party there has _developed_
+through insensible grades of rationalism out of the old orthodox
+conceptions, religious and social. The process has been a continuous
+modification of positive belief, and the extremes, even if they had no
+respect for each other and no desire for mutual accommodation (which I
+think at bottom they have), would yet be kept from cutting each other's
+throats by the intermediate links. But in France Belief and Denial are
+separated by a chasm. The step once made, "écrasez l'infâme" is the only
+watchword on each side. How any order is possible except by a Cæsar to
+hold the balance, it is hard to see. But I don't want to dose you with
+my crude speculations. This difference was brought home vividly to me by
+reading yesterday in the "Revue des Deux Mondes" for last December a
+splendid little story, "Histoire d'un Sous-Maître," by Erckmann-Chatrian,
+and what was uppermost in my mind came out easiest in writing.
+
+I shall be overjoyed to see you in September, but expect to hear from
+you many a time ere then. I see little medical society, none in fact;
+but hope to begin again soon. [R. H.] Fitz, I believe, is showing great
+powers in "Pathology" since his return. And I hear a place in the
+school is being kept warm for you on your return. Count me for an
+auditor. I invested yesterday in a ticket for a course of "University"
+lectures on "Optical Phenomena and the Eye," by B. Joy Jeffries, to be
+begun out here tomorrow. It's the first mingling in the business of life
+which I have done since my return home. Wyman is in Florida till May. He
+has an obstinate cough and seems anxious about his lungs. I hope he'll
+be spared, though, many a long year.
+
+Ever yours truly,
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To Charles Renouvier._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Nov. 2, 1872_.
+
+MONSIEUR,--Je viens d'apprendre par votre "Science de la Morale," que
+l'ouvrage de M. Lequier, auquel vous faites renvoi dans votre deuxième
+Essai de Critique, n'a jamais été mis en vente. Ceci explique l'insuccès
+avec lequel j'ai pendant longtemps tâché de me le procurer par la voie
+de la librairie.
+
+Serait-ce trop vous demander, s'il vous restait encore des exemplaires,
+de m'en envoyer un, que je présenterais, après l'avoir lu, en votre nom,
+à la bibliothèque Universitaire de cette ville?
+
+Si l'édition est déjà épuisée, ne vous mettez pas en peine de me
+répondre, et que le vif intérêt que je prends à vos idées serve d'excuse
+à ma demande. Je ne peux pas laisser échapper cette occasion de vous
+dire toute l'admiration et la reconnaissance que m'ont inspirée la
+lecture de vos Essais (sauf le 3me, que je n'ai pas encore lu). Grâce à
+vous, je possède pour la première fois une conception intelligible et
+raisonnable de la Liberté. Je m'y suis rangé à peu près. Sur d'autres
+points de votre philosophie il me reste encore des doutes, mais je puis
+dire que par elle je commence à renaître à la vie morale; et croyez,
+monsieur, que ce n'est pas une petite chose!
+
+Chez nous, c'est la philosophie de Mill, Bain, et Spencer qui emporte
+tout à présent devant lui. Elle fait d'excellents travaux en
+psychologie, mais au point de vue pratique elle est déterministe et
+matérialiste, et déjà je crois aperçevoir en Angleterre les symptomes
+d'une renaissance de la pensée religieuse. Votre philosophie par son
+côté phénoméniste semble très propre à frapper les ésprits élevés dans
+l'école empirique anglaise, et je ne doute pas dès qu'elle sera un peu
+mieux connue en Angleterre et dans ce pays, qu'elle n'ait un assez grand
+retentissement. Elle paraît faire son chemin lentement; mais je suis
+convaincu que chaque année nous rapprochera du jour où elle sera
+reconnue de tous comme étant la plus forte tentative philosophique que
+le siècle ait vue naître en France, et qu'elle comptera toujours comme
+un des grands jalons dans l'histoire de la speculation. Dès que ma santé
+(depuis quelques années très mauvaise) me permet un travail intellectuel
+un peu sérieux, je me propose d'en faire une étude plus approfondie et
+plus critique, et d'en donner un compte-rendu dans une de nos revues. Si
+donc, monsieur, il se trouve un exemplaire encore disponible de la
+"Rech[erche] d'une première Verité," j'oserai vous prier de l'envoyer à
+l'adresse de la libraire ci-incluse, en écrivant mon nom sur la
+couverture. M. Galette soldera tous les frais, s'il s'en trouve.
+
+Veuillez encore une fois, cher monsieur, croire aux sentiments
+d'admiration et de haut respect avec lesquels je suis votre très
+obéissant serviteur,
+
+WILLIAM JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+1872-1878
+
+_First Years of Teaching_
+
+
+IN 1872 President Eliot wished to provide instruction in physiology and
+hygiene for the Harvard undergraduates, and looked about him for
+instructors. He had formed an impression of James ten years before
+which, as he said, "was later to become useful to Harvard University,"
+and in the interval he had known him as a Cambridge neighbor and had
+been aware of the direction his interests had taken. He proposed that
+James and Dr. Thomas Dwight--a young anatomist who was also to become an
+eminent teacher--should share in the new undertaking. In August, 1872,
+the College appointed James "Instructor in Physiology," to conduct three
+exercises a week "during half of the ensuing academic year." Thus began
+a service in the University which was to be almost continuously active
+and engrossing until 1907.
+
+The fact that James began by teaching anatomy and physiology, passed
+thence to psychology, and last to philosophy, has been wrongly cited as
+if his interest in each successive subject of his college work had been
+the fruit of his experience in teaching the preceding subject. This
+inference from the mere sequence of events will appear strange to
+attentive readers of what has gone before. Indeed, if the fact that
+James devoted a good share of his time to physiology in the seventies
+calls for remark at all, it should be noted that his subject, from soon
+after the beginning, was really physiological psychology, and
+that--more interesting than anything else in this connection--one may
+discern a patient surrender to limitations imposed by the state of his
+health on the one hand, and on the other a sound sense of the value of
+physiology to psychological investigations and so to philosophy, as both
+underlying the sequence of events in his teaching. Whatever may have
+been the succession of his college "courses," psychology and philosophy
+were never divorced from each other in his thought or in his writings.
+Thus it is interesting to find, that at the very moment of his
+engagement to teach physiology,--at a date intermediate between the
+appointment and the commencement of the course in fact,--he wrote to his
+brother, "If I were well enough, now would be my chance to strike at
+Harvard College, for Peterson has just resigned his sub-professorship of
+philosophy, and I know of no very formidable opponent. But it's
+impossible. I keep up a small daily pegging at my physiology, whose
+duties don't begin till January, and which I shall find easy, I think."
+
+He had needed definite duties and responsibilities and more or less
+recognized his need; so he undertook to teach a subject which, though
+congenial and interesting, lay distinctly off the path of his deepest
+inclination.
+
+The first three fragments that follow refer to his preparation for the
+plunge into teaching. The course on Comparative Anatomy and Physiology
+was given by Dwight and James under the general head of Natural History
+and was an "elective" open to Juniors and Seniors. "As the course was
+experimental and a part of the new expansion of the Elective System,"
+writes President Eliot, "the President and the Faculty were interested
+in the fact that the new course under these two young instructors
+attracted 28 Juniors and 25 Seniors."
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry James._
+
+
+SCARBORO, _Aug. 24, 1872_.
+
+...The appointment to teach physiology is a perfect God-send to me just
+now, an external motive to work, which yet does not strain me--a dealing
+with men instead of my own mind, and a diversion from those
+introspective studies which had bred a sort of philosophical
+hypochondria in me of late and which it will certainly do me good to
+drop for a year....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Nov. 24, 1872_.
+
+...I go into the Medical School nearly every morning to hear Bowditch
+lecture, or paddle round in his laboratory. It is a noble thing for
+one's spirits to have some responsible work to do. I enjoy my revived
+physiological reading greatly, and have in a corporeal sense been better
+for the past four or five weeks than I have been at all since you
+left....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Feb. 13, 1873_.
+
+...This morning arose, went to Brewer's to get two partridges to garnish
+our cod-fish dinner. Bought at Richardson's an "Appleton's Journal"
+containing part of "Bressant," a novel by Julian Hawthorne, to send Bob
+Temple. At 10.30 arrived your letter of January 26th, which was a very
+pleasant continuation of your _Aufenthalt_ in Rome. At 12.30, after
+reading an hour in Flint's "Physiology," I went to town, paid a bill of
+Randidge's, looked into the Athenæum reading-room, got one dozen raw
+oysters at Higgins's saloon in Court Street, came out again, thermometer
+having risen to near thawing point, dozed half an hour before the fire,
+and am now writing this to you.
+
+I am enjoying a two weeks' respite from tuition, the boys being
+condemned to pass examinations, in which I luckily take no part at
+present. I find the work very interesting and stimulating. It presents
+two problems, the intellectual one--how best to state your matter to
+them; and the practical one--how to govern them, stir them up, not bore
+them, yet make them work, etc. I should think it not unpleasant as a
+permanent thing. The authority is at first rather flattering to one. So
+far, I seem to have succeeded in interesting them, for they are
+admirably attentive, and I hear expressions of satisfaction on their
+part. Whether it will go on next year can't at this hour, for many
+reasons, be decided. I have done almost absolutely no visiting this
+winter, and seen hardly anyone or heard anything till last week, when a
+sort of frenzy took possession of me and I went to a symphony concert
+and thrice to the theatre. A most lovely English actress, young,
+innocent, refined, has been playing Juliet, which play I enjoyed most
+intensely, though it was at the Boston Theatre and her support almost as
+poor as it could have been. Neilson is she hight. I ne'er heard of her
+before. A rival American beauty has been playing a stinking thing of
+Sardou's ("Agnes") at the Globe, which disgusted me with cleverness. Her
+name is Miss Ethel, and she is a ladylike but depressing phenomenon, all
+made up of nerves and American insubstantiality. I have read hardly
+anything of late, some of the immortal Wordsworth's "Excursion" having
+been the best. I have simply shaken hands with Gray since his
+engagement, and have only seen Holmes twice this winter. I fear he is at
+last feeling the effects of his overwork....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Apr. 6, 1873_.
+
+...I have been cut out all this winter from the men with whom I used to
+gossip on generalities, Holmes, Putnam, Peirce, Shaler, John Gray and,
+last not least, yourself. I rather hanker after it, Bowditch being
+almost the only man I have seen anything of this winter, and that at his
+laboratory.... Child and I have struck up quite an intimacy.... T. S.
+Perry is my only surviving crony. He dines pretty regular once a week
+here.... Ever your affectionate
+
+W. J.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The next letter, although not from William James, will help to fill out
+the picture.
+
+
+
+
+_Henry James, Senior, to Henry James._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Mar. 18, 1873_.
+
+... [William] gets on greatly with his teaching; his
+students--fifty-seven of them--are elated with their luck in having him,
+and I feel sure he will have next year a still larger number by his
+fame. He came in the other afternoon while I was sitting alone, and
+after walking the floor in an animated way for a moment, broke out:
+"Bless my soul, what a difference between me as I am now and as I was
+last spring at this time! Then so hypochondriacal"--he used that word,
+though perhaps less in substance than form--"and now with my mind so
+cleared up and restored to sanity. It's the difference between death and
+life."
+
+He had a great effusion. I was afraid of interfering with it, or
+possibly checking it, but I ventured to ask what especially in his
+opinion had produced the change. He said several things: the reading of
+Renouvier (particularly his vindication of the freedom of the will) and
+of Wordsworth, whom he has been feeding on now for a good while; but
+more than anything else, his having given up the notion that all mental
+disorder requires to have a physical basis. This had become perfectly
+untrue to him. He saw that the mind does act irrespectively of material
+coercion, and could be dealt with therefore at first hand, and this was
+health to his bones. It was a splendid declaration, and though I had
+known from unerring signs of the fact of the change, I never had been
+more delighted than by hearing of it so unreservedly from his own lips.
+He has been shaking off his respect for men of mere science as such, and
+is even more universal and impartial in his mental judgments than I have
+known him before....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+James's first Harvard appointment had been for one year only. In the
+spring of 1873 the question of its renewal on somewhat different terms
+came up. President Eliot informed him that the College wished some one
+man to give the instruction which he and Dr. Dwight had shared between
+them, and offered him the whole course, including the anatomy.
+
+It cost him "some perplexity to make the decision." He thought he saw
+that such an instructorship "might easily grow into a permanent
+biological appointment, to succeed Wyman, perhaps." At first he resolved
+"to fight it out on the line of mental science," feeling that "with such
+arrears of lost time behind [him] and such curtailed power of work," he
+could no longer "afford to make so considerable an expedition into the
+field of anatomy." But when he then considered himself as a possible
+future teacher of philosophy, he was overwhelmed by a feeling which he
+recorded on a page of his diary: "Philosophical activity _as a business_
+is not normal for most men, and not for me.... To make the _form_ of all
+possible thought the prevailing _matter_ of one's thought breeds
+hypochondria. Of course my deepest interest will, as ever, lie with the
+most general problems. But ... my strongest moral and intellectual
+craving is for some stable reality to lean upon.... That gets reality
+for us in which we place our responsibility, and the concrete facts in
+which a biologist's responsibilities lie form a fixed basis from which
+to aspire as much as he pleases to the mastery of universal questions
+when the gallant mood is on him; and a basis too upon which he can
+passively float and tide over times of weakness and depression, trusting
+all the while blindly in the beneficence of nature's forces, and the
+return of higher opportunities." Accordingly he determined to give
+himself to biology, reporting to his brother Henry, who was at that time
+in Europe, "I am not a strong enough man to choose the other and nobler
+lot in life, but I can in a less penetrating way work out a philosophy
+in the midst of the other duties...."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+As the summer went on, he still had misgivings that he would not be
+strong enough to prepare and conduct the laboratory demonstrations
+necessary for a large class in comparative anatomy and physiology. He
+saw that his first year of teaching had been "of great moral service to
+him," but thought that in other ways the strain and fatigue had been a
+brake upon the rate of his wished-for improvement. He therefore made up
+his mind to postpone the instructorship for a year and go abroad once
+more.
+
+These hesitations, and a few months in Europe, marked the end of the
+period of morbid depression through which the reader has been following
+him. He returned to America eager for work.
+
+Meanwhile parts of four letters written while he was abroad may be
+given.
+
+
+
+
+_To his Family._
+
+
+ON BOARD S.S. SPAIN, _Oct. 17, 1873_.
+
+DEAREST FAMILY,--I begin my Queenstown letter now because the first
+section of the voyage seems to be closing. The delicious warm stern
+wind, cloudy sky and smooth sea which we have had, unlike anything I
+remember on the Atlantic, threatens to change into something less
+agreeable, for the wind is fresh ahead, and the waves all capped with
+white and the vessel begins to roll more and more. Hitherto she has not
+rolled an inch, and all our days have been spent on deck, and I have
+enjoyed less sickness than ever before; though I must say I loathe the
+element. I am confirmed in my preference for big boats, and shall
+probably try one of the Inman line when I return, as this, sweet Alice,
+is rather Cunardy as to its table and sitting accommodations. Miss K----
+and her two friends sit opposite me at meals and seem to ply a good
+knife and fork. The other passengers are inoffensive and quiet, with the
+exception of my roommate, who is a fine fellow, and a lovely young
+missionary going to the Gabun coast to convert the niggers--a fearful
+waste of herself, one is tempted to think. There are eleven missionaries
+on board, and a young lady who is traveling with a party of them and
+confided to me yesterday that she dreaded it was her doom to become one
+too. My chum is a graduate of Bowdoin College, going to study two years
+in Europe on money which he made during his vacations by peddling quack
+medicines of his own concoction, and cutting corns. He has supported
+himself four years in this way, and _abgesehen_ from the swindle of his
+life in vacation time, is an honor to his native land, without
+prejudices and full of animal spirits, wit and intelligence. We wash in
+the same basin. He has never tasted spirituous liquor. I am also
+intimate with a French commercial traveler, incredibly ignorant, but
+extremely good-natured and gentlemanly. I have now determined to stick
+to the missionary as close as possible. She is twenty-four years old and
+very beautiful. I finished the "Strange Adventures of a Phaeton"
+yesterday. A perfectly beautiful book, beside which "Good-bye,
+Sweetheart," which I have begun, tastes coarse.
+
+Good-bye. I hope a storm won't arise, but if it does, I'm glad enough to
+be in such an extraordinarily steady ship. I pity you at home without
+me, and long to pat the rich, creamy throat of little sister.
+(Expression derived from "Goodbye, Sweetheart.")
+
+ * * * * *
+
+_Friday Morn._
+
+Ach! I thought yesterday was Friday, but found in the evening that it
+was only Thursday. No matter, six days are now past. As I predicted, the
+sea grew pretty big before sundown and the ship has been skipping about
+all night like a lively kitten. But her motion is delightfully easy, and
+no one, so far as I can see, has been sick. I never was better in my
+life than yesterday made me. Nevertheless, little Sister, in looking at
+the black waves with their skin of silver lace I have regretted saying
+that safety was a minor consideration with me. I doubt in my heart that
+even comfort is to be preferred to danger. The sea looks too
+indigestible--the all-digesting sea! I threw away "Goodbye, Sweetheart"
+at the 40th page and have begun the "Tour of the World in Eighty Days,"
+a much better book. I am sorry that the little beauty's care for her
+Bro.'s comfort did not go so far as to provide him with a
+needle-and-thread-book, etc. _True_ sympathy divines wants; and a sister
+who could not foresee that in three days her bro. should be driven to
+borrowing Miss K----'s needle-book to sew on his buttons cannot be said
+to be in very close magnetic relations with him. I lurched about the
+deck arm in arm with the young missionary yestreen. I told her that, if
+I were a missionary, instead of going to the most unhealthy part of
+Africa, I would choose, say, Paris for a field. She, all unconscious of
+the subtle humor of my remark, said, "Oh, yes! there are fearful numbers
+of heathen there!" I have just rolled out of bed and into my clothes,
+and write this in my stateroom, but can stand no longer its aromatic air
+and hasten to say good-bye and mount to the deck.... Good-bye, good-bye.
+Ever your loving
+
+W. J.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+On landing, James proceeded to Florence, to join his brother Henry for a
+winter in Italy.
+
+
+
+
+_To his Sister._
+
+
+FLORENCE, _Oct. 29_ [1873].
+12 midnight.
+
+BELOVED SWEETLINGTON,--At this solemn hour I can't go to sleep without
+remembering thee and thy beauty. I have just arrived from an
+eleven-hours ride from Turin, pouring rain all the way. Ditto yesterday
+during my twenty-two-hours ride from Paris. The Angel sleeps in number
+39 hard by, all unwitting that I, the Demon (or perhaps you have already
+begun in your talks to distinguish me from him as the Archangel), am
+here at last. I wouldn't for worlds disturb this his last independent
+slumber.
+
+Not having seen the sun but for three days (on board ship) since the
+eleventh, the natural gloom of my disposition and circumstances has been
+much aggravated. And I had in London and Paris a pretty melancholy time.
+I stayed but two days and one night in the latter place, which,
+according to the law of opposition that rules your opinions and mine,
+seemed to me a very tedious place. Its Haussmanization has produced a
+terribly monotonous-looking city--no expression of having _grown_, in
+any of the quarters I visited, and I did not have time to bring to the
+surface what power I may possess of sympathizing with the French way of
+being and doing. The awful thin and slow dinner in the tremendously
+imperial dining-room of the Hôtel du Louvre, the exaggerated neatness
+and order and reglementation of everything visible, contrasted with the
+volcanic situation of things at the present moment, all a-kinder turned
+my plain Yankee stomach, which has not yet recovered from the simpler
+lessons of joy it learnt at Scarboro and Magnolia last summer. I went to
+the Théâtre Français and heard a play in verse of Ponsard, thin stuff
+splendidly represented. Altogether I don't care if I never go to Paris
+again. London "impressed" me twelve times as much. Today in Italy my
+spirits have riz. The draggle-tailed physiognomy of the railway stations
+on the way here, the beautifully good-natured easy-going expression on
+the faces of the railway officials, the charming dialogue I have just
+had with the aged but angelic chambermaid whose phrases I managed to
+understand the sense of as a whole without recognizing any particular
+words--together with the consciousness of having for a time come to my
+journey's end and of the certainty of breakfasting tomorrow with the
+Angel, all let me go to bed with a light heart; hoping that yours is as
+much so, beloved Alice and all....
+
+
+
+
+_To his Sister._
+
+
+FLORENCE, _Nov. 23, 1873_.
+
+BELOVED SISTERKIN,--Your "nice long letter," as you call it, of Oct. 26
+reached me five days ago, Mother's of November 4th yesterday, and with
+it one from Father to Harry. Though you will probably disbelieve me, I
+cannot help stating how agreeable it is to me to be once more in
+regular communication with that which, in spite of all shortcomings, is
+all that has ever been vouchsafed to me in the way of a "home" (and a
+mother). The hotel in which we live here is anything but home-like. In
+fact, when the heart aches for cosiness, etc., all it can do is to turn
+out into the street.
+
+I begin to feel, too, strongly that at my time of life, with such a set
+of desultory years behind, what a man most wants is to be settled and
+concentrated, to cultivate a patch of ground which may be humble but
+still is his own. Here all this dead civilization crowding in upon one's
+consciousness forces the mind open again even as the knife the unwilling
+oyster--and what my mind wants most now is practical tasks, not the
+theoretical digestion of additional masses of what to me are raw and
+disconnected empirical materials. I feel like one still obliged to eat
+more and more grapes and pears and pineapples, when the state of the
+system imperiously demands a fat Irish stew, or something of that sort.
+I knew it all before I came, however; and I hope in a fortnight to be
+able comparatively to disregard what lies about me and get interested in
+the physiological books I brought. So far I find the pictures, etc.,
+drive my thoughts far away. I have just been reading a big German
+octavo, Burkhardt's "Renaissance in Italy," with the title of which you
+may enrich your historical consciousness, though I hardly think you need
+read the book. This is the place for history. I don't see how, if one
+lived here, historical problems could help being the most urgent ones
+for the mind. It would suit you admirably. Even art comes before one
+here much more as a problem--how to account for its development and
+decline--than as a refreshment and an edification. I really think that
+end is better served by the stray photographs which enter our houses at
+home, finding us in the midst of our work and surprising us.
+
+But here I am pouring out this one-sided splenetic humor upon you
+without having the least intended it when I sat down. Your pen
+accidentally slips into a certain vein and you must go on till you get
+it out clearly. If you had heard me telling Harry two or three times
+lately that I feared the fatal fascination of this place,--that I began
+to feel it taking little stitches in my soul,--you would have a
+different impression of my state than my above written words have left
+upon you.... I went out intending to stroll in the Boboli Garden, a
+wonderful old piece of last-century stateliness, but found it shut till
+twelve. So I returned to Harry's room, where I sit by the pungent wood
+fire writing this letter which I did not expect to begin till the
+afternoon, while he, just at this moment rising from the table where his
+quill has been busily scratching away at the last pages of his
+Turguenieff article, comes to warm his legs and puts on another log....
+
+Good-bye beloved Sister, and Father and Mother.... Write repeatedly such
+nice long letters, and make glad the heart of both the Angel and the
+other brother,
+
+W. J.
+
+
+
+
+_To his Sister._
+
+
+ROME, _Dec. 17, 1873_.
+
+BELOVED BEAUTLINGTON,--I cannot retire to rest on this eve of a
+well-filled day without imparting to thy noble nature a tithe of the
+enjoyment and happiness with which I am filled, and wishing you was here
+to take your share in it.... The barbarian mind stretches little by
+little to take in Rome, but I doubt if I shall ever call it the "city of
+my soul," or "my country." Strange to say, my very enjoyment of what
+here belongs to hoary eld has done more to reconcile me to what belongs
+to the present hour, business, factories, etc., etc., than anything I
+ever experienced. Every day I sally out into the sunshine and plod my
+way o'er steps of broken thrones and temples until one o'clock, when I
+repair to a certain café in the Corso, begin to eat and read "Galignani"
+and the "Débats," until Harry comes in with the flush of successful
+literary effort fading off his cheek. (It may interest the sympathetic
+soul of Mother to know that my diet until that hour consists of a roll,
+which a waiter in wedding costume brings up to my room when I rise, and
+three sous' worth of big roasted chestnuts, which I buy, on going out,
+from an old crone a few doors from the hotel. In this respect I am
+economical. Likewise in my total abstinence from spirituous liquors, to
+which Harry, I regret to say, has become an utter slave, spending a
+large part of his earnings in Bass's Ale and wine, and trembling with
+anger if there is any delay in their being brought to him.) After
+feeding, the Angel in his old and rather shabby striped overcoat, and I
+in my usual neat attire, proceed to walk together either to the big
+Pincian terrace which overhangs the city, and where on certain days
+everyone resorts, or to different churches and spots of note. I always
+dine at the table-d'hôte here; Harry sometimes, his indisposition lately
+(better the past two days) having made him prefer a solitary gorge at
+the restaurant.
+
+The people in the house are hardly instructive or exciting, but at
+dinner and for an hour after in the dining-room they very pleasantly
+kill time. I am become so far Anglicized that I find myself quite
+fearful of speaking too much to a family of three "cads" who sit
+opposite me at the table-d'hôte, and of whom the young lady (though
+rather greasy about the face) is very handsome and intelligent. In the
+evening I usually light my fire and read some local book....
+
+I got a note from Hillebrand saying Schiff would gladly let me work in
+his laboratory if I liked. I suppose I ought if I can, but I hanker
+after home even at the price of a February voyage, and I hate to spend
+so much money here on my mere gizzard and cheeks.--There, my sweet
+sister, I hope that is a sufficiently spirited epistle for 10.30 P.M.
+When, oh, when, will you write me another like the solitary one I got
+from you in Florence? Seven weeks and one letter! C'est très
+caractéristique de vous! I wrote two days ago to Annie Ashburner. Tell
+the adorable Sara Sedgwick [Mrs. W. E. Darwin] that I can't possibly
+refrain much longer--in spite of my just resentment--from writing to
+her. Love to all.... Your
+
+W. J.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+After his return his college duties proved both absorbing and
+stimulating. Beginning, as the reader has seen, as an instructor in the
+Department of Natural History, charged with teaching the comparative
+anatomy and physiology of vertebrates, he added a course on
+physiological psychology in 1876, and organized the beginnings of the
+psychological laboratory.[55] The next year this course was transferred
+to the Department of Philosophy and given under the title "Psychology."
+He contributed numerous reviews of scientific and philosophic
+literature, along with a few anonymous articles, to the columns of the
+"Atlantic Monthly" and the "Nation," and in 1878 appeared in the
+"Journal of Speculative Philosophy" and the "Critique Philosophique,"
+with three important papers entitled "Spencer's Definition of Mind as
+Correspondence," "Brute and Human Intellect," and "Quelques
+Considérations sur la Méthode Subjective."
+
+Meanwhile his correspondence diminished to its minimum. When his brother
+Henry also came home to America in 1874, it ceased almost entirely. It
+did not begin to flow freely again, at least so far as letters are now
+recoverable, until after 1878.
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry James._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _June 25, 1874_.
+
+A few days ago came your letter from Florence of June 3, speaking of the
+glare on the _piazza_ and the coolness and space of your rooms, of your
+late dinners and your solitude, and of the progress of your novel, and,
+finally, of your expected departure about the 20th; so that I suppose
+you are today percolating the cool arcades of Bologna or the faded
+beauties of Verona, or haply [are] at Venice.... As the weeks glide by,
+my present life and my last year's life at home seem to glide together
+across the five months breach that Italy made in them, and to become
+continuous; while those months step out of the line and become a sort of
+side-decoration or picture hanging vaguely in my memory. As this happens
+more and more, I take the greater pleasure in it. Especially does the
+utter friendliness of Florence, Rome, etc., grow dear to me, and get
+strangely mixed up with still earlier and more faded impressions,
+derived I know not whence, which infused into the places when I first
+saw them that strange thread of familiarity. The thought of the
+Florentine places you name in your letters like "leiser Nachhall längst
+verklungner Lieder, zieht mit Errinnerungsschauer durch die Brust." I
+hope you'll pass through Dresden if you sail from Germany. I forgot to
+say that the Eagle line from Hamburg has now the largest and finest
+ships and the newest....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Miss Theodora Sedgwick, to whom the next letter is addressed, was a
+member of the Stockbridge and New York family of that name, and a sister
+of Mrs. Charles Eliot Norton and Mrs. William Darwin, to whom reference
+has already been made. At this time she was living with two maiden aunts
+named Ashburner, friends of James's parents, in a house on Kirkland
+Street, Cambridge, not far from Mr. Norton's "Shady Hill." The letter of
+November 14, 1866, contained an allusion to this household, and others
+will occur as the letters proceed.
+
+
+
+
+_To Miss Theodora Sedgwick._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Aug. 8, 1874_.
+
+MISS THEODORA SEDGWICK
+
+to WILLIAM JAMES, Dr.
+
+ Aug. 6, to 1 Orchestra Seat in Hippodrome [Barnum's Circus] $1.00
+ " " " 2 carriage fares at 50c. $1.00
+ " " " 1 glass vanilla cream sodawater $ .10
+ " " " 1 plate of soup lost $ .25
+ " " " 4 hours time at 12-1/2 cents $ .50
+ " " " Sundries $ .05
+ -----
+ Total $2.90
+
+ Rec'd on account. $2.00
+
+WM. JAMES
+
+HONORED MISS,--I hope you will find the aforesaid charges moderate. When
+you transmit me the 90 cents still due, please send back at the same
+time whatever letters of mine you may still have in your possession, and
+the diamonds, silks, etc., which you may have at different times been
+glad to receive from me. Likewise both pieces of the collar stud I so
+recently lavished upon you. We can then remain as strangers.
+
+I come of a race sensitive in the extreme; more accustomed to treat than
+to be treated, especially in this manner; and caring for its money as
+little as for its life. What wonder then that the mercenary conduct of
+One whom I have ever fostered without hope of pecuniary reward should
+work like madness in my brain?
+
+On the point of closing I see with rapture that a way of accommodation
+is still open! O joy! The salmon, blackberries, etc., I consumed, had a
+market value. By charging me for the tea 90 cents, you will make the
+thing reciprocal, and I will call the account square. Perhaps even then
+the dreadful feeling of wounded pride and Barnum-born resentment may
+with time fade away. Amen. Respectfully yours,
+
+W. J.
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry James._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Jan._ [2], 1876.
+
+...Your letter No. 2 speaking of your visit to Turguenieff was received
+by me duly and greatly enjoyed. I never heard you speak so
+enthusiastically of any human being. It is too bad he is to leave Paris;
+but if he gives you the "run" of Flaubert and eke George Sand, it will
+be so much gained. I don't think you know Miss A----, but if you did,
+you would thank me for pointing out to you the parallelism between her
+and George Sand which overwhelmed me the other day when I was calling on
+her, and she (who has just lost her sister B---- and had her father go
+through an attack of insanity) was snuggling down so hyper-comfortably
+into garrulity about B----, and her poor dead T---- and her dead mother,
+that I was fairly suffocated, just as I am by the _comfort_ George Sand
+takes in telling you of the loves of servant men for ladies, and other
+things _contra naturam_.
+
+Christmas passed off here in a rather wan and sallow manner. I got a
+gold scarf-ring from Mother and a gold watch-chain from Aunt Kate. Let
+me, by the way, advise you to get a scarf-ring; 't is one of the
+greatest inventions of modern times, in saving labor, silk and shirt
+fronts. Alice got a desk, and from me a Scotch terrier pup only seven
+weeks old, whom we call Bunch, who has almost doubled his size in a
+week, who is a perfect lion in determination and courage, and who don't
+seem to care a jot for any human society but that of Jane in the
+kitchen, whose person is, I suppose, pervaded by a greasy and smoky
+smell agreeable to his nostrils. He has a perfect passion for the
+dining-room; whenever he is left to himself, he travels thither and lies
+down under the table and takes no notice of you when you go to call him.
+He does not sleep half as much as Dido, never utters a sound when shut
+up for the night in the kitchen, and altogether fills us with a sort of
+awe for the Roman firmness and independence of his character. He is
+"animated" by a colliquative diarrhoea or cholera, which keeps us all
+sponging over his tracks, but which don't affect his strength or spirits
+a bit. He is in short a very queer substitute for poor, dear Dido....
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry James._
+
+
+NEWPORT, _June 3, 1876_.
+
+MY DEAR H.,--I write you after [a] considerable interval filled with too
+much work and weariness to make letter-writing convenient.... I ran away
+three days ago, the recitations being over for the year, in order to
+break from the studious associations of home. I have been staying at the
+Tweedies with Mrs. Chapman, and James Sturgis and his wife, and enjoying
+extremely, not the conversation indoors, but the lonely lying on the
+grass on the cliffs at Lyly Pond, and four or five hours yesterday at
+the Dumplings, feeling the moving air and the gentle living sea. There
+is a purity and mildness about the elements here which purges the soul
+of one. And I have been as if I had taken opium, not wanting to do
+anything else than the particular thing I happened to be doing at the
+moment, and feeling equally good whether I stood or walked or lay, or
+spoke or was silent. It's a splendid relief from the overstrain and
+stimulus of the past few scholastic months. I go the day after tomorrow
+(Monday) with the Tweedies to New York, assist at Henrietta Temple's
+wedding on Tuesday, and then pass on to the Centennial for a couple of
+days. I suppose it will be pretty tiresome, but I want to see the
+English pictures, which they say are a good show.... I fancy my
+vacationizing will be confined to visits of a week at a time to
+different points, perhaps the pleasantest way after all of spending it.
+Newport as to its villas, and all that, is most repulsive to me. I
+really didn't know how little charm and how much shabbiness there was
+about the place. There are not more than three or four houses out of the
+whole lot that are not offensive, in some way, externally. But the mild
+nature grows on one every day. This afternoon, God willing, I shall
+spend on Paradise.[56]
+
+The Tweedies keep no horses, which makes one walk more or pay more than
+one would wish. The younger Seabury told me yesterday that he was just
+reading your "Roderick Hudson," but offered no [comment]. Colonel
+Waring said of your "American" to me: "I'm not a blind admirer of H.
+James, Jr., but I said to my wife after reading that first number, 'By
+Jove, I think he's hit it this time!'" I think myself the thing opens
+very well indeed, you have a first-rate datum to work up, and I hope
+you'll do it well.
+
+Your last few letters home have breathed a tone of contentment and
+domestication in Paris which was very agreeable to get.... Your accounts
+of Ivan Sergeitch are delightful, and I envy you the possession of the
+young painter's intimacy. Give my best love to Ivan. I read his book
+which you sent home (foreign books sent by mail pay duty now, though; so
+send none but good ones), and although the vein of "morbidness" was so
+pronounced in the stories, yet the mysterious depths which his plummet
+sounds atone for all. It is the amount of life which a man feels that
+makes you value his mind, and Turguenieff has a sense of worlds within
+worlds whose existence is unsuspected by the vulgar. It amuses me to
+recommend his books to people who mention them as they would the novels
+of Wilkie Collins. You say we don't notice "Daniel Deronda." I find it
+extremely interesting. Gwendolen and her spouse are masterpieces of
+conception and delineation. Her ideal figures are much vaguer and
+thinner. But her "sapience," as you excellently call it, passes all
+decent bounds. There is something essentially womanish in the
+irrepressible garrulity of her moral reflections. Why is it that it
+makes women feel so good to moralize? Man philosophizes as a matter of
+business, because he must,--he does it to a purpose and then lets it
+rest; but women don't seem to get over being tickled at the discovery
+that they have the faculty; hence the tedious iteration and restlessness
+of George Eliot's commentary on life. The La Farges are absent. Yours
+always,
+
+W. J.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Under the title "Bain and Renouvier," James contributed a review
+containing a brief discussion of free will and determinism to the
+"Nation" of June 8, 1876. He of course sent a copy to Renouvier. The
+following letter begins with a reference to Renouvier's acknowledgment.
+James had been acquainted with Renouvier's work since 1868, when, as the
+reader will recall, he read a number of the "Année Philosophique,"
+Renouvier's annual survey of contemporary philosophy, for the first
+time. The diary entry already quoted from the year 1870 has shown what
+effect Renouvier's essays then had on his mind. His admiration for the
+elder philosopher was great and he cherished it loyally for the rest of
+his life. Indeed, in the unfinished manuscript, which was published
+posthumously as "Some Problems of Philosophy," James looked back at the
+formative period of his own philosophical thinking and wrote: "Renouvier
+was one of the greatest of philosophic characters, and but for the
+decisive impression made on me in the seventies by his masterly advocacy
+of pluralism I might never have got free from the monistic superstition
+under which I had grown up." In time he made Renouvier's acquaintance in
+France and wrote to him often. He examined and discussed his writings
+with college classes. Occasionally he reported these discussions and
+read Renouvier's answers to the students. On the other side, Renouvier
+paid James the compliment of printing or translating several of his
+papers in the "Critique Philosophique," and thus brought him early to
+the notice of French readers.
+
+
+
+
+_To Charles Renouvier._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _July 29, 1876_.
+
+MY DEAR SIR,--I am quite overcome by your appreciation of my poor little
+article in the "Nation." It gratifies me extremely to hear from your
+own lips that my apprehension of your thoughts is accurate. In so
+despicably brief a space as that which a newspaper affords, I could
+hardly hope to attain any other quality than that, and perhaps
+clearness. I had written another paragraph of pure eulogy of your
+powers, which the editor suppressed, to my great regret, for want of
+room. I need not repeat to you again how grateful I feel to you for all
+I have learned from your admirable writings. I do what lies in my feeble
+power to assist the propagation of your works here, but _students_ of
+philosophy are rare here as everywhere. It astonishes me, nevertheless,
+that you have had to wait so long for general recognition. Only a few
+months ago I had the pleasure of introducing to your "Essais" two
+_professors_ of philosophy, able and learned men, who hardly knew your
+name!! But I am perfectly convinced that it is a mere affair of time,
+and that you will take your place in the general History of Speculation
+as the classical and finished representative of the tendency which was
+begun by Hume, and to which writers before you had made only fragmentary
+contributions, whilst you have fused the whole matter into a solid,
+elegant and definitive system, perfectly consistent, and capable, by
+reason of its moral vitality, of becoming popular, so far as that is
+permitted to philosophic systems. After your Essays, it seems to me that
+the only important question is the deepest one of all, the one between
+the principle of contradiction, and the _Sein und Nichts_.[57] You have
+brought it to that clear issue; and extremely as I value your logical
+attitude, it would be uncandid of me (after what I have said) not to
+confess that there are certain psychological and moral facts, which make
+me, as I stand today, unable wholly to commit myself to your position,
+to burn my ships behind me, and proclaim the belief in the _one_ and the
+many to be the Original Sin of the mind. I long for leisure to study up
+these questions. I have been teaching anatomy and physiology in Harvard
+College here. Next year, I add a course of physiological psychology,
+using, for certain practical reasons, Spencer's "Psychology" as a
+textbook. My health is not strong; I find that laboratory work and
+study, too, are more than I can attend to. It is therefore not
+impossible that I may in 1877-8 be transferred to the philosophical
+department, in which there is likely to be a vacancy. If so, you may
+depend upon it that the name of Renouvier will be as familiar as that of
+Descartes to the Bachelors of Arts who leave these walls. Believe me
+with the greatest respect and gratitude, faithfully yours,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+...I must add a _vivat_ to your "Critique Philosophique," which keeps up
+so ably and bravely! And although it is probably an entirely superfluous
+recommendation, I cannot refrain from calling your attention to the most
+robust of English philosophic writers, [Shadworth] Hodgson, whose "Time
+and Space" was published in 1865 by Longmans, and whose "Theory of
+Practice," in two volumes, followed it in 1870.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+In connection with the allusion to two professors of philosophy who
+hardly knew Renouvier's name, it would be fair to say that James was
+acutely conscious of the prevailing academic conditions. He was, in
+fact, one among a few younger men who were already rejuvenating the
+teaching of philosophy in American colleges. They began their work under
+difficult conditions.
+
+Dr. G. Stanley Hall wrote an open letter to the "Nation" in 1876, in
+which he said:--
+
+"I have often wished that the 'Nation' would devote some space to the
+condition of philosophy in American colleges. Within the last few years
+I have visited the class-rooms of many of our best institutions, and
+believe that there are few if any branches which are so inadequately
+taught as those generally roughly classed as philosophy. Deductive
+logic, or the syllogism, is the most thoroughly dwelt upon, while
+induction, æsthetic and psychological and ethical studies, and
+especially the history of the leading systems of philosophy, ancient and
+modern, and the marvellous new developments in England and Germany, are
+almost entirely ignored. The persistent use of Hamilton, Butler's
+'Analogy' and a score of treatises on 'moral science,' which deduce all
+the ground of obligation from theological considerations, as text-books,
+is largely responsible for the supposed unpopularity of the studies....
+I think the success which has attended the recent lecture courses at
+Cambridge on modern systems of philosophy, and on æsthetic studies of
+literature and the fine arts, shows plainly how much might be
+accomplished in this direction by the proper method of instruction."
+
+James's comment on this, printed anonymously in the "Nation" for
+September 21, 1876, expressed his view of the situation more fully:--
+
+"The philosophical teaching, as a rule, in our higher seminaries is in
+the hands of the president, who is usually a minister of the Gospel,
+and, as he more often owes his position to general excellence of
+character and administrative faculty than to any speculative gifts or
+propensities, it usually follows that 'safeness' becomes the main
+characteristic of his tuition; that his classes are edified rather than
+awakened, and leave college with the generous youthful impulse, to
+reflect on the world and our position in it, rather dampened and
+discouraged than stimulated by the lifeless discussions and flabby
+formulas they have had to commit to memory....
+
+"Let it not be supposed that we are prejudging the question whether the
+final results of speculation will be friendly or hostile to the formulas
+of Christian thought. All we contend for is that we, like the Greeks and
+the Germans, should now attack things as if there were no official
+answer preoccupying the field. At present we are bribed beforehand by
+our reverence or dislike for the official answer; and the free-thinking
+tendency which the 'Popular Science Monthly,' for example, represents,
+is condemned to an even more dismal shallowness than the spiritualistic
+systems of our text-books of 'Mental Science.' We work with one eye on
+our problem, and with the other on the consequences to our enemy or to
+our lawgiver, as the case may be; the result in both cases is
+mediocrity.
+
+"If the best use of our colleges is to give young men a wider openness
+of mind and a more flexible way of thinking than special technical
+training can generate, then we hold that philosophy (taken in the broad
+sense in which our correspondent uses the word) is the most important of
+all college studies. However skeptical one may be of the attainment of
+universal truths (and to make our position more emphatic, we are willing
+here to concede the extreme Positivistic position), one can never deny
+that philosophic study means the habit of always seeing an alternative,
+of not taking the usual for granted, of making conventionalities fluid
+again, of imagining foreign states of mind. In a word, it means the
+possession of mental perspective. Touchstone's question, 'Hast any
+philosophy in thee, shepherd?' will never cease to be one of the tests
+of a wellborn nature. It says, Is there space and air in your mind, or
+must your companions gasp for breath whenever they talk with you? And
+if our colleges are to make men, and not machines, they should look,
+above all things, to this aspect of their influence....
+
+"As for philosophy, technically so called, or the reflection of man on
+his relations with the universe, its educational essence lies in the
+quickening of the spirit to its _problems_. What doctrines students take
+from their teachers are of little consequence provided they catch from
+them the living, philosophic attitude of mind, the independent, personal
+look at all the data of life, and the eagerness to harmonize them....
+
+"In short, philosophy, like Molière, claims her own where she finds it.
+She finds much of it today in physics and natural history, and must and
+will educate herself accordingly.... Meanwhile, when we find announced
+that the students in Harvard College next year may study any or all of
+the following works under the guidance of different professors,--Locke's
+'Essay,' Kant's 'Kritik,' Schopenhauer and Hartmann, Hodgson's 'Theory
+of Practice,' and Spencer's 'Psychology,'--we need not complain of
+universal academic stagnation, even today."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+1878-1883
+
+_Marriage--Contract for the Psychology--European Colleagues--Death of
+his Parents_
+
+
+EARLY in 1876 James had been introduced by their common friend Thomas
+Davidson (that ardent and lovable man whom he sketched with incomparable
+strokes in "A Knight Errant of the Intellectual Life") to Miss Alice H.
+Gibbens, and the next day he wrote to his brother Wilky that he had met
+"the future Mrs. W. J." Miss Gibbens had grown up in Weymouth, a
+pleasant little Massachusetts town in which several generations of her
+ancestors had lived comfortably and which was then still untouched by
+the "development" that later converted it and its neighbour, Quincy,
+into unseemly stone-quarriers' suburbs. In 1876 she had just returned,
+with her widowed mother and two younger sisters, from a five-years'
+residence in Europe and was teaching in a school for girls in Boston. On
+July 10, 1878, after a short engagement, he and Miss Gibbens were
+married by the Reverend Rufus Ellis at the house of the bride's
+grandmother in Boston.
+
+It must be left to a later day and a less intimate and partial hand to
+do adequate justice to a marriage which was happy in the rarest and
+fullest sense, and which was soon to work an abiding transformation in
+James's health and spirits. No mere devotion could have achieved the
+skill and care with which his wife understood and helped him. Family
+duties and responsibilities, often grave and worrisome enough, weighed
+lightly in the balance against the tranquillity and confidence that his
+new domesticity soon brought him. During the twenty-one years that
+immediately followed his marriage he accomplished an amount of teaching,
+college committee-service and administration, friendly and helpful
+personal intercourse with his students, reading and book-writing,
+original research, not to speak of his initial excursions into the field
+of psychical research, and a good deal of popular lecturing to eke out
+his income, that would have astonished anyone who had known him only
+during the early seventies, and that would have honored the capacity and
+endurance of any man. The serener tone of his letters soon contrasts
+itself with much that has gone before. The occasional references to
+fatigue, insomnia, and eye-strain, which still occur in his
+correspondence are explained by the amount of work he imposed upon
+himself rather than by the lack of strength with which he met his tasks.
+
+Meanwhile his wife, who entered into all his plans and undertakings with
+unfailing understanding and high spirit, stood guard over his library
+door, protected him from interruptions and distractions, managed the
+household and the children and the family business, helped him to order
+his day and to see and entertain his friends at convenient times, sped
+him off on occasional much-needed vacations, and encouraged him to all
+his major undertakings, with a sustaining skill and cheer which need not
+be described to anyone who knew his household. To the importance of her
+companionship it is still, happily, impossible to do justice. If
+consulted, she would not tolerate even this allusion; yet to gloss over
+her sustaining influence entirely would be to do injustice to James
+himself.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The summer of 1878 was momentous in James's life for another reason. In
+June, one month before his marriage, he contracted with Messrs. Henry
+Holt & Company to write a volume on Psychology for the "American Science
+Series" that they were beginning to publish. He was asked by Mr. Holt,
+in the course of preliminary correspondence, whether he could deliver
+the manuscript in a year's time. James replied (June, 1878): "My other
+engagements and my health both forbid the attempt to execute the work
+rapidly. Its quality too might then suffer. I don't think I could finish
+it inside of two years--say the fall of 1880." Thus he proposed to throw
+the book off rapidly. He doubtless conceived of it in the beginning as a
+more or less literary survey of the subject as it was then known, and he
+certainly did not foresee that he was going to devote twelve years of
+critical study and original research to its preparation.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Meanwhile, immediately after their marriage, James took his wife to the
+upper end of Keene Valley in the Adirondacks for the rest of the summer.
+They both knew and loved the region already. Indeed, although there has
+been no occasion to mention it before, Keene Valley had already become
+for James the playground toward which he turned most eagerly when summer
+came. It never lost its charm for him; he managed to spend a week or two
+of almost every year there or nearby; and allusions to the region will
+appear in a number of later letters.
+
+At the head of these valleys, in the basin of the Ausable Lakes and on
+the surrounding slopes of the most interesting group of mountains in the
+Adirondacks, a great tract of forest has been preserved. Giant,
+Noonmark, Colvin, and the Gothics raise their splendid ridges and
+summits to the enclosing horizon, and Dix, Haystack, and Marcy, the
+last the highest mountain of the Adirondack range, are within a day's
+walk of the little community that used to be known as "Beede's." Where
+the Ausable Club's picturesque golf-course is now laid out, the fields
+of Smith Beede's farm then surrounded his primitive, white-painted
+hotel. Half a mile to the eastward, in a patch of rocky pasture beside
+Giant Brook, stood the original Beede farm-house, and this Henry P.
+Bowditch, Charles and James Putnam, and William James had bought for a
+few hundred dollars (subject to Beede's cautious proviso in the deed
+that "the purchasers are to keep no boarders"). They had adapted the
+little story-and-a-half dwelling to their own purposes and converted its
+surrounding sheds and pens into habitable shanties of the simplest kind.
+So they established a sort of camp, with the mountains for their
+climbing, the brook to bathe in, and the primeval forest fragrant about
+them.
+
+With a friend or native guide,--or often alone, with a book and lunch in
+his light rücksack,--James would go off for a long day's walk on one of
+the mountain trails. He liked to start early and to spend several hours
+at mid-day stretched out on the sheltered side of an open ridge or
+summit. In this way he would combine a day of outdoor exercise with
+fifty to eighty pages of professional reading, the daily stint to which
+he often held himself in his holidays.
+
+In the summer of seventy-eight he planned to combine this sort of
+refreshment with work on the "Psychology." The plan seemed a little
+innocent to at least one friend,--Francis J. Child,--who said in a
+letter to James Russell Lowell: "William has already begun a Manual of
+Psychology--in the honeymoon;--but they are both writing it."
+
+
+
+
+_To Francis J. Child._
+
+[Dictated to Mrs. James]
+
+
+KEENE VALLEY, _Aug. 16_ [1878].
+
+CARISSIMO,--Daily since the first instant have we trembled with joyous
+expectancy of your holiday face arriving at our door. Daily have we
+dashed the teardrop of disappointment from our common eye! And now to
+get a letter instead of your revered form! It is shameful. We are dying
+with the tedium of each other's society and you would make the wheels of
+life go round again. Your excursion to Scarborough is simply criminal
+under the circumstances. You know we longed to see you. It is not too
+late to repair your fault, for although we shall not outstay the 1st of
+September, you would find the Putnams and the best thirty-five-year-old
+medical society in Boston to keep you company after we go. You had
+better come from Scarborough through Portland direct to Burlington by
+the White Mt. R.R. From Burlington take boat to Westport, whence stage
+to Beede's and our beating heart. But such is the crassitude of your
+malignity that after this we hardly dare expect you. Seriously, how
+could you be so insane?
+
+As for the remaining matter of your somewhat illegible letter, what is
+this mythological and poetical talk about psychology and Psyche and
+keeping back a manuscript composed during a honeymoon? The only Psyche
+now recognized by science is a decapitated frog whose writhings express
+deeper truths than your weakminded poets ever dreamed. _She_ (not Psyche
+but the bride) loves all these doctrines which are quite novel to her
+mind, hitherto accustomed to all sorts of mysticism and superstitions.
+She swears entirely by reflex action now, and believes in universal
+_Nothwendigkeit_. Hope not with your ballad-mongering ever to gain an
+influence.
+
+We have spent, however, a ballad-like summer in this delicious cot among
+the hills. We only needed crooks and a flock of sheep. I need not say
+that our psychic reaction has been one of content--perhaps as great as
+ever enjoyed by man.
+
+So farewell, false friend, till such near time as your ehrwürdig person
+decorate our hearth at Mrs. Hanks's in Harvard St.
+
+Communicate our hearty love to Mrs. Child and believe us your always
+doting
+
+(W. and A.) J.
+
+And for Heaven's sake _come_ while yet there is time!
+
+WM.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+When the College opened in the autumn of seventy-eight James and his
+wife returned to Cambridge and lived for a few months in lodgings at 387
+Harvard Street. The next letter begins a series from which a number of
+later letters will be given. One of the warmest of James's lifelong
+friendships was with Miss Frances R. Morse of Boston. The "exquisite
+Mary" referred to near the end is her sister, later Mrs. John W. Elliot.
+
+
+
+
+_To Miss Frances R. Morse._
+
+[Dictated to Mrs. James]
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Dec. 26, 1878_.
+
+_Our_ DEAR FANNY,--I (W.) shield myself under my wife's handwriting to
+drop that formal style of address which has so long cast its cold shadow
+over our intercourse, and for which, now that I have become an old fogy
+whilst you still remain a blooming child, there seems no further good
+reason. Are you willing that henceforward we should call each other by
+our first names? If so, respond in kind. I have got into the habit of
+dictating to _her_ all that I write, in order to save my eyes. This
+letter is from both of us.
+
+Your letter from Brighton of Oct. 15th was duly and gladly received. You
+have since then seen a great many things, and we have heard of you
+occasionally, latest of your ascent of the Nile with the Longfellows.
+They will be pleasant companions and I hope the long rest, delicious
+climate and beautiful outlook of that voyage will do ---- a world of
+good. It is too pitiful to think of her breaking down just at a time
+when one's active faculties have so much incitement to exert themselves.
+I am glad your mother is so much better. And how you will enjoy the
+sights of the winter! Don't you wish you had taken history instead of
+English literature!
+
+We are very happily "boarding" on the corner of Harvard and Ware Street,
+next door to old Mrs. Cary's, where the Tappans used to live. We have
+absolutely no housekeeping trouble; we live surrounded by our wedding
+presents, and can devote all our energies to studying our lessons,
+dining with our respective mothers-in-law, receiving and repaying our
+"calls," which average one a day, and anxiously keeping our accounts in
+a little book so as to see where the trouble is if both ends don't meet.
+
+We meant to have sent you this letter on Christmas day, but it was
+crowded out by many interruptions. We had, considering the age of the
+world and the hard times, quite a show of Xmas gifts and mild
+festivities.
+
+...I suppose you get your "Nation" regularly on the Nile, so I make no
+comments on public affairs. We all feel sorry for poor old England just
+now. It really seems as if with us things were settling down upon a
+solid and orderly basis of general frugality. Keen cold weather, bare
+ground, and clear sky, west wind filling the air with clouds of frozen
+dust, and an engagement at the dentist's in an hour from this will seem
+to you on the Nile like tales told by an idiot. Still they are true for
+me. Pray write again and let us hear that you are all well, especially
+the exquisite Mary, to whom give lots of love, and with plenty to your
+parents and self, believe me, yours faithfully,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The passage which follows is taken from a letter to Mrs. James, of about
+this time. It is so unusual a bit of self-analysis that it is included
+here. James himself never failed to recognize that every man's thought
+is biased by his temperament as well as guided by purely rational
+considerations.
+
+
+
+
+_To Mrs. James._
+
+
+...I have often thought that the best way to define a man's character
+would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which,
+when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active
+and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and
+says: "_This_ is the real me!" And afterwards, considering the
+circumstances in which the man is placed, and noting how some of them
+are fitted to evoke this attitude, whilst others do not call for it, an
+outside observer may be able to prophesy where the man may fail, where
+succeed, where be happy and where miserable. Now as well as I can
+describe it, this characteristic attitude in me always involves an
+element of active tension, of holding my own, as it were, and trusting
+outward things to perform their part so as to make it a full harmony,
+but without any _guaranty_ that they will. Make it a guaranty--and the
+attitude immediately becomes to my consciousness stagnant and stingless.
+Take away the guaranty, and I feel (provided I am _überhaupt_ in
+vigorous condition) a sort of deep enthusiastic bliss, of bitter
+willingness to do and suffer anything, which translates itself
+physically by a kind of stinging pain inside my breast-bone (don't smile
+at this--it is to me an essential element of the whole thing!), and
+which, although it is a mere mood or emotion to which I can give no form
+in words, authenticates itself to me as the deepest principle of all
+active and theoretic determination which I possess....
+
+W. J.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The next letter contains the first reference to work on the
+"Psychology." It also introduces into this volume the name and
+personality of a colleague-to-be with whom James's relations were
+destined to be close and permanent.
+
+Josiah Royce was then a young man "from the intellectual barrens of
+California" whose brilliant work was still to be done, and whose
+philosophic genius had not yet been disclosed to the public, although it
+may fairly be said to have been announced by every line of his
+engagingly Socrates-like face and figure. He had been born and brought
+up among the most primitive surroundings in Grass Valley, California,
+and won his way to a brief period of study in Germany and to a degree at
+Johns Hopkins in 1878. While yet a student there, he paid a visit to
+Cambridge, and he has left his own quotable record of the meeting which
+resulted, and of what followed.
+
+"My real acquaintance with [James] began one summer-day in 1877, when I
+first visited him in [his father's] house on Quincy Street, and was
+permitted to pour out my soul to somebody who really seemed to believe
+that a young man might rightfully devote his life to philosophy if he
+chose. I was then a student at the Johns Hopkins University. The
+opportunities for a life-work in philosophy in this country were few.
+Most of my friends and advisers had long been telling me to let the
+subject alone. Perhaps, so far as I was concerned, their advice was
+sound; but in any case I was, so far, incapable of accepting that
+advice. Yet if somebody had not been ready to tell me that I had a right
+to work for truth in my own way, I should ere long have been quite
+discouraged. I do not know what I then could have done. James found me
+at once--made out what my essential interests were at our first
+interview, accepted me with all my imperfections, as one of those many
+souls who ought to be able to find themselves in their own way, gave a
+patient and willing ear to just my variety of philosophical experience,
+and used his influence from that time on, not to win me as a follower,
+but to give me my chance. It was upon his responsibility that I was
+later led to get my first opportunities here at Harvard."[58]
+
+The opportunities did not ripen until 1882-83, however; and in the
+meanwhile Royce returned to the young University of California as an
+instructor in logic and rhetoric. Letters written to him there will show
+how cordially James continued to sympathize with the aspirations of his
+young friend, and how eagerly he fostered the possibility of an
+appointment to the Harvard philosophical department. When the
+opportunity arose, James seized it. Thereafter he and Royce saw each
+other so constantly in Cambridge that there were not many occasions for
+either to write letters to the other. Instead, allusions to Royce appear
+frequently in the letters to other people.
+
+The philosophical club which is alluded to at the end of the letter was
+presided over by Dr. W. T. Harris and held informal meetings in Boston
+during this one winter. Its purpose was to read and discuss Hegel. Dr.
+C. C. Everett, Prof. G. H. Palmer, and Thomas Davidson were among the
+members.
+
+
+
+
+_To Josiah Royce._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Feb. 16_ [1879].
+
+MY DEAR ROYCE,--Your letter was most welcome. I had often found myself
+wondering how you were getting on, and your wail as the solitary
+philosopher between Behrings' Strait and Tierra del Fuego has a grand,
+lonesome picturesqueness about it. I am sorry your surroundings are not
+more mentally congenial. But recollect your extreme youth and the fact
+that you are making a living and practising yourself in the pedagogic
+art, _überhaupt_. You might be forced to do something much farther away
+from your chosen line, and even then not make a living. I think you are
+a lucky youth even as matters stand. Unexpected chances are always
+turning up. A fortnight ago President Eliot was asked to recommend some
+one for a $5000 professorship of philosophy in the New York City
+College. One Griffin of Amherst was finally appointed. I imagine that
+Gilman [of Johns Hopkins] is keeping his eye on you and only waiting for
+the disgrace of youth to fade from your person.
+
+I liked your article on Schiller very much, and hope you will send more
+to Harris. That most villainous of editors, as I am told, has himself
+been to Baltimore lately as an office-seeker. But the rumor may be
+false. In some respects he might be a useful man for the Johns Hopkins
+University, but I would give no more for his judgment than for that of a
+Digger Indian. I hope you will write something about Hodgson. He is
+quite as worthy as Kant of supporting any number of parasites and
+partial assimilators of his substance. My sentence, I perceive, has a
+rather uncomplimentary sound. I meant only to say that you should not be
+deterred from treating him in your own way from fear of inadequacy. All
+his commentators must undoubtedly be inadequate for some time to come;
+but they will all help each other out. He seems to me the wealthiest
+mine of thought I ever met with.
+
+With me, save for my eyes, things are jogging along smoothly. I am
+writing (very slowly) what may become a text-book of psychology. A
+proposal from Gilman to teach in Baltimore three months yearly for the
+next three years had to be declined as incompatible with work here. I
+will send you a corrected copy of Harris's journal with my article on
+Space, which was printed without my seeing the proof.
+
+I suppose you subscribe to "Mind." The only decent thing I have ever
+written will, I hope, appear in the July number of that sheet.[59] The
+delays of publication are fearful. Most of this was written in 1877. If
+it ever sees the light, I hope you will let me know what you think of
+it, and how it tallies with your own theory of the Concept, which latter
+I would fain swallow and digest. I wish you belonged to our philosophic
+club here. It is very helpful to the uprooting of weeds from one's own
+mind as well as the detection of beams in one's neighbor's eyes. Write
+often and believe me faithfully yours,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To Josiah Royce._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Feb. 3, 1880_.
+
+BELOVED ROYCE!--So far was I from having forgotten you that I had been
+revolving in my mind, on the very day when your letter came, the
+rhetorical formulas of objurgation with which I was to begin a page of
+inquiries of you: whether you were dead and buried or had become an
+idiot or were sick or blind or what, that you sent no word of yourself.
+_I_ am blind as ever, which may excuse my silence.
+
+First of all _Glückwünsche_ as to your _Verlobung_! which, like the true
+philosopher that you are, you mention parenthetically and without names,
+dates, numbers of dollars, etc., etc. I think it shows great sense in
+her, and no small amount of it in you, whoe'er she be. I have found in
+marriage a calm and repose I never knew before, and only wish I had done
+the thing ten years earlier. I think the lateness of our usual marriages
+is a bad thing, and hope your engagement will not last very long.
+
+It is refreshing to hear your account of philosophic work.... I'm sorry
+you've given up your article on Hodgson. He _is_ obscure enough, and
+makes me sometimes wonder whether the _ignotum_ does not pass itself off
+for the _magnifico_ in his pages. I enclose his photograph as a loan,
+trusting you will return it soon. I will never write again for Harris's
+journal. He refused an article of mine a year ago "for lack of room,"
+and has postponed the printing of two admirable original articles by T.
+Davidson and Elliot Cabot for the last ten months or more, in order to
+accommodate Mrs. Channing's verses and Miss----'s drivel about the
+school of Athens, etc., etc. It is too loathsome. Harris has resigned
+his school position in St. Louis and will, I am told, come East to live.
+I know not whether he means to lay siege to the Johns Hopkins
+professorship. My ignorant prejudice against all Hegelians, except
+Hegel himself, grows wusser and wusser. Their sacerdotal airs! and their
+sterility! Contemplating their navels and the syllable _oum_! My dear
+friend Palmer, assistant professor of philosophy here, is already one of
+the white-winged band, having been made captive by Caird in two summers
+of vacation in Scotland.... The ineffectiveness and impotence of the
+ending of [Caird's] work on Kant seem to me simply scandalous, after its
+pretentious (and able) beginning. What do you think of Carveth [Reid]'s
+Essay on Shadworth [Hodgson]? I haven't read it. Our Philosophic Club
+here is given up this year--I think we're all rather sick of each
+other's voices. My teaching is small in numbers, though my men are good.
+I've tried Renouvier as a text-book--for the last time! His exposition
+offers too many difficulties. I enjoyed your Rhapsody on Space, and
+hereby pledge myself to buy two copies of your work ten years hence, and
+to devote the rest of my life to the propagation of its doctrines. I
+despise my own article,[60] which was dashed off for a momentary purpose
+and published for another. But I don't see why its main doctrine, from a
+psychologic and sublunary point of view, is not sound; and I think I
+can, if my psychology ever gets writ, set it down in decently clear and
+orderly form. All _deducers_ of space are, I am sure, mythologists. You
+are, after all, not so very much isolated in California. We are all
+isolated--"columns left alone of a temple once complete," etc. Books are
+our companions more than men. But I wish nevertheless, and firmly
+expect, that somehow or other you will get a call East, and within my
+humble sphere of power I will do what I can to further that end. My
+accursed eye-sight balks me always about study and production. _Ora pro
+me!_ With most respectful and devout regards to the fair Object, believe
+me always your
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To Charles Renouvier._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _June 1, 1880_.
+
+MY DEAR MONSIEUR RENOUVIER,--My last lesson in the course on your
+"Essais" took place today. The final examination occurs this week. The
+students have been profoundly interested, though their reactions on your
+teaching seem as diverse as their personalities; one (the maturest of
+all) being yours body and soul, another turning out a strongly
+materialistic fatalist! and the rest occupying positions of mixed doubt
+and assent; all however (but one) being convinced by your treatment of
+freedom and certitude.
+
+As for myself, I must frankly confess to you that I am more unsettled
+than I have been for years. I have read several times over your reply to
+Lotze, and your reply to my letter. The latter was fully discussed in
+the class. The former seems to me a perfectly masterly expression of a
+certain intellectual position, and with the latter, I think it makes it
+perfectly clear to me where our divergence lies. I can formulate all
+your reasonings for myself, but--dare I say it?--they fail to awaken
+conviction. It seems as if, the simpler the point, the more hopeless the
+disagreement in philosophy. But I will enter into no further discussion
+now. I think it will be profitable for me, for some time to come,
+inwardly to digest the matters in question and your utterances before
+trying to articulate any more opinions.
+
+I am overwhelmed with duties at present, and shall very shortly sail for
+England to pass part of the vacation; maybe I shall get to the Continent
+and see you. If we meet, I hope you will treat my heresies on the
+question of the Infinite with the indulgence and magnanimity which your
+doctrine of freedom in theoretic affirmations exacts!! I will send you
+in a day or two an essay which develops your psychology of the voluntary
+process, and which I hope will give you pleasure.
+
+Pray excuse the haste and superficiality of this note, which is only
+meant to explain why I do not write at greater length and to announce my
+hope of soon grasping you by the hand and assuring you in person of my
+devotion and indebtedness. Always yours,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+James sailed in June a good deal fagged by his year's work, and got back
+by the first week of September, having spent most of the interval
+seeking solitude and refreshment in the Alps and Northern Italy. On his
+way home he paid his respects to Renouvier at Avignon, but otherwise
+made no effort to meet his European colleagues.
+
+
+
+
+_To Charles Renouvier._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Dec. 27, 1880_.
+
+MY DEAR MONSIEUR RENOUVIER,--Your note and the conclusion of my article
+in the "Critique" came together this morning. It gives me almost a
+feeling of pain that you, at your age and with your achievements, should
+be spending your time in translating my feeble words, when by every
+principle of right I should be engaged in turning your invaluable
+writings into English. The state of my eyes is, as you know, my excuse
+for this as for all other shortcomings. I have not even read the whole
+of your translation of [my] "Feeling of Effort," though the passages I
+have perused have seemed to me excellently well done. My exposition
+strikes me as rather complicated now. It was written in great haste
+and, were I to rewrite it, it should be simpler. The omissions of which
+you speak are of no importance whatever.
+
+I have read your discussion with Lotze in the "Revue Philosophique" and
+agree with Hodgson that you carry off there the honors of the battle.
+_Quant au fond de la question_, however, I am still in doubt and wait
+for the light of further reflexion to settle my opinion. The matter in
+my mind complicates itself with the question of a universal ego. If time
+and space are not _in se_, do we not need an enveloping ego to make
+continuous the times and spaces, not necessarily coincident, of the
+partial egos? On this question, as I told you, I will not fail to write
+again when I get new light, which I trust may decide me in your favor.
+
+My principal amusement this winter has been resisting the inroads of
+Hegelism in our University. My colleague Palmer, a recent convert and a
+man of much ability, has been making an active propaganda among the more
+advanced students. It is a strange thing, this resurrection of Hegel in
+England and here, after his burial in Germany. I think his philosophy
+will probably have an important influence on the development of our
+liberal form of Christianity. It gives a quasi-metaphysic backbone which
+this theology has always been in need of, but it is too fundamentally
+rotten and charlatanish to last long. As a reaction against
+materialistic evolutionism it has its use, only this evolutionism is
+fertile while Hegelism is absolutely sterile.
+
+I think often of the too-short hours I spent with you and Monsieur
+Pillon and wish they might return. Believe me with the warmest thanks
+and regards, yours faithfully,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+In August of 1882 James arranged with the College for a year's leave of
+absence, and sailed for Europe again, this time with the double purpose
+of giving himself a vacation and of meeting some of the European
+investigators who were working on the problems in which he had become
+absorbed.
+
+He landed in England, and paused there just long enough to throw his
+brother Henry into the state of half-resentful bewilderment that
+invariably resulted from their first European reunions. Henry, to whom
+Europe, and England in particular, had already become an absorbing
+passion and for whom American reactions upon Europe were still an
+unexhausted theme, greeted every arriving American with eager curiosity
+and a confident expectation that the stranger would "register"
+impressions of the most charming enchantment and pleasure for his
+edification. William, on the other hand, was always most under the
+European spell when in America; and--whether moved by the constitutional
+restlessness that seized him so soon as ever he began to travel, or by
+the perversity that was a fascinating trait in his character and was
+usually provoked by his younger brother's admiring neighborhood--he was
+always most ardently American when on European soil. Thus his first
+words of greeting to Henry on stepping out of the steamer-train were:
+"My!--how cramped and inferior England seems! After all, it's poor old
+Europe, just as it used to be in our dreary boyhood! America may be raw
+and shrill, but I could never live with this as you do! I'm going to
+hurry down to Switzerland [or wherever] and then home again as soon as
+may be. It was a mistake to come over! I thought it would do me good.
+Hereafter I'll stay at home. You'll have to come to America if you want
+to see the family."
+
+The effect on Henry can better be imagined than described. Time never
+accustomed him to these collisions, even though he learned to expect
+them. England inferior! A mistake to come abroad! Horror and
+consternation are weak terms by which to describe his feelings; and
+nothing but a devotion seldom existing between brothers, and a lively
+interest in the astonishing phenomenon of such a reaction, ever carried
+him through the hour. He usually ended by hurrying William
+onward--anywhere--within the day if possible--and remained alone to
+ejaculate, to exclaim and to expatiate for weeks on the rude and
+exciting cyclone that had burst upon him and passed by.
+
+On this occasion it took only two days for William to start on from
+London for the Rhine, Nüremburg, and Vienna; then to Venice, where he
+idled for the first half of October. After this short pause he returned
+to Prague; and then, working northward, consumed the autumn in visiting
+the universities of Dresden, Berlin, Leipzig, Liège and Paris. Intimate
+letters to his wife, who had remained in Cambridge with their two little
+boys, are almost the only ones that survive. A few passages from these
+will therefore be included.
+
+
+
+
+_To Mrs. James._
+
+
+VIENNA, _Sept. 24, 1882_.
+
+...I wish you could have been with me yesterday to see some French
+pictures at the "Internationale Kunst Ausstellung"; they gave an idea of
+the vigor of France in that way just now. One, a peasant woman, in all
+her brutish loutishness sitting staring before her at noonday on the
+grass she's been cutting, while the man lies flat on his back with straw
+hat over face. She with such a look of infinite unawakenedness, such
+childlike virginity under her shapeless body and in her face, as to make
+it a poem.[61] Dear, perhaps the deepest impression I've got since I've
+been in Germany is that made on me by the indefatigable beavers of old
+wrinkled peasant women, striding like men through the streets, dragging
+their carts or lugging their baskets, minding their business, seeming to
+notice nothing, in the stream of luxury and vice, but belonging far
+away, to something better and purer. Their poor, old, ravaged and
+stiffened faces, their poor old bodies dried up with ceaseless toil,
+their patient souls make me weep. "They are our conscripts." They are
+the venerable ones whom we should reverence. All the mystery of
+womanhood seems incarnated in their ugly being--the Mothers! the
+Mothers! Ye are all one! Yes, Alice dear, what I love in you is only
+what these blessed old creatures have; and I'm glad and proud, when I
+think of my own dear Mother with tears running down my face, to know
+that she is one with these.[62] Good-night, good-night!...
+
+
+
+
+_To Mrs. James._
+
+
+AUSSIG, BOHEMIA, _Nov. 2, 1882_.
+
+...As for Prague, _veni, vidi, vici_. I went there with much trepidation
+to do my social-scientific duty. The mighty Hering in especial
+intimidated me beforehand; but having taken the plunge, the cutaneous
+glow and "euphoria" (_vide_ dictionary) succeeded, and I have rarely
+enjoyed a forty-eight hours better, in spite of the fact that the good
+and sharp-nosed Stumpf (whose book "Über die Raumvorstellungen" I verily
+believe thou art capable of never having noticed the cover of!) insisted
+on trotting me about, day and night, over the whole length and breadth
+of Prague, and that [Ernst] Mach (Professor of Physics), genius of all
+trades, simply took Stumpf's place to do the same. I heard [Ewald]
+Hering give a very poor physiology lecture and Mach a beautiful physical
+one. I presented them with my visiting card, saying that I was with
+their "Schriften sehr vertraut und wollte nicht eher Prague verlassen
+als bis ich wenigstens ein Paar Worte mit ihnen umtauschte," etc.[63]
+They received me with open arms. I had an hour and a half's talk with
+Hering, which cleared up some things for me. He asked me to come to his
+house that evening, but I gave an evasive reply, being fearful of boring
+him. Meanwhile Mach came to my hotel and I spent four hours walking and
+supping with him at his club, an unforgettable conversation. I don't
+think anyone ever gave me so strong an impression of pure intellectual
+genius. He apparently has read everything and thought about everything,
+and has an absolute simplicity of manner and winningness of smile when
+his face lights up, that are charming.
+
+With Stumpf I spent five hours on Monday evening (this is Thursday),
+three on Wednesday morning and four in the afternoon; so I feel rather
+intimate. A clear-headed and just-minded, though pale and
+anxious-looking man in poor health. He had another philosopher named
+Marty [?] to dine with me yesterday--jolly young fellow. My native
+_Geschwätzigkeit_[64] triumphed over even the difficulties of the German
+tongue; I careered over the field, taking the pitfalls and breastworks
+at full run, and was fairly astounded myself at coming in alive. I
+learned a good many things from them, both in the way of theory and
+fact, and shall probably keep up a correspondence with Stumpf. They are
+not so different from us as we think. Their greater thoroughness is
+largely the result of circumstances. I found that I had a more
+_cosmopolitan_ knowledge of modern philosophic literature than any of
+them, and shall on the whole feel much less intimidated by the thought
+of their like than hitherto.
+
+My letters will hereafter, I feel sure, have a more jocund tone. Damn
+Italy! It isn't a good thing to stay with one's inferiors. With the
+nourishing breath of the German air, and the sort of smoky and leathery
+German smell, vigor and good spirits have set in. I have walked well and
+slept well and eaten well and read well, and in short begin to feel as I
+expected I should when I decided upon this arduous pilgrimage. Prague is
+a ---- city--the adjective is hard to find; not magnificent, but
+everything is too honest and homely,--we have in fact no English word
+for the peculiar quality that good German things have, of depth,
+solidity, picturesqueness, magnitude and homely goodness combined. They
+have worked out a really great civilization. "Dienst ist Dienst"![65]
+said the gateman of a certain garden yesterday afternoon whom Stumpf was
+trying to persuade to let me in, as an American, to see the view five
+minutes after the closing hour had struck. _Dienst ist Dienst._ That is
+really the German motto everywhere--and I should like to know what
+American would ever think of justifying himself by just that formula. I
+say German of Prague, for it seems to me, in spite of the feverish
+nationalism of the natives, to be outwardly a pure German city....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+BERLIN, _Nov. 9, 1882_.
+
+...Yesterday I went to the veterinary school to see H. Munk, the great
+brain vivisector. He was very cordial and poured out a torrent of talk
+for one and a half hours, though he could show me no animals. He gave
+me one of his new publications and introduced me to Dr. Baginsky
+(Professor Samuel Porter's favorite authority on the semicircular
+canals, whose work I treated superciliously in my article). So we opened
+on the semicircular canals, and Baginsky's torrent of words was even
+more overwhelming than Munk's. I never felt quite so helpless and
+small-boyish before, and am to this hour dizzy from the onslaught. In
+the evening at the house of Gizycki (a Docent on Ethics), to a
+"privatissimum" with a supper after it. Good, square, deep-chested talk
+again, which I couldn't help contrasting with the whining tones of our
+students and of some of the members of the Hegel Club--I hate to leave
+the wholesome, tonic atmosphere, the land where one talks best when he
+talks manliest--slowest, distinctest, with most deliberate emphasis and
+strong voice....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+LEIPZIG, _Nov. 11, 1882_.
+
+...Jones spoilt my incipient nap this afternoon and I adjourned to his
+room to meet Smith and Brown[66] again, with another American wild-cat
+reformer. Jones is too many for me--I'm glad I'm to get far off.
+Religion is well, moral regeneration is well, so is improvement of
+society, so are the courage, disinterestedness, ideality of all sorts,
+these men show in their lives; but I verily believe that the condition
+of being a man of the world, a gentleman, etc., carries something with
+it, an atmosphere, an outlook, a play, that all these things together
+fail to carry, and that is worth them all. I got so suffocated with
+their everlasting spiritual gossip! The falsest views and tastes somehow
+in a man of fashion are truer than the truest in a plebeian cad. And
+when I told the new man there that a "materialist" would have no
+difficulty in keeping his place in Harvard College provided he was
+well-bred, I said what was really the highest test of the College
+excellence. I suppose he thought it sounded cynical. _Their_ sphere is
+with the masses struggling into light, not with us at Harvard; though
+I'm glad I can meet them cordially for a while now and then. Thou
+see'est I have some "spleen" on me today....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+LEIPZIG, _Nov. 13, 1882_.
+
+...Yesterday was a splendid day within and without.... The old town
+delightful in its blackness and plainness. I heard several lecturers.
+Old Ludwig's lecture in the afternoon was memorable for the
+extraordinary impression of character he made on me. The traditional
+German professor in its highest sense. A rusty brown wig and
+broad-skirted brown coat, a voluminous black neckcloth, an absolute
+unexcitability of manner, a clean-shaven face so plebeian and at the
+same time so grandly carved, with its hooked nose and gentle kindly
+mouth and inexhaustible patience of expression, that I never saw the
+like. Then to Wundt, who has a more refined elocution than any one I've
+yet heard in Germany. He received me very kindly after the lecture in
+his laboratory, dimly trying to remember my writings, and I stay over
+today, against my intention, to go to his _psychologische Gesellschaft_
+tonight. Have been writing psychology most all day....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+In train for LIÈGE, _Nov. 18, 1882_.
+
+...I believe I didn't tell you, in the bustle of traveling, much about
+Wundt. He made a very pleasant and personal impression on me, with his
+agreeable voice and ready, tooth-showing smile. His lecture also was
+very able, and my opinion of him is higher than before seeing him. But
+he seemed very busy and showed no desire to see more of me than the
+present interview either time. The _psychologische Gesellschaft_ I
+stayed over to see was postponed, but he did not propose to me to do
+anything else--to the gain of my ease, but to the loss of my vanity.
+Dear old Stumpf has been the friendliest of these fellows. With him I
+shall correspond....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+LIÈGE, _Nov. 20, 1882_.
+
+...I am still at Delboeuf's, aching in every joint and muscle, weary
+in every nerve-cell, but unable to get away till tomorrow noon. I was to
+have started today.... The total lesson of what I have done in the past
+month is to make me quieter with my home-lot and readier to believe that
+it is one of the chosen places of the Earth. Certainly the instruction
+and facilities at our university are on the whole superior to anything I
+have seen; the rawnesses we mention with such affliction at home belong
+rather to the century than to us (witness the houses here); we are not a
+whit more isolated than they are here. In all Belgium there seem to be
+but two genuine philosophers; in Berlin they have little to do with each
+other, and I really believe that in my way I have a wider view of the
+field than anyone I've seen (I count out, of course, my ignorance of
+ancient authors). We are a sound country and my opinion of our essential
+worth has risen and not fallen. We only lack abdominal depth of
+temperament and the power to sit for an hour over a single pot of beer
+without being able to tell at the end of it what we've been thinking
+about. Also to reform our altogether abominable, infamous and
+infra-human voices and way of talking. (What _further_ fatal defects
+hang together with that I don't know--it seems as if it must carry
+something very bad with it.) The first thing to do is to establish in
+Cambridge a genuine German plebeian Kneipe club, to which all
+instructors and picked students shall be admitted. If that succeeds, we
+shall be perfect, especially if we talk therein with deeper voices....
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry James._
+
+
+PARIS, _Nov. 22, 1882_.
+
+DEAR H.,--Found at Hottinguer's this A.M. your letter with all the
+enclosures--and a wail you had sent to Berlin. Also six letters from my
+wife and seven or eight others, not counting papers and magazines. I
+will mail back yours and father's letter to me. Alice [Mrs. W. J.]
+speaks of father's indubitable improvement in strength, but our sister
+Alice apparently is somewhat run down.--Paris looks delicious--I shall
+try to get settled as soon as possible and meanwhile feel as if the
+confusion of life was recommencing. I saw in Germany all the men I cared
+to see and talked with most of them. With three or four I had a really
+nutritious time. The trip has amply paid for itself. I found third-class
+_Nichtraucher_ almost always empty and perfectly comfortable. The great
+use of such experiences is less the definite information you gain from
+anyone, than a sort of solidification of your own foothold on life.
+Nowhere did I see a university which seems to do for _all_ its students
+anything like what Harvard does. Our methods throughout are better. It
+is only in the select "Seminaria" (private classes) that a few German
+students making researches with the professor gain something from him
+personally which his genius alone can give. I certainly got a most
+distinct impression of my own _information_ in regard to _modern_
+philosophic matters being broader than that of any one I met, and our
+Harvard post of observation being more cosmopolitan. Delboeuf in Liège
+was an angel and much the best teacher I've seen....[67] "The Century,"
+with your very good portrait, etc., was at Hottinguer's this A.M., sent
+by my wife. I shall read it presently. I'm off now to see if I can get
+your leather trunk, sent from London, arrested by inundations, and
+ordered to be returned to Paris. I never needed its contents a second.
+And in your little American valise and my flabby black hand-bag and
+shawl-straps and a small satchel, I carried not only everything I used,
+but collected a whole library of books in Leipsig, some pieces of
+Venetian glass in their balky bolsters of seaweed, a quart bottle of eau
+de Cologne, and a lot of other acquisitions. I feel remarkably tough
+now, and fairly ravenous for my psychologic work. Address Hottinguer's.
+
+W. J.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+James's mother had died during the preceding winter. Now, just after his
+arrival in Paris, he received news that his father was dangerously ill.
+
+He went to London immediately, with the intention of getting home as
+soon as possible. On arriving at his brother Henry's lodgings, he found
+that Henry had already sailed. He also received a despatch advising him
+that the danger was not immediate and that he should wait. He remained,
+but with misgivings which the next news intensified.
+
+
+
+
+_To his Father._
+
+
+BOLTON ST., LONDON, _Dec. 14, 1882_.
+
+DARLING OLD FATHER,--Two letters, one from my Alice last night, and one
+from Aunt Kate to Harry just now, have somewhat dispelled the mystery
+in which the telegrams left your condition; and although their news is
+several days earlier than the telegrams, I am free to suppose that the
+latter report only an aggravation of the symptoms the letters describe.
+It is far more agreeable to think of this than of some dreadful unknown
+and sudden malady.
+
+We have been so long accustomed to the hypothesis of your being taken
+away from us, especially during the past ten months, that the thought
+that this may be your last illness conveys no very sudden shock. You are
+old enough, you've given your message to the world in many ways and will
+not be forgotten; you are here left alone, and on the other side, let us
+hope and pray, dear, dear old Mother is waiting for you to join her. If
+you go, it will not be an inharmonious thing. Only, if you are still in
+possession of your normal consciousness, I should like to see you once
+again before we part. I stayed here only in obedience to the last
+telegram, and am waiting now for Harry--who knows the exact state of my
+mind, and who will know yours--to telegraph again what I shall do.
+Meanwhile, my blessed old Father, I scribble this line (which may reach
+you though I should come too late), just to tell you how full of the
+tenderest memories and feelings about you my heart has for the last few
+days been filled. In that mysterious gulf of the past into which the
+present soon will fall and go back and back, yours is still for me the
+central figure. All my intellectual life I derive from you; and though
+we have often seemed at odds in the expression thereof, I'm sure there's
+a harmony somewhere, and that our strivings will combine. What my debt
+to you is goes beyond all my power of estimating,--so early, so
+penetrating and so constant has been the influence. You need be in no
+anxiety about your literary remains. I will see them well taken care
+of, and that your words shall not suffer for being concealed. At Paris I
+heard that Milsand, whose name you may remember in the "Revue des Deux
+Mondes" and elsewhere, was an admirer of the "Secret of Swedenborg," and
+Hodgson told me your last book had deeply impressed him. So will it be;
+especially, I think, if a collection of _extracts_ from your various
+writings were published, after the manner of the extracts from Carlyle,
+Ruskin, & Co. I have long thought such a volume would be the best
+monument to you.--As for us; we shall live on each in his way,--feeling
+somewhat unprotected, old as we are, for the absence of the parental
+bosoms as a refuge, but holding fast together in that common sacred
+memory. We will stand by each other and by Alice, try to transmit the
+torch in our offspring as you did in us, and when the time comes for
+being gathered in, I pray we may, if not all, some at least, be as ripe
+as you. As for myself, I know what trouble I've given you at various
+times through my peculiarities; and as my own boys grow up, I shall
+learn more and more of the kind of trial you had to overcome in
+superintending the development of a creature different from yourself,
+for whom you felt responsible. I say this merely to show how my
+_sympathy_ with you is likely to grow much livelier, rather than to
+fade--and not for the sake of regrets.--As for the other side, and
+Mother, and our all possibly meeting, I _can't_ say anything. More than
+ever at this moment do I feel that if that _were_ true, all would be
+solved and justified. And it comes strangely over me in bidding you
+good-bye how a life is but a day and expresses mainly but a single note.
+It is so much like the act of bidding an ordinary good-night.
+Good-night, my sacred old Father! If I don't see you again--Farewell! a
+blessed farewell! Your
+
+WILLIAM.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The elder Henry James died on the nineteenth of December. A cablegram
+was sent to London; and on learning of his father's death, James wrote a
+letter to his wife from which the following extract is taken.
+
+
+
+
+_To Mrs. James._
+
+
+...Father's boyhood up in Albany, Grandmother's house, the father and
+brothers and sister, with their passions and turbulent histories, his
+burning, amputation and sickness, his college days and ramblings, his
+theological throes, his engagement and marriage and fatherhood, his
+finding more and more of the truths he finally settled down in, his
+travels in Europe, the days of the old house in New York and all the men
+I used to see there, at last his quieter motion down the later years of
+life in Newport, Boston and Cambridge, with his friends and
+correspondents about him, and his books more and more easily brought
+forth--how long, how long all these things were in the living, but how
+short their memory now is! What remains is a few printed pages, us and
+our children and some incalculable modifications of other people's
+lives, influenced this day or that by what he said or did. For me, the
+humor, the good spirits, the humanity, the faith in the divine, and the
+sense of his right to have a say about the deepest reasons of the
+universe, are what will stay by me. I wish I could believe I should
+transmit some of them to our babes. We all of us have some of his
+virtues and some of his shortcomings. Unlike the cool, dry thin-edged
+men who now abound, he was full of the fumes of the _ur-sprünglich_
+human nature; things turbid, more than he could formulate, wrought
+within him and made his judgments of rejection of so much of what was
+brought [before him] seem like revelations as well as knock-down
+blows.... I hope that rich soil of human nature will not become more
+rare!...
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Two months later James said in a letter to Mrs. Gibbens: "It is singular
+how I'm learning every day now how the thought of his comment on my
+experiences has hitherto formed an integral part of my daily
+consciousness, without my having realized it at all. I interrupt myself
+incessantly now in the old habit of imagining what he will say when I
+tell him this or that thing I have seen or heard."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+James remained in London until mid-February of 1883, and took advantage
+of the opportunity to see more of certain men there--among them
+Shadworth Hodgson, Edmund Gurney, Croom Robertson, Frederick Pollock,
+Leslie Stephen, Carveth Reid, and Francis Galton. His eyes were
+troubling him again, but he did some writing on psychology. After paying
+another short visit to Paris, he sailed for home in March.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+1883-1890
+
+ _Writing the "Principles of Psychology"--Psychical Research--The
+ Place at Chocorua--The Irving Street House--The Paris Psychological
+ Congress of 1889_
+
+
+JAMES had now found his feet, professionally, as well as in other ways.
+He strode ahead on the next stage of his journey with a firmness of
+which he would have been incapable in the seventies, and carried a heavy
+burden of work forward, with never a long halt and without ever setting
+it down, until he had finished the two large volumes of the "Principles
+of Psychology" in 1890. The previous decade had counted steadily for
+inward clarification, for health and for confidence. He was no longer
+harassed by serious illnesses and pursued by the spectre of possible
+invalidism. Marriage, parenthood--these immense events in a man's
+spiritual journey--had happened for him within the last four years and
+had brought him new loves and ambitions. He was no longer perplexed by
+misgivings about his aims and abilities, but had arrived at the
+conception of his treatise on psychology and had begun to formulate its
+chapters. He had become a very successful teacher, and might fairly have
+suspected himself of being an inspiring one. His work was beginning to
+be well known outside the halls of his own University.
+
+It is not the purpose of this book to trace the origin of his ideas or
+their influence on contemporary discussion. But any reader who will
+glance at Professor Perry's annotated "List" of his published work may
+see that he had written important papers by 1883, and that most of what
+was original in his psychology must by then have been present to his
+mind. During the visit he had just made to Europe, he had got a personal
+impression of the transatlantic colleagues whose writings had interested
+him especially, and had spent many hours in the company of certain among
+them with whom he found himself to be particularly in sympathy. Thus he
+had gained a bracing sense of comradeship with the men who were
+collaborating in his field. Last of all, he had brought home with him a
+happy conviction that the most propitious place for him to teach and
+write his book in was the philosophical department of his own
+University.
+
+So far as the "textbook on Psychology" was concerned, however, he still
+underestimated the amount of original investigation and thought which
+his instinct for "concrete" reality was to exact of him. Perhaps also he
+made too little allowance for the inadequacies of current laboratory
+methods and of the existing literature of the subject. Helmholtz and
+Wundt had already published important reports from their laboratories in
+Germany; but psychology was still generally considered to be an
+inductive science, which achieved its purposes by introspection and
+description, and which had no very broad connection with physiology nor
+many laboratory methods of its own. James had still to help make a
+modern science of it by his own immense effort. He may perhaps be said
+to have set to work when he offered the course on "The Relation between
+Physiology and Psychology" to graduate students in 1875, and made the
+class take part in experiments which he arranged in a room in the
+Lawrence Scientific School building.[68]
+
+Thus with teaching, experimenting, and occasionally writing out his
+conclusions as he went along, he ploughed his way through his subject.
+The triple process is familiar enough today to most men of science. But
+James and the majority of his contemporaries had been trained
+differently or not at all; and their generation, following a few great
+leaders like Pasteur, Darwin and Helmholtz, had to establish new
+standards of criticism and new methods of inquiry in every department of
+science. When the "Psychology" was drawing to its completion, James
+wrote two sentences about his difficulties to his brother Henry. They
+might equally well have been written at any other time during the
+eighties. "I have," he said, "to forge every sentence in the teeth of
+irreducible and stubborn facts. It is like walking through the densest
+brush-wood."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+There was one peculiarly stubborn and irreducible class of facts which
+he took up and gave much thought to during this period.
+
+As early as 1869 he had recognized the desirability of examining the
+class of phenomena that are popularly called psychic[69] in a critical
+and modern spirit. This was not because he was in the least impressed by
+the lucubrations of the kind of mind which can be well described, in
+Macaulay's phrase, as "utterly wanting in the faculty by which a
+demonstrated truth is distinguished from a plausible supposition." But
+an instinctive "love of sportsmanlike fair play" was stirred in him by
+the indifference with which men who professed to be students of
+nature,[70] and particularly scientists whose prime concern was with our
+mental life, usually declined to examine phenomena which have occurred
+in every known human race and generation. He was in cordial sympathy
+with the announced intention of the Society for Psychical Research to
+investigate the abnormal and "supernormal" occurrences. He referred
+aptly to such occurrences as "wild facts," having as yet no scientific
+"stall or pigeon-hole."[71] Above all, he was conscious, from the
+beginning, of the proximity and possible relevance to his psychological
+and philosophical problems of this large body of unanalyzed material.
+
+Most people cannot approach such matters without emotional bias. The
+atmosphere in which the public discussion of them goes on is still
+poisoned by superstition and clouded by prejudice. No scientific man
+involves himself in such inquiries, even now, without the certitude that
+his statements will be misconstrued by some of his professional
+brethren, and that his name will be taken in vain by newspapers and
+charlatans. James recognized all this, but saw in it no excuse for
+avoiding the subject; rather, a reason for examining it in an
+unprejudiced spirit and for avowing his conclusions openly.
+
+The English Society for Psychical Research had been founded in 1882. In
+1884 James became a corresponding member and concerned himself actively
+in organizing an American society of the same name in Boston. He made
+contributions to the "Proceedings" of this society during the six years
+of its existence; and, when it amalgamated with the English Society in
+1890, he became a Vice-President of the latter. With the exception of a
+term during which he served as its President (in 1894-95), he continued
+to be a Vice-President of the S. P. R. until his death, and occasionally
+published through its "Proceedings."
+
+In the eighties he took up his share of the drudgery which was involved
+in investigating alleged cases of apparition, thought-transference, and
+mediumship. For one entire winter he and Professor G. H. Palmer attended
+"cabinet séances" every Saturday without discovering anything that they
+could report as other than fraudulent. But in the following year he got
+upon the track of the now famous Mrs. Piper, and he made his first
+report on her trance-state to the S. P. R. in 1886. After many tests and
+trials he was unable to "resist the conviction that knowledge appeared
+in her trances which she had never gained by the ordinary waking use of
+her eyes, ears and wits." Withholding his acceptance from the
+spirit-message hypothesis, he added: "What the source of this knowledge
+may be I know not, and have not a glimmer of an explanatory suggestion
+to make; but from admitting the fact of such knowledge I can see no
+escape."[72] He continued to find time for the investigation of other
+cases, and could sometimes console himself by laughing over expeditions
+which were quite fruitless of interesting result. A few sentences from
+letters addressed to Mrs. James in 1888, reporting an adventure with
+Richard Hodgson in New York, will serve as illustration:--
+
+"[Apr. 6.] Hodgson and I started after our baggage arrived, to find Mr.
+B----, who, you may have seen by the papers, is making a scandal by
+having given himself over (hand and foot) to a medium, 'Madam D----,'
+who does most extraordinarily described physical performances. We found
+the old girl herself, a type for Alexandre Dumas, obese, wicked, jolly,
+intellectual, with no end of go and animal spirits, who entertained us
+for an hour, gave us an appointment for a sitting on Monday, and asked
+us to come and see Mr. B. tonight. What will come of it all I don't
+know. It will be baffling, I suppose, like everything else of that
+kind."
+
+"[Apr. 7.] Mr. B. and Mrs. D. were 'too tired' to see us last night! I
+suspect that will be the case next Monday. It is the knowing thing to do
+under the circumstances. But that woman is one with whom one would fall
+_wildly_ in love, if in love at all--she is such a fat, _fat_ old
+villain...."
+
+"[Apr. 24th.] In bed at 11.30, after the most hideously inept psychical
+night, in Charleston, over a much-praised female medium who fraudulently
+played on the guitar. A plague take all white-livered, anæmic, flaccid,
+weak-voiced Yankee frauds! Give me a full blooded red-lipped villain
+like dear old D.--when shall I look upon her like again?"
+
+In 1889 James undertook the labor of conducting the "Census of
+Hallucinations" in America. The census sought to discover, from lists of
+people selected at random, how many of them, when in good health and
+awake, had ever heard a voice, seen a form, or felt a touch which no
+material presence could account for. James received about seven thousand
+answers to the inquiries that were sent out in America; and after he had
+digested and reported them, the results turned out to be in remarkable
+conformity with the returns from other parts of the world. Some of
+James's own deductions from the returns will be found in the essay,
+"What Psychical Research has Accomplished."[73] Among other things, the
+census showed apparitions corresponding with a distant event as
+occurring more than four hundred times oftener than could be expected
+from a calculation of chances.
+
+After this task had been completed, he usually avoided spending time in
+personal investigations.
+
+
+
+
+_To Charles Renouvier._
+
+
+KEENE VALLEY, _Aug. 5, 1883_
+ADIRONDACKS.
+
+MY DEAR MONSIEUR RENOUVIER,--My silence has been so protracted that I
+fear you must have wondered what its reasons could be. Only the old
+ones!--much to do, and little power to do it, obliging procrastination.
+You will doubtless have heard from the Pillons of my safe return home. I
+have spent the interval in the house of my mother-in-law in Cambridge,
+trying to do some work in the way of psychologic writing before the
+fatal day should arrive when the College bell, summoning _me_ as well
+as my colleagues to the lecture-room, should make literary work almost
+impossible. Although my bodily condition, thanks to my winter abroad,
+has been better than in many years at a corresponding period, what I
+succeeded in accomplishing was well-nigh zero. I floundered round in the
+morasses of the theory of cognition,--the Object and the Ego,--tore up
+almost each day what I had written the day before, and although I am
+inwardly, of course, more aware than I was before of where the
+difficulties of the subject lie, outwardly I have hardly any manuscript
+to show for my pains. Your unparalleled literary fecundity is a perfect
+wonder to me. You should return pious thanks to the one or many gods who
+had a hand in your production, not only for endowing you with so clear a
+head, but for giving you so admirable a working temperament. The most
+rapid piece of literary work I ever did was completed ten days ago, and
+sent to "Mind," where it will doubtless soon appear. I had promised to
+give three lectures at a rather absurd little "Summer School of
+Philosophy," which has flourished for four or five years past in the
+little town of Concord near Boston, and which has an audience of from
+twenty to fifty persons, including the lecturers themselves; and,
+finding at the last moment that I could do nothing with my much
+meditated subject of the Object and the Ego, I turned round and lectured
+"On Some Omissions of Introspective Psychology,"[74] and wrote the
+substance of the lectures out immediately after giving them--the whole
+occupying six days. I hope you may read the paper some time and approve
+it--though it is out of the current of your own favorite topics and
+consequently hardly a proper candidate for the honours of translation in
+the "Critique."
+
+I understand now why no really good classic manual of psychology exists;
+why all that do exist only treat of particular points and chapters with
+any thoroughness. It is impossible to write one at present, so
+infinitely more numerous are the difficulties of the task than the means
+of their solution. Every chapter bristles with obstructions that refer
+one to the next ten years of work for their mitigation.
+
+With all this I have done very little consecutive reading. I have not
+yet got at your historic survey in the "Critique Religieuse," for which
+my brain nevertheless itches. But I have read your articles apropos of
+Fouillée, and found them--the latest one especially--admirable for
+clearness and completeness of statement. Surely nothing like them has
+ever been written--no such stripping of the question down to its naked
+essentials. Those who, like Fouillée, have the intuition of the Absolute
+Unity, will of course not profit by them or anything else. Why can all
+others view their own beliefs as _possibly_ only hypotheses--_they_ only
+not? Why does the Absolute Unity make its votaries so much more
+_conceited_ at having attained it, than any other supposed truth does?
+This inner sense of superiority to all antagonists gives Fouillée his
+_fougue_ and adds to his cleverness, and no doubt increases immensely
+the effectiveness of his writing over the average reader's mind. But it
+also makes him careless and liable to overshoot the mark.
+
+I have just been interrupted by a visit from Noah Porter, D.D.,
+President of Yale College, whose bulky work on "The Human Intellect" you
+may have in your library, possibly. An American college president is a
+very peculiar type of character, partly man of business, partly
+diplomatist, partly clergyman, and partly professor of metaphysics,
+armed with great authority and influence if his college is an important
+one--which Yale is; and Porter is the paragon of the type--_bonhomme et
+rusé_, learned and simple, kindhearted and sociable, yet possessed of
+great decision and obstinacy. He is over seventy, but comes every summer
+here to the woods to refresh himself by long mountain walks and life in
+"camp," sleeping on a bed of green boughs before a great fire in the
+open air. He looks like a farmer or a fisherman, and there is no sort of
+human being who does not immediately feel himself entirely at home in
+his company.
+
+I have been here myself just a week. The virgin forest comes close to
+our house, and the diversity of walks through it, the brooks and the
+ascensions of hilltops are infinite. I doubt if there be anything like
+it in Europe. Your mountains are grander, but you have nowhere this
+carpet of absolutely primitive forest, with its indescribably sweet
+exhalations, spreading in every direction unbroken. I shall stay here
+doing hardly any work till late in September. I need to lead a purely
+animal life for at least two months to carry me through the teaching
+year. My wife and two children are here, all well. I would send you her
+photograph and mine, save that hers--the only one I have--is too bad to
+send to anyone, and my own are for the moment exhausted. I find myself
+counting the years till my next visit to Europe becomes possible. Then
+it shall occur under more cheerful circumstances, if possible; and I
+shall stay the full fifteen months instead of only six. As I look back
+now upon the winter, I find the strongest impression I received was that
+of the singularly artificial, yet deeply vital and soundly healthy,
+character of the English social and political system as it now exists.
+It is one of the most _bizarre_ outbirths of time, one of the most
+abnormal, in certain ways, and yet one of the most successful. I know
+nothing that so much confirms your philosophy as this spectacle of an
+accumulation of individual initiatives _all preserved_. I hope both you
+and the Pillons are well. I shall never forget their friendliness, nor
+the spirit of human kindness that filled their household. I am ashamed
+to ask for letters from you, when after so long a silence I can myself
+give you so little that is of philosophic interest. But we must take
+long views; and, if life be granted, I shall do something yet, both in
+the way of reading and writing. Ever truly yours,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+At about this time Major Henry L. Higginson, then the junior partner in
+the banking house of Lee, Higginson & Company and soon to be widely
+known as the founder of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, undertook to look
+after the small patrimony which James had inherited. He tactfully
+assumed the initiative respecting whatever had to be done, and continued
+to render this friendly service as long as James lived. On his side
+James, who knew nothing about investments and was incapable of
+considering them without involving himself in excessive and unprofitable
+worry, was delighted to leave decisions to his friend's wiser judgment.
+Occasional jocose communications like the following came to be almost
+his only incursions into his own "affairs."
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry L. Higginson._
+
+
+_Oct. 14_ [1883?].
+
+MY DEAR HENRY,--I receive today from your office two documents, one
+containing some unintelligible hieroglyphics, "C. B.& Q., 138" etc.,
+etc.; the other winding up with a statement that I owe you $12,674.97!!
+
+The latter explains your mysterious interest in my affairs. I feared as
+much! Go on, Shylock, go on! you have me in your power. The peculiar
+combination of ignorance and poverty which I present makes me an easy
+victim. And I confess that as a psychologist I am curious to see how far
+your instincts of cupidity will carry you. I await eagerly the ulterior
+developments. Yours, etc.,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+[_Enclosed with the foregoing_]
+
+Extract from a biographic sketch of W. J. soon to be published in the
+"Harvard Register":--
+
+"He now fancied himself possessed of immense wealth, and gave without
+stint his imaginary riches. He has ever since been under gentle
+restraint, and leads a life not merely of happiness, but of bliss;
+converses rationally, reads the newspapers, where every talk of distress
+attracts his notice, and being furnished with an abundant supply of
+blank checks, he fills up one of them with a munificent sum, sends it
+off to the sufferer, and sits down to his dinner with a happy conviction
+that he has earned the right to a little indulgence in the pleasures of
+the table; and yet, on a serious conversation with one of his old
+friends, he is quite conscious of his real position; but the conviction
+is so exquisitely painful that he will not let himself believe it."
+
+
+
+
+_To H. P. Bowditch._
+
+
+[Post-card]
+
+CAMBRIDGE, MASS., _Jan. 31_ [1884].
+
+Heute den 31ten Januar wurde mir vor 2 Stunden in rascher
+Aufeinander-folge _ein_ (1) wunderschöner jüdischaussehender, kräftiger
+und munterer Knabe geboren. Alles geht nach Wunsch, und bittet um
+stiller Theilnahme der glückliche Vater.
+
+W. J.
+
+[_Translation._]
+
+Today the 31st of January, two hours since, there was born to me in
+rapid succession _one_ (I) wonderfully beautiful, Jewish-looking,
+sturdy and lively boy. Everything is going as one would wish, and the
+happy father craves your hushed sympathy.
+
+W. J.
+
+
+
+
+_To Thomas Davidson._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Mar. 30, 1884_.
+
+MY DEAR DAVIDSON,--I am in receipt of two letters from you since my
+last, the latest one of them from Capri. I am very sorry to hear of your
+continued bad physical condition. You have a queer constitution,--with
+such an unusual amount of strength in most ways,--to be a constant prey
+to ailment. I have long ago come to think that the right measure of a
+man's health is not how much comfort or discomfort he feels in the year,
+but how much work, through thick and thin, he manages to get through.
+Judged by that standard, you doubtless score an unusually high number.
+But when I hear you talking about Texas, I confess I really begin to
+feel alarmed. From Rome to Austin! How can you think of such a thing?
+Are you sure M---- is not playing the part of the tailless fox in the
+fable? I know not a living soul in Texas, and if I did I should have
+moral scruples about becoming an accomplice in any plot for transporting
+you there. Why is it that everything in this world is offered us on no
+medium terms between either having too much of it or too little? You
+pine for a professorship. I pine for your leisure to write and study.
+Teaching duties have really devoured the whole of my time this winter,
+and with hardly any intellectual profit whatever. I have read nothing,
+and written nothing save one lecture on the freedom of the will. How it
+is going to end, I don't well see. The four months of non-lecturing
+study I had at home last year, when I slept well and led a really
+intellectual life, seem like a sort of lost paradise. However, vacations
+make amends. This summer I am to edit my poor father's literary remains,
+"with a sketch of his writings" which will largely consist of extracts
+and no doubt help to the making him better known.
+
+You ask why I don't write oftener. If you could see the arrears of work
+under which my table groans, and the number of semi-business letters and
+notes I now have to write with my infernal eyesight, you would ask no
+longer. In fact I am beginning to ask whether it be not my bounden duty
+to stop corresponding with my friends altogether. Only at that price
+does there seem to be any prospect of doing any reading at all.
+
+I had neither seen your article in the Unitarian Review[75] nor heard of
+it, but ran for it as soon as I got your announcement of its existence.
+I know not what to think of it practically; though I confess the idea of
+engrafting the bloodless pallor of Boston Unitarianism on the Roman
+temperament strikes one at first sight as rather queer. Unitarianism
+seems to have a sort of moribund vitality here, because it is a branch
+of protestantism and the tree keeps the branch sticking out. But whether
+it could be grafted on a catholic trunk seems to me problematic. I
+confess I rather despair of any popular religion of a philosophic
+character; and I sometimes find myself wondering whether there can be
+any popular religion raised on the ruins of the old Christianity without
+the presence of that element which in the past has presided over the
+origin of all religions, namely, a belief in new _physical_ facts and
+possibilities. Abstract considerations about the soul and the reality of
+a moral order will not do in a year what the glimpse into a world of new
+phenomenal possibilities enveloping those of the present life, afforded
+by an extension of our insight into the order of nature, would do in an
+instant. Are the much despised "Spiritualism" and the "Society for
+Psychical Research" to be the chosen instruments for a new era of faith?
+It would surely be strange if they were; but if they are not, I see no
+other agency that can do the work.
+
+I like your formula that in consciousness there must be two
+irreducibles, "being and feeling," and nothing else. But I can't put
+philosophy into letters. When is our long-postponed talk to take place?
+_Aufgeschoben_ for another summer, and I fear another winter too, from
+what you write. It is too bad!
+
+We have a week's recess in a couple of days and I start to look up
+summer lodgings. Alice and the two-month-old baby are very well and send
+you love. Always truly yours,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To G. H. Howison._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Feb. 5, 1885_.
+
+MY DEAR HOWISON,--I've just reread (for the fourth time, I believe) your
+letter of the 30th November. I need not say how tickled I am at your too
+generous words about my Divinity school address on Determinism.[76]
+Sweet are the praises of an enemy. There is, thank Heaven! a plane below
+all formulas and below enmities due to formulas, where men occasionally
+meet each other moving, and recognize each other as brothers inhabiting
+the _same depths_. Such is this depth of the _problem_ of
+determinism--howe'er we solve it, we are brothers if we know it to be a
+_problem_. No man on either side awakens any sense of intellectual
+respect in me who regards the solution as a cock-sure and immediately
+given thing, and wonders that any one should hesitate to choose his
+party. You find fault with my deterministic disjunction, "pessimism or
+subjectivism," and ask why I forgot the third way of "objective moral
+activity," etc. (You probably remember.) I didn't forget it. It entered
+for me into pessimism, for, since such activity has failed to be
+universally realized, it was (deterministically) _impossible from
+eternity_, and the Universe in so far forth not an object of pure
+worship, not an Absolute. My trouble, you see, lies with monism.
+Determinism = monism; and a monism like this world can't be an object of
+pure optimistic contemplation. By pessimism I simply mean _ultimate_
+non-optimism. The Ideal is only a part of this world. Make the world a
+Pluralism, and you forthwith have an object to worship. Make it a Unit,
+on the other hand, and worship and abhorrence are equally one-sided and
+equally legitimate reactions. _Indifferentism_ is the true condition of
+such a world, and turn the matter how you will, I don't see how any
+philosophy of the Absolute can ever escape from that capricious
+alternation of mysticism and satanism in the treatment of its great
+Idol, which history has always shown. Reverence is an accidental
+personal mood in such a philosophy, and has naught to do with the
+essentials of the system. At least, so it seems to me; and in view of
+that, I prefer to stick in the wooden finitude of an ultimate pluralism,
+because that at least gives me something definite to worship and fight
+for.
+
+However, I know I haven't exhausted all wisdom, and am too well aware
+that this position, like everything else, is a _parti pris_ and a _pis
+aller_,--_faute de mieux_,--to continue the Gallic idiom. Your
+predecessor Royce thinks he's got the thing at last. It is too soon for
+me to criticize his book; but I must say it seems to me one of the very
+freshest, profoundest, solidest, most human bits of philosophical work
+I've seen in a long time. In fact, it makes one think of Royce as a man
+from whom nothing is too great to expect.
+
+Your list of thirty lectures makes one bow down in reverence before you.
+I should be afraid you were over-working. Your Hume-Kant circular shall
+be diligently scanned when my Hume lectures come off, in about six
+weeks. I am better as to the eyes, which gives me much hope. Am,
+however, "maturing" building plans for a house, which is bad for sleep.
+I do hope and trust there will be no "Enttäuschung" about Berkeley,[77]
+and that not only the work, but the place and the climate, may prove
+well adapted to both you and Mrs. Howison. Ever truly yours,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The next letters relate to the "Literary Remains of Henry James," which
+had just been published, and in which William James had collected a
+number of his father's papers and edited them with an introductory essay
+on their author's philosophy. Needless to say, the two letters to Godkin
+have not been included among these with any thought of the unfortunate
+review to which they refer. They furnish too good an illustration of
+James's loyalty and magnanimity to be omitted. If more critics, and more
+of the criticized, were to cultivate the manliness and generosity with
+which James always entered discussion, there would be less reviewers
+"never-quite-forgiven," and less feuds in the world of science.
+
+
+
+
+_To E. L. Godkin._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, [_Feb._] 16, 1885.
+
+MY DEAR GODKIN,--Doesn't the impartiality which I suppose is striven for
+in the "Nation," sometimes overshoot the mark "and fall on t'other
+side"? Poor Harry's books seem always given out to critics with
+antipathy to his literary temperament; and now for this only and last
+review of my father--a writer exclusively religious--a personage seems
+to have been selected for whom the religious life is complete _terra
+incognita_. A severe review by one interested in the subject is one
+thing; a contemptuous review by one with the subject out of his sight is
+another.
+
+Make no reply to this! One must disgorge his bile.
+
+I was taken ill in Philadelphia the day after seeing you, and had to
+return home after some days without stopping in N.Y. I _may_ get there
+the week after next, and if so shall claim _one_ dinner, over which I
+trust no cloud will be cast by the beginning of this note! With best
+respects to Mrs. Godkin, always truly yours
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To E. L. Godkin._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Feb. 19, 1885_.
+
+MY DEAR GODKIN,--Your cry of remorse or regret is so "whole-souled" and
+complete that I should not be human were I not melted almost to tears by
+it, and sorry I "ever spoke to you as I did." I felt pretty sure that
+you had no positive oversight of the thing in this case, but I addressed
+you as the official head. And my _emotion_ was less that of filial
+injury than of irritation at what seemed to me editorial stupidity in
+giving out the book to the wrong _sort_ of person altogether--a Theist
+of some sort being the only proper reviewer. I am heartily sorry that
+the thing should have distressed you so much more than it did me. You
+can take your consolation in the fact that it has now afforded you an
+opportunity for the display of those admirable qualities of the heart
+which your friends know, but which the ordinary readers of the "Nation"
+probably do not suspect to slumber beneath the gory surface of that
+savage sheet.
+
+I hear that you are soon coming to give us some political economy. I am
+very glad on every account, and suppose Mrs. Godkin will come _mit_.
+Always truly yours
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To Shadworth H. Hodgson._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _20 Feb., 1885_.
+
+MY DEAR HODGSON,--Your letter of the 7th was most welcome. Anything
+responsive about my poor old father's writing falls most gratefully upon
+my heart. For I fear he found _me_ pretty unresponsive during his
+lifetime; and that through my means any post-mortem response should come
+seems a sort of atonement. You would have enjoyed knowing him. I know of
+no one except Carlyle who had such a smiting _Ursprünglichkeit_ of
+intuition, and such a deep sort of humor where human nature was
+concerned. He bowled one over in such a careless way. He was like
+Carlyle in being no _reasoner_ at all, in the sense in which
+philosophers are reasoners. Reasoning was only an unfortunate necessity
+of exposition for them both. His _ideas_, however, were the exact
+inversion of Carlyle's; and he had nothing to correspond to Carlyle's
+insatiable learning of historic facts and memory. As you say, the world
+of his thought had a few elements and no others ever troubled him.
+_Those_ elements were very deep ones, and had theological names. Under
+"Man" he would willingly have included all flesh, even that resident in
+Sirius or ethereal worlds. But he felt no need of positively looking so
+far. He was the humanest and most genial being in his impulses whom I
+have ever personally known, and had a bigness and power of nature that
+everybody felt. I thank you heartily for your interest. I wish that
+somebody could _take up_ something from his system into a system more
+articulately scientific. As it is, most people will feel the _presence_
+of something real and true for the while they read, and go away and
+presently, unable to dovetail [it] into their own framework, forget it
+altogether.
+
+I am hoping to write you a letter ere long, a letter philosophical. I am
+going over Idealism again, and mean to review your utterances on the
+subject. You know that, to quote what Gurney said one evening, to attain
+to assimilating your thought is the chief purpose of one's life. But you
+know also how hard it is for the likes of me to write, and how much that
+is felt is unthought, and that as thought [it] goes and must go
+unspoken. Brother Royce tells me he has sent you his "Religious Aspect
+of Philosophy." He is a wonderfully powerful fellow, not yet thirty, and
+this book seems to me to have a real fresh smell of the Earth about it.
+You will enjoy it, I know. I am very curious to hear what you think of
+his brand-new argument for Absolute Idealism.
+
+I and mine are well. But the precious time as usual slips away with
+little work done. Happy you, whose time is all your own!
+
+WM. JAMES
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry James._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Apr. 1, 1885_.
+
+...I am running along quite smoothly, and my eyes,--you never knew such
+an improvement! It has continued gradually, so that practically I can
+use them all I will. It saves my life. _Why_ it should come now, when,
+bully them as I would, it wouldn't come in the past few years, is one of
+the secrets of the nervous system which the last trump, but nothing
+earlier, may reveal. A week's recess begins today, and the day after
+tomorrow I shall start for the South Shore to look up summer quarters. I
+want to try how sailing suits me as a summer kill-time. The walking in
+Keene Valley suits me not, and driving is too "cost-playful." I have
+made a start with my psychology which I shall work at, temperately,
+through the vacation and hope to get finished a year from next fall,
+_sans faute_. Then shall the star of your romances be eclipst!...
+
+
+
+
+_To Shadworth H. Hodgson._
+
+
+NEWPORT, _Dec. 30, 1885_.
+
+MY DEAR HODGSON,--I have just read your "Philosophy and Experience"
+address, and re-read with much care your "Dialogue on Free Will" in the
+last "Mind." I thank you kindly for the address. But isn't philosophy a
+sad mistress, estranging the more intimately those who in all other
+respects are most intimately united,--although 'tis true she unites them
+afresh by their very estrangement! I feel for the first time now, after
+these readings, as if I might be catching sight of your foundations.
+Always hitherto has there been something elusive, a sense that what I
+caught could not be _all_. Now I feel as if it might be all, and yet for
+me 'tis not enough.
+
+Your "method" (which surely after _this_ needs no additional expository
+touch) I seem at last to understand, but it shrinks in the
+understanding. For what is your famous "two aspects" principle more than
+the postulate that the world is thoroughly _intelligible_ in nature? And
+what the practical outcome of the distinction between _whatness_ and
+_thatness_ save the sending us to experience to ascertain the
+connections among things, and the declaration that no amount of insight
+into their intrinsic qualities will account for their existence? I can
+now get no more than that out of the method, which seems in truth to me
+an over-subtle way of getting at and expressing pretty simple truths,
+which others share who know nothing of your formulations. In fact your
+wondrously delicate retouchings and discriminations appear rather to
+darken the matter from the point of view of teaching. One gains much by
+the way, of course, that he would have lost by a shorter path, but one
+risks losing the end altogether. (I reserve what you say at the end of
+both articles about Conscience, etc.--which is original and beautiful
+and which I feel I have not yet assimilated. I will only ask whether all
+you say about the decisions of conscience implying a future verification
+does not hold of scientific decisions as well, so that _all_ reflective
+_cognitive_ judgments, as well as practical judgments, project
+themselves ideally into eternity?)
+
+As for the Free Will article, I have very little to say, for it leaves
+entirely untouched what seems to me the only living issue involved. The
+paper is an exquisite piece of literary goldsmith's work,--nothing like
+it in that respect since Berkeley,--but it hangs in the air of
+speculation and touches not the earth of life, and the beautiful
+distinctions it keeps making gratify only the understanding which has no
+end in view but to exercise its eyes by the way. The distinctions
+between _vis impressa_ and _vis insita_, and compulsion and "reaction"
+_mean_ nothing in a monistic world; and any world is a monism in which
+the parts to come are, as they are in your world, absolutely involved
+and presupposed in the parts that are already given. Were such a monism
+a palpable optimism, no man would be so foolish as to care whether it
+was predetermined or not, or to ask whether he was or was not what you
+call a "real agent." He would acquiesce in the flow and drift of things,
+of which he found himself a part, and rejoice that it was such a whole.
+The question of free will owes its entire being to a difficulty you
+disdain to notice, namely that we _cannot_ rejoice in such a whole, for
+it is _not_ a palpable optimism, and yet, if it be predetermined, we
+_must treat_ it as a whole. Indeterminism is the only way to _break_ the
+world into good parts and into bad, and to stand by the former as
+against the latter.
+
+I can understand the determinism of the mere mechanical intellect which
+will not hear of a moral dimension to existence. I can understand that
+of mystical monism shutting its eyes on the concretes of life, for the
+sake of its abstract rapture. I can understand that of mental defeat and
+despair saying, "it's all a muddle, and here I go, along with it." I can
+_not_ understand a determinism like yours, which rejoices in clearness
+and distinctions, and which is at the same time alive to moral
+ones--unless it be that the latter are purely speculative for it, and
+have little to do with its real feeling of the way life _is_ made up.
+
+For life _is_ evil. Two souls are in my breast; I see the better, and in
+the very act of seeing it I do the worse. To say that the molecules of
+the nebula implied this and _shall have implied it_ to all eternity, so
+often as it recurs, is to condemn me to that "dilemma" of pessimism or
+subjectivism of which I once wrote, and which seems to have so little
+urgency to you, and to which all talk about abstractions erected into
+entities; and compulsion _vs._ "freedom" are simply irrelevant. What
+living man cares for such niceties, when the real problem stares him in
+the face of how practically to meet a world foredone, with no
+possibilities left in it?
+
+What a mockery then seems your distinction between determination and
+compulsion, between passivity and an "activity" every minutest feature
+of which is preappointed, both as to its _whatness_ and as to its
+_thatness_, by what went before! What an insignificant difference then
+the difference between "impediments from within" and "impediments from
+without"!--between being fated to do the thing _willingly_ or not! The
+point is not as to how it is done, but as to its being done at all. It
+seems a wrong complement to the rest of life, which rest of life
+(according to your precious "free-will determinism," as to any other
+fatalism), whilst shrieking aloud at its _whatness_, nevertheless exacts
+rigorously its _thatness_ then and there. Is that a reasonable world
+from the moral point of view? And is it made more reasonable by the fact
+that when I brought about the _thatness_ of the evil _whatness_ decreed
+to come by the _thatness_ of all else beside, I did so consentingly and
+aware of no "impediments outside of my own nature"? With what can I
+_side_ in such a world as this? this monstrous indifferentism which
+brings forth everything _eodem jure_? Our nature demands something
+_objective_ to take sides with. If the world is a Unit of this sort
+there _are_ no sides--there's the moral rub! And you don't see it!
+
+Ah, Hodgson! Hodgson _mio!_ from whom I hoped so much! Most spirited,
+most clean, most thoroughbred of philosophers! _Perchè di tanto inganni
+i figli tuoi?_[78] If you want to reconcile us rationally to
+Determinism, write a Theodicy, reconcile us to _Evil_, but don't talk of
+the distinction between impediments from within and without when the
+within and the without of which you speak are both within that _Whole_
+which is the only real agent in your philosophy. There is no such
+superstition as the idolatry of the _Whole_.
+
+I originally finished this letter on sheet number one--but it occurred
+to me afterwards that the end was too short, so I scratched out the
+first lines of the crossed writing, and refer you now to what follows
+them.--[_Lines from sheet number I._] It makes me sick at heart, this
+discord among the only men who ought to agree. I am the more sick this
+moment as I must write to your ancient foe (at least the stimulus to an
+old "Mind" article of yours), one F. E. Abbot who recently gave me his
+little book "Scientific Theism"--the burden of his life--which makes me
+groan that I cannot digest a word of it. Farewell! Heaven bless you all
+the same--and enable you to forgive me. We are well and I hope you are
+the same. Ever faithfully yours,
+
+W. J.
+
+[_From the final sheet._] Let me add a wish for a happy New Year and the
+expression of my undying regard. You are tenfold more precious to me now
+that I have braved you thus! Adieu!
+
+
+
+
+_To Carl Stumpf._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Jan. 1, 1886_.
+
+MY DEAR STUMPF,--...Let me tell you of my own fate since I wrote you
+last. It has been an eventful and in some respects a sad year. We lost
+our youngest child in the summer--the flower of the flock, 18 months
+old--with a painful and lingering whooping-cough complicated with
+pneumonia. My wife has borne it like an angel, however, which is
+something to be thankful for. Her mother, close to whom we have always
+lived, has had a severe pulmonary illness, which has obliged her to
+repair to Italy for health. She is now on the Ocean, with her youngest
+and only unmarried daughter, the second one having only a month ago
+become the wife of that [W. M.] Salter whose essays on ethics have
+lately been translated by von Gizycki in Berlin. So I have gained him as
+a brother-in-law, and regard it as a real gain. I have also gained a
+full Professorship with an increase of pay, and have moved into a larger
+and more commodious house.[79] My eyes, too, are much better than they
+were a year ago, and I am able to do more work, so there is plenty of
+sweet as well as bitter in the cup.
+
+I don't know whether you have heard of the London "Society for Psychical
+Research," which is seriously and laboriously investigating all sorts of
+"supernatural" matters, clairvoyance, apparitions, etc. I don't know
+what you think of such work; but I think that the present condition of
+opinion regarding it is scandalous, there being a mass of testimony, or
+apparent testimony, about such things, at which the only men capable of
+a critical judgment--men of scientific education--will not even look. We
+have founded a similar society here within the year,--some of us thought
+that the publications of the London society deserved at least to be
+treated as if worthy of experimental disproof,--and although work
+advances very slowly owing to the small amount of disposable time on the
+part of the members, who are all very busy men, we have already stumbled
+on some rather inexplicable facts out of which something may come. It is
+a field in which the sources of deception are extremely numerous. But I
+believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature
+which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomenon
+are _impossible_.
+
+My teaching is much the same as it was--a little better in quality, I
+hope. I enjoy very much a new philosophic colleague, Josiah Royce, from
+California, who is just thirty years old and a perfect little Socrates
+for wisdom and humor. I still try to write a little psychology, but it
+is exceedingly slow work. No sooner do I get interested than bang! goes
+my sleep, and I have to stop a week or ten days, during which my ideas
+get all cold again. Nothing so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an
+uncompleted task.... I try to spend two hours a day in a laboratory for
+psycho-physics which I started last year, but of which I fear the
+_fruits_ will be slow in ripening, as my experimental aptitude is but
+small. But I am convinced that one must guard in some such way as that
+against the growing tendency to _subjectivism_ in one's thinking, as
+life goes on. I am hypnotizing, on a large scale, the students, and have
+hit one or two rather pretty unpublished things of which some day I hope
+I may send you an account.... Ever faithfully yours,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+When the American Society for Psychical Research was organized in Boston
+in the autumn of 1884, Thomas Davidson wrote to comment on its apparent
+anti-spiritual bias. In the following reply, dated February 1, 1885, but
+more easily understood if inserted here out of its chronological place,
+James defined the society's conception of its function. In so doing he
+described his own attitude toward psychical research quite exactly:--
+
+"As for any 'antispiritual bias' of our Society, no theoretic basis, or
+_bias_ of any sort whatever, so far as I can make out, exists in it. The
+one thing that has struck me all along in the men who have had to do
+with it is their complete colorlessness philosophically. They seem to
+have no preferences for any general _ism_ whatever. I doubt if this
+could be matched in Europe. Anyhow, it would make no difference in the
+important work to be done, what theoretic bias the members had. For I
+take it the urgent thing, to rescue us from the present disgraceful
+condition, is to ascertain in a manner so thorough as to constitute
+_evidence_ that will be accepted by outsiders, just what the _phenomenal
+conditions of certain_ concrete phenomenal occurrences are. Not till
+that is done, can spiritualistic or anti-spiritualistic theories be even
+mooted. I'm sure that the more we can steer clear of theories at first,
+the better. The choice of officers was largely dictated by motives of
+policy. Not that scientific men are necessarily better judges of all
+truth than others, but that their adhesion would popularly seem better
+_evidence_ than the adhesion of others, in the matter. And what we want
+is not only truth, but evidence. We shall be lucky if our scientific
+names don't grow discredited the instant they subscribe to any
+'spiritual' manifestations. But how much easier to discredit literary
+men, philosophers or clergymen! I think Newcomb, for President, was an
+uncommon hit--if he believes, he will probably carry others. You'd
+better chip in, and not complicate matters by talking either of
+spiritualism or anti-spiritualism. '_Facts_' are what are wanted."
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry James._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _May 9, 1886_.
+
+MY DEAR HARRY,--I seize my pen the first leisure moment I have had for a
+week to tell you that I have read "The Bostonians" in the full
+flamingness of its bulk, and consider it an exquisite production. My
+growling letter was written to you before the end of Book I had appeared
+in the "Atlantic"; and the suspense of narrative in that region, to let
+the relation of Olive and Verena grow, was enlarged by the vacant months
+between the numbers of the magazine, so that it seemed to me so slow a
+thing had ne'er been writ. Never again shall I attack one of your novels
+in the magazine. I've only read one number of the "Princess
+Casamassima"--though I hear all the people about me saying it is the
+best thing you've done yet. To return to "The Bostonians"; the two last
+books are simply sweet. There isn't a hair wrong in Verena, you've made
+her neither too little nor too much--but absolutely _liebenswürdig_. It
+would have been so easy to spoil her picture by some little excess or
+false note. Her moral situation, between Woman's rights and Ransom, is
+of course deep, and her discovery of the truth on the Central Park day,
+etc., inimitably given. Ransom's character, which at first did not
+become alive to me, does so, handsomely, at last. In Washington, Hay
+told me that Secretary Lamar was delighted with it; Hay himself ditto,
+but especially with "Casamassima." I enclose a sheet from a letter of
+Gurney's but just received. You see how seriously he takes it. And I
+suppose he's right from a profoundly serious point of view,--_i.e._, he
+would be right if the characters were real,--but as the story stands, I
+don't feel his objection. The _fancy_ is more tickled by R.'s victory
+being complete. I hear very little said of the book, and I imagine it is
+being less read than its predecessors. The truth about it, combining
+what I said in my previous letter with what I have just written, seems
+to be this, that it is superlatively well done, provided one admits that
+method of doing such a thing at all. Really the _datum_ seems to me to
+belong rather to the region of fancy, but the treatment to that of the
+most elaborate realism. One can easily imagine the story cut out and
+made into a bright, short, sparkling thing of a hundred pages, which
+would have been an absolute success. But you have worked it up by dint
+of descriptions and psychologic commentaries into near 500--charmingly
+done for those who have the leisure and the peculiar mood to enjoy that
+amount of miniature work--but perilously near to turning away the great
+majority of readers who crave more matter and less art. I can truly say,
+however, that as I have lain on my back after dinner each day for ten
+days past reading it to myself, my enjoyment has been complete. I
+imagine that inhabitants of other parts of the country have read it more
+than natives of these parts. They have bought it for the sake of the
+information. The way you have touched off the bits of American nature,
+Central Park, the Cape, etc., is exquisitely true and calls up just the
+feeling. Knowing you had done such a good thing makes the meekness of
+your reply to me last summer all the more wonderful.
+
+I cannot write more--being much overloaded and in bad condition. The
+spring is opening deliciously--all the trees half out, and the white,
+bright, afternoon east winds beginning. Our household is well....
+
+Don't be alarmed about the labor troubles here. I am quite sure they are
+a most healthy phase of evolution, a little costly, but normal, and sure
+to do lots of good to all hands in the end. I don't speak of the
+senseless "anarchist" riot in Chicago, which has nothing to do with
+"Knights of Labor," but is the work of a lot of pathological Germans and
+Poles. I'm amused at the anti-Gladstonian capital which the English
+papers are telegraphed to be making of it. All the Irish names are among
+the killed and wounded policemen. Almost every anarchist name is
+Continental. Affectly.,
+
+W. J.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+James read "The Bostonians," and wrote to his brother about it, with
+that special shade of detachment which is peculiar to fraternal
+judgments. He was less careful to measure his praise when he wrote to
+other authors about their novels.
+
+
+
+
+_To W. D. Howells._
+
+
+JAFFREY, N.H., _July 21, 1886_.
+
+MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I "snatch" a moment from the limitless vacation peace
+and leisure in which I lie embedded and which doesn't leave me "time"
+for anything, to tell you that I have been reading your "Indian Summer,"
+and that it has given me about as exquisite a kind of delight as
+anything I ever read in my life, in the line to which it belongs. How
+you tread the narrow line of nature's truth so infallibly is more than I
+can understand. Then the profanity, the humor, the humanity, the
+morality--the everything! In short, 'tis cubical, and set it up any way
+you please 'twill stand. That blessed young female made me squeal at
+every page. How _can_ you have got back to the conversations of your
+prime?
+
+But I won't discriminate or analyze. This is only meant for an
+inarticulate cry of _viva Howells_. I repeat it: long live Howells! God
+grant you may do as good things again! I don't believe you can do
+better.
+
+With warmest congratulations to Mrs. Howells that you _and_ she were
+born, I am ever yours,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Mr. Howells called such letters "whoops of blessing." When a new book
+pleased James particularly, he was apt to send a "whoop" to its author.
+
+With respect to the next letter, it will be recalled that Croom
+Robertson was the Editor of "Mind." Richard Hodgson was later for many
+years the Secretary of the American Branch of the Society for Psychical
+Research, in Boston. He became a warm friend. Other allusions to him
+occur later.
+
+
+
+
+_To G. Croom Robertson._
+
+
+_Aug. 13, 1886_.
+
+MY DEAR ROBERTSON,--...I have just been reading the last number of
+"Mind," and find it rather below par. R. Hodgson muddled, clotted, dusky
+and ineffectual, save for a gleam or two of light in as many separate
+points. How can an adult man spend his time in trying to torture an
+accurate meaning into Spencer's incoherent accidentalities? It is so
+much more easy to do the work over for oneself. I rubbed my eyes at the
+Macdonald paper, as a dim sense came over me that it might be a Divinity
+student who "sat under" me for a part of last year. I ween it is. Little
+did I know the viper I was nourishing. Why don't you have a special
+"Neo-Hegelian Department" in "Mind," like the "Children's Department" or
+the "Agricultural Department" in our newspapers--which educated readers
+skip? With Montgomery's paper I am for the most part in warm sympathy,
+though he might make a discrimination or two more. I'm sorry I've not
+yet read his first number. His non-empirical style, so different from
+that of the British school, will stand in the way of his views'
+deglutition by the ordinary reader. I've got the same stuff all neatly
+down in black and white, in a very empirical style, which alas! must
+wait perhaps years till the other chapters are finished. However, in
+these matters, no matter how much different men strike the same vein,
+they do it in such different _ways_, that no one of them absolutely
+supersedes the need of the others.
+
+Davidson I saw the other day in Cambridge. He was fresh from the Concord
+School, where they had been belaboring Goethe as their _pièce de
+résistance_ and topping off with pantheism as dessert. He had read aloud
+a paper of Montgomery's against pantheism, as well as one of his own on
+Goethe's Titanism. Montgomery's is shortly to appear in a journal here.
+I am rather curious to read it.
+
+To go on with "Mind," Hull's paper (Donaldson's) is refreshing. X---- is
+a little stub-and-twist fellow who also sat under me last year, and now
+has a fellowship for next year. He is a silent, mannerless little cub,
+but has first-rate stuff in him, I think, as an original worker;
+theological training. Have you had time yet to look into Royce's book?
+Royce seems to me to be a man of the greatest promise, performance too,
+in that book. I wish you would have it worthily reviewed.
+
+Here I have run on about the accidents of the hour, instead of the
+eternal things of the soul. No matter; all is a symbol, and these words
+will probably waft my presence somehow into yours....
+
+Pray drop me even a short line soon, to let me know about you and Mrs.
+Robertson. I've heard nothing _of_ you, even, for many months. Haven't
+you a brother, or something, to send over here, since there seems no
+hope of having you yourself? Gurney wrote the other day that he was
+about to send his brother.
+
+Farewell! I think of you both often, and am with heartiest affection,
+Yours always,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To Shadworth H. Hodgson._
+
+
+JAFFREY, N.H., _Sept. 12, 1886_.
+
+MY DEAR HODGSON,--I ought long ere this to have written you a genuine
+letter in reply to your two of Feb. 3, _respective_ March 6. (The latter
+by the way came to me many weeks too late, all blurred and
+water-stained, with a notice gummed on it telling as how it had been
+rescued from the Oregon sunken on the bottom of the Ocean. This makes it
+ex-as well as in-trinsically interesting, and does honor to our
+nineteenth-century post-office perfection.) I suppose one reason for my
+procrastination has been the shrinking-back of the fleshly man from
+another gnashing of the teeth over the free-will business. I have just
+been reading your letters again, and beautiful letters they are--also
+your pregnant little paper on Monism. But I'm blest if they make me
+budge an inch from my inveterate way of looking at the question. I hate
+to think that controversy should be useless, and arguments of no avail,
+but the history of opinion on this problem is ominous; so I will be very
+short, hardly more than "yea, yea! nay, nay!"
+
+The subject of my concern seems entirely different from yours. I care
+absolutely nothing whether there be "agents" or no agents, or whether
+man's actions be really "_his_" or not.
+
+What I care for is that my moral reactions should find a real outward
+application. All those who, like you, hold that the world is a system of
+"uniform law" which repels all variation as so much "chaos," oblige, it
+seems to me, the world to be judged integrally. Now the only _integral_
+emotional reaction which can be called forth by such a world as this of
+our experience, is that of dramatic or melodramatic
+interest--romanticism--which _is_ the emotional reaction upon it of all
+intellects who are neither religious nor moral. The moment you seek to
+go deeper, you must break the world into parts, the parts that seem good
+and those that seem bad. Whatever Indian mystics may say about
+overcoming the bonds of good and evil, for _us_ there is no higher
+synthesis in which their contradiction merges, no _one_ way of judging
+that world which holds them both. Either close your eyes and adopt an
+optimism or a pessimism equally daft; or exclude moral categories
+altogether from a place in the world's definition, which leaves the
+world _unheimlich_, reptilian, and foreign to man; or else, sticking to
+it that the moral judgment _is_ applicable, give up the hope of applying
+it to the _whole_, and admit that, whilst some parts are good, others
+are bad, and being bad, _ought_ not to have been, "argal," possibly
+_might_ not have been. In short, be an indeterminist on moral grounds
+with which the differences between compulsory or spontaneous uniformity
+and perceptive and conceptive order have absolutely nothing to do.
+
+But enough! I am far beyond the yea and nay I promised, and feel more
+like gossiping with you as a friend than wrangling with you as a foe. I
+hope things are going well with you in these months and that politics
+have not exasperated you beyond the possibility of philosophizing.... I
+got successfully through the academic year, in spite of the fact that I
+wasted a great deal of time on "psychical research" and had other
+interruptions from work which I would fain have done. I intend _per fas
+aut nefas_ to make more time for myself next year. The family is very
+well; and with the exception of an attack of illness of a couple of
+weeks, the vacation has been a delightful and beneficial one. I wish I
+could live in the country all the year round, or rather nine months of
+it. When I retire from the harness, if that ever happens, I probably
+shall.
+
+I have just been on a little trip to the White Mountains and may
+possibly buy a small farm which I saw in a convenient and romantic
+neighborhood. New England farms are now dirt cheap--the natives going
+West, the Irish coming in and making a better living than the Yankees
+could. Here were seventy-five acres of land, two thirds of it oak and
+pine timber, one third hay, a splendid spring of water, fair little
+house and large barn, close to a beautiful lake and under a mountain
+3500 feet high, four and a half hours from Boston, for 900 dollars! A
+rivulet of great beauty runs through it. I am only waiting to see if I
+can get the strip between it and the lake shore to buy....
+
+I have just read, with infinite zest and stimulation, Bradley's "Logic."
+I suppose you have read it. It is surely "epoch-making" in English
+philosophy. Both empiricists and pan-rationalists must settle their
+accounts with it. It breaks up all the traditional lines. And what a
+fighter the cuss is! Do you know him? What is he personally? Whether
+churlish and sour, or simply redundantly ironical and irrepressible, I
+can't make out from his polemic tone; but should apprehend the former.
+It will be long ere I settle my accounts with his book.
+
+Well! adieu and good luck to you, in spite of your viciousness in the
+matter of determinism! Send me all you write and believe me as ever,
+Always most affectionately yours,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+With respect to the next letter, and others to James's sister, which
+follow, it should now be explained that Miss Alice James had gone abroad
+in 1885. The illness which was the cause of her journey developed more
+and more serious complications. Being near her brother Henry in England,
+she stayed on there during the remaining six years of her life. In
+spite of much suffering, she never let herself adopt an invalidish
+tone,[80] but kept her attention turned toward things outside her
+sick-room, and was apt to greet expressions of commiseration in a way to
+discourage their repetition--as the following letter testifies. "K. P.
+L." was a devoted friend, Miss Katharine P. Loring of Boston; "A. K."
+was the Aunt Kate mentioned in early letters.
+
+
+
+
+_To his Sister._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Feb. 5, 1887_.
+
+DEAREST ALICE,--Your card and, a day or two later, K. P. L.'s letter to
+A. K., have made us acquainted with your sad tumble-down, for which I am
+sorrier than I can express, and can only take refuge in the hope,
+incessantly springing up again from its ashes, that you will
+"recuperate" more promptly than of late has been the case. I'm glad, at
+any rate, that it has got you into Harry's lodgings for a while, and
+hope your next permanent arrangement will prove better than the last.
+When, as occasionally happens, I have a day of headache, or of real
+sickness like that of last summer at Mrs. Dorr's, I think of you whose
+whole life is woven of that kind of experience, and my heart sinks at
+the horizon that opens, and wells over with pity. But when all is over,
+the longest life appears short; and we had better drink the cup,
+whatever it contains, for it _is_ life. But I will not moralize or
+sympathize, for fear of awakening more "screams of laughter" similar to
+those which you wrote of as greeting my former attempts.
+
+We have had but one letter from Harry--soon after his arrival at
+Florence. I hope he has continued to get pleasure and profit from his
+outing. I haven't written to him since he left London, nor do I now
+write him a special letter, but the rest of this is meant for him as
+well as you, and if he is still to be away, you will forward it to him.
+We are getting along very well, on the whole, I keeping very
+continuously occupied, but not seeming to get ahead much, _for the days
+grow so short_ with each advancing year. A day is now about a
+minute--hardly time to turn round in. Mrs. Gibbens arrived from Chicago
+last night, and in ten days she and Margaret will start, with our little
+Billy, for Aiken, S.C., to be gone till May. B. is asthmatic, she is
+glad to go south for her own sake, and the open-air life all day long
+will be much better for him than our arduous winter and spring. He is
+the most utterly charming little piece of human nature you ever saw, so
+packed with life, impatience, and feeling, that I think Father must have
+been just like him at his age....
+
+I have been paying ten or eleven visits to a mind-cure doctress, a
+sterling creature, resembling the "Venus of Medicine," Mrs. Lydia E.
+Pinkham,[81] made solid and veracious-looking. I sit down beside her and
+presently drop asleep, whilst she disentangles the snarls out of my
+mind. She says she never saw a mind with so many, so agitated, so
+restless, etc. She said my _eyes_, mentally speaking, kept revolving
+like wheels in front of each other and in front of my face, and it was
+four or five sittings ere she could get them _fixed_. I am now,
+_unconsciously to myself_, much better than when I first went, etc. I
+thought it might please you to hear an opinion of my mind so similar to
+your own. Meanwhile what boots it to be made unconsciously better, yet
+all the while consciously to lie awake o' nights, as I still do?
+
+Lectures are temporarily stopped and examinations begun. I seized the
+opportunity to go to my Chocorua place and see just what was needed to
+make it habitable for the summer. It is a goodly little spot, but we may
+not, after all, fit up the buildings till we have spent a summer in the
+place and "studied" the problem a little more closely. The snow was
+between two and three feet deep on a level, in spite of the recent
+thaws. The day after I arrived was one of the most crystalline purity,
+and the mountain simply exquisite in gradations of tint. I have a tenant
+in the house, one Sanborn, who owes me a dollar and a half a month, but
+can't pay it, being of a poetic and contemplative rather than of an
+active nature, and consequently excessively poor. He has a sign out
+"Attorney and Pension Agent," and writes and talks like one of the
+greatest of men. He was working the sewing machine when I was there, and
+talking of his share in the war, and why he didn't go to live in
+Boston, etc. (namely that he wasn't known), and my heart was heavy in my
+breast that so rich a nature, fitted to inhabit a tropical dreamland,
+should have nothing but that furnitureless cabin within and snow and sky
+without, to live upon. For, however spotlessly pure and dazzlingly
+lustrous snow may be, pure snow, always snow, and naught but snow, for
+four months on end, is, it must be confessed, a rather lean diet for the
+human soul--deficient in variety, chiaroscuro, and oleaginous and
+medieval elements. I felt as I was returning home that some intellectual
+inferiority _ought_ to accrue to all populations whose environment for
+many months in the year consisted of pure snow.--You are better off,
+better off than you know, in that great black-earthed dunghill of an
+England. I say naught of politics, war, strikes, railroad accidents or
+public events, unless the departure of C. W. Eliot and his wife for a
+year in Europe be a public event....
+
+Well, dear old Alice, I hope and pray for you. Lots of love to Harry,
+and if Katharine is with you, to her. Yours ever,
+
+W. J.
+
+
+
+
+_To Carl Stumpf._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _6 Feb., 1887_.
+
+MY DEAR STUMPF,--Your two letters from Rügen of Sept. 8th, and from
+Halle of Jan. 2 came duly, and I can assure you that their contents was
+most heartily appreciated, and not by me alone. I fairly squealed with
+pleasure over the first one and its rich combination of good counsel and
+humorous commentary, and read the greater part of it to my friend Royce,
+assistant professor of philosophy here, who enjoyed it almost as much as
+I. There is a heartiness and solidity about your letters which is truly
+German, and makes them as nutritious as they are refreshing to receive.
+Your _Kater-Gefühl_,[82] however, in your second letter, about your
+_Auslassungen_[83] on the subject of Wundt, amused me by its speedy
+evolution into _Auslassungen_ more animated still. I can well understand
+why Wundt should make his compatriots impatient. Foreigners can afford
+to be indifferent for he doesn't _crowd_ them so much. He aims at being
+a sort of Napoleon of the intellectual world. Unfortunately he will
+never have a Waterloo, for he is a Napoleon without genius and with no
+central idea which, if defeated, brings down the whole fabric in ruin.
+You remember what Victor Hugo says of Napoleon in the Miserables--"Il
+gênait Dieu"; Wundt only _gêners_ his _confrères_; and whilst they make
+mincemeat of some one of his views by their criticism, he is meanwhile
+writing a book on an entirely different subject. Cut him up like a worm,
+and each fragment crawls; there is no _noeud vital_ in his mental
+medulla oblongata, so that you can't kill him all at once.
+
+But surely you must admit that, since there must be professors in the
+world, Wundt is the most praiseworthy and never-too-much-to-be-respected
+type of the species. He isn't a genius, he is a _professor_--a being
+whose duty is to know everything, and have his own opinion about
+everything, connected with his _Fach_. Wundt has the most prodigious
+faculty of appropriating and preserving knowledge, and as for opinions,
+he takes _au grand sérieux_ his duties there. He says of each possible
+subject, "Here I must have an opinion. Let's see! What shall it be? How
+many possible opinions are there? three? four? Yes! just four! Shall I
+take one of these? It will seem more original to take a higher position,
+a sort of _Vermittelungsansicht_[84] between them all. That I will do,
+etc., etc." So he acquires a complete assortment of opinions of his own;
+and, as his memory is so good, he seldom forgets which they are! But
+this is not reprehensible; it is admirable--from the professorial point
+of view. To be sure, one gets tired of that point of view after a while.
+But was there ever, since Christian Wolff's time, such a model of the
+German Professor? He has utilized to the uttermost fibre every gift that
+Heaven endowed him with at his birth, and made of it all that mortal
+pertinacity could make. He is the finished example of how much mere
+_education_ can do for a man. Beside him, Spencer is an ignoramus as
+well as a charlatan. I admit that Spencer is occasionally more _amusing_
+than Wundt. His "Data of Ethics" seems to me incomparably his best book,
+because it is a more or less frank expression of the man's personal
+_ideal of living_--which has of course little to do with science, and
+which, in Spencer's case, is full of definiteness and vigor. Wundt's
+"Ethics" I have not yet seen, and probably shall not "tackle" it for a
+good while to come.
+
+I was much entertained by your account of F----, of whom you have seen
+much more than I have. I am eager to see him, to hear about his visit to
+Halle, and to get his account of you. But [F.'s place of abode] and
+Boston are ten hours asunder by rail, and I never go there and he never
+comes here. He seems a very promising fellow, with a good deal of
+independence of character; and if you knew the conditions of education
+in this country, and of the preparation to fill chairs of philosophy in
+colleges, you would not express any surprise at his, or mine, or any
+other American's small amount of "Information über die philosophische
+Literatur." Times are mending, however, and within the past six or eight
+years it has been possible, in three or four of our colleges, to get
+really educated for philosophy as a profession. The most promising man
+we have in this country is, in my opinion, the above-mentioned Royce, a
+young Californian of thirty, who is really built for a metaphysician,
+and who is, besides that, a very complete human being, alive at every
+point. He wrote a novel last summer, which is now going through the
+press, and which I am very curious to see. He has just been in here,
+interrupting this letter, and I have told him he must send a copy of his
+book, the "Religious Aspect of Philosophy," to you, promising to urge
+you to read it when you had time. The first half is ethical, and very
+readable and full of profound and witty details, but to my mind not of
+vast importance philosophically. The second half is a new argument for
+monistic idealism, an argument based on the possibility of truth and
+error in knowledge, subtle in itself, and rather lengthily expounded,
+but seeming to me to be one of the few big original suggestions of
+recent philosophical writing. I have vainly tried to escape from it. I
+still suspect it of inconclusiveness, but I frankly confess that I am
+_unable_ to overthrow it. Since you too are an anti-idealist, I wish
+very much you would try your critical teeth upon it. I can assure you
+that, if you come to close quarters with it, you will say its author
+belongs to the genuine philosophic breed.
+
+I am myself doing very well this year, rather light work, etc., but
+still troubled with bad sleep so as to advance very slowly with private
+study and writing. However, few days without a line at least. I found to
+my surprise and pleasure that Robertson was willing to print my chapter
+on Space in "Mind," even though it should run through all four numbers
+of the year.[85] So I sent it to him. Most of it was written six or even
+seven years ago. To tell the truth, I am _off_ of Space now, and can
+probably carry my little private ingenuity concerning it no farther than
+I have already done in this essay; and fearing that some evil fiend
+might put it into Helmholtz's mind to correct all his errors and tell
+the full truth in the new edition of his "Optics," I felt it was high
+time that what I had written should see the light and not be lost. It is
+dry stuff to read, and I hardly dare to recommend it to you; but if you
+do read it, there is no one whose favorable opinion I should more
+rejoice to hear; for, as you know, you seem to me, of all writers on
+Space, the one who, on the whole, has thought out the subject most
+_philosophically_. Of course, the experimental patience, and skill and
+freshness of observation of the Helmholtzes and Herings are altogether
+admirable, and perhaps at bottom _worth_ more than philosophic ability.
+Space is really a direfully difficult subject! The third dimension
+bothers me very much still.
+
+I have this very day corrected the proofs of an essay on the Perception
+of Time,[86] which I will send you when it shall appear in the "Journal
+of Speculative Philosophy" for October last. (The number of "July, 1886"
+is not yet out!) I rather enjoyed the writing of it. I have just begun a
+chapter on "Discrimination and Comparison," subjects which have been
+long stumbling-blocks in my path. Yesterday it seemed to me that I could
+perhaps do nothing better than just translate 6 and 7 of the first
+_Abschnitt_ of your "Tonpsychologie," which is worth more than
+everything else put together which has been written on the subject. But
+I will stumble on and try to give it a more personal form. I shall,
+however, borrow largely from you....
+
+Have you seen [Edmund] Gurney's two bulky tomes, "Phantasms of the
+Living," an amazingly patient and thorough piece of work? I should not
+at all wonder if it were the beginning of a new department of natural
+history. But even if not, it is an important chapter in the statistics
+of _Völkerpsychologie_, and I think Gurney worthy of the highest praise
+for his devotion to this unfashionable work. He is not the kind of stuff
+which the ordinary pachydermatous fanatic and mystic is made of....
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry P. Bowditch._
+
+
+[Post-card]
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Mar. 26_ [1887].
+
+My live-stock is increased by a _Töchterchen_, modest, tactful,
+unselfish, quite different from a boy, and in fact a really
+_epochmachendes Erzeugniss_.[87] I shall begin to save for her dowry and
+perhaps your Harold will marry her. Their ages are suitable.
+
+Grüsse an die gnädige Frau.
+
+W. J.
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry James._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Apr. 12, 1887_.
+
+MY DEAR HARRY,--...I got back yesterday from five days spent at my
+sylvan home at Lake Chocorua, whither I had gone to see about getting
+the buildings in order for the summer. The winter has been an
+exceptionally snowy one back of the coast, and I found, when I arrived,
+four feet of snow on a level and eight feet where it had drifted. The
+day before yesterday the heat became summer-like, and I took a long walk
+in my shirt-sleeves, going through the snow the whole length of my leg
+when the crust broke. It was a queer combination--not exactly agreeable.
+The snow-blanket keeps the ground from freezing deep; so that very few
+days after the snow is gone the soil is dry, and spring begins in good
+earnest. I tried snow-shoes but found them clumsy. They were making the
+maple-sugar in the woods; I had excellent comfort at the hotel hard by;
+with whose good landlord and still better landlady I am good friends; I
+rested off the fumes of my lore-crammed brain, and altogether I smile at
+the pride of Greece and Rome--from the height of my New Hampshire home.
+I'm afraid it will cost nearer $2000 than $800 to finish all the work.
+But we shall have ten large rooms (two of them 24 x 24), and three small
+ones--not counting kitchen, pantries, etc., and if you want some real,
+roomy, rustic happiness, you had better come over and spend all your
+summers with us. I can see that the thought makes you sick, so I'll say
+no more about it, but my permanent vision of your future is that your
+pen will fail you as a means of support, and, having laid up no income,
+you will return like the prodigal son to my roof. You will then find
+that, with a wood-pile as large as an ordinary house, a hearth four feet
+wide, and the American sun flooding the floor, even a New Hampshire
+winter is not so bad a thing. With house provided, two or three hundred
+dollars a year will support a man comfortably enough at Tamworth Iron
+Works, which is the name of our township. But, enough! My vulgarity
+makes you shudder....
+
+College begins tomorrow, and there are seven weeks more of lectures. I
+never did my work so easily as this year, and hope to write two more
+chapters of psychology ere the vacation. That immortal work is now more
+than two thirds done. To you, who throw off two volumes a year, I must
+seem despicable for my slowness. But the truth is that (leaving other
+impediments out of account) the "science" is in such a confused and
+imperfect state that every paragraph presents some unforeseen snag, and
+I often spend many weeks on a point that I didn't foresee as a
+difficulty at all. American scholarship is looking up in that line.
+Three first-class works, in point both of originality and of learning,
+have appeared here within four months. Stanley Hall's and mine will make
+five. Meanwhile in England they are doing little or nothing. The
+"psychical researchers" seem to be the only active investigators....
+
+
+
+
+_To his Sister._
+
+
+CHOCORUA, N.H., _July 2, 1887_.
+
+DEAREST SISTER,--It is an unconscionable time since I have written
+either to you or to Harry. Too little eyesight, and too much use
+thereof, is the reason. I thought I should go wild during the
+examination period. I have now got some presbyopic spectacles and hope
+for an improvement. I think I've been straining my eyes for three or
+four months past by not having them on.
+
+A short dictated letter from you came the other day, and has been sent
+back to Alice in Cambridge, so I cannot give its date. I am grieved in
+the extreme to hear of another breakdown in your health.... But I make
+no sympathetic comment, as you would probably "roar" over it. There is
+this to be said, that it is probably less tragic to be sick all the time
+than to be sometimes well and incessantly tumbling down again.
+
+I thought of the difference in our lots yesterday as I was driving home
+in the evening with a wagon in tow, which I had started at six-thirty
+to get at a place called Fryeburg, 19 miles away. All day in the open
+air, talking with the country people, trying horses which they had to
+swap, but concluding to stick to my own--a most blessed feeling of
+freedom, and change from Cambridge life. I never knew before how much
+freedom came with having a horse of one's own. I am becoming quite an
+expert jockey, having examined and tried at least two dozen horses in
+the last six weeks; and I don't know a more fascinating occupation. The
+day before yesterday, I spent most of both forenoon and afternoon in the
+field under the blazing sun, sprinkling my potato plants with Paris
+green. The house comes on slowly, but in a fortnight we shall surely be
+inside of the larger half of it, and the rest can then drag on. Three or
+four men can't get ahead very fast. It has some delightful rooms, and, I
+have no doubt, will make us all happy for several years to come. Not for
+eternity, for everything fades, and I can see that some day we shall be
+glad to sell out and move on, to something grander, perhaps. For simple
+harmonious loveliness, however, this can't be beat....
+
+What a grotesque sort of time you have been having with your Queen's
+jubilee! What a chance for a woman to give some human shove to things,
+by the smallest _real_ word or act, and what incapacity to guess its
+existence or to profit by it! One can see the ground for
+Bonaparte-worship, when one contemplates the results of the orthodox and
+conservative crowned-head education. He, at least, could have dropped an
+unconventional word, done something to pierce the cuticle. But the
+density of British unintellectuality is a spectacle for gods. One can't
+imagine it or describe it. One can only _see_ it....
+
+W. J.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Such enterprises as the horse-swapping just alluded to were not always
+conducted with that circumspection which marks your true horse-trader.
+The companion of one search for a horse reported James as accosting a
+man whom he met driving along the road and asking, "Do you know anyone
+who wants to sell a horse?" At Chocorua everyone was willing to sell a
+horse, and accordingly the man answered that he "didn't know as he did,"
+but what might James be ready to pay? James replied that he was looking
+for a horse "for about $150, but _might_ pay $175." There was a pause
+before the man spoke: "I've got a horse in my barn that would be just
+what you want--_for one hundred and seventy five_."
+
+The buyer was ready enough to laugh over such an incident; but he could
+not mend his trustful ways. The great thing was to have the fun of
+poking about the country-side and of talking business, or anything else,
+with its people whenever occasion offered; and, after all, the horses
+James bought usually turned out to be sound and serviceable enough.
+Perhaps it was because he looked at every living creature with a
+discriminating eye, and had not been a comparative anatomist for
+nothing. In the end, too, he was suited by any horse that pulled
+willingly and was safe for man, woman, and child to drive. There were no
+motor-cars then, and few other summer residents or visitors at Chocorua.
+James's two-seated "democrat" wagon, full of family and guests, and
+often followed by a child on the pony and by one or two other riders,
+used to travel quietly along the secluded and hilly roads for many hours
+a day.
+
+During this summer, and yearly during the next four, James found real
+rest and refreshment on his Chocorua farm. The conditions were simple
+and the place yielded him all the joys of proprietorship without
+involving him in responsibilities to cattle and fields. Anyone who
+knows central New Hampshire will realize how rudimentary "farming" in
+one of the most barren parts of rocky New England necessarily was. The
+glacial soil produced nothing naturally except woods and apple trees.
+But the country was very beautiful, and on his own acres James was lord
+of part of the Earth. Clearing away bushes and stones from one of the
+little fields near the house; causing something to be planted which,
+during those first years, always seemed as if it _must_ be responsive
+enough to grow; cutting out trees to improve the look of the woods or to
+open an interesting view; dragging stones out of the bathing-hole in the
+brook; buying a horse or two and a cow on some lonely roadside at the
+beginning of each summer--these were fascinating adventures.
+
+James was an insatiable lover of landscape, and particularly of wide
+"views." His inclination was to "open" the view, to cut down obstructing
+trees, even at the expense of the foreground. In drives and walks about
+Chocorua he usually made for some high hill that commanded the Ossipee
+Valley or the peaks of the Sandwich Range and White Mountains. Most
+hills in the neighborhood were topped by granite ledges and deserted
+pastures, and each commanded a different prospect. So the expedition
+often took the form of a picnic on one of these ledges. Axes were taken
+along; permission was sometimes obtained to cut down any worthless tree
+that had sprung up to shut off the horizon.
+
+Before the end of such an afternoon James was more than likely to have
+fallen in love with the spot and to be talking of buying it. Indeed he
+was forever playing with projects for buying this or that hill-top or
+high farm and establishing a new dwelling-place of some sort on it. He
+was usually restrained by the price or by remembering the housekeeping
+cares with which his wife was already over-burdened. But he actually did
+buy two--one near Chocorua and one on a shoulder of Mt. Hurricane in the
+Adirondacks; and about the Chocorua region there is hardly a
+high-perched pasture which he did not at some time nourish the hope of
+possessing.
+
+Another consideration that usually deterred him from buying was the
+difficulty of combining hill-tops with brooks. He used often to bewail
+this dispensation of nature; for a vacation without a brook or a pond to
+bathe in was as unthinkable as a summer dwelling-place that did not
+command a splendid view was "inferior." The little house at Chocorua
+stood at no great elevation, but it was near the Lake, and the place
+boasted its own brook, with a little pool, overhung by trees, into which
+the cold water splashed noisily over a natural dam. Thither, rain or
+shine, James used to walk across the meadow for an early morning dip;
+and after a walk or a drive or a couple of hours of chopping, or a warm
+half-day with a book in the woods, he used to plunge into it again.
+
+A few lines, through which breathes the happiest Chocorua mood, may be
+added here, although they were written during a later summer.
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry James._
+
+
+CHOCORUA, _July 10_.
+
+...I have been up here for ten days reveling in the deliciousness of the
+country, dressed in a single layer of flannel, shirt, breeches and long
+stockings, exercising my arms as well as my legs several hours a day,
+and already feeling that bodily and spiritual freshness that comes of
+health, and of which no other good on earth is worthy to unlatch the
+shoe....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The next letter also rejoices over Chocorua, although it turns first to
+academic amenities. The correspondent addressed, now Sir Charles
+Walston, and Henry Jackson, both of the English Cambridge, had sent
+James two cases of audit ale.
+
+
+
+
+_To Charles Waldstein._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _July 20, 1887_.
+
+MY DEAR WALDSTEIN,--It never rains but it pours. The case of beer from
+_you_ also came duly. Day after day I wondered about its _provenance_,
+but your letter dispels the mystery. I had begun to believe that all the
+colleges of Cambridge and Oxford were going to vie with each other in
+wooing my appreciation of their respective brews. The dream is shattered
+but the reality remains. Five dozen is enough for me to fall back
+upon--in the immediate present, at all events.
+
+As for that unknown but thrice-blest Jackson, Henry Jackson of Trinity
+(_dulcissimum mundi nomen_)--is that the way he always acts, or is he
+only so towards _me_? I thank him from the bottom of my heart, and swear
+an eternal friendship with him. If ever he is in need of meat, drink,
+advice or defence, let him henceforth know to whom to apply--purse,
+house, life, all shall be at his disposal. Such a magnanimous heart as
+his was ne'er known before.
+
+I wish I knew his _Fach_! But my ignorance is too encyclopedic. He must
+be a very great philosopher. Goddard shall have some of the stuff.--Of
+course you mean George Goddard--I know him well.
+
+This has been written in the midst of interruptions. I am back in
+Cambridge for only a couple of days, to send furniture up to my New
+Hampshire farmlet. You may play the swell, but I play the yeoman. Which
+is the better and more godly life? Surely the latter. The mother earth
+is in my finger-nails and my back is aching and my skin sweating with
+the ache and sweat of Father Adam and all his _normal_ descendants. No
+matter! Swells and artists have their place too. Farewell! I am called
+off again by the furniture. Remember me! And as for the divine Henry
+Jackson, thank him again and again. His ale is royal stuff. I will make
+no comparisons between his and yours. Ever affectionately yours,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+In explanation of the next letters, it should be said that in 1888 it
+seemed advisable to get the children into a warmer winter climate than
+that of Cambridge. Accordingly Mrs. James carried the three ("Harry,"
+"Billy," and "Margaret Mary," aged respectively eight, five, and two
+years), and a German governess off to Aiken, South Carolina, for three
+months. James was thus left in the Garden Street house with no other
+member of the family except--for he counted as one--a small pug-dog
+named Jap. Dr. Hildreth, who is referred to, was a next-door neighbor,
+whose children were somewhat older than the James children.
+
+
+
+
+_To his Son Henry (age 8)._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Mar. 1, 1888_.
+
+BELOVED HEINRICH,--You lazy old scoundrel, why don't you write a letter
+to your old Dad? Tell me how you enjoy your riding on horseback, what
+Billy does for a living, and which things you like best of all the new
+kinds of things you have to do with in Aiken. How do you like the
+darkeys being so numerous? Everything goes on quietly here. The house so
+still that you can hear a pin drop, and so clean that everything makes a
+mark on it. All because there are no brats and kids around. Jap is my
+only companion, and he sneezes all over me whenever I pick him up. Mrs.
+Hildreth and the children are gone to Florida. The Emmets seem very
+happy. I will close with a fable. A donkey felt badly because he was not
+so great a favorite as a lap-dog. He said, I must act like the lap-dog,
+and then my mistress will like me. So he came into the house and began
+to lick his mistress, and put his paws on her, and tried to get into her
+lap. Instead of kissing him for this, she screamed for the servants, who
+beat him and put him out of the house. Moral: It's no use to try to be
+anything but a donkey if you are one. But neither you nor Billy are one.
+
+Good-night! you blessed boy. Stick to your three R's and your riding, so
+as to get on _fast_. The ancient Persians only taught their boys to
+ride, to shoot the bow and to tell the truth. Good-night!
+
+Kiss your dear old Mammy and that belly-ache of a Billy, and little
+Margaret Mary for her Dad. Good-night.
+
+YOUR FATHER.
+
+
+
+
+_To his Son Henry._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Mar. 27_ [1888].
+
+BELOVED HEINRICH,--Your long letter came yesterday P.M. Much the best
+you ever writ, and the address on the envelope so well written that I
+wondered whose hand it was, and never thought it might be yours. Your
+tooth also was a precious memorial--I hope you'll get a better one in
+its place. Send me the other as soon as it is tookin out. They ought to
+go into the Peabody Museum. If any of George Washington's baby-teeth had
+been kept till now, they would be put somewhere in a public museum for
+the world to wonder at. I will keep this tooth, so that, if you grow up
+to be a second Geo. Washington, I may sell it to a Museum. When
+Washington was only eight years old his mother didn't know he was going
+to be Washington. But he did be it, when the time came.
+
+I will now tell you about what Dr. Hildreth is doing. The family is in
+Florida, and he is building himself a new house. They are just starting
+the foundation. The fence is taken down between our yard and his, by the
+stable, and teams are driving through with lumber. Our back yard is
+filled with lumber for the frame of the house. It is to be cut, squared,
+mortised, etc., in our yard and then carried through to his.
+
+I dined last night at the Dibblees'. The boys had been to
+dancing-school. I like their looks. All the boys and girls together kept
+up such a talking that I seemed to be in a boiler factory where they
+bang the iron with the hammers so. It's just so with them every day. But
+they're very good-natured, even if they don't let the old ones speak.
+
+Say to Fräulein that "ich lasse Sie grüssen von Herzensgrund!"[88]
+
+Thump Bill for me and ask him if he likes it so nicely.
+
+Jap's nose is all dry and brown with holding it so everlastingly towards
+the fire.
+
+We are having ice-cream and the Rev. George A. Gordon to lunch today.
+The ice-cream is left over from the Philosophical Club last night.
+
+Now pray, old Harry, stick to your books and let me see you do sums and
+read _fast_ when you get back.
+
+The best of all of us is your mother, though.
+
+Good-bye!
+
+Your loving Dad.
+
+W. J.
+
+
+
+
+_To his Son William._
+
+
+18 GARDEN STREET, _Apr. 29, 1888_.
+9:30 A.M.
+
+BELOVED WILLIAMSON,--This is Sunday, the sabbath of the Lord, and it has
+been very hot for two days. I think of you and Harry with such longing,
+and of that infant whom I know so little, that I cannot help writing you
+some words. Your Mammy writes me that she can't get _you_ to _work_
+much, though Harry works. You _must_ work a little this summer in our
+own place. How nice it will be! I have wished that both you and Harry
+were by my side in some amusements which I have had lately. First, the
+learned seals in a big tank of water in Boston. The loveliest beasts,
+with big black eyes, poking their heads up and down in the water, and
+then scrambling out on their bellies like boys tied up in bags. They
+play the guitar and banjo and organ, and one of them saves the life of a
+child who tumbles in the water, catching him by the collar with its
+teeth, and swimming him ashore. They are both, child and seal, trained
+to do it. When they have done well, their master gives them a lot of
+fish. They eat an awful lot, scales, and fins, and bones and all,
+without chewing. That is the worst thing about them. He says he never
+beats them. They are full of curiosity--more so than a dog for far-off
+things; for when a man went round the room with a pole pulling down the
+windows at the top, all their heads bobbed out of the water and followed
+him about with their eyes _aus lauter_[89] curiosity. Dogs would hardly
+have noticed him, I think. Now, speaking of dogs, Jap was _nauseated_
+two days ago. I thought, from his licking his nose, that he was going to
+be sick, and got him out of doors just in time. He vomited most awfully
+on the grass. He then acted as if he thought I was going to punish him,
+poor thing. He can't discriminate between sickness and sin. He leads a
+dull life, without you and Margaret Mary. I tell him if it lasts much
+longer, he'll grow into a common beast; he hates to be a beast, but
+unless he has human companionship, he will sink to the level of one. So
+you must hasten back and make much of him.
+
+I also went to the panorama of the battle of Bunker Hill, which is as
+good as that of Gettysburg. I wished Harry had been there, because he
+knows the story of it. You and he shall go soon after your return. It
+makes you feel just as if you lived there.
+
+Well, I will now stop. On Monday morning the 14th or Sunday night the
+13th of May, I will take you into my arms; that is, I will meet you with
+a carriage on the wharf, when the boat comes in. And I tell you I shall
+be glad to see the whole lot of you come roaring home. Give my love to
+your Mammy, to Aunt Margaret, to Fräulein, to Harry, to Margaret Mary,
+and to yourself. Your loving Dad,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry James._
+
+
+CHOCHURA, N.H., _July 11, 1888_.
+
+MY DEAR HARRY,--Your note announcing Edmund Gurney's death came
+yesterday, and was a most shocking surprise. It seems one of Death's
+stupidest strokes, for I know of no one whose life-task was begun on a
+more far-reaching scale, or from whom one expected with greater
+certainty richer fruit in the ripeness of time. I pity his lovely wife,
+to whom I wrote a note yesterday; and also a brief notice for the
+"Nation."[90] To me it will be a cruel loss; for he recognized me more
+than anyone, and in all my thoughts of returning to England he was the
+Englishman from whom I awaited the most nourishing communion. We ran
+along on very similar lines of interest. He was very profound, subtle,
+and voluminous, and bound for an intellectual synthesis of things much
+solider and completer than anyone I know, except perhaps Royce. Well!
+such is life! all these deaths make what remains here seem strangely
+insignificant and ephemeral, as if the weight of things, as well as the
+numbers, was all on the other side.[91]
+
+I have to thank you for a previous letter three or four weeks old,
+which, having sent to Aunt Kate, I cannot now date. I must also thank
+for "Partial Portraits" and "The Reverberator." The former, I of course
+knew (except the peculiarly happy Woolson one), but have read several of
+'em again with keen pleasure, especially the Turguenieff. "The
+Reverberator" is masterly and exquisite. I quite squealed through it,
+and all the household has amazingly enjoyed it. It shows the technical
+ease you have attained, that you can handle so delicate and difficult a
+fancy so lightly. It is simply delicious. I hope your other magazine
+things, which I am following your advice and not reading [in magazine
+form], are only half as good. How you can keep up such a productivity
+and live, I don't see. All your time is your own, however, barring
+dinner-parties, and that makes a great difference.
+
+Most of my time seems to disappear in college duties, not to speak of
+domestic interruptions. Our summer starts promisingly. How with my lazy
+temperament I managed to start all the things we put through last
+summer, now makes me wonder. The place has yet a good deal to be done
+with it, but it can be taken slowly, and Alice is a most _vaillante_
+partner. We have a trump of a hired man.... Some day I'll send you a
+photograph of the little place. Please send this to Alice, for whose
+letters I'm duly grateful. I only hope she'll keep decently well for a
+little while. Yours ever,
+
+W. J.
+
+P.S. I have just been downstairs to get an envelope, and there on the
+lawn saw a part of the family which I will describe, for you to insert
+in one of your novels as a picture of domestic happiness. On the newly
+made lawn in the angle of the house and kitchen ell, in the shadow of
+the hot afternoon sun, lies a mattress taken out of our spare-room for
+an airing against Richard Hodgson's arrival tomorrow. On it the madonna
+and child--the former sewing in a nice blue point dress, and smiling at
+the latter (named Peggy), immensely big and fat for her years, and who,
+with quite a vocabulary of adjectives, proper names, and a mouthful of
+teeth, shows as yet, although in her sixteenth month, no disposition to
+walk. She is rolling and prattling to herself, now on mattress and now
+on grass, and is an exceedingly good-natured, happy, and intelligent
+child. It conduces to her happiness to have a hard cracker in her fist,
+at which she mumbles more or less all day, and of which she is never
+known to let go, even taking it into her bath with her and holding it
+immersed till that ceremony is o'er. A man is papering and painting one
+of our parlors, a carpenter putting up a mantelpiece in another.
+Margaret and Harry's tutor are off on the backs of the two horses to the
+village seven miles off, to have 'em shod. I, with naught on but gray
+flannel shirt, breeches, belt, stockings and shoes, shall now proceed
+across the Lake in the boat and up the hill, to get and carry the mail.
+Harry will probably ride along the shore on the pony which Aunt Kate has
+given him, and where Billy and Fräulein are, Heaven only knows.
+Returning, I shall have a bath either in lake or brook--doesn't it sound
+nice? On the whole it is nice, but very hot.
+
+
+
+
+_To Miss Grace Norton._
+
+
+[Post-card]
+
+[CHOCORUA,] _Aug. 12, 1888_.
+
+It would take G[uy] de M[aupassant] himself to just fill a post-card
+chock-full and yet leave naught to be desired, with an account of
+"Pierre et Jean." It is a little cube of bronze; or like the body of the
+Capitaine Beausire, "plein comme un oeuf, dur comme une balle"--dur
+surtout! Fifteen years ago, I might have been _enthused_ by such art;
+but I'm growing weak-minded, and the charm of this admirable precision
+and adequacy of art to subject leaves me too cold. It is like these
+modern tools and instruments, so admirably compact, and strong, and
+reduced to their fighting weight. One of those little metallic pumps,
+_e.g._, so oily and powerful, with a handle about two feet long, which
+will throw a column of water about four inches thick 100 feet.
+Unfortunately, G. de M.'s pump only throws dirty water--and I am
+_beginning_ to be old fogy eno' to like even an old shackly wooden
+pump-handle, if the water it fetches only carries all the sweetness of
+the mountain-side. Yrs. ever,
+
+W.J.
+
+The dying fish on p[in]s stick most in my memory. Is that right in a
+novel of human life?
+
+
+
+
+_To G. Croom Robertson._
+
+
+_Oct. 7, 1888._
+
+...I am teaching ethics and the philosophy of religion for the first
+time, with that dear old duffer Martineau's works as a text. It gives me
+lots to do, as I only began my systematic reading in that line three
+weeks ago, having wasted the summer in farming (if such it can be
+called) and philosophizing. My "Psychology" will therefore have to be
+postponed until another year; for with as much college work as I have
+this year, I can't expect to write a line of it....
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry James._
+
+
+_Oct. 14, 1888._
+
+...The Cambridge year begins with much vehemence--I with a big class in
+ethics, and seven graduates from other colleges in advanced psychology,
+giving me a good deal of work. But I feel uncommonly hearty, and shall
+no doubt come out of it all in good shape.... I am to have lots of
+reading and no writing to speak of this year and expect to enjoy it
+hugely. It does one good to read classic books. For a month past I've
+done nothing else, in behalf of my ethics class--Plato, Aristotle, Adam
+Smith, Butler, Paley, Spinoza, etc., etc. No book is celebrated without
+deserving it for some quality, and recenter books, certain never to be
+celebrated, have an awfully squashy texture....
+
+
+
+
+_To E. L. Godkin._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Apr. 15, 1889_.
+
+MY DEAR GODKIN,--Harry's address is 34 De Vere Gardens, W. I imagine
+that he will be there till midsummer.
+
+I hope 'tis yourself that's going! You must need it awfully. I fully
+meant to call on you when I was in N. Y. a fortnight ago. But I was so
+dead tired that I slept on my hotel bed all the only afternoon I had,
+went to Daly's theatre in the evening and then had to come away. You are
+the noblest Roman of them all; and what a man shall do for a newspaper
+with sanity, intellect and backbone in it, when your editorial pen has
+ceased to trickle, I don't know. There must be plenty of morals in the
+world, plenty of brains, plenty of education, plenty of literary skill,
+but was there ever a time or country when they seemed less to coalesce,
+in the field of journalism? In the earlier years I may say that my whole
+political education was due to the "Nation"; later came a time when I
+thought you looked on the doings of Terence Powderly and Co. too much
+from without and too little from within; now I turn to you again as my
+only solace in a world where nothing stands straight. You have the most
+curious way of always being _right_, so I never dare to trust myself now
+when you're agin me. I read my "Nation" rather quicker than I used, but
+I depend on it perhaps more than ever, and cannot forbear seizing this
+passing occasion to tell you so.
+
+I hope, once more, that you're going abroad yourself. It will do you no
+end of good to _take in_ after your daily giving out for so long. Harry
+will be delighted to see you. Poor Alice is stranded at Leamington,
+unable to use her legs or brain to any account, but never complaining,
+and living apparently on the Irish question, being a violent Parnellite.
+I settle the affairs of the Universe in my College courses, and have got
+so far ahead as to be building a big new house on that part of it known
+as the Norton estate.[92] A new street passes before your old house, now
+Grace Norton's. I am a little north of it, facing it, and squatting
+right across the old Norton Avenue. Four other houses are going up
+there immediately, two of 'em actually under way. No answer to this is
+expected, from a man as busy as you. Please give my best respects to
+Mrs. Godkin, and believe me ever affectionately yours,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry James._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _May 12, 1889_.
+
+MY DEAR HARRY,--I have been feeling so dead-tired all this spring that I
+believe a long break from my usual scenes is necessary. It is like the
+fagged state that drove me abroad the last two times. I have been pretty
+steadily busy for six years and the result isn't wonderful, considering
+what a miserable nervous system I have anyhow. The upshot of it is that
+I have pretty much made up my mind to invest $1000 (if necessary) of
+Aunt Kate's legacy in my constitution, and spend the summer abroad. This
+will give me the long-wished opportunity of seeing you and Alice, and
+enable me to go to an international congress of "physiological
+psychologists" which I have had the honor of an invitation to attend in
+the capacity of "honorary committee"-man for the U. S. It will be
+instructive and inspiring, no doubt, and won't last long, and [will]
+give me an opportunity to meet a number of eminent men. But for these
+three reasons, I think I should start for the Pacific coast as being
+more novel. I confess I find myself caring more for landscapes than for
+men--strange to say, and doubtless shameful; so my stay in London will
+probably be short.
+
+I learn from Godkin that he is to be with you about the same time that I
+shall be in London. I don't suppose you have room for both of us, but
+pray don't let that trouble you. I can easily find a lodging somewhere
+for a few days, which are all that I shall stay. I am heartily glad
+Godkin is about to go abroad; I know of no one who so richly deserves a
+vacation. My heart is warming up again to the "Nation," as it hasn't for
+many years.
+
+I long to have a good long talk with you about yourself, Alice, and
+10,000 old things. Alice used to be so perturbed at _expecting_ things
+that in my ignorance of her present condition I don't venture to
+announce to her my arrival. But do you use your discretion as to where
+and how she shall be informed. Send her this, if it is the best way.
+
+It's a bad summer for me to be gone, with the house-building here, the
+Chocorua place unfinished, and the crowds set in motion by the Paris
+exhibition; and _perhaps_, if I find myself unexpectedly hearty when
+lectures end two weeks hence, I may not go after all. But I can't help
+feeling in my bones that I _ought_ to go, so I probably shall. It will
+then be the Cephalonia, sailing June 22, and I shall get off at
+Queenstown, as I am on the whole more curious to see the Emerald Isle
+than any other part of Europe, except Scotland, which I probably shan't
+see at all. The "Congress" in Paris begins Aug. 5.
+
+How good it will be to see poor Alice again, and to hear you discourse!
+Ever affectly, yours,
+
+W.J.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+In late June James did, in fact, sail on the Cephalonia and disembark at
+Queenstown. Thence he proceeded _via_ Cork to Killarney and on to
+Dublin, where he spent a day at Trinity College before going to Glasgow
+and Oban. Having, in the briefest time and at first sight, fallen "dead
+in love wi' Scotland both land and people" he traveled on _via_
+Edinburgh, and reached London by the 17th of July. There he stayed with
+Henry James for ten days and saw his sister. A letter from London to
+Mrs. James may be included in part.
+
+
+
+
+_To Mrs. James._
+
+
+34 DE VERE GARDENS, LONDON,
+_July 29, 1889_.
+
+... [After seeing Mrs. Gurney I went] to Brighton, where I spent a night
+at Myers's lodgings, and the evening with him and the Sidgwicks trying
+thought-transference experiments which, however, on that occasion did
+not succeed.... The best thing by far which I saw in Brighton, and a
+thing the impression of which will perhaps outlast everything else on
+this trip, was four cuttle-fish (octopus) in the Aquarium. I wish we had
+one of them for a child--such flexible intensity of life in a form so
+inaccessible to our sympathy. Next day to Haslemere to the Pearsall
+Smiths, where I spent a really _gemüthlich_ evening and morning.
+Pearsall himself as engaging as of yore. The place and country
+wonderfully rich and beautiful. Returning yesterday, went with H. to
+National Gallery in the afternoon, and read Brownell on France in the
+P.M. Yesterday, Sunday, Harry went to the country after breakfast,
+whilst I wrote a lot of notes and read Zola's "Germinal," a story of
+mines and miners, and a truly magnificent work, if successfully to
+reproduce the horror and pity of certain human facts and make you see
+them as if real can make a book magnificent.
+
+Towards four o'clock (the weather fine) I mounted the top of a bus and
+went (with thousands of others similarly enthroned) to Hampton Court,
+through Kew, Richmond, Bushey Park, etc.; about 30 miles there and back,
+all for 4_s._ 6_d._ I strolled for an hour or more in the Hampton Court
+Gardens, and overlooked the Thames all _bizarrée_ with row-boats and
+male and female rowers, and got back, _perdu dans la foule_, at 10
+P.M.--a most delightful and interesting six hours, with but the usual
+drawback, that _you_ were not along. How you would have enjoyed every
+bit of it, especially the glimpses, between Richmond and Hampton, over
+the high brick walls and between the bars of the iron gates, of these
+extraordinary English gardens and larger grounds, all black with their
+tufted vegetation. More different things can grow in a square foot here,
+if they're taken care of, than I've ever seen elsewhere, and one of
+these high ivy-walled gardens is something the _like_ of which is
+altogether unknown to us. Like all human things (except wives) they grow
+banal enough, if one stays long in their company, but the first
+acquaintance between Alice Gibbens and them is something which I would
+fain see. The crowd was immense and the picturesqueness of everything
+quite medieval, as were also the good manners and the tendency to a
+certain hearty sociability, shown in the chaffing from vehicle to
+vehicle along the road. I'm glad I had this sight of the greatness of
+the English people, and glad I had no social duties to perform....
+
+Harry is as nice and simple and amiable as he can be. He has covered
+himself, like some marine crustacean, with all sorts of material
+growths, rich sea-weeds and rigid barnacles and things, and lives hidden
+in the midst of his strange heavy alien manners and customs; but these
+are all but "protective resemblances," under which the same dear old,
+good, innocent and at bottom very powerless-feeling Harry remains,
+caring for little but his writing, and full of dutifulness and affection
+for all gentle things....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+From London James crossed to Paris, to attend the International Congress
+of Physiological Psychology which had been arranged to coincide with the
+International Exposition of that year. He found between 60 and 120
+colleagues, most of them European, of course, in attendance at its
+sessions. This incident in his life may be summarized in a few sentences
+from his own report of the Congress, in "Mind": "The most striking
+feature of the discussions was, perhaps, their tendency to slope off to
+some one or other of those shady horizons with which the name of
+"psychic-research" is now associated.... The open results were, however
+(as always happens at such gatherings), secondary in real importance to
+the latent ones--the friendships made, the intimacies deepened, and the
+encouragement and inspiration which came to everyone from seeing before
+them in flesh and blood so large a portion of that little army of fellow
+students from whom and for whom all contemporary psychology exists. The
+individual worker feels much less isolated in the world after such an
+experience." To Stumpf he wrote similarly (Aug. 15): "The sight of 120
+men all actively interested in psychology has made me feel much less
+lonely in the world, and ready to finish my book this year with a great
+deal more _entrain_. A book hanging so long on one's hands at last gets
+outgrown, and even disgusting to one."
+
+On his way home James went again to see his sister, and her account of
+him is not to be omitted.
+
+"William, instead of going to Switzerland, came suddenly back from Paris
+and went home, having, as usual, exhausted Europe in a few weeks,
+finding it stale, flat and unprofitable. The only necessity being to get
+home, the first letter after his arrival, was, of course, full of plans
+for his return _plus_ wife and infants; he is just like a blob of
+mercury--you can't put a mental finger upon him. H. and I were laughing
+over him, and recalling Father, and William's resemblance (in his ways)
+to him. Tho' the results are the same, they seem to come from such a
+different nature in the two; in W., an entire inability or indifference
+to 'stick to a thing for the sake of sticking,' as some one said of him
+once; whilst Father, the delicious infant! couldn't submit even to the
+thralldom of his own whim; and then the dear being was such a prey to
+the demon homesickness.... But to return to our mutton, William: he came
+with H. on August 14 on his way to Liverpool. He told all about his
+Paris experience, where he was a delegate to the Psychological Congress,
+which was a most brilliant success. The French most polite and
+hospitable. They invited W. to open the Congress, and they always had a
+foreigner in the Chair at the different meetings. I extracted with great
+difficulty from him that 'Monsieur Willyam James' was frequently
+referred to by the speakers. He liked the Henry Sidgwicks and Fred.
+Myers. Mrs. Myers paid him the following enigmatic compliment: 'We are
+so glad that you are _as_ you are.'"
+
+ * * * * *
+
+[Illustration: Francis James Child.
+
+Caricature from a Pocket Note-Book.]
+
+On getting back to Cambridge in the autumn, James moved his family into
+a house which he had just built in Irving Street--a street which had
+been newly opened through what used to be called Norton's Woods. He had
+planned this house with such eager interest in all its details that he
+had even designed doors and windows and had practically been his own
+architect with respect to everything except structural specifications.
+The result was a detached wooden house of pleasantly square outer
+appearance, covered with shingles which soon weathered brown, and having
+dark green trimmings. Inside there was one room which deserves
+particular mention. James loved to have "space" about him[93] and he
+planned a library that was the largest and sunniest room the house
+could provide. It was about 22-1/2 feet wide and 27 feet long. The walls
+were lined with book-shelves from floor to ceiling, except where James
+hung a portrait of his father over the open fireplace. On the southern
+side there was a triple window whose total width was nearly half the
+length of the room, and which let in a flood of sunlight. Through it one
+looked out upon a small lawn overhung by a large elm, and upon more
+grass and trees beyond. This was his study and living-room for the rest
+of his life. Here most of the Cambridge letters that follow may be
+assumed to have been written.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+After James moved to 95 Irving Street, several people referred to in the
+letters became his very near neighbors. Josiah Royce, Francis J. Child,
+C. E. Norton, Miss Theodora Sedgwick were all within three minutes walk
+of his door. Miss Grace Norton lived across the way.
+
+
+
+
+_To Miss Grace Norton._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Dec. 25, 1889_.
+
+DEAR MISS NORTON,--Will you accept, as a Christmas offering, the
+accompanying bottles of California Champagne, _extremely_ salubrious in
+its after-effects, quite as intoxicating, almost as good-tasting and
+only half as "cost-playful" as French Champagne--in short, a beverage
+which no household should be without.
+
+I should gladly have sought out something more sentimental,--though
+after a bottle or so, this seems rosy with sentiment,--but I have no
+gifts of invention in the _present_ line, and took something useful,
+merely to testify to the affection and admiration with which I am ever
+yours,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To Charles Eliot Norton._
+
+
+Undated [1889].
+
+MY DEAR MR. NORTON,--This introduces to you Mr. X----, from South
+Abington, a workman in a tack factory since boyhood, who has
+nevertheless gone quite deeply into studies philosophic, mathematical
+and sociological. He will tell you more about himself, and I wish if
+convenient that you would "draw him out"--I should like much to hear
+your impression. I want, if possible, to help him to a start in life
+here. Palmer has invited him to stay with him for a week. And we are
+busy studying him and trying to cast his horoscope, to feel whether we
+can conscientiously recommend him to some millionaire to support in
+college for a year (as unmatriculated), and so give him a chance to make
+himself known and find some better avocation for himself than the making
+of tacks ten hours a day. He knows nothing of our plan, thinks this a
+mere spree, so please don't let it out! Very truly yours,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The workman from the tack factory, like more than one other lame duck
+before and after him, had aroused what Professor Palmer once aptly
+called James's "inclination toward the under-dog and his insistence on
+keeping the door open for every species of human experiment." It made no
+difference what X----'s doctrines were, or whether or not they were akin
+to James's way of thinking. And if such a man was unfitted to arouse
+other people's sympathies, James's own were the more readily challenged.
+The erratics of the philosophical world were significant phenomena, and
+sometimes interested him most just when they were most "queer"--when
+they were perhaps aberrant to the point of being pathological specimens.
+It mattered as little to James where such people sprang from, or by
+what strange processes they had arrived at their ideas, as it matters to
+a naturalist that beetles have to be hunted for in all sorts of places.
+He filled the "Varieties of Religious Experience" with the records of
+abnormal cases and with accounts of the mental and emotional adventures
+of people whom the everyday world called cranks and fanatics. He was not
+only curious about such men, but endlessly patient and helpful to them.
+To some indeed his encouragement was more comforting than profitable,
+and among them must be numbered the X---- of this letter--an uncouth and
+helpless creature, who has since achieved his only immortality in
+another sphere of being. The poor man never got over this "spree," but
+withdrew from the tack factory forever, spent many years in a Mills
+Hotel working over an unsalable _magnum opus_, and every now and then
+appealing for funds. A letter on a later page recurs to this case.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+In the spring of 1890 James finished the remaining chapters of the
+"Psychology." The next letters were written during the final weeks of
+work on the book.
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry Holt._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _May 9, 1890_.
+
+MY DEAR HOLT,--I was in hopes that you would propose to break away from
+the famous "Series" and publish the book independently, in two volumes.
+An abridgement could then be prepared for the Series. If there be
+anything which I loathe it is a mean overgrown page in small type, and I
+think the author's feelings ought to go for a good deal in the case of
+the enormous _rat_ which his ten years gestation has brought forth.
+
+In any event, I dread the summer and next year, with two new courses to
+teach, and, I fear, no vacation. What I wrote you, if you remember, was
+to send you the "heft" of the MS. by May 1st, the rest to be done in the
+intervals of proof-correcting. You however insisted on having the entire
+MS. in your hands before anything should be done. It seems to me that
+this delay is, _now_ at any rate, absurd. There is certainly less than
+two weeks' work on the MS. undone. And every day got behind us now means
+a day of travel and vacation for me next September. I really think,
+considering the sort of risk I am running by the delay, that I must
+_insist_ on getting to press now as soon as the page is decided on.
+
+No one could be more disgusted than I at the sight of the book. _No_
+subject is worth being treated of in 1000 pages! Had I ten years more, I
+could rewrite it in 500; but as it stands it is this or nothing--a
+loathsome, distended, tumefied, bloated, dropsical mass, testifying to
+nothing but two facts: _1st_, that there is no such thing as a _science_
+of psychology, and _2nd_, that W. J. is an incapable.
+
+Yours provided you hurry up things,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+When Mrs. James took the children to Chocorua for the summer, James
+remained in Cambridge to finish the book.
+
+
+
+
+_To Mrs. James._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _May 17_, 7:50 P.M.
+
+...Wrote hard pretty much all day, lectured on Ansel Bourne, etc., had
+three students to lunch, Chubb being gone to Milton. Visit this A.M.
+from Bishop Keane of the New Catholic University at Washington, to get
+advice about psycho-physic laboratory. Feel very well, though I drink
+coffee daily. "Psychology" will certainly be finished by Sunday noon!...
+
+ * * * * *
+
+_Sunday, May_ [18], 9:50 P.M.
+
+...The job is done! All but some paging and half a dozen little
+footnotes, the work is completed, and as I see it as a unit, I feel as
+if it might be rather a vigorous and richly colored chunk--for that kind
+of thing at least!...
+
+ * * * * *
+
+_May 22_, 5:45 P.M.
+
+...I sot up till two last night putting the finishing touches on the
+MS., which now goes to Holt in irreproachable shape, woodcuts and all. I
+insured it for $1000.00 in giving it to the express people this A.M.
+That will make them extra careful at a cost of $1.50. This morning a
+great feeling of weariness came over me at 10 o'clock, and I was taking
+down a volume of Tennyson intending to doze off in my chair, when X----
+arrived....
+
+ * * * * *
+
+_May 24._
+
+...I came home very weary, and lit a fire, and had a delicious two hours
+all by myself, thinking of the big _étape_ of my life which now lay
+behind me (I mean that infernal book done), and of the possibilities
+that the future yielded of reading and living and loving out from the
+shadow of that interminable black cloud.... At any rate, it does give me
+some comfort to think that I don't live _wholly_ in projects,
+aspirations and phrases, but now and then have something done to show
+for all the fuss. The joke of it is that I, who have always considered
+myself a thing of glimpses, of discontinuity, of _aperçus_, with no
+power of doing a big job, suddenly realize at the _end_ of this task
+that it is the biggest book on psychology in any language except
+Wundt's, Rosmini's and Daniel Greenleaf Thompson's! Still, if it burns
+up at the printing-office, I shan't much care, for I shan't ever write
+it again!!
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry James._
+
+
+CHOCORUA, _June 4, 1890_.
+
+MY DEAR HARRY, ...The great event for me is the completion at last of my
+tedious book. I have been at my desk with it every day since I got back
+from Europe, and up at four in the morning with it for many a day of the
+last month. I have written every page four or five times over, and
+carried it "on my mind" for nine years past, so you may imagine the
+relief. Besides, I am glad to appear at last as a man who has done
+something more than make phrases and projects. I will send you a copy,
+in the fall, I trust, though [the printer] is so inert about starting
+the proofs that we may not get through till midwinter or later. As
+"Psychologies" go, it is a good one, but psychology is in such an
+ante-scientific condition that the whole present generation of them is
+predestined to become unreadable old medieval lumber, as soon as the
+first genuine tracks of insight are made. The sooner the better, for
+me!...
+
+
+
+
+_To Mrs. Henry Whitman._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _July 24, 1890_.
+
+MY DEAR MRS. WHITMAN,--How good a way to begin the day, with a letter
+from you, and a composition of yours to correct!
+
+To take the latter first, I trembled a little when, after looking over
+the printed document, I found you beginning so sympathetically to stroke
+down Mr. Jay; but you made it all right ere the end. Since the movement
+is on foot, it is time that rational people like yourself should get an
+influence in it. I doubt whether the earth supports a more genuine enemy
+of all that the Catholic Church _inwardly_ stands for than I
+do--_écrasez l'infâme_ is the only way I can feel about it. But the
+concrete Catholics, including the common priests in this country, are an
+entirely different matter. Their wish to educate their own, and to do
+what proselytizing they can, is natural enough; so is their wish to get
+state money. "Destroying American institutions" is a widely different
+matter; and instead of this vague phrase, I should like to hear one
+specification laid down of an "institution" which they are now
+threatening. The only way to resist them is absolute firmness and
+impartiality, and continuing in the line which you point out, bless your
+'art! Down with demagogism!--this document is not quite free
+therefrom....
+
+As for the style, I see in it nothing but what is admirable. A pedant
+might object (near the end) to a _drop_ of (even Huguenot) blood
+_beating high_; but how can I object to anything from your pen?
+
+And now 10,000 thanks for your kind words about the proofs. The pages I
+sent you are probably the most _continuously_ amusing in the
+book--though occasionally there is a passing gleam elsewhere. If there
+is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in
+rewriting. Everything comes out wrong with me at first; but when once
+objectified in a crude shape, I can torture and poke and scrape and pat
+it till it offends me no more. I take you at your word and send you some
+more sheets--only, to get something pithy and real, I go back to some
+practical remarks at the end of a chapter on Habit, composed with a view
+of benefiting the _young_. May they accordingly be an inspiration to
+_you_!
+
+Most of the book is altogether unreadable from any human point of view,
+as I feel only too well in my deluge of proofs. My dear wife will come
+down next week (I think) to help me through. Thank you once more, and
+believe me, with warm regards to your husband, Yours always,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To W. D. Howells._
+
+
+CHOCORUA, _Aug. 20, 1890_.
+
+MY DEAR HOWELLS,--You've done it this time and no mistake! I've had a
+little leisure for reading this summer, and have just read, first your
+"Shadow of a Dream," and next your "Hazard of New Fortunes," and can
+hardly recollect a novel that has taken hold of me like the latter. Some
+compensations go with being a mature man, do they not? You couldn't
+possibly have done so solid a piece of work as that ten years ago, could
+you? The steady unflagging flow of it is something wonderful. Never a
+weak note, the number of characters, each intensely individual, the
+observation of detail, the everlasting wit and humor, and beneath all
+the bass accompaniment of the human problem, the entire Americanness of
+it, all make it a very great book, and one which will last when we shall
+have melted into the infinite azure. Ah! my dear Howells, it's worth
+something to be able to write such a book, and it is so peculiarly
+_yours_ too, flavored with your idiosyncrasy. (The book is so d--d
+humane!) Congratulate your wife on having brought up such a husband.
+_My_ wife had been raving about it ever since it came out, but I
+couldn't read it till I got the larger printed copy, and naturally
+couldn't credit all she said. But it makes one love as well as admire
+you, and so o'er-shadows the equally exquisite, though slighter "Shadow
+of a Dream," that I have no adjectives left for that. I hope the summer
+is speeding well with all of you. I have been in Cambridge six weeks and
+corrected 1400 pages of proof. The year which shall have witnessed the
+apparition of your "Hazard of New Fortunes," of Harry's "Tragic Muse,"
+and of _my_ "Psychology" will indeed be a memorable one in American
+Literature!! Believe me, with warm regards to Mrs. Howells, yours ever
+affectionately,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The "Principles of Psychology" appeared in the early autumn.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+1890-1893
+
+_The "Briefer Course" and the Laboratory--A Sabbatical Year in Europe_
+
+
+THE publication of the "Principles" may be treated as making a date--at
+any rate in the story of James's life. Although conceived originally as
+a manual or textbook, it had gone far beyond that mere summary of a
+subject which it is the rôle of most textbooks to be, and had finally
+assumed the form of a philosophic survey. "It was a declaration of
+independence (defining the boundary lines of a new science with
+unapproachable genius.)"[94] In the scientific world it established
+James's already high reputation and greatly extended his influence.
+
+Beyond scientific circles the book's style, its colloquial directness,
+its humor, and its moral depth and appeal, won it an instantaneous
+popularity. Even before it appeared, the compositor at the
+printing-press was reported as so enthralled by his "copy" that he was
+reading the manuscript out of hours. Passages, among which the chapter
+on Habit is the most widely known, "went home" with the force of
+eloquent sermons. "I can't tell you what the book has _meant_ to me."
+Such was the burden of countless messages that began to come in from
+non-professional readers. During the course of the first winter after
+its appearance, it became clear that the only obstacle to its almost
+universal use in American colleges was its size. And so James spent the
+summer of 1891 in making an abridgment which appeared that autumn under
+the title "Briefer Course." In one form or the other, either in the
+two-volume edition or the one-volume abridgment,--either in "James" or
+in "Jimmy," as the two books were soon nicknamed,--James's "Psychology"
+was soon in use in most of the colleges. During the thirty years that
+have passed since then, the majority of the English-speaking students
+who have entered the field of psychology have entered by the door which
+James's pages threw wide to them.
+
+But by this time the inclination of James's own mind was more and more
+strongly toward philosophy, and the experimental laboratory was becoming
+a burden to him. It is true that the laboratory with which he had thus
+far done his own work would not nowadays be reckoned as at all a big
+affair. But owing to advances which had been made in the science during
+the previous ten years, an enlarged laboratory was a necessity for
+further progress and for right teaching. It would then require more time
+and attention from its director; James wished to give less time than
+heretofore. "I naturally hate experimental work," he said, "and all my
+circumstances conspired (during the important years of my life) to
+prevent me from getting into a routine of it, so that now it is always
+the duty that gets postponed. There are plenty of others, to keep my
+time as fully employed as my working powers permit."[95] There appeared
+to be one solution for the difficulty, and in 1892 he set about to
+arrange it. He raised enough money to establish the Harvard Laboratory
+on such a basis that an able experimenter could be invited to make its
+direction his chief concern. He recommended the appointment of Hugo
+Münsterberg to take charge for three years. He had been much impressed
+by the originality and promise implied by some experimental work which
+Münsterberg had already done at Freiburg, and his conviction--in respect
+to all academic appointments--was that youth and originality should be
+sought rather than "safety"; that the way to organize a strong
+philosophical department was to get men of different schools into its
+faculty, and that they should expound dissimilar rather than harmonious
+points of view and doctrines.
+
+When this appointment had been made, James saw his way clear to taking
+the sabbatical year of absence from college duties to which he was
+already more than entitled. For nine years he had allowed himself only
+the briefest interruptions of work, and by 1892 he was in a badly
+fatigued condition. He sailed for Antwerp in May, and took his family
+with him. He had no more definite purpose than to escape all literary
+and academic obligations and "lie fallow" in Europe for the next fifteen
+months. Letters will show that he accomplished this with fair success.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Meanwhile, those which immediately follow were written from Cambridge.
+The first of them was to a Boston neighbor and correspondent, one letter
+to whom has already been given and to whom there will be a number more.
+Sarah Whitman, who had lived in Baltimore before her marriage to Henry
+Whitman of Boston made her a resident of that city and of Beverly, was a
+person to whose charm and talents and taste it would be impossible to do
+justice here. She was a lover of every art, and worked, herself, at
+painting, and with more success and great distinction in stained glass.
+Eager and generous of spirit, she was constantly confided in and
+consulted by a small host of friends. She was, in an eminent degree, one
+of those happy mortals who possess a native gift for friendship and
+hospitality. At the date of the next letter she was, for a season, in
+England.
+
+
+
+
+_To Mrs. Henry Whitman._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Oct. 15, 1890_.
+
+MY DEAR MRS. WHITMAN,--It does me good to hear from you, and to come in
+contact with the spirit with which you "chuck" yourself at life. It is
+medicinal in a way which it would probably both surprise and please you
+to know, and helps to make me ashamed of those pusillanimities and
+self-contempts which are the bane of my temperament and against which I
+have to carry on my lifelong struggle. Enough! As for you, beat Sargent,
+play round Chamberlain, extract the goodness and wisdom of Bryce, absorb
+the autumn colors of the land and sea, mix the crimson and the opal fire
+in the glass, charm everyone you come in contact with by your humanity
+and amiability; in short, _continue_, and we shall have plenty to talk
+about at the next (but for that, tedious) dinner at which it may be my
+blessing to be placed by your side! Also enough!
+
+You will probably erelong be receiving the stalwart [Henry M.] Stanley
+and his accomplished bride. I am reading with great delight his book.
+How delicious is the fact that you can't cram individuals under cut and
+dried heads of classification. Stanley is a genius all to himself, and
+on the whole I like him right well, with his indescribable mixture of
+the battering ram and the orator, of hardness and sentiment, egotism and
+justice, domineeringness and democratic feeling, callousness to others'
+insides, yet kindliness, and all his other odd contradictions. He is
+probably on the whole an innocent. At any rate, it does me a lot of good
+to read about his heroic adventures.
+
+As for "detail," of which you write, it is the ever-mounting sea which
+is certain to engulf one, soul and body. You have a genius to cope with
+it.--But again, enough!
+
+Naturally I "purr" like your cat at the handsome words you let fall
+about the "Psychology." Go on! But remember that you can do so just as
+well without reading it: I shan't know the difference. Seriously, your
+determination to read that fatal book is the one flaw in an otherwise
+noble nature. I wish that I had never written it.
+
+I hope to get my wife and the rest of the family down from New Hampshire
+this week, though it does seem a sin to abandon the feast of light,
+color, and purity, for the turbid town.
+
+Good-night! Yours faithfully,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+James was now beginning to prepare the condensed edition of the
+"Principles of Psychology," which appeared the next year as the "Briefer
+Course."
+
+Professor Howison, who was informed of the project, had uttered a
+protest against the irreverent irony with which James treated the
+Hegelian dialectics in the "Principles,"[96] and had expressed a hope
+that such passages would be omitted from the Briefer Course.
+
+
+
+
+_To G. H. Howison._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Jan. 20, 1891_.
+
+MY POOR DEAR DARLING HOWISON,--Your letter is received and wrings my
+heart with its friendliness and animosity combined. But don't think me
+more frivolous than I am. "Those bagatelle diatribes about Hegelism,"
+etc., are not reprinted in this book, not a single syllable of them! I
+make some jokes about Caird on a certain page, but Caird already
+forgives me, and writes that I am sophisticated by Hegel myself. If you
+carefully ponder the _note_ on that same page or the next one (Volume I,
+page 370), you will see the real inwardness of my whole feeling about
+the matter. I am not as low as I seem, and some day (D. v.) may get out
+another and a more "metaphysical" book, which will steal all your
+Hegelian thunder except the dialectical method, and show me to be a true
+child of the gospel. Heartily and everlastingly yours,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To F. W. H. Myers._
+
+
+NEWPORT, R.I., _Jan. 30, 1891_.
+
+MY DEAR MYERS,--Your letter of the 12th came duly, but not till now have
+I had leisure to write you a line of reply. Verily you are the stuff of
+which world-changers are made! What a despot for Psychical Research! I
+always feel guilty in your presence, and am, on the whole, glad that the
+broad blue ocean rolls between us for most of the days of the year;
+although I should be glad to have it intermit occasionally, on days when
+I feel particularly larky and indifferent, when I might meet you without
+being bowed down with shame.
+
+To speak seriously, however, I agree in what you say, that the position
+I am now in (Professorship, book published and all) does give me a very
+good pedestal for carrying on psychical research effectively, or rather
+for disseminating its results effectively. I find however that
+_narratives_ are a weariness, and I must confess that the reading of
+narratives for which I have no personal responsibility is almost
+intolerable to me. Those that come to me at first-hand, incidentally to
+the Census, I get interested in. Others much less so; and I imagine my
+case is a very common case. One page of experimental thought-transference
+work will "carry" more than a hundred of "Phantasms of the Living." I
+shall stick to my share of the latter, however; and expect in the summer
+recess to work up the results already gained in an article[97] for
+"Scribner's Magazine," which will be the basis for more publicity and
+advertising and bring in another bundle of Schedules to report on at the
+Congress. Of course I wholly agree with you in regard to the _ultimate_
+future of the business, and fame will be the portion of him who may
+succeed in naturalizing it as a branch of legitimate science. I think it
+quite on the cards that you, with your singular tenacity of purpose, and
+wide look at all the intellectual relations of the thing, may live to be
+the ultra-Darwin yourself. Only the facts are _so_ discontinuous so far
+that possibly all our generation can do may be to get 'em called facts.
+I'm a bad fellow to investigate on account of my bad memory for
+anecdotes and other disjointed details. Teaching of students will have
+to fill most of my time, I foresee; but of course my weather eye will
+remain open upon the occult world.
+
+Our "Branch," you see, has tided over its difficulties temporarily; and
+by raising its fee will enter upon the new year with a certain momentum.
+You'll have to bleed, though, ere the end, devoted creatures that you
+are, over there!
+
+I thank you most heartily for your kind words about my book, and am
+touched by your faithful eye to the errata. The volumes were run through
+the press in less than seven weeks, and the proof-reading suffered. My
+friend G. Stanley Hall, leader of American Psychology, has written that
+the book is the most complete piece of self-evisceration since Marie
+Bashkirtseff's diary. Don't you think that's rather unkind? But in this
+age of nerves all philosophizing is really something of that sort. I
+finished yesterday the writing of an address on Ethics which I have to
+give at Yale College; and, on the way hither in the cars, I read the
+last half of Rudyard Kipling's "The Light that Failed"--finding the
+latter indecently true to nature, but recognizing after all that my
+ethics and his novel were the same sort of thing. All literary men are
+sacrifices. "Les festins humains qu'ils servent à leurs fêtes
+ressemblent la plupart à ceux des pélicans," etc., etc. Enough!...
+
+
+
+
+_To W. D. Howells._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Apr. 12, 1891_.
+
+MY DEAR HOWELLS,--You made me what seemed at the time a most reckless
+invitation at the Childs' one day--you probably remember it. It seemed
+to me improper then to take it up. But it has lain rankling in my mind
+ever since; and now, as the spring weather makes a young man's fancy
+lightly turn away from the metaphysical husks on which he has fed
+exclusively all winter to some more human reading, I say to myself, Why
+shouldn't I have copies, from the Author himself, of "Silas Lapham" and
+of the "Minister's Charge"--which by this time are almost the only
+things of yours which I have never possessed? Take this as thou wilt!...
+
+
+
+
+_To W. D. Howells._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _June 12, 1891_.
+
+MY DEAR HOWELLS,--You are a sublime and immortal genius! I have just
+read "Silas Lapham" and "Lemuel Barker"--strange that I should not have
+read them before, after hearing my wife rave about them so--and of all
+the perfect works of fiction they are the perfectest. The truth, in
+gross and in detail; the concreteness and solidity; the geniality,
+humanity, and unflagging humor; the steady way in which it keeps up
+without a dead paragraph; and especially the fidelity with which you
+stick to the ways of human nature, with the ideal and the un-ideal
+inseparably beaten up together so that you never give them "clear"--all
+make them a feast of delight, which, if I mistake not, will last for all
+future time, or as long as novels _can_ last. Silas is the bigger total
+success because it deals with a more important story (I think you ought
+to have made young Corey _angrier_ about Irene's mistake and its
+consequences); but the _work_ on the much obstructed Lemuel surely was
+never surpassed. I hope his later life was happy!
+
+Altogether _you_ ought to be happy--you can fold your arms and write no
+more if you like. I've just got your "Criticism and Fiction," which
+shall speedily be read. And whilst in the midst of this note have
+received from the postman your clipping from Kate Field's "Washington,"
+the author of which I can't divine, but she's a blessed creature whoever
+she is. Yours ever,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To Mrs. Henry Whitman._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _June 20, 1891_.
+
+MY DEAR MRS. WHITMAN,--You _are_ magnificent. Here comes your letter at
+6 o'clock, just as I am looking wearily out of the window for a change,
+and makes me feel like an aspiring youth again. But I can't go to
+Beverly tomorrow, nor indeed leave my room, I fear; for I've had every
+kind of _-itis_ that can afflict one's upper breathing channels, and
+although convalescent, am as weak as a blade of grass, and feel as
+antique as Methusalem. A fortnight hence I shall be like a young
+puppy-dog again, however, and shall turn up inevitably between two
+trains more than once ere the summer is over.
+
+I've managed to get through Volume I of Scott's Journal in the last two
+days. The dear old boy! But who would not be "dear" who could have such
+a mass of doggerel running in his head all the time, and make a hundred
+thousand dollars a year just by letting his pen trickle? Bless his dear
+old "unenlightened" soul all the same! The Scotch are the finest race in
+the world--except the Baltimoreans[98] and Jews--and I think I enjoyed
+my twenty-four hours of Edinburgh two summers ago more than any
+twenty-four hours a city ever gave me.
+
+Good-bye! I'm describing W. S.'s character when I ought to be describing
+yours--but you never give me a chance. When I get that task performed,
+we shall settle down to a solid basis; though probably all that will be
+in "the dim future." Meanwhile my love to all the Youth and Beauty
+(including your own) and best wishes for their happiness and freedom
+from influenzas of every description till the end of time.
+Affectionately yours,
+
+W. J.
+
+
+
+
+_To his Sister._
+
+
+CHOCORUA, N.H., _July 6, 1891_.
+
+DEAREST ALICE,--...Of course [this medical verdict on your case may
+mean] as all men know, a finite length of days; and then, good-bye to
+neurasthenia and neuralgia and headache, and weariness and palpitation
+and disgust all at one stroke--I should think you would be reconciled to
+the prospect with all its pluses and minuses! I know you've never cared
+for life, and to me, now at the age of nearly fifty, life and death seem
+singularly close together in all of us--and life a mere farce of
+frustration in all, so far as the realization of the innermost ideals go
+to which we are made respectively capable of feeling an affinity and
+responding. Your frustrations are only rather more flagrant than the
+rule; and you've been saved many forms of self-dissatisfaction and
+misery which appertain to such a multiplication of responsible relations
+to different people as I, for instance, have got into. Your fortitude,
+good spirits and unsentimentality have been simply unexampled in the
+midst of your physical woes; and when you're relieved from your post,
+just _that_ bright note will remain behind, together with the
+inscrutable and mysterious character of the doom of nervous weakness
+which has chained you down for all these years. As for that, there's
+more in it than has ever been told to so-called science. These
+inhibitions, these split-up selves, all these new facts that are
+gradually coming to light about our organization, these enlargements of
+the self in trance, etc., are bringing me to turn for light in the
+direction of all sorts of despised spiritualistic and unscientific
+ideas. Father would find in me today a much more receptive listener--all
+_that_ philosophy has got to be brought in. And what a queer
+contradiction comes to the ordinary scientific argument against
+immortality (based on body being mind's condition and mind going _out_
+when body is gone), when one must believe (as now, in these neurotic
+cases) that some infernality in the body _prevents_ really existing
+parts of the mind from coming to their effective rights at all,
+suppresses them, and blots them out from participation in this world's
+experiences, although they are _there_ all the time. When that which is
+_you_ passes out of the body, I am sure that there will be an explosion
+of liberated force and life till then eclipsed and kept down. I can
+hardly imagine _your_ transition without a great oscillation of both
+"worlds" as they regain their new equilibrium after the change! Everyone
+will feel the shock, but you yourself will be more surprised than
+anybody else.
+
+It may seem odd for me to talk to you in this cool way about your end;
+but, my dear little sister, if one has things present to one's mind, and
+I know they are present enough to _your_ mind, why not speak them out? I
+am sure you appreciate that best. How many times I have thought, in the
+past year, when my days were so full of strong and varied impression and
+activities, of the long unchanging hours in bed which those days stood
+for with you, and wondered how you bore the slow-paced monotony at all,
+as you did! You can't tell how I've pitied you. But you _shall_ come to
+your rights erelong. Meanwhile take things gently. Look for the little
+good in each day as if life were to last a hundred years. Above all
+things, save yourself from bodily pain, if it can be done. You've had
+too much of that. Take all the morphia (or other forms of opium if that
+disagrees) you want, and don't be afraid of becoming an opium-drunkard.
+What was opium created for except for such times as this? Beg the good
+Katharine (to whom _our_ debt can never be extinguished) to write me a
+line every week, just to keep the currents flowing, and so farewell
+until I write again. Your ever loving,
+
+W. J.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The reader should not fail to realize, in reading the letter which
+follows, that it was written, not only while Münsterberg was still a
+remote young psychologist in Germany, with no claim on James's
+consideration, but before there was any question of calling him to
+Harvard.
+
+
+
+
+_To Hugo Münsterberg._
+
+
+CHOCORUA, _July 8, 1891_.
+
+DEAR DR. MÜNSTERBERG,--I have just read Prof. G. E. Müller's review of
+you in the G. G. H., and find it in many respects so brutal that I am
+impelled to send you a word of "consolation," if such a thing be
+possible. German polemics in general are not distinguished by
+mansuetude; but there is something peculiarly hideous in the business
+when an established authority like Müller, instead of administering
+fatherly and kindly admonition to a youngster like yourself, shows a
+malign pleasure in knocking him down and jumping up and down upon his
+body. All your merits he passes by parenthetically as
+_selbstverständlich_; your sins he enlarges upon with unction. Don't
+mind it! Don't be angry! Turn the other cheek! Make no ill-mannered
+reply!--and great will be your credit and reward! Answer by continuing
+your work and making it more and more irreproachable.
+
+I can't myself agree in some of your theories. _A priori_, your muscular
+sense-theory of psychic measurements seems to me incredible in many
+ways. Your general mechanical _Welt-anschauung_ is too abstract and
+simple for my mind. But I find in you just what is lacking in this
+critique of Müller's--a sense for the perspective and proportion of
+things (so that, for instance, you _don't_ make experiments and quote
+figures to the 100th decimal, where a coarse qualitative result is all
+that the question needs). Whose _theories_ in Psychology have any
+_definitive_ value today? No one's! Their only use is to sharpen
+farther reflexion and observation. The man who throws out most new ideas
+and immediately seeks to subject them to experimental control is the
+most useful psychologist, in the present state of the science. No one
+has done this as yet as well as you. If you are only _flexible_ towards
+your theories, and as ingenious in testing them hereafter as you have
+been hitherto, I will back you to beat the whole army of your critics
+before you are forty years old. Too much ambition and too much rashness
+are marks of a certain type of genius in its youth. The _destiny_ of
+that genius depends on its power or inability to assimilate and get good
+out of such criticisms as Müller's. Get the good! forget the bad!--and
+Müller will live to feel ashamed of his tone.
+
+I was very much grieved to learn from Delabarre lately that the doctors
+had found some weakness in your heart! What a wasteful thing is Nature,
+to produce a fellow like you, and then play such a trick with him!
+Bah!--But I prefer to think that it will be no serious impediment, if
+you only go _piani piano_. You will do the better work doubtless for
+doing it a little more slowly. Not long ago I was dining with some old
+gentlemen, and one of them asked, "What is the best assurance a man can
+have of a long and active life?" He was a doctor; and presently replied
+to his own question: "To be entirely broken-down in health before one is
+thirty-five!"--There is much truth in it; and though it applies more to
+nervous than to other diseases, we all can take our comfort in it. _I_
+was entirely broken-down before I was thirty. Yours cordially,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+Delabarre and Mackaye wrote to me of you with great admiration and
+gratitude for all they have gained.
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry Holt._
+
+
+CHOCORUA, N.H., _July 24, 1891_.
+
+MY DEAR HOLT,--I expect to send you within ten days the MS. of my
+"Briefer Course," boiled down to possibly 400 pages. By adding some
+twaddle about the senses, by leaving out all polemics and history, all
+bibliography and experimental details, all metaphysical subtleties and
+digressions, all quotations, all humor and pathos, all _interest_ in
+short, and by blackening the tops of all the paragraphs, I think I have
+produced a tome of pedagogic classic which will enrich both you and me,
+if not the student's mind.
+
+The difficulty is about when to correct the proofs. I've practically had
+no vacation so far, and won't touch them during August. I can start them
+September first up here. I can't rush them through in Cambridge as I did
+last year; but must do them leisurely, to suit this northern mail and
+its hours. I _could_ have them done by another man in Cambridge, if
+there were desperate hurry; but on the whole I should prefer to do them
+myself.
+
+Write and propose something! The larger book seems to be a decided
+success--especially from the literary point of view. I begin to look
+down upon Mark Twain! Yours ever,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry James._
+
+
+ASHEVILLE, N.C., _Aug. 20, 1891_.
+
+MY DEAR HARRY,--...Of poor Lowell's death you heard. I left Cambridge
+the evening of the funeral, for which I had waited over, and meant to
+write to you about it that very afternoon. But as it turned out, I
+didn't get a moment of time.... He had never been ill in his life till
+two years ago, and didn't seem to understand or realize the fact as
+most people do. I doubt if he dreamed that his end was approaching until
+it was close at hand. Few images in my memory are more touching than the
+picture of his attitude in the last visits I paid him. He was always up
+and dressed, in his library, with his velvet coat and tobacco pipes, and
+ready to talk and be talked to, alluding to his illness with a sort of
+apologetic and whimsical plaintiveness that had no querulousness in it,
+though he coughed incessantly, and the last time I was there (the last
+day of June, I think) he was strongly narcotized by opium for a sciatica
+which had lately supervened. Looking back at him, what strikes one most
+was his singularly boyish cheerfulness and robustness of temperament. He
+was a sort of a boy to the end, and makes most others seem like
+premature old men....[99]
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Miss Grace Ashburner, next addressed, and her sister Miss Anne
+Ashburner, were two old ladies, friends of James's parents, for whom he
+felt an especially affectionate regard. They, and their niece Miss
+Theodora Sedgwick, lived in Kirkland Street, next door to Professor
+Child and near the Norton family. They had become near neighbors as well
+as friends when James moved into his new house.
+
+
+
+
+_To Miss Grace Ashburner._
+
+
+LINVILLE, N.C., _Aug. 25, 1891_.
+
+MY DEAR MISS GRACE,--The time has come for that letter to be written! I
+have been thinking of you ever since I left home; but every
+letter-writing moment so far has been taken up by the information
+necessary to be imparted to my faithful spouse about my whereabouts,
+expenses, health, longings for home and the children, etc.; then a
+long-due letter to Harry had to be written, another to Alice, and one to
+Katharine Loring; finally, one to my Cousin Elly Emmet who is about to
+marry _en secondes noces_ a Scotchman, until at the last the moment is
+ripe for the most ideal correspondent of all!
+
+I have at last "struck it rich" here in North Carolina, and am in the
+most peculiar, and one of the most poetic places I have ever been in.
+Strange to say, it is on the premises of a land speculation and would-be
+"boom." A tract of twenty-five square miles of wilderness, 3800 feet
+above the sea at its lowest part, has been bought; between 30 and 40
+miles of the most admirable alpine, evenly-graded, zigzagging roads
+built in various directions from the centre, which is a smallish cleared
+plateau; an exquisite little hotel built; nine cottages round about it;
+and that is all. Not a loafer, not a fly, not a blot upon the scene! The
+serpent has not yet made his appearance in this Eden, around which stand
+the hills covered with primeval forest of the most beautiful
+description, filled with rhododendrons, laurels, and azaleas which,
+through the month of July, must make it ablaze with glory.
+
+I went this morning on horseback with the manager of the concern, a
+really charming young North Carolinian educated at our Institute of
+Technology, to the top of "Grandfather Mountain" (close by, which the
+Company owns) and which is only a couple of hundred feet lower than Mt.
+Washington. The road, the forest, the view, the crags were as good as
+such things can be. Apparently the company had just planted a couple of
+hundred thousand dollars in _pure esthetics_--a most high-toned
+proceeding in this degenerate age. Later, doubtless, a railroad,
+stores, and general sordidness with wealth will creep in. Meanwhile let
+us enjoy things! There "does be" advantages in creation as opposed to
+evolution, in the railway, in the telegraph and the electric light, and
+all that goes with them. This peculiar combination of virgin wilderness
+with perfectly planned roads, Queen Anne cottages, and a sweet little
+modern hotel, has never been realized until our day.
+
+But what am I doing? I always held a descriptive letter in abhorrence:
+sentiment is the only thing that should be allowed a place in a
+correspondence between two persons of opposite genders. But to feel
+sentiment is one thing, and to express it both forcibly and gracefully
+is another. Had I but the pen of an F. J. Child, I might do something.
+As it is, my dear, dear Miss Grace, I can only rather dumbly say how
+everlastingly tender was, is and ever shall be the emotion which
+accompanies my thoughts of you. Especially in these days when your
+patience and good spirits add such a halo to you and to your sister too.
+I am fast overtaking you in age, and it gives the deepest sort of
+satisfaction to feel the process of growing together with one's old
+friends as one does. "Thought is deeper than all speech," so I will say
+no more. I shall hope to see you, and see you feeling well, before the
+week is over. Meanwhile, with heartiest affection to your dear sister,
+and to Theodora as well as to yourself, I am always, your loving,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry James._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _Apr. 11, 1892_.
+
+MY DEAR HARRY,--...I have been seething in a fever of politics about the
+future of our philosophy department. Harvard must lead in psychology;
+and I, having founded her laboratory, am not the man to carry on the
+practical work. I have _almost_ succeeded, however, in clinching a
+bargain whereby Münsterberg, the ablest experimental psychologist in
+Germany, allowance made for his being only 28 years old,--he is in fact
+the Rudyard Kipling of psychology,--is to come here. When he does he
+will scoop out all the other universities as far as that line of work
+goes. We have also had another scheme, at the various stages of which
+you, Balzac or Howells ought to have been present, to work up for a
+novel or the stage. There's a great comedy yet to be made out of the
+University newly founded by the American millionaire. In this case the
+millionaire had announced his desire to found a professorship of
+psychology applied to education. The thing was to get it for Harvard,
+which he mistrusted. I went at him tooth and nail, trying to persuade
+him that Royce was the man. Letters, _pour-parlers_, visits (he lives in
+N. Y.), finally a two-days' visit at this house, and a dinner for him.
+He is a real Balzackian figure--a regular porker, coarse, vulgar, vain,
+cunning, mendacious, etc., etc. The worst of it is that he will probably
+give us nothing,--having got all the attention and flattery from us at
+which he aimed,--so that we have our labor for our pains, and the gods
+laugh as they say "served them right."
+
+I have long been meaning to write of my intense enjoyment of Du
+Maurier's "Peter Ibbetson," which I verily believe will be one of the
+classics of the English tongue. The _beauty_ of it goes beyond
+everything--and the light and happy touch--the rapid style! Please tell
+him if you see him that we are all on our knees. Your last book fell
+into Margaret Gibbens's hands, and I have barely seen it. I shan't have
+time to read it till the voyage....
+
+
+
+
+_To Miss Mary Tappan._
+
+
+CAMBRIDGE, _April 29, 1892_.
+
+MY DEAR MARY,--Your kind letter about poor Alice came today, and makes
+me do what I have long been on the _point_ of doing--write a friendly
+word to you. Yes, Alice's death is a great release to her; she longed
+for it; and it is in a sense a release to all of us. In spite of its
+terrific frustrations her life was a triumph all the same, as I now see
+it. Her particular burden was borne well. She never whimpered or
+complained of her sickness, and never seemed to turn her face towards
+it, but up to the very limit of her allowance attended to outer things.
+When I went to London in September to bid her good-bye, she altogether
+refused to waste a minute in talking about her disease, and conversed
+only of the English people and Harry's play. So her soul was not
+subdued! I wish that mine might ever be as little so! Poor Harry is left
+rather disconsolate. He habitually stored up all sorts of things to tell
+her, and now he has no ear into which to pour their like. He says her
+talk was better than anyone's he knew in London. Strange to say, altho'
+practically bedridden for years, her mental atmosphere, barring a little
+over-vehemence, was altogether that of the _grand monde_, and the
+information about both people and public affairs which she had the art
+of absorbing from the air was astonishing.
+
+We are probably all going to Europe on the 25th of May--[SS.] Friesland
+[to] Antwerp. Both Alice and I need a "year off," and I hope we shall
+get it. Our winter abode is yet unknown. I wish you were going to stay
+and we could be near you. I wish anyhow we might meet this summer and
+talk things over. It doesn't pay in this short life for good old friends
+to be non-existent for each other; and how can one write letters of
+friendship when letters of business fill every chink of time? I _do
+hope_ we shall meet, my dear Mary. Both of us send you lots of love, and
+plenty to Ellen too. Yours ever,
+
+W.J.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+James sailed for Antwerp with his family on May 25, and escaped not only
+from college duties but from the postman and from his writing-table. He
+spent the summer in the Black Forest and Switzerland before moving down
+to Florence in September. It happened that a few weeks were passed in a
+_pension_ at Vers-chez-les-Blanc above the Lake of Geneva, in which
+Professor Theodore Flournoy of the University of Geneva, to whom the
+next letter but one is addressed, was also spending his vacation with
+his family. Flournoy had reviewed the "Principles" in the "Journal de
+Genève," and there had already been some correspondence between the two
+men. At Vers-chez-les-Blanc a real friendship sprang up quickly. It grew
+deeper and closer as the years slipped by, for in temperament and mental
+outlook the Swiss and the American were close kin.
+
+
+
+
+_To Miss Grace Ashburner._
+
+
+GRYON, SWITZERLAND, _July 13, 1892_.
+
+MY DEAR MISS GRACE, or rather, let me say, MY DEAR GRACE,--since what
+avails such long friendship and affection, if not that privilege of
+familiarity? I have thought of you often and of the quiet place that
+harbors you, but have been too distracted as yet to write any letters
+but necessary ones on business. We have been in Europe five and a half
+weeks and are only just beginning to see a ray of daylight on our path.
+How could Arthur, how could Madame Lucy,[100] see us go off and not
+raise a more solemn word of warning? It seems to me that the most
+solemn duty _I_ can have in what remains to me of life will be to save
+my inexperienced fellow beings from ignorantly taking their little ones
+abroad when they go for their own refreshment. To combine novel
+anxieties of the most agonizing kind about your children's education,
+nocturnal and diurnal contact of the most intimate sort with their
+shrieks, their quarrels, their questions, their rollings-about and
+tears, in short with all their emotional, intellectual and bodily
+functions, in what practically in these close quarters amounts to one
+room--to combine these things (I say) with a _holiday_ for _oneself_ is
+an idea worthy to emanate from a lunatic asylum. The wear and tear of a
+professorship for a year is not equal to one week of this sort of thing.
+But let me not complain! Since I am responsible for their being, I will
+launch them worthily upon life; and if a foreign education is required,
+they shall have it. Only why talk of "sabbatical" years?--there is the
+hideous mockery! Alice, if she writes to you, will (after her feminine
+fashion) gloze over this aspect of our existence, because she has been
+more or less accustomed to it all these years and _on the whole does not
+dislike it_ (!!), but I for once will speak frankly and not disguise my
+sufferings. Here in this precipitous Alpine village we occupy rooms in
+an empty house with a yellow-plastered front and an iron balcony above
+the street. Up and down that street the cows, the goats, the natives,
+and the tourists pass. The church-roof and the pastor's house are across
+the way, dropped as it were twenty feet down the slope. Close beside us
+are populous houses either way, and others beside _them_. Yet on that
+iron balcony all the innermost mysteries of the James family are
+blazoned and bruited to the entire village. _Things_ are dried there,
+quarrels, screams and squeals rise incessantly to Heaven, dressing and
+undressing are performed, punishments take place--recriminations,
+arguments, execrations--with a publicity after which, if there _were_
+reporters, we should never be able to show our faces again. And when I
+think of that cool, spacious and quiet mansion lying untenanted in
+Irving Street, with a place in it for everything, and everything in its
+place when _we_ are there, I could almost weep for "the pity of it." But
+we may get used to this as other travelers do--only Arthur and Lucy
+ought to have dropped some word of warning ere we came away!
+
+Our destiny seems relentlessly driving us towards Paris, which on the
+whole I rather hate than otherwise, only the educational problem
+promises a better solution there. The boys meanwhile have got started on
+French lessons here, and though we must soon "move on" like a family of
+wandering Jews, we shall probably leave one behind in the pastor's
+family hard-by. The other boy we shall get into a family somewhere else,
+and then have none but Peg and the baby to cope with. Perhaps strength
+will be given us for that.
+
+Switzerland meanwhile is an unmitigated blessing, from the mountains
+down to the bread and butter and the beds. The people, the arrangements,
+the earth, the air and the sky, are satisfactory to a degree hard to
+imagine beforehand. There is an extraordinary absence of feminine
+beauty, but great kindliness, absolute honesty, fixed tariffs and prices
+for everything, etc., etc., and of course absolutely clean hotels at
+prices which, though not the "dirt cheap" ones of former times, are yet
+very cheap compared with the American standard. We stayed for ten days
+at a _pension_ on the Lake of Lucerne which was in all respects as
+beautiful and ideal as any scene on the operatic stage, yet we paid
+just about what the Childs pay at Nickerson's vile and filthy hotel at
+Chocorua. Of course we made the acquaintance of Cambridge people there
+whose acquaintance we had not made before--I mean the family of Joseph
+Henry Thayer of the Divinity School, whose daughter Miriam, with her
+splendid playing and general grace and amiability, was a proof of how
+much hidden wealth Cambridge contains.
+
+But I have talked too much about ourselves and ought to talk about you.
+What can I do, however, my dear Grace, except express hopes? I know that
+you have had a hot summer, but I know little else. Have you borne it
+well? Have you had any relief from your miserable suffering state? or
+have you gone on as badly or worse than ever? Of course you can't answer
+these questions, but some day Theodora will. I devoutly trust that
+things have gone well and that you may even have been able to see some
+friends, and in that way get a little change. Your sister, to whom pray
+give the best love of both of us, is I suppose holding her own as
+bravely as ever; only I should like to know the fact, and that too
+Theodora will doubtless ere long acquaint us with. To that last-named
+exemplary and delightful Being give also our best love; and with any
+amount of it of the tenderest quality for yourself, believe me, always
+your affectionate,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+Love to all the Childs, please, and all the Nortons who may be within
+reach.
+
+
+
+
+_To Theodore Flournoy._
+
+
+PENSIONE VILLA MAGGIORE
+(PALLANZA), _Sept. 19, 1892_.
+
+MY DEAR FLOURNOY,--Your most agreeable letter--one of those which one
+preserves to read in one's old age--came yesterday.... I am much
+obliged to you for the paper by Sécretan, and (unless you deny me the
+permission) I propose to keep it, and let you get a new one, which you
+can do more easily than I. It is much too oracular and brief, but its
+_pregnancy_ is a good example of what an intellect gains by growing old:
+one says vast things simply. I read it stretched on the grass of Monte
+Motterone, the Rigi of this region, just across the Lake, with all the
+kingdoms of the earth stretched before me, and I realized how exactly a
+philosophic _Weltansicht_ resembles that from the top of a mountain. You
+are driven, as you ascend, into a choice of fewer and fewer paths, and
+at last you end in two or three simple attitudes from each of which we
+see a great part of the Universe amazingly simplified and summarized,
+but nowhere the entire view at once. I entirely agree that Renouvier's
+system fails to satisfy, but it seems to me the classical and consistent
+expression of _one_ of the great attitudes: that of insisting on
+logically intelligible formulas. If one goes beyond, one must abandon
+the hope of _formulas_ altogether, which is what all pious
+sentimentalists do; and with them M. Sécretan, since he fails to give
+any articulate substitute for the "Criticism" he finds so
+unsatisfactory. Most philosophers give formulas, and inadmissible ones,
+as when Sécretan makes a _memoire sans oubli_ = _duratio tota simul_ =
+eternity!
+
+I have been reading with much interest the articles on the will by
+Fouillée, in the "Revue Philosophique" for June and August. There are
+admirable descriptive pages, though the final philosophy fails to
+impress me much. I am in good condition now, and must try to do a little
+methodical work every day in Florence, in spite of the temptations to
+_flânerie_ of the sort of life.
+
+I did hope to have spent a few days in Geneva before crossing the
+mountains! But perhaps, for the holidays, you and Madame Flournoy will
+cross them to see us at Florence. The Vers-chez-les-Blanc days are
+something that neither she nor I will forget!
+
+You and I are strangely contrasted as regards our professorial
+responsibilities: you are becoming entangled in laboratory research and
+demonstration just as I am getting emancipated. As regards
+_demonstrations_, I think you will not find much difficulty in
+concocting a programme of classical observations on the senses, etc.,
+for students to verify; it worked much more easily at Harvard than I
+supposed it would when we applied it to the whole class, and it improved
+the spirit of the work very much. As regards _research_, I advise you
+not to take that duty too conscientiously, if you find that ideas and
+projects do not abound. As long as [a] man is working at anything, he
+must give up other things at which he might be working, and the best
+thing he can work at is usually the thing he does most spontaneously.
+You philosophize, according to your own account, more spontaneously than
+you work in the laboratory. So do I, and I always felt that the
+occupation of philosophizing was with me a valid excuse for neglecting
+laboratory work, since there is not time for both. Your work as a
+philosopher will be more _irreplaceable_ than what results you might get
+in the laboratory out of the same number of hours. Some day, I feel
+sure, you will find yourself impelled to publish some of your
+reflections. Until then, take notes and read, and feel that your true
+destiny is on the way to its accomplishment! It seems to me that a great
+thing would be to add a new course to your instruction. Au revoir, my
+dear friend! My wife sends "a great deal of love" to yours, and says she
+will write to her as soon as we get settled. I also send my most cordial
+greetings to Madame Flournoy. Remember me also affectionately to those
+charming young _demoiselles_, who will, I am afraid, incontinently
+proceed to forget me. Always affectionately yours,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To William M. Salter._
+
+
+FLORENCE, _Oct. 6, 1892_.
+
+...So the magician Renan is no more! I don't know whether you were ever
+much subject to his spell. If so, you have a fine subject for Sunday
+lectures! The queer thing was that he so slowly worked his way to his
+natural mental attitude of irony and persiflage, on a basis of moral and
+religious material. He levitated at last to his true level of
+superficiality, emancipating himself from layer after layer of the
+inhibitions into which he was born, and finally using the old moral and
+religious vocabulary to produce merely musical and poetic effects. That
+moral and religious ideals, seriously taken, involve certain refusals
+and renunciations of freedom, Renan seemed at last entirely to forget.
+On the whole, his sweetness and mere literary coquetry leave a
+displeasing impression, and the only way to handle him is not to take
+him heavily or seriously. The worst is, he was a prig in his ideals....
+
+
+
+
+_To James J. Putnam._
+
+
+16 PIAZZA DELL'INDIPENDENZA,
+FLORENCE, _Oct. 7, 1892_.
+
+MY DEAR JIM,--We got your delightful letter ever so long ago, and
+nothing but invincible lethargy on my part, excusing itself to
+conscience by saying, "I mustn't write till I have something definitive
+to announce," is responsible for this delay. The lethargy was doubtless
+the healthy reversion of the nervous system to its normal equilibrium
+again, so I let it work. And the conscientious sophism was not so
+unreasonable after all. My brain has gradually got working in a natural
+manner again, and we are definitively settled for the winter, so the
+time for a line to you has come.
+
+To begin with, your letter sounded delicious, and I like to think of you
+as enjoying the neighborhood of our good little [Chocorua] lake so much,
+and particularly as expressing such satisfaction in the look of our
+little place. If it hasn't "style," it has at least a harmonious
+domesticity of appearance. A recent letter referred to "Dr. Putnam's"
+place on the hill across the lake, as if you or Charlie might have been
+buying over there too. Is this so? I shall be very glad if it is so.
+
+As for ourselves, coming abroad with a pack of children is not the same
+thing in reality as it is on paper. A summer full of passive enjoyment
+is one thing, a summer full of care for the present and anxious schemes
+for the coming winter is another. When you come abroad, come with Marian
+for the summer only and leave the children at home. Of course they have
+gained perception and intelligence, and if this Florence school only
+turns out well, they will have a good deal of French, and other
+experiences which will be precious to them hereafter; so that on their
+[account] there will be nothing to regret. But the parental organism in
+sore need of recuperative vacation gets a great deal more of it per
+dollar and per day if allowed to wander by itself. Enough now of this
+philosophy!...
+
+I am telling you nothing of our summer, most all of which was passed in
+Switzerland. Germany is good, but Switzerland is better. _How_ good
+Switzerland is, is something that can't be described in words. The
+healthiness of it passes all utterance--the air, the roads, the
+mountains, the customs, the institutions, the people. Not a breath of
+art, poetry, esthetics, morbidness, or "suggestions"! It is all there,
+solid meat and drink for the sick body and soul, ready to be turned to,
+and do you infallible good when the nervous and gas-lit side of life has
+had too much play. What a see-saw life is, between the elemental things
+and the others! We must have both; but aspiration for aspiration, I
+think that of the over-cultured and exquisite person for the insipidity
+of health is the more pathetic. After the suggestiveness, decay and
+over-refinement of Florence this winter, I shall be hungry enough for
+the eternal elements to be had in Schweiz. I didn't do any high
+climbing, for which my legs and _Schwindeligkeit_ both unfit me, but any
+amount of solid moderate walking (say four to six hours a day), which
+did me a lot of good. I envy the climbers, though!
+
+Now that my brain begins to work again, I have mapped out a profitable
+course of winter reading, _Naturphilosophie_ and _Kunstgeschichte_, and,
+if the boys' school is only as good as it is cracked up to be, we shall
+have had a good year. Alice is very well, and much refreshed in spite of
+maternal cares and perplexities.... Love from both of us to both of you,
+and wishes for a good winter. Love also to all your family circle,
+especially Annie, and to Mrs. Wynne if she be near.
+
+W. J.
+
+
+
+
+_To Miss Grace Ashburner._
+
+
+6 PIAZZA DELL INDIPENDENZA
+FLORENCE, _Oct. 19, 1892_.
+
+MY DEAR GRACE,--It is needless to say that your long and delightful
+reply written by Theodora's self-effacing hand reached us duly, and that
+I have "been on the point" of writing to you again ever since. That
+"point" as you well know, is one to which somehow one seems long to
+cleave without jumping off. But at last here goes--irrevocably! I did
+not expect that in your condition you would be either so conscientious
+or so energetic as to send so immediate and full a return, and I must
+expressly stipulate, my dear old friend, that the sole condition upon
+which I write now is that you shall not feel that I expect a single word
+of answer. (Needless to say, however, how much any infringement of this
+condition on your part will be _enjoyed_.)
+
+Well! Cold and wet drove us out of Switzerland that first week in
+September, though, as it turned out, we should have had a fine rest of
+the month if we had stayed. We crossed the Simplon to Pallanza on Lake
+Maggiore, where we stayed ten days, till the bad fare made us sick; and
+then came straight to Florence by the 21st. As almost no strangers had
+arrived, we had the pick of all the furnished apartments, most of which
+threatened great bleakness or gloominess for the winter, with their high
+ceilings, and _some_ rooms in all of them lit from court or well. Our
+family seems to be of the maximum size for which apartments are made! We
+found but this one into all the rooms of which the sun can come either
+before- or after-noon. It is clean, and abundantly furnished with sofas
+and chairs, but not a "convenience for housekeeping" of any kind
+whatsoever. No oven in which to make the macaroni _au gratin_, no place
+to keep more than a week's supply of charcoal, or I fear more than three
+or four days' supply of wood for the fire when the cold weather comes,
+as come it will with a vengeance, from all accounts. I hope our children
+won't freeze!
+
+Harry and Billy started school at last two days ago, and glad I am to
+see them at it. In the immortal words of our townsman Rindge in his
+monumental inscription, "every man" (and "every" boy!) "should have an
+honest occupation."[101] What they need is comrades of their own age,
+and competitive play and work, rather than monuments of antiquity or
+landscape beauty. Animal, not vegetable or mineral life is their
+element. The school is English, they'll get no more French or German
+there than at Browne and Nichols's [school at home] and they'll have to
+begin Italian, I'm afraid, which will be pure interruption and leave not
+a rack behind after they've been home a year. Still one mustn't always
+grumble about one's children, and they are getting an amount of
+perception over here, and a freedom from prejudices about American
+things and ways, which will certainly be of general service to their
+intelligence, and be worth more to them hereafter than their year would
+have been if spent in drill for the Harvard exams--even if what they
+lose do amount to a whole year, which I much doubt. But I think it may
+be called certain that they shan't be kept abroad a _second_ year!
+
+For ourselves, Florence is delicious. I have a sort of organic
+protestation against certain things here, the toneless air in the
+streets, which feels like used-up indoor air, the "general debility"
+which pervades all ways and institutions, the worn-out faces, etc., etc.
+But the charming sunny manners, the old-world picturesqueness wherever
+you cast your eye, and above all, the magnificent remains of art, redeem
+it all, and insidiously spin a charm round one which might well end by
+turning one into one of these mere northern loungers here for the rest
+of one's days, recreant to all one's native instincts. The stagnancy of
+the thermometer is the great thing. Day after day a changeless air,
+sometimes sun and sometimes shower, but no other difference except
+possibly from week to week the faintest possible progress in the
+direction of cold. It must be very good for one's nerves after our
+acrobatic climate. We have an excellent man-cook, the most faithful of
+beings, at two and a half dollars a week. He never goes out except to
+market, and understands, strange to say, the naked Latin roots without
+terminations in which we hold _un_sweet discourse with him. But on Dante
+and Charles Norton's _admirable_ "pony" I am getting up the lingo fast!
+
+All this time I am saying nothing about you or your sister, or the dear
+Childs, or the Nortons, or anyone. Of your own condition we have got
+very scanty news indeed since your letter.... Perhaps Theodora will just
+sit down and write two pages,--not a letter, if she isn't ready; but
+just two pages--to give some authentic account of how the fall finds you
+all, especially you. I hope the opium business and all has not given you
+additional trouble, and that the pain has not made worse havoc than
+before. When one thinks of your patience and good cheer, my dear, dear
+Grace, through all of life, one feels grateful to the Higher Powers for
+the example. Please take the heartfelt love of both of us, give some to
+your dear sister and to Theodora, and believe me ever your affectionate,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+Love too, to the Nortons, old and young, and to the Childs.
+
+
+
+
+_To Josiah Royce._
+
+
+FLORENCE, _Dec. 18, 1892_.
+
+BELOVED JOSIAH,--Your letter of Oct. 12, with "missent Indian mail"
+stamped upon its envelope in big letters, was handed in only ten days
+ago, after I had long said in my heart that you were no true friend to
+leave me thus languishing so long in ignorance of all that was
+befalling in Irving St. and the country round about. Its poetical
+hyperboles about the way I was missed made amends for everything, so I
+am not now writing to ask you for my diamonds back, or to return my
+ringlet of your hair. It was a beautiful and bully letter and filled the
+hearts of both of us with exceeding joy. I have heard since then from
+the Gibbenses that you are made Professor--I fear at not more than
+$3000. But still it is a step ahead and I congratulate you most heartily
+thereupon.
+
+What I most urgently wanted to hear from you was some estimate of
+Münsterberg, and when you say, "he is an immense success," you may
+imagine how I am pleased. He has his foibles, as who has not; but I have
+a strong impression that that youth will be a great man. Moreover, his
+naïveté and openness of nature make him very lovable. I do hope that
+[his] English will go--of course there can be no question of the
+students liking him, when once he gets his communications open. He has
+written me exhaustive letters, and seems to be outdoing even you in the
+amount of energizing which he puts forth. May God have him in his holy
+keeping!
+
+From the midst of my laziness here the news I get from Cambridge makes
+it seem like a little seething Florence of the XVth Century. Having all
+the time there is, to myself, I of course find I have no time for doing
+any particular duties, and the consequence is that the days go by
+without anything very serious accomplished. But we live well and are
+comfortable by means of sheet-iron stoves which the clammy quality of
+the cold rather than its intensity seems to necessitate, and Italianism
+is "striking in" to all of us to various degrees of depth, shallowest of
+all I fear in Peg and the baby. When _Gemüthlichkeit_ is banished from
+the world, it will still survive in this dear and shabby old country;
+though I suppose the same sort of thing is really to be found in the
+East even more than in Italy, and that we shall seek it there when Italy
+has got as tram-roaded and modernized all over as Berlin. It is a
+curious smell of the past, that lingers over everything, speech and
+manners as well as stone and stuffs!
+
+I went to Padua last week to a Galileo anniversary. It was splendidly
+carried out, and great fun; and they gave all of us foreigners honorary
+degrees. I rather like being a doctor of the University of Padua, and
+shall feel more at home than hitherto in the "Merchant of Venice." I
+have written a letter to the "Nation" about it, which I commend to the
+attention of your gentle partner.[102] ...
+
+Mark Twain is here for the winter in a villa outside the town, hard at
+work writing something or other. I have seen him a couple of times--a
+fine, soft-fibred little fellow with the perversest twang and drawl, but
+very human and good. I should think that one might grow very fond of
+him, and wish he'd come and live in Cambridge.
+
+I am just beginning to wake up from the sort of mental palsy that has
+been over me for the past year, and to take a little "notice" in matters
+philosophical. I am now reading Wundt's curiously long-winded "System,"
+which, in spite of his intolerable sleekness and way of _soaping_
+everything on to you by plausible transitions so as to make it run
+continuous, has every now and then a compendiously stated truth, or
+_aperçu_, which is nourishing and instructive. Come March, I will send
+you proposals for my work next year, to the "Cosmology" part of which I
+am just beginning to wake up. [A. W.] Benn, of the history of Greek
+Philosophy, is here, a shy Irishman (I should judge) with a queer
+manner, whom I have only seen a couple of times, but with whom I shall
+probably later take some walks. He seems a good and well-informed
+fellow, much devoted to astronomy, and I have urged your works on his
+attention. He lent me the "New World" with your article in it, which I
+read with admiration. Would that belief would ensue! Perhaps I shall get
+straight.
+
+I have just been "penning" a notice of Renouvier's "Principes de la
+Nature" for Schurman.[103] Renouvier cannot be _true_--his world is so
+much _dust_. But that conception is a _zu überwindendes Moment_, and he
+has given it its most energetic expression. There is a theodicy at the
+end, a speculation about this being a world fallen, which ought to
+interest you much from the point of view of your own Cosmology.
+
+Münsterberg wrote me, and I forgot to remark on it in my reply, that
+Scripture wanted him to contribute to a new Yale psychology review, but
+that he wished to publish in a volume. I confess it disgusts me to hear
+of each of these little separate college tin-trumpets. What I should
+really like would be a philosophic _monthly_ in America, which would be
+all sufficing, as the "Revue Philosophique" is in France. If it were a
+monthly, Münsterberg could find room for all his contributions from the
+laboratory. But I don't suppose that Scripture will combine with
+Schurman any more than Hall would, or for the matter of that, I don't
+know whether Schurman himself would wish it....
+
+What are you working at? Is the Goethe work started? Is music raging
+round you both as of yore? How are the children? We heard last night the
+new opera by Mascagni, "I Rantzau," which has made a _furore_ here and
+which I enjoyed hugely. How is Santayana, and what is he up to? You
+can't tell how thick the atmosphere of Cambridge seems over here?
+"Surcharged with vitality," in short. Write again whenever you can spare
+a fellow a half hour, and believe me, with warmest regards from both of
+us to both of you, yours always,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+Pray give love to Palmer, Nichols, Santayana, Münsterberg, and all.
+
+
+
+
+_To Miss Grace Norton._
+
+
+FLORENCE, _Dec. 28, 1892_.
+
+MY DEAR GRACE,--I hope that my silence has not left you to think that I
+have forgotten all the ties of friendship. Far from it!--but have _you_
+never felt the rapture of day after day with no letter to write, nor the
+shrinking from breaking the spell by changing a limitless possibility of
+future outpouring into a shabby little actual scrawl? Remote, unwritten
+to and unheard from, you seem to me something ideal, off there in your
+inaccessible Cambridge palazzo, bathed in the angelic American light,
+occupying your mind with noble literature, pure, solitary,
+incontaminate--a station from which the touch of this vulgar epistle
+will instantly bring you down; for you will have been imagining your
+poor correspondent in the same high and abstract fashion until what he
+says breaks the charm (as infallibly it must), and with the perception
+of his finiteness must also come a faint sense of discouragement as if
+_you_ were finite too--for communications bring the communicants to a
+common level. All of which sounds, my dear Grace, as if I were
+refraining from writing to you out of my well-known habit of
+"metaphysical politeness"; or trying to make you think so. But I think I
+can trust you to see that all these elaborate conceits (which seem
+imitated from the choice Italian manner, and which I confess have flowed
+from my pen quite unpremeditatedly and somewhat to my own surprise) are
+nothing but a shabby cloak under which I am trying to hide my own
+palpable _laziness_--a laziness which even the higher affections can
+only render a little restless and uncomfortable, but not
+dispel.--However, it _is_ dispelled at last, isn't it? So let me begin.
+
+You will have heard stray tidings of us from time to time, so I need
+give you no detailed account of our peregrinations or decisions. We had
+a delicious summer in Switzerland, that noble and medicinal country, and
+we have now got into first-rate shape at Florence, although there is a
+menace of "sociability" commencing, which may take away that wonderful
+and unexampled sense of peace. I have been enjoying [myself] of late in
+sitting under the lamp until midnight, secure against any possible
+interruption, and reading what things I pleased. I believe that last
+year in Cambridge I counted one single night in which I could sit and
+read passively till bedtime; and now that the days have begun to
+lengthen and that the small end of winter appears looking through the
+future, I begin to count them here as something unspeakably precious
+that may ne'er return.
+
+The boys are at an English school which, though certainly very good,
+gives them rather less French and German than they would have at Browne
+and Nichols's. Peg is having first-rate "opportunities" in the way of
+dancing, gymnastics and other accomplishments of a bodily sort. We have
+a little shred of a half-starved, but very cheerful, ex-ballet dancer
+who brings a poor little, humble, peering-eyed fiddler--"Maestro" she
+calls him--three times a week to our big salon, and makes supple the
+limbs of Peg and the two infants of Dr. Baldwin by the most wonderful
+patience and diversity of exercises at five francs a lesson. When one
+thinks of the sort of lessons the children at Cambridge get, and of the
+sort of price they pay, it makes one feel that geography is a tremendous
+frustrator of the so-called laws of demand and supply.
+
+Alice and I lunched this noon with young Loeser, whose name you may
+remember some years ago in Cambridge. He is devoted to the scientific
+study of pictures, and I hope to gain some truth from him ere we leave.
+He is a dear good fellow. Baron Ostensacken is also here--I forget
+whether you used to know him. The same quaint, cheerful, nervous,
+intelligent, rather egotistic old bachelor that he used to be, who also
+runs to pictures in his old age, after the strictly entomological
+method, I fancy, this time; for I doubt whether he cares near as much
+for the pictures themselves as for the science of them. But you can't
+keep science out of anything in these bad times. Love is dead, or at any
+rate seems weak and shallow wherever science has taken possession. I am
+glad that, being incapable cf anything like scholarship in any line, I
+still can take some pleasure from these pictures in the way of love;
+particularly glad since some years ago I thought that my care for
+pictures had faded away with youth. But with better opportunities it has
+revived. Loeser describes Bôcher as _basking_ in the presence of
+pictures, as if it were an amusing way of taking them, whereas it is the
+true way. Is Mr. Bôcher giving his lectures or talks again at your
+house?
+
+Duveneck[104] is here, but I have seen very little of him. The professor
+is an oppressor to the artist, I fear; and metaphysical politeness has
+kept me from pressing him too much. What an awful trade that of
+professor is--paid to talk, talk, talk! I have seen artists growing
+pale and sick whilst I talked to them without being able to stop. And I
+loved them for not being able to love me any better. It would be an
+awful universe if _everything_ could be converted into words, words,
+words.
+
+I have been so sorry to hear of the miserable condition of so many of
+your family circle this summer.... Give my love to your brother Charles,
+to Sally, Lily, Dick, Margaret and all the dear creatures. Also to the
+other dears on both sides of the Kirkland driveway. I hope and trust
+that your winter is passing cheerfully and healthily away. With warm
+good wishes for a happy new year, and affectionate greetings from both
+of us, believe me always yours,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+It will be recalled that Miss Gibbens, to whom the next letter was
+addressed, was Mrs. James's sister.
+
+
+
+
+_To Miss Margaret Gibbens (Mrs. L. R. Gregor)._
+
+
+FLORENCE, _Jan. 3, 1893_.
+
+BELOVED MARGARET,--A happy New Year to you all! My immediate purpose in
+writing is to celebrate Alice's social greatness, and to do humble
+penance for the obstacles I have persistently thrown in her path. By
+which I mean that the dinner which we gave on Sunday night, and which
+she with great equanimity got up, was a perfect success. She began,
+according to her wont, after we had been in the apartment a fortnight,
+to say that we must give a dinner to the Villaris, etc. If you could
+have seen the manner of our ménage at that time, you would have excused
+the terrible severity of the tones in which I rebuked her, and the
+copious eloquence in which I described our past, present, and future
+life and circumstances and expressed my doubts as to whether she ought
+not to inhabit an asylum rather than an apartment. As time wore on we
+got a waitress, and added dessert spoons, fruit knives, etc., etc., to
+our dining-room resources; also got some silver polish, etc.; and Alice
+would keep returning to the idea in a way which made _me_, I confess,
+act like the madman with whose conversation at such times (dictated I
+must say by the highest social responsibility) you are acquainted. At
+last she invited the Lorings, I. Ostensacken and Loeser for New Year's
+night; I groaning, she smiling; I hopeless and abusive, she confident
+and defensive, of our resources; I doing all I could to add to her
+burden and make things impossible, she explaining to Raffaello in her
+inimitable Italian, drilling the handmaids, screening the direful lamp
+most successfully with three Japanese umbrellas after I contended that
+it was impossible to do so, procuring the only two little red petticoats
+in the city to put on our two candles, making a bunch of flowers, so
+small in the centre of a star of fern leaves that I bitterly laughed at
+it, look exquisitely lovely--and then, with her beautiful countenance,
+which always becomes transfigured in the presence of company, keeping
+the conversation going till after eleven o'clock. I humbly prostrated
+myself before her after it was over,--for the table really looked
+sweet--no human being would have believed it beforehand,--threw the
+wood-ashes on my head, and swore that she should have the Villaris, and
+the King of Italy if she wished and whenever she wished, and that I
+would write to you in token of my shame. It will please your mother to
+hear what a successful creature she is. Her diet is still
+eccentric,--flying from one extreme of abstinence to another,--and her
+sleep fitful and accidental in its times and seasons. She sits up very
+late at night, and slumbers publicly when afternoon visitors come in,
+upright in her chair, with the lamp shining full on her beautiful
+countenance from which all traces of struggle have disappeared and
+[where] sleep reigns calmly victorious--at least she did this once
+lately....
+
+P.S. On reading this to Alice she says she doesn't see what call I had
+to write it, and that as for my obstructing the dinner, I hadn't made it
+more impossible than I always make everything. This with a sweet
+ironical smile which I can't give on paper....
+
+
+
+
+_To Francis Boott._
+
+
+FLORENCE, _Jan. 30, 1893_.
+
+DEAR MR. BOOTT,--Your letter of Dec. 15th was very welcome, with its
+home gossip and its Florentine advice. Our winter has worn away, as you
+see, with very little discomfort from cold. It is true that I have been
+irritated at the immovable condition of my bed-room thermometer which,
+for five weeks, has been at 40°F., not shifting in all that time more
+than one degree either way, until I longed for a change; but how much
+better such steadfastness than the acrobatic performances of our
+American winter-thermometer. You and other sybarites scared us so, in
+the fall, about the arctic cold we should have, that I used daily to
+make vows to the Creator and the Saints that, if they would only carry
+us safely to the first of February, I never would ask them for another
+favor as long as I lived. With the impending winter once _overcome_ I
+thought life would be one long vista of relief thenceforth. But
+practically there has been nothing _to_ overcome. I am glad, however,
+that now that January disappears, we may have some warm days, coming
+more and more frequently. The spring must be really delicious. We are
+keeping as shy of "Society" as we can, but still we see a good many
+people, and the interruptions to study (from that, and the domestic
+causes which abound in our narrow quarters--narrow in winter-time, broad
+enough when fires go out) are very great.
+
+Duveneck[105] spent a most delightful evening here a while ago, and left
+a big portfolio of photos of Böcklin's pictures and a big bunch of
+cigars for me two days later. I wish I didn't always feel like a
+_phrase-monger_ with honest artists like him. However there are some
+fellows who seem phrase-mongers to me, X----, _e.g._, so it's
+"square."... We have a cook, Raffaello, the most modest and faithful of
+his sex. Our manner of communication with him is _awful_; but he
+finishes all our sentences for us, and, strange to say, just as we would
+have finished them if we could. Alice swears we must bring him home to
+America. Should you think it safe? He seems to have no friends or
+diversions here, and no love except for his saucepans. But I dread the
+responsibility of being foster-father to him in our cold and uncongenial
+land. It would be different if I spoke his lingo.--What do _you_ think?
+
+And _what_ a pretty lingo it is! Italian and German seem to me _the_
+languages. The mongrels French and English might drop out!
+
+Apropos to English, I return your slip [about the teaching of English?]
+"as per request," having been amused at the manifestation of the ruling
+passion in you. I don't care how incorrect language may be if it only
+has fitness of epithet, energy and clearness. But I do pity the poor
+English Department. I see they are talking in England of more study of
+their own tongue in the schools being required.... Mark Twain dined with
+us last night, in company with the good Villari and the charming Mrs.
+Villari; but there was no chance then to ask him to sing Nora McCarty.
+He's a dear man, and there'll be a chance yet. He is in a delightful
+villa at Settignano, and says he has written more in the past four
+months than he could have done in two years at Hartford. Well! good-bye,
+dear old friend. Yours ever,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry James._
+
+
+FLORENCE, _Mar. 17, 1893_.
+
+...I don't wonder that it seems strange to you that we should be leaving
+here just in the glory of the year. _Your_ view of Italy is that of the
+tourist; and that is really the only way to _enjoy_ any place. Ours is
+that of the resident in whom the sweet decay breathed in for six months
+has produced a sort of physiological craving for a change to robuster
+air. One ends by craving one's own more permanent attitude, and a
+country whose language I can speak and where I can settle into my own
+necessary work (which has been awfully prevented here of late), without
+a guilty sense that I am neglecting the claims of pictures and
+monuments, is the better environment now. In short, Italy has well
+served its purpose by us and we shall be eternally grateful. But we have
+no farther use for it, and the spring is also beautiful in lands that
+will [be] fresher to our senses. There are moments when the Florentine
+debility becomes really hateful to one, and I don't see how the Lorings
+and others can come and make their home with it. You have done the best
+thing, in putting yourself in the strongest _milieu_ to be found on
+earth. But Italy is incomparable as a refreshing refuge, and I am sorry
+that you are likely to lose it this year....
+
+
+
+
+_To François Pillon._
+
+[Post-card]
+
+
+LONDON, _June 17, 1893_.
+
+You can hardly imagine how strong my disappointment was in losing you in
+Paris--when we might have found you by going to Alcan's on Monday, or by
+writing you before we came. It seems now sheer folly! But I didn't think
+of the possibility of your being gone so early in the summer. Our three
+young children are all in Switzerland, the older boy in Munich, and my
+wife and I are like middle-aged omnibus-horses let loose in a pasture.
+The first time we have had a holiday together for 15 years. I feel like
+a barrel without hoops! We shall be here in England for a month at
+least. After that everything is uncertain. I _may_ not even pass through
+Paris again.
+
+W. J.
+
+
+
+
+_To Shadworth H. Hodgson._
+
+
+LONDON, _June 23, 1893_.
+
+MY DEAR HODGSON,--I am more different kinds of an ass, or rather I am
+(without ceasing to be different kinds) the same kind more often than
+any other living man! This morning I knocked at your door, inwardly
+exultant with the certainty that I should find you, and learned that you
+had left for Saltburn just one hour ago! A week ago yesterday the same
+thing happened to me at Pillon's in Paris, and because of the same
+reason, my having announced my presence a day too late.
+
+My wife and I have been here six days. As it was her first visit to
+England and she had a lot of clothes to get, having worn out her
+American supply in the past year, we thought we had better remain
+_incog._ for a week, drinking in London irresponsibly, and letting the
+dressmakers have their will with her time. I early asked at your door
+whether you were in town and visible, and received a reassuring reply,
+so I felt quite safe and devoted myself to showing my wife the sights,
+and enjoying her naïf wonder as she drank in Britain's greatness. Four
+nights ago at 9:30 P.M. I pointed out to her (as possibly the climax of
+greatness) your library windows with one of them open and bright with
+the inner light. She said, "Let's ring and see him." My heart palpitated
+to do so, but it was late and a hot night, and I was afraid you might be
+in tropical costume, safe for the night, and my hesitation lost us. We
+came home. It is too, too bad! I wanted much to see you, for though, my
+dear Hodgson, our correspondence has languished of late (the effect of
+encroaching eld), my sentiments to you-ward (as the apostle would say)
+are as lively as ever, and I recognize in you always the friend as well
+as the master. Are you likely to come back to London at all? Our plans
+didn't exactly lie through Yorkshire, but they are vague and may
+possibly be changed. But what I wanted my wife to see was S. H. H. in
+his own golden-hued library with the rumor of the cab-stand filling the
+air.... But write, you noble old philosopher and dear young man, to
+yours always,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To Dickinson S. Miller._
+
+
+LONDON, _July 8, 1893_.
+
+DARLING MILLER,--I must still for a while call you darling, in spite of
+your Toryism, ecclesiasticism, determinism, and general diabolism, which
+will probably result in your ruthlessly destroying me both as a man and
+as a philosopher some day. But sufficient unto that day will be its
+evil, so let me take advantage of the hours before "black-manhood comes"
+and still fondle you for a while upon my knee. And both you and Angell,
+being now colleagues and not students, had better stop Mistering or
+Professoring me, or I shall retaliate by beginning to "Mr." and "Prof."
+you....
+
+What you say of Erdmann, Uphues and the atmosphere of German academic
+life generally, is exceedingly interesting. If we can only keep our own
+humaner tone in spite of the growing complication of interests! I think
+we shall in great measure, for there is nothing here in English academic
+circles that corresponds to the German savagery. I do hope we may meet
+in Switzerland shortly, and you can then tell me what Erdmann's
+greatness consists in....
+
+I have done hardly any reading since the beginning of March. My genius
+for being frustrated and interrupted, and our unsettled mode of life
+have played too well into each other's hands. The consequence is that I
+rather long for settlement, and the resumption of the harness. If I only
+had working strength not to require these abominably costly vacations!
+Make the most of these days, my dear Miller. They will never exactly
+return, and will be looked back to by you hereafter as quite ideal. I am
+glad you have assimilated the German opportunities so well. Both Hodder
+and Angell have spoken with admiration of the methodical way in which
+you have forged ahead. It is a pity you have not had a chance at
+England, with which land you seem to have so many inward affinities. If
+you are to come here let me know, and I can give you introductions.
+Hodgson is in Yorkshire and I've missed him. Myers sails for the Chicago
+Psychic Congress, Aug. 2nd. Sidgwick may still be had, perhaps, and
+Bryce, who will give you an order to the Strangers' Gallery. The House
+of Commons, cradle of all free institutions, is really a wonderful and
+moving sight, and at bottom here the people are more good-natured on
+the Irish question than one would think to listen to their strong words.
+The cheery, active English temperament beats the world, I believe, the
+Deutschers included. But so cartilaginous and unsentimental as to the
+_Gemüth_! The girls like boys and the men like horses!
+
+I shall be greatly interested in your article. As for Uphues, I am duly
+uplifted that such a man should read me, and am ashamed to say that
+amongst my pile of sins is that of having carried about two of his books
+with me for three or four years past, always meaning to read, and never
+actually reading them. I only laid them out again yesterday to take back
+to Switzerland with me. Such things make me despair. Paulsen's
+_Einleitung_ is the greatest treat I have enjoyed of late. His synthesis
+is to my mind almost lamentably unsatisfactory, but the book makes a
+station, an _étape_, in the expression of things. Good-bye--my wife
+comes in, ready to go out to lunch, and thereafter to Haslemere for the
+night. She sends love, and so do I. Address us when you get to
+Switzerland to M. Cérésole, as above, "la Chiesaz sur Vevey (Vaud), and
+believe me ever yours,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+
+
+_To Henry James._
+
+
+THE SALTERS' HILL-TOP
+[near CHOCORUA], _Sept. 22, 1893_.
+
+...I am up here for a few days with Billy, to close our house for the
+winter, and get a sniff of the place. The Salters have a noble hill with
+such an outlook! and a very decent little house and barn. But oh! the
+difference from Switzerland, the thin grass and ragged waysides, the
+poverty-stricken land, and sad American sunlight over all--sad because
+so empty. There is a strange thinness and femininity hovering over all
+America, so different from the stoutness and masculinity of land and air
+and everything in Switzerland and England, that the coming back makes
+one feel strangely sad and hardens one in the resolution never to go
+away again unless one can go to end one's days. Such a divided soul is
+very bad. To you, who now have real practical relations and a place in
+the old world, I should think there was no necessity of ever coming back
+again. But Europe has been made what it is by men staying in their homes
+and fighting stubbornly generation after generation for all the beauty,
+comfort and order that they have got--we must abide and do the
+same.[106] As England struck me newly and differently last time, so
+America now--force and directness in the people, but a terrible
+grimness, more ugliness than I ever realized in things, and a greater
+weakness in nature's beauty, such as it is. One must pitch one's whole
+sensibility first in a different key--then gradually the quantum of
+personal happiness of which one is susceptible fills the cup--but the
+moment of change of key is lonesome....
+
+We had the great Helmholtz and his wife with us one afternoon, gave them
+tea and invited some people to meet them; she, a charming woman of the
+world, brought up by her aunt, Madame Mohl, in Paris; he the most
+monumental example of benign calm and speechlessness that I ever saw. He
+is growing old, and somewhat weary, I think, and makes no effort beyond
+that of smiling and inclining his head to remarks that are made. At
+least he made no response to remarks of mine; but Royce, Charles Norton,
+John Fiske, and Dr. Walcott, who surrounded him at a little table where
+he sat with tea and beer, said that he spoke. Such power of calm is a
+great possession.
+
+I have been twice to Mrs. Whitman's, once to a lunch and reception to
+the Bourgets a fortnight ago. Mrs. G----, it would seem, has kept them
+like caged birds (probably because they wanted it so); Mrs. B. was
+charming and easy, he ill at ease, refusing to try English unless
+compelled, and turning to _me_ at the table as a drowning man to a
+"hencoop," as if there were safety in the presence of anyone connected
+with you. I could do nothing towards inviting them, in the existent
+state of our ménage; but when, later, they come back for a month in
+Boston, I shall be glad to bring them into the house for a few days. I
+feel quite a fellow feeling for him; he seems a very human creature, and
+it was a real pleasure to me to see a Frenchman of B.'s celebrity _look_
+as ill at ease as I myself have often _felt_ in fashionable society.
+They are, I believe, in Canada, and have only too much society.
+
+I shan't go to Chicago, for economy's sake--besides I _must_ get to
+work. But _everyone_ says one ought to sell all one has and mortgage
+one's soul to go there; it is esteemed such a revelation of beauty.
+People cast away all sin and baseness, burst into tears and grow
+religious, etc., under the influence!! _Some_ people evidently....
+
+The people about home are very pleasant to meet.... Yours ever
+affectionately,
+
+WM. JAMES.
+
+
+END OF VOLUME I
+
+MCGRATH-SHERRILL PRESS
+
+GRAPHIC ARTS BLDG.
+
+BOSTON
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
+
+He tried to make up for the deficiences=>He tried to make up for the
+deficiencies
+
+"little genuises"=>"little geniuses"
+
+I am desirious of reading=>I am desirous of reading
+
+Et peut-on savoir jusqu'ou=>Et peut-on savoir jusqu'où
+
+Dés que ma santé=>Dès que ma santé
+
+Journal of Speculative Philsophy=>Journal of Speculative Philosophy
+
+end was apporaching until it was close at hand=>end was approaching
+until it was close at hand
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] _Literary Remains of Henry James_, p. 151.
+
+[2] Henry James (in _A Small Boy and Others_, p. 5) says of Catherine
+Barber; "She represented for us in our generation the only English
+blood--that of both her own parents--flowing in our veins." She may well
+have seemed to her grandson to be of a different type from other members
+of the family, who were more recently, and doubtless obviously, Irish or
+Scotch; but the statement is incorrect. John Barber was the son of
+Patrick Barber, who came from Longford County, Ireland, about 1750 and
+settled at Neelytown near Newburgh (after having lived in New York City
+and Princeton) about 1764, and of Jannet Rhea (or Rea) whose parents
+were well-to-do people in old Shawangunk in 1790. Whatever may have been
+the previous history of the Rhea family, their name does not suggest an
+English origin. Both Patrick Barber and Matthew Rhea were pillars of
+Goodwill Presbyterian Church in Montgomery.
+
+[3] See _Literary Remains_, p. 149.
+
+[4] If the reader were familiar, as he cannot be presumed to have been,
+with the elder Henry James or his writings, he would be in no danger of
+finding anything cold or qualifying in these words, but would discern a
+true adoration expressing itself in a way that was peculiarly
+characteristic of their writer. For Henry James, Senior, a spiritual
+democracy deeper than that of our political jargon was not a mere
+conception: it was an unquestioned reality. The outer wrappings in which
+people swathed their souls excited him to anger and ridicule more often
+than praise; but when men or women seemed to him beautiful or adorable
+he thought it was because they betrayed more naturally than others the
+inward possession of that humble "social" spirit which he wanted to
+think of as truly a common possession--God's equal gift to each and all.
+To say of his mother that _that_ could be felt in her, that she was
+_merely_ that, was his purest praise. The reader may find this habit of
+his thought expressing itself anew in William James by turning to a
+letter on page 210 below. That letter might have been written by Henry
+James, Senior.
+
+[5] The places of two of the eleven who died early were taken by their
+orphaned children.
+
+[6] According to the Rev. Hugh Walsh of Newburgh, who has worked out the
+Walsh genealogy. _A Small Boy and Others_ (page 6) says "Killyleagh."
+
+[7] _A Small Boy and Others_, p. 8.
+
+[8] _Literary Remains of Henry James_, Introduction, p. 9.
+
+[9] See, further, _Notes of a Son and Brother_, pp. 181 _et seq._
+
+[10] _Society of the Redeemed Form of Man_, quoted in the Introduction
+to _Literary Remains_, p. 57, _et seq._
+
+[11] Letter to Shadworth H. Hodgson, p. 241 _infra_.
+
+[12] _A Small Boy and Others_, p. 216.
+
+[13] _Vide_ also a passage in the _Literary Remains_, at p. 104.
+
+[14] _Life of E. L. Godkin_, vol. II, p. 218. New York, 1907.
+
+[15] _Early Years of the Saturday Club_; E. W. Emerson's chapter on
+Henry James, Senior, p. 328. There follows a delightful account of a
+"Conversation" at R. W. Emerson's house in Concord, at which Henry
+James, Senior, upset a prepared discourse of Alcott's and launched
+himself into an attack on "Morality." Whereupon Miss Mary Moody Emerson,
+"eighty-four years old and dressed underneath without doubt, in her
+shroud," seized him by the shoulders and shook him and rebuked him. "Mr.
+James beamed with delight and spoke with most chivalrous courtesy to
+this Deborah bending over him."
+
+[16] Some passages in William James's early letters to his family might
+seem labored. They should be read with this in mind. An especially
+high-sounding phrase or a flight into a grand style was understood as a
+signal meaning "fun," and such passages are never to be taken as
+serious.
+
+[17] _A Small Boy and Others_, p. 207.
+
+[18] "I have fully decided to try being a painter. I shall know in a
+year or two whether I am made to be one. If not, it will be easy to
+retreat. There's nothing in the world so despicable as a bad artist."
+(1860.)
+
+[19] For James's use of Touchstone's question, see p. 190 _infra_.
+
+[20] _Cf._ Henry James's _Life of W. W. Story_, vol. II, p. 204, where
+there is a passage which sounds reminiscent of the author's father and
+brother.
+
+[21] The following entries occur among some "notes on his students"
+which President Eliot made at the time--
+
+"First term, '61-'62, James, W., entered this term, passed examination
+on qualitative analysis well."
+
+"Second term, '61-'62, James, W., studied quantitative analysis.
+Irregular in attendance at laboratory, passed examination on Fownes's
+Organic Chemistry, mark 85."
+
+"First term, '62-'63, James, W., studied quantitative analysis and was
+tolerably punctual at recitations till Thanksgiving, when he began an
+investigation of the effects of different bread-raising materials on the
+urine. He worked steadily on this until the end of the term, mastering
+the processes, and studying the effect of yeast on bicarbonate of sodium
+and bitartrate of potash." The investigation referred to consisted of
+experiments of which he himself was the subject.
+
+There is no record for the second term of 1862-63.
+
+President Eliot has generously supplied the Editor with a memorandum on
+William James's connection with the College, from which these, and
+several statements below, have been drawn.
+
+[22] The expression was undoubtedly recognized in Kay Street as borrowed
+from the Lincolnshire boor, in Fitzjames Stephen's Essay on
+Spirit-Rapping, who ended his life with the words, "What with faith, and
+what with the earth a-turning round the sun, and what with the railroads
+a-fuzzing and a-whizzing, I'm clean stonied, muddled and beat."
+
+[23] A diary of Mr. T. S. Perry's has fixed the date of this visit as
+Oct. 31-Nov. 4.
+
+[24] W. J. could make much better drawings than the ones which he
+enclosed in this letter.
+
+[25] A horse.
+
+[26] N. S. Shaler, _Autobiography_, pp. 105 _ff._
+
+[27] _Harvard Advocate_, Oct. 1, 1874.
+
+[28] The "great anthropomorphological collection" consisted of
+photographs of authors, scientists, public characters, and also people
+whose only claim upon his attention was that their physiognomies were in
+some way typical or striking. James never arranged the collection or
+preserved it carefully, but he filled at least one album in early days,
+and he almost always kept some drawer or box at hand and dropped into it
+portraits cut from magazines or obtained in other ways. He seemed to
+crave a visual image of everybody who interested him at all.
+
+[29]
+
+ All theory is gray, dear friend,
+ But the golden tree of life is green.
+
+
+[30] See _Memories and Studies_, pp. 6, 8, and 9; and the address on
+Agassiz, _passim_.
+
+[31] The case of small-pox left no scar whatever. Indeed James afterward
+regarded it as having been perhaps no small-pox at all, but only
+varioloid, and by October he described himself as being in better health
+than ever before. During several weeks of convalescence that followed
+his distressing experience in quarantine he was, however, quite
+naturally, "blue and despondent."
+
+[32] This house has since been enlarged and converted into the Colonial
+Club.
+
+[33] John A. Allen, another of the Brazilian party.
+
+[34] Miss Dixwell became Mrs. O. W. Holmes; the other two, Mrs. E. W.
+Gurney and Mrs. William E. Darwin respectively.
+
+[35] Miss Kate Havens of Stamford, Conn., a fellow _pensionnaire_ at
+Frau Spannenberg's, has kindly supplied a helpful memorandum.
+
+[36] An accompanying drawing presented a telescopic exaggeration of
+features, which are hardly appropriate to the Christian Strasse.
+
+[37] The notice of Grimm's _Unüberwindliche Mächte_ appeared under the
+title "A German-American Novel" in the _Nation_, 1867; vol. V, p. 432.
+
+[38] The Herr Professor was later identified as W. Dilthey.
+
+[39] I send you a thousand kisses.
+
+[40] "When in his grotesque moods [the elder Henry James] maintained
+that, to a right-minded man, a crowded Cambridge horse-car 'was the
+nearest approach to Heaven upon earth.'" E. L. Godkin, _Life_, vol. II,
+p. 117.
+
+[41] An allusion to a picture in the parlor which had formerly belonged
+to the Thieses.
+
+[42] A devoted family servant.
+
+[43] A daughter of Henry James, Senior's, English friend J. J. Garth
+Wilkinson. "Wilky" James had been named after Mr. Wilkinson. See _Notes
+of a Son and Brother_, p. 196.
+
+[44] A note-book in which there are many pages of titles, under dates
+between 1867 and 1872, appears to have been a record of reading; it was
+not kept systematically and is incomplete. The following entries were
+made between the date "June 21, '69--M.D."--the date of graduation from
+the Medical School--and the end of the year 1869. It will be understood
+that "R 2 M" signified the _Revue des deux Mondes_. The original entries
+stand in a column, without punctuation, and occupy two and a half pages.
+Amplifications are added in brackets:--
+
+"A. Dumas, fils; Père prod[igue], 1/2 Monde; Fils naturel, Question
+D'Argent. / Jung; Stilling's Leben. [5 vols. 1806]. / J. S. Mill;
+Subjection of Women [1869]. / H[orace] Bushnell; Woman suffrage, etc.
+[1869]. / Balzac; Le curé de Tours. / Browning; The Ring and the Book. /
+Ravaison [Mollien]; Rapport s. l. Philosophie [La philosophie en France
+au xixe Siècle. Paris, 1868]. / Goethe; Aus meinem Leben. / Coquerel
+fils; [Perhaps Athanase Josué Coquerel, 1820-1875, author of "Libres
+études" (1867)]. / Em. Burnouf; [La] Sc[ience] des Relig[ions, vi. Les
+orthodoxies, comment elles se forment et déclinent] R2M. July 1, 69. /
+Leblais; Matérialisme and Sp[iri]t[ua]l[i]sme. [Paris, 1865]. / Littré;
+Paroles de [la] Philos[ophie] pos[itive, 1859]. / Caro; le
+Mat[érialis]me and la Science [1868]. / Comte and Littré; principes de
+Phil. pos. [Comte, Auguste. Cours de philosophie positive, 6 vols., 2nd
+ed. with preface by Littré. Paris, 1864]. / Littré, Bridges; replies to
+Mill. [Bridges, John Henry. Unity of Comte's life and doctrine; a reply
+to strictures on Comte's later writings, addressed to J. S. Mill.
+London, 1866]. / H. Spencer; Reasons for dissenting from Comte. /
+Secrétan; Preface to Phil. de la Liberté [1848]. / Schopenhauer; das
+Metaph. Bedürfniss. / H[enry] James [sen.]; Moralism and Christianity
+[N.Y. 1850]. / Jouffroy; Dist. ent. Psych. and Phys. [Part of the
+"Mélanges Philosophiques"?]. / Benedikt; Electrotherap[ie], first 100
+pp. / Lecky; History of Morals [2 vols. 1869]. / Froude; Short Studies,
+etc. (skimmed). / Duke of Argyle; Primeval Man [1869]. / Turgeneff;
+Nouvelles Moscovites. / Lewes: [Biographical] Hist. of Phil.,
+Prolegomena, Kant, Comte. / Geo. Sand; Constance Verrier. / Mérimée;
+Lokis. R2M. 15 Sept. 69. / J. Grote; Exploratio philosophica, [1865]. /
+H[enry] James [Sen.]; Lectures and Miscellanies. [1852]. / [K. J?]
+Simrock. / C. Reade; Griffith Gaunt. / G. Droz; Autour d'une Source. /
+O. Feuillet. / D. F. Strauss; Chr[istian] Marklin. Mannheim. 1851. / M.
+Müller; Chips [from a German workshop] vol. I and vol. II partly. / Lis
+[Elisa?] Maier; W. Humboldt's Leben. [1865]. / Lis Maier; Geo. Forster's
+[Leben, 1856]. / Schleiermacher; Correspondenz. vol. I. / Réville;
+Israelitic monotheism, R2M, 1er Sept. 69. [La religion primitive
+d'Israel et le développement du monothéisme]. / Deutsch; Islam.
+Quarterly Rev. Oct. '69. / Fichte; Best[immung] des Gelehrten. i and ii
+Vorlesungen. / Ste.-Beuve; Art[icle on] Leopardi, [in] Port[raits]
+cont[emporains] iii. / Westm[inster]: Rev[iew] Art. on Lecky. Oct. 69. /
+[T. G. von] Hippel; Selbstleben. / Vita de Leopardi. / Fichte;
+Bestim[mung] des Menschen. / Gwinner; Schopenhauer. /"
+
+Thanks are due to Mr. E. F. Walbridge, Librarian of the New York Harvard
+Club, for identifying a number of abbreviated titles.
+
+[45] _Psychology_, vol. I, p. 130, note. The quotation is literal. The
+subject of the foot-note in the _Psychology_ is "the author."
+
+[46] See, for example, the use made of Touchstone's question, in the
+_Nation_ in 1876 (quoted on page 190 _infra_). James was certainly
+unconscious of the repetition when he wrote page 7 of _Some Problems of
+Philosophy_. Consider also, a few sentences from a notice of Morley's
+_Voltaire_ (_Atlantic Monthly_, 1872, vol. XXX, p. 624). "As the
+opinions of average men are swayed more by examples and types than by
+mere reasons, so a personality so accomplished as Mr. Morley's cannot
+fail by its mere attractiveness to influence all who come within its
+reach and inspire them with a certain friendliness toward the faith that
+animates it. The standard example, Goethe, is ever at hand. But to be
+thus widely effective, a man must not be a specialist. Mr. John Mill,
+weighty and many-sided as he is by nature and culture, is yet deficient
+in the æsthetic direction; and the same is true of M. Littré in France.
+Their lances lack that final tipping with light that made Voltaire's so
+irresistible. What Henry IV's soldiers followed was his white plume; and
+that imponderable superfluity, grace, in some shape, seems one factor
+without which no awakening of men's sympathies on a large scale can take
+place."
+
+[47] _William James_, by Theodore Flournoy (Geneva, 1911), p. 149 note.
+
+[48] Grubbing among subtleties.
+
+[49] Regardings, or contemplative views.
+
+[50] MS. doubtful.
+
+[51] "I made a discovery in sending in my credentials to the Dean which
+gratified me. It was that, adding in conscientiously every week in which
+I have had anything to do with medicine, I can't sum up more than three
+years and two or three months. Three years is the minimum with which one
+can go up for examination; but as I began away back in '63, I have been
+considering myself as having studied about five years, and have felt
+much humiliated by the greater readiness of so many younger men to
+answer questions and understand cases." To Henry James, June 12, 1869.
+
+[52] Ephraim W. Gurney and T. S. Perry.
+
+[53] It ought perhaps to be noted, even if only to dismiss the subject
+and prevent misapprehension, that at about this time a man whose
+philosophic ability was great and whose thought was vigorously
+materialistic was often at the house in Quincy Street. This was Chauncey
+Wright. He was twelve years James's senior; a man whose best work was
+done in conversation--who wrote little, and whose talents are now to be
+measured chiefly by the strong impression that he made on some of his
+contemporaries. "Of the two motives to which philosophic systems owe
+their being, the craving for consistency or unity in thought, and the
+desire for a solid outward warrant for our emotional ends, his mind was
+dominated only by the former. Never in a human head was contemplation
+more separated from desire." (_Vide_ James's obituary notice of Wright,
+contributed to the _Nation_ for Sept. 23, 1875.) It has been suggested
+that Wright influenced James's thinking. If so, his influence was not
+lasting and, in the opinion of the editor, can easily be overstated.
+James was not limited to any one philosophic companionship even at this
+time; and if he felt Wright's influence, it is remarkable that there
+should be no mention of him in any of the letters or memoranda that have
+survived and that there was never any acknowledgment in James's
+subsequent writings. He was ever inclined to make acknowledgment, even
+to his opponents.
+
+[54] _Cf._ the description of Henry James, Senior's, home-comings in _A
+Small Boy and Others_, p. 72.
+
+[55] The early history of experimental psychology in America once
+occasioned discussion. But the discussion seems to have arisen from its
+being assumed that some particular formality or event should be
+recognized as marking the coming into being, or the coming of age, of a
+"Department" or a "Laboratory." James has stated the facts as to the
+history of the Harvard Laboratory in his own words: "I, myself,
+'founded' the instruction in experimental psychology at Harvard in
+1874-5, or 1876, I forget which. For a long series of years the
+laboratory was in two rooms of the Scientific School building, which at
+last became choked with apparatus, so that a change was necessary. I
+then, in 1890, resolved on an altogether new departure, raised several
+thousand dollars, fitted up Dane Hall, and introduced laboratory
+exercises as a regular part of the undergraduate psychology
+course."--_Vide Science_, (N. S.) vol. II, pp. 626, 735. Also, p. 301
+_infra_.
+
+[56] The name of a rocky promontory near Newport.
+
+[57] Being and Non-Being.
+
+[58] _Harvard Graduates' Magazine_, vol. XVIII, p. 631 (June, 1910).
+
+[59] "The only decent thing I have ever written" appeared in _Mind_
+under the title "The Sentiment of Rationality." A footnote (p. 346) ran
+as follows: "This article is the first chapter of a psychological work
+on the motives which lead men to philosophize. It deals with the purely
+theoretic or logical impulse. Other chapters treat of practical and
+emotional motives, and in the conclusion an attempt is made to use the
+motives as tests of the soundness of different philosophies."
+
+[60] "The Spatial Quale," _Journal of Speculative Philosophy_, 1879,
+vol. XIII, p. 64.
+
+[61] Bastien-Lepage's Les Foins (The Hay-Makers).
+
+[62] _Vide_ Introduction, p. 9 _supra_.
+
+[63] That I was intimate with their writings and did not wish to leave
+Prague without exchanging a few words with them.
+
+[64] Loquacity.
+
+[65] Service is service.
+
+[66] The true names of three compatriots, who may be living, are not
+given.
+
+[67] "My tour in Germany was pleasant, and from the pedagogic point of
+view instructive; although its chief result was to make me more
+satisfied than ever with our Harvard College methods of teaching, and to
+make me feel that in America we have perhaps a more cosmopolitan post of
+observation than is elsewhere to be found." To Renouvier, Dec. 18, 1882.
+
+[68] See p. 179 _supra_, and note.
+
+[69] See an unsigned review of Epes Sargent's "Planchette," in the
+Boston _Advertiser_ of March 10, 1869. "The present attitude of society
+on this whole question is as extraordinary and anomalous as it is
+discreditable to the pretension of an age which prides itself on
+enlightenment and the diffusion of knowledge.... The phenomena seem, in
+their present state, to pertain more to the sphere of the disinterested
+student of nature than to that of the ordinary layman." The review was
+reprinted in _Collected Essays and Reviews_.
+
+[70] As an example of this James once quoted Huxley: "I take no interest
+in the subject. The only case of 'Spiritualism' I have had the
+opportunity of examining into for myself was as gross an imposture as
+ever came under my notice. But supposing the phenomena to be
+genuine--they do not interest me. If anybody would endow me with the
+faculty of listening to the chatter of old women and curates in the
+nearest cathedral town, I should decline the privilege, having better
+things to do. And if the folk in the spiritual world do not talk more
+wisely and sensibly than their friends report them to do, I put them in
+the same category. The only good that I can see in the demonstration of
+the truth of 'Spiritualism' is to furnish an additional argument against
+suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper, than die and be made to talk
+twaddle by a 'medium' hired at a guinea a séance." _Life and Letters_,
+vol. I, p. 452 (New York, 1900).
+
+James's comment should be added: "Obviously the mind of the excellent
+Huxley has here but two whole-souled categories, namely, revelation or
+imposture, to apperceive the case by. Sentimental reasons bar revelation
+out, for the messages, he thinks, are not romantic enough for that;
+fraud exists anyhow; therefore the whole thing is nothing but imposture.
+The odd point is that so few of those who talk in this way realize that
+they and the spiritists are using the same major premise and differing
+only in the minor. The major premise is: 'Any spirit-revelation must be
+romantic.' The minor of the spiritist is: 'This _is_ romantic'; that of
+the Huxleyan is: 'This is dingy twaddle'--whence their opposite
+conclusions!" (_Memories and Studies_, pp. 185, 186.)
+
+[71] _The Will to Believe_, etc., p. 302.
+
+[72] _Cf._ _The Will to Believe_, etc., p. 319.
+
+[73] It is not the province of this book to estimate the importance of
+the work done by James and the other men--Sidgwick, Myers, Gurney,
+Richard Hodgson, Sir Oliver Lodge, and Richet, to go no further--who
+supported and guided the S. P. R. It must be traced in the literature of
+automatisms, hypnosis, divided personality, and the "subliminal." In
+James's own writings the reader may be referred to the above named
+chapter of _The Will to Believe_, etc., two papers included in _Memories
+and Studies_, and a review of Myers's _Human Personality_ in Proc. of
+the (Eng.) S. P. R., vol. XVIII, p. 22 (1903). See also p. 306 _infra_,
+and note.
+
+[74] _Mind_, 1884, vol. IX, pp. 1-26.
+
+[75] _Unitarian Review_, Dec., 1883; vol. XX, p. 481.
+
+[76] "The Dilemma of Determinism." _Unitarian Review_, Sept., 1884.
+Republished in _The Will to Believe and Other Essays_.
+
+[77] Professor Howison had accepted an appointment at the University of
+California (Berkeley).
+
+[78]
+
+ "Why so heartlessly deceive your sons?"
+
+ LEOPARDI, _To Sylvia_.
+
+
+[79] From 15 Appian Way to 18 Garden Street.
+
+[80] "It's amusing to see how, even upon my microscopic field, minute
+events are perpetually taking place illustrative of the broadest facts
+of human nature. Yesterday Nurse and I had a good laugh, but I must
+allow that decidedly she 'had' me. I was thinking of something that
+interested me very much, and my mind was suddenly flooded by one of
+those luminous waves that sweep out of consciousness all but the living
+sense, and overpower one with joy in the rich, throbbing complexity of
+life, when suddenly I looked up at Nurse, who was dressing me, and saw
+her primitive, rudimentary expression (so common here), as of no
+inherited quarrel with her destiny of putting petticoats over my head;
+the poverty and deadness of it, contrasted to the tide of speculation
+that was coursing through my brain, made me exclaim, 'Oh, Nurse, don't
+you wish you were inside of _me_?' Her look of dismay, and vehement
+disclaimer--'Inside of you, Miss, when you have just had a sick-headache
+for five days!'--gave a greater blow to my vanity than that
+much-battered article has ever received. The headache had gone off in
+the night and I had clean forgotten it when the little wretch confronted
+me with it, at this sublime moment, when I was feeling within me the
+potency of a Bismarck, and left me powerless before the immutable law
+that, however great we may seem to our own consciousness, no human being
+would exchange his for ours, and before the fact that _my_ glorious rôle
+was to stand for _sick-headache_ to mankind! What a grotesque being I
+am, to be sure, lying in this room, with the resistance of a
+thistle-down, having illusory moments of throbbing with the pulse of the
+race, the mystery to be solved at the next breath, and the fountain of
+all happiness within me--the sense of vitality, in short, simply
+proportionate to the excess of weakness. To sit by and watch these
+absurdities is amusing in its way, and reminds me of how I used to
+_listen_ to my 'company manners' in the days when I had 'em, and how
+ridiculous they sounded.
+
+"Ah! Those strange people who have the courage to be unhappy! _Are_ they
+unhappy, by the way?" [From a diary of Alice James's.]
+
+[81] Whose picture used to adorn the numerous advertisements of a patent
+medicine called "Mrs. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound."
+
+[82] The state of self-reproachful irritation described by
+_Kater-Gefühl_ cannot be justly rendered by any English word.
+
+[83] Outbursts.
+
+[84] Mediatory attitude (view).
+
+[85] "The Perception of Space." _Mind_, 1887; vol. XII, pp. 1-30,
+183-211, 321-353, 516-548.
+
+[86] _Journal of Speculative Philosophy_, 1886, vol. XX, p. 374.
+
+[87] Epochmaking manifestation.
+
+[88] I send her heartiest greetings.
+
+[89] From pure.
+
+[90] If it was printed, this notice has escaped identification.
+
+[91] "How I shall miss that man's presence in the world!... Our problems
+were the same and for the most part our solutions."
+
+"He is a terrible loss to me. I didn't know till the news came how much
+I mentally referred to him as a critic and sympathizer, or how much I
+counted on seeing more of him hereafter." (From letters to G. Croom
+Robertson.)
+
+_Vide_, also, _The Will to Believe_, etc., pp. 306-7.
+
+[92] _Vide_, pp. 290-91 _infra_.
+
+[93] "I write every morning at one of the card tables in the parlor, all
+alone in a room 120 feet long--just about the right size for one man."
+(Letter from the Hotel Del Monte, Sept. 8, 1898.)
+
+[94] J. M. Cattell. Address upon the 25th Anniversary of the American
+Psychological Association, Dec. 1916. _Science_ (N.S.), vol. XLV, p.
+276.
+
+[95] To Hugo Münsterberg, Aug. 22, 1890.
+
+[96] _E.g._, _Principles of Psychology_, vol. I, p. 369. "One is almost
+tempted to believe that the pantomime state of mind and that of the
+Hegelian dialectics are, emotionally considered, one and the same thing.
+In the pantomime all common things are represented to happen in
+impossible ways, people jump down each other's throats, houses turn
+inside out, old women become young men, everything 'passes into its
+opposite' with inconceivable celerity and skill; and this, so far from
+producing perplexity, brings rapture to the beholder's mind. And so, in
+the Hegelian logic, relations elsewhere recognized under the insipid
+name of distinctions (such as that between knower and object, many and
+one) must first be translated into impossibilities and contradictions,
+then 'transcended' and identified by miracles, ere the proper temper is
+induced for thoroughly enjoying the spectacle they show."
+
+[97] "What Psychical Research has Accomplished," was first published in
+_The Forum_, 1892, vol. XIII, p. 727.
+
+[98] It will be recalled that Mrs. Whitman had been a Baltimorean before
+she came to live in Boston.
+
+[99] _Aug. 14._ "Lowell's funeral at mid-day.... Went to Child's to say
+good-bye, and found Walcott, Howells, Cranch, etc. Poor dear old Child!
+We drank a glass standing to the hope of seeing Lowell again."
+
+[100] Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Sedgwick. Mr. Sedgwick was Miss Ashburner's
+nephew.
+
+[101] See vol. II, p. 39 _infra_.
+
+[102] See "The Galileo Festival at Padua": _Nation_ (New York), Jan. 5,
+1893; a four-column account of the Festival.
+
+[103] _Philosophical Review_ (1893), vol. II, p. 213
+
+[104] Mr. Frank Duveneck, painter and sculptor, now of Cincinnati.
+
+[105] Mr. Duveneck was Mr. Boott's son-in-law. _Vide_ page 153 _supra_.
+
+[106] Jan. 24, '94. To Carl Stumpf. "One should not be a cosmopolitan,
+one's soul becomes 'disintegrated,' as Janet would say. Parts of it
+remain in different places, and the whole of it is nowhere. One's native
+land seems foreign. It is not wholly a good thing, and I think I suffer
+from it."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Letters of William James, Vol. 1, by
+William James
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40307 ***
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