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THE LETTERS OF
WILLIAM JAMES

EDITED BY HIS SON
HENRY JAMES

IN TWO VOLUMES
VOLUME II

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS

BOSTON

CONTENTS

XI. 1893-1899 ....

1-52

Turning to Philosophy — A Student's Impressions —

Popular Lecturing — Chautauqua.

Letters: —

To Dickinson S. Miller .... 17

To Henry Holt

To Henry James

To Mrs. Henry Whitman

To G. H. Howison .

To Theodore Flournoy .

To his Daughter

To E. L. Godkin

To F. W. H. Myers . .

To F. W. H. Myers

To Henry Holt

To his Class at Radcliffe College

To Henry James ....

To Henry James

To Benjamin P. Blood .

• 38

To Mrs. James

To Miss Rosina H. Emmet .

To Charles Renouvier

To Theodore Flournoy .

. 46

To Dickinson S. Miller .

■ 48

To Henry James

XII. 1893-1899 (Continued) S3~9l

The Will to Believe — Talks to Teachers — Defense

CONTENTS

of Mental Healers — Excessive Climbing in the
Adirondacks.
Letters: —

To Theodore Flournoy .

To Henry W. Rankin

To Benjamin P. Blood .

To Henry James

To Miss Ellen Emmet

To E. L. Godkin

To F. C. S. Schiller .

To James J. Putnam

To Francois Pillon

To Mrs. James

To G. H. Howison .

To Henry James

To his Son Alexander

To Miss Rosina H. Emmet

To Dickinson S. Miller .

To Henry Rutgers Marshall

To Mrs. Henry Whitman

53
56
58
60
62
64

65
66

79
80

XIII. 1899-1902 92-170

Two Years of Illness in Europe — Retirement from
Active Duty at Harvard — The First and Second
Series of the Gifford Lectures.
Letters: —

To Miss Pauline Goldmark 95

To Mrs. E. P. Gibbens 96

To William M. Salter 99

To Miss Frances R. Morse . . . . . 102

CONTENTS

Vll

To Mrs. Henry Whitman

To Thomas Davidson

To John C. Gray

To Miss Frances R. Morse

To Mrs. Glendower Evans

To Dickinson S. Miller .

To Francis Boott

To Hugo Miinsterberg .

To G. H. Palmer

To Miss Frances R. Morse

To his Son Alexander

To his Daughter

To Miss Frances R. Morse

To Josiah Royce

To Miss Frances R. Morse

To James Sully.

To Miss Frances R. Morse

To F. C. S. Schiller

To Miss Frances R. Morse

To Henry W. Rankin

To Charles Eliot Norton

To N. S. Shaler

To Miss Frances R. Morse

To Henry James

To E. L. Godkin

To Miss Pauline Goldmark

To H. N. Gardiner .

To F. C. S. Schiller

To Charles Eliot Norton

To Mrs. Henry Whitman

[°3

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1 2

M
29

[33
133
[3S
[38

:4o

142

[43

:46

[48

59
.61

62
64
64
66

Vlll

CONTENTS

XIV. 1902-1905

171-218

The Last Period (I) — Statements of Religious

Belief — Philosophical Writing.

Letters: —

To Henry L. Higginson

173

To Miss Grace Norton

173

To Miss Frances R. Morse ....

175

To Henry L. Higginson

. 176

To Henri Bergson

178

To Mrs. Louis Agassiz

180

To Henry L. Higginson

182

To Henri Bergson

183

To Theodore Flournoy

185

To Henry James

188

To his Daughter

192

To Miss Frances R. Morse ....

193

To Henry James

195

To Henry W. Rankin

196

To Dickinson S. Miller

197

To Mrs. Henry Whitman ....

198

To Miss Frances R. Morse ....

200

To Mrs. Henry Whitman ....

201

To Henry James

202

To Francois Pillon

203

To Henry James

204

To Charles Eliot Norton ....

206

To L. T. Hobhouse

207

To Edwin D. Starbuck

209

To James Henry Leuba

21 1

Answers to the Pratt Questionnaire on Religiou;

Belief

212

To Miss Pauline Goldmark

215

To F. C. S. Schiller .

216

CONTENTS ix

To F. J. E. Woodbridge 21-

To Edwin D. Starbuck 2 1 -

To F. J. E. Woodbridge 218

XV. 1 905-1 907 219-2X2

The Last Period (II) — Italy and Greece — Philo-
sophical Congress in Rome — Stanford Univer-
sity— The Earthquake — Resignation of Profes-
sorship.
Letters: —

To Mrs. James

To his Daughter

To Mrs. James

To George Santayana

To Mrs. James

To H. G. Wells

To Henry L. Higginson .

To T. S. Perry .

To Dickinson S. Miller .

To Daniel Merriman

To Miss Pauline Goldmark

To Henry James

To Theodore Flournoy .

To F. C. S. Schiller .

To Miss Frances R. Morse

To Henry James and W. James, J

To W. Lutoslawski .

To John Jay Chapman .

To Henry James

To H. G. W7ells

22 1

22;
228
229
230

-jo
231
232
233

2J5
237
238
238

239
241

245

247
250

252

255
258

259

CONTENTS

To Miss Theodora Sedgwick .

To his Daughter

To Henry James and W. James, J

To Moorfield Storey

To Theodore Flournoy

To Charles A. Strong

To F. C. S. Schiller .

To Clifford W. Beers

To William James, Jr.

To Henry James

To F. C. S. Schiller .

260

262
>3

26?

265
266
268

270

2/3
275

277

280

XVI. 1 907-1 909

The Last Period (III) — Hibbert Lectures

ford — The Hodgson Report.
Letters: —

To Charles Lewis Slattery

To Henry L. Higginson .

To W. Cameron Forbes .

To F. C. S. Schiller .

To Henri Bergson

To T. S. Perry .

To Dickinson S. Miller .

To Miss Pauline Goldmark

To W. Jerusalem

To Henry James

To Theodore Flournoy .

To Norman Kemp Smith

To his Daughter

To Henry James

To Miss Pauline Goldmark

To Charles Eliot Norton

283-332
in Ox-

287

288

290

294

295

296

297

298

300

301

302

303

303
306

CONTENTS

To Henri Bergson 308

To John Dewey

310

To Theodore Flournoy .

310

To Shadworth H. Hodgson .

312

To Theodore Flournoy .

3l3

To Henri Bergson

3*5

To H. G. Wells

316

To Henry James

31?

To T. S. Perry ....

318

To Hugo Miinsterberg .

320

To John Jay Chapman .

321

To G. H. Palmer

322

To Theodore Flournoy .

322

To Miss Theodora Sedgwick .

3-4

To F. C. S. Schiller

3-5

To Theodore Flournoy

326

To Shadworth H. Hodgson

328

To John, Jay Chapman .

3-9

To John Jay Chapman .

■ 330

To John Jay Chapman .

• 33o

To Dickinson S. Miller .

• 33i

XVII. 1910 333-35°

Final Months — The End.

Letters: —

To Henry L. Higginson 334

To Miss Frances R. Morse

To T. S. Perry .

0 0 r

To Frangois Pillon .

• 336

To Theodore Flournoy .

• 33*

To his Daughter

■ 33*

To Henry P. Bowditch .

• 341

To Francois Pillon .

• 342

xii CONTENTS

To Henry Adams 344

To Henry Adams 346

To Henry Adams 347

To Benjamin P. Blood 347

To Theodore Flournoy 349

Appendtx 1 353

Three Criticisms for Students.

Appendix II 357

Books by William James.

Index 363

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

William James in middle life . . . Frontispiece

" Damn the Absolute " : two snapshots of William

James and Josiah Royce .... 135

William James and Henry James posing for a

kodak in 1900 . . . • • • 161

William James and Henry Clement at the " Put-
nam Shanty" in the Adirondacks (1907?) . 315

Facsimile of Post-card addressed to Henry Adams 347

THE LETTERS OF
WILLIAM JAMES

1893-1899

Turning to Philosophy — A Student 's Impressions —
Popular Lecturing — Chautauqua

When James returned from Europe, he was fifty-two
years old. If he had been another man, he might have set-
tled down to the intensive cultivation of the field in which
he had already achieved renown and influence. He would
then have spent the rest of his life in working out special
problems in psychology, in deducing a few theories, in mak-
ing particular applications of his conclusions, in adminis-
tering a growing laboratory, in surrounding himself with
assistants and disciples — in weeding and gathering where
he had tilled. But the fact was that the publication of his
two books on psychology operated for him as a welcome
release from the subject.

He had no illusion of finality about what he had written.1
But he would have said that whatever original contribu-
tion he was capable of making to psychology had already
been made; that he must pass on and leave addition and
revision to others. He gradually disencumbered himself

'"It seems to me that psychology is like physics before Galileo's time — not
a single elementary law yet caught a glimpse of. A great chance for some future
psychologue to make a greater name than Newton's; but who then will read the
books of this generation? Not many, I trow. Meanwhile they must be written."
To James Sully, July 8 , 1 890.

2 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1893-99

of responsibility for teaching the subject in the College.
The laboratory had already been placed under Professor
Miinsterberg's charge. For one year, during which Miin-
sterberg returned to Germany, James was compelled to
direct its conduct; but he let it be known that he would
resign his professorship rather than concern himself with it
indefinitely.

Readers of this book will have seen that the centre of
his interest had always been religious and philosophical.
To be sure, the currents by which science was being carried
forward during the sixties and seventies had supported him
in his distrust of conclusions based largely on introspection
and a priori reasoning. As early as 1865 he had said,
apropos of Agassiz, "No one sees farther into a generaliza-
tion than his own knowledge of details extends." In the
spirit of that remark he had spent years on brain-physiology,
on the theory of the emotions, on the feeling of effort in
mental processes, in studying the measurements and exact
experiments by means of which the science of the mind was
being brought into quickening relation with the physical
and biological sciences. But all the while he had been
driven on by a curiosity that embraced ulterior problems.
In half of the field of his consciousness questions had been
stirring which now held his attention completely. Does
consciousness really exist? Could a radically empirical con-
ception of the universe be formulated ? What is knowledge ?
What truth? Where is freedom? and where is there room
for faith? Metaphysical problems haunted his mind; dis-
cussions that ran in strictly psychological channels bored
him. He called psychology "a nasty little subject," ac-
cording to Professor Palmer, and added, "all one cares to
know lies outside." He would not consider spending time
on a revised edition of his textbook (the "Briefer Course")

1893-99] LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES 3

except for a bribe that was too great ever to be urged upon
him. As time went on, he became more and more irritated
at being addressed or referred to as a "psychologist." In
June, 1903, when he became aware that Harvard was in-
tending to confer an honorary degree on him, he went about
for days before Commencement in a half-serious state of
dread lest, at the fatal moment, he should hear President
Eliot's voice naming him "Psychologist, psychical researcher,
willer-to-believe, religious experiencer." He could not say
whether the impossible last epithets would be less to his
taste than "psychologist."

Only along the borderland between normal and patho-
logical mental states, and particularly in the region of
"religious experience," did he continue to collect psycho-
logical data and to explore them.

The new subjects which he offered at Harvard during
the nineties are indicative of the directions in which his
mind was moving. In the first winter after his return he
gave a course on Cosmology, which he had never taught
before and which he described in the department announce-
ment as "a study of the fundamental conceptions of natural
science with especial reference to the theories of evolution
and materialism," and for the first time announced that
his graduate "seminar" would be wholly devoted to ques-
tions in mental pathology "embracing a review of the
principal forms of abnormal or exceptional mental life." In
1895 the second half of his psychological seminar was
announced as "a discussion of certain theoretic problems,
as Consciousness, Knowledge, Self, the relations of Mind
and Body." In 1896 he offered a course on the philosophy
of Kant for the first time. In 1898 the announcement of
his "elective" on Metaphysics explained that the class would
consider "the unity or pluralism of the world ground, and

4 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1893-99

its knowability or unknowability; realism and idealism,
freedom, teleology and theism." r

But there is another aspect of the nineties which must
be touched upon. After getting back "to harness" in 1893
James took up, not only his full college duties, but an amount
of outside lecturing such as he had never done before. In
so doing he overburdened himself and postponed the attain-
ment of his true purpose; but the temptation to accept the
requests which now poured in on him was made irresistible
by practical considerations. He not only repeated some
of his Harvard courses at Radcliffe College, and gave in-
struction in the Harvard Summer School in addition to
the regular work of the term; but delivered lectures at
teachers' meetings and before other special audiences in
places as far from Cambridge as Colorado and California.
A number of the papers that are included in "The Will
to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy" (1897)
and "Talks to Teachers and Students on Some of Life's
Ideals" (1897) were thus prepared as lectures. Some of
them were read many times before they were published.
When he stopped for a rest in 1899, he was exhausted to
the verge of a formidable break-down.

Even a glance at this period tempts one to wonder whether
this record would not have been richer if it had been dif-
ferent. Might-have-beens can never be measured or veri-
fied; and yet sometimes it cannot be doubted that possi-

1 President Eliot, in a memorandum already referred to (vol. i, p. 32, note), calls
attention to these courses and remarks: "These frequent changes were highly
characteristic of James's whole career as a teacher. He changed topics, text-
books and methods frequently, thus utilizing his own wide range of reading and
interest and his own progress in philosophy, and experimenting from year to year
on the mutual contacts and relations with his students." James continued to be
titular Professor of Psychology until 1897, Just as ne had been nominally Assistant
Professor of Physiology for several years during which the original and important
part of his teaching was psychological. His title never indicated exactly what he
was teaching.

i893~99l LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES 5

bilities never realized were actual possibilities once. By
1893 James was inwardly eager, as has already been said,
to devote all his thought and working time to metaphysical
and religious questions. More than that --he had already
conceived the important terms of his own Welt-anschauung.
"The Will to Believe" was written by 1896. In the pref-
ace to the "Talks to Teachers" he said of the essay called
"A Certain Blindness in Human Beings," "it connects it-
self with a definite view of the World and our Moral rela-
tions to the same. ... I mean the pluralistic or individual-
istic philosophy." This was no more than a statement of
a general philosophic attitude which had for some years
been familiar to his students and to readers of his occasional
papers. The lecture on "Philosophical Conceptions and
Practical Results," delivered at the University of California
in 1898, forecast "Pragmatism" and the "Meaning of
Truth." If his time and energy had not been otherwise
consumed, the nineties might well have witnessed the ap-
pearance of papers which were not written until the next
decade. If he had been able to apply an undistracted at-
tention to what his spirit was all the while straining toward,
the disastrous breakdown of 1 899-1902 might not have
happened. But instead, these best years of his maturity
were largely sacrificed to the practical business of supporting
his family. His salary as a Harvard professor was insuffi-
cient to his needs. On his salary alone he could not edu-
cate his four children as he wanted to, and make provision
for his old age and their future and his wife's, except by
denying himself movement and social and professional
contacts and by withdrawing into isolation that would
have been utterly paralyzing and depressing to his genius.
He possessed private means, to be sure; but, considering
his family, these amounted to no more than a partial in-

6 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1893-99

surance against accident and a moderate supplement to
his salary. His books had not yet begun to yield him a
substantial increase of income. It is true that he made
certain lecture engagements serve as the occasion for cast-
ing philosophical conceptions in more or less popular form,
and that he frequently paid the expenses of refreshing
travels by means of these lectures. But after he had econ-
omized in every direction, — as for instance, by giving up
horse and hired man at Chocorua, — the bald fact remained
that for six years he spent most of the time that he could
spare from regular college duties, and about all his vaca-
tions, in carrying the fruits of the previous fifteen years of
psychological work into the popular market. His public
reputation was increased thereby. Teachers, audiences, and
the "general reader" had reason to be thankful. But science
and philosophy paid for the gain. His case was no worse
than that of plenty of other men of productive genius who
were enmeshed in an inadequately supported academic
system. It would have been much more distressing under
the conditions that prevail today. So James took the
limitations of the situation as a matter of course and made
no complaint. But when he died, the systematic statement
of his philosophy had not been "rounded out" and he knew
that he was leaving it "too much like an arch built only on
one side."

James's appearance at this period is well shown by the
frontispiece of this volume. Almost anyone who was at
Harvard in the nineties can recall him as he went back
and forth in Kirkland Street between the College and his
Irving Street house, and can in memory see again that
erect figure walking with a step that was somehow firm and
light without being particularly rapid, two or three thick

1893-99] LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES 7

volumes and a note-book under one arm, and on his face a
look of abstraction that used suddenly to give way to an
expression of delighted and friendly curiosity. Sometimes
it was an acquaintance who caught his eye and received a
cordial word; sometimes it was an occurrence in the street
that arrested him; sometimes the terrier dog, who had been
roving along unwatched and forgotten, embroiled himself
in an adventure or a fight and brought James out of his
thoughts. One day he would have worn the Norfolk jacket
that he usually worked in at home to his lecture-room;
the next, he would have forgotten to change the black coat
that he had put on for a formal occasion. At twenty minutes
before nine in the morning he could usually be seen going
to the College Chapel for the fifteen-minute service with
which the College day began. If he was returning home
for lunch, he was likely to be hurrying; for he had probably
let himself be detained after a lecture to discuss some ques-
tion with a few of his class. He was apt then to have some
student with him whom he was bringing home to lunch and
to finish the discussion at the family table, or merely for the
purpose of establishing more personal relations than were
possible in the class-room. At the end of the afternoon,
or in the early evening, he would frequently be bicycling
or walking again. He would then have been working until
his head was tired, and would have laid his spectacles down
on his desk and have started out again to get a breath of
air and perhaps to drop in on a Cambridge neighbor.

In his own house it seemed as if he was always at work;
all the more, perhaps, because it was obvious that he pos-
sessed no instinct for arranging his day and protecting him-
self from interruptions. He managed reasonably well to
keep his mornings clear; or rather he allowed his wife to
stand guard over them with fair success. But soon after

8 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1893-99

he had taken an essential after-lunch nap, he was pretty
sure to be "caught" by callers and visitors. From six
o'clock on, he usually had one or two of the children sitting,
more or less subdued, in the library, while he himself read
or dashed off letters, or (if his eyes were tired) dictated
them to Mrs. James. He always had letters and post-cards
to write. At any odd time — with his overcoat on and
during a last moment before hurrying off to an appoint-
ment or a train — he would sit down at his desk and do one
more note or card — always in the beautiful and flowing
hand that hardly changed between his eighteenth and his
sixty-eighth years. He seemed to feel no need of solitude
except when he was reading technical literature or writing
philosophy. If other members of the household were talk-
ing and laughing in the room that adjoined his study, he
used to keep the door open and occasionally pop in for a
word, or to talk for a quarter of an hour. It was with the
greatest difficulty that Mrs. James finally persuaded him
to let the door be closed up. He never struck an equilib-
rium between wishing to see his students and neighbors
freely and often, and wishing not to be interrupted by even
the most agreeable reminder of the existence of anyone or
anything outside the matter in which he was absorbed.

It was customary for each member of the Harvard Faculty
to announce in the college catalogue at what hour of
the day he could be consulted by students. Year after
year James assigned the hour of his evening meal for such
calls. Sometimes he left the table to deal with the caller
in private; sometimes a student, who had pretty certainly
eaten already and was visibly abashed at finding himself
walking in on a second dinner, would be brought into the
dining-room and made to talk about other things than his,
business.

1893-99] LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES 9

He allowed his conscience to be constantly burdened with
a sense of obligation to all sorts of people. The list of
neighbors, students, strangers visiting Cambridge, to whom
he and Mrs. James felt responsible for civilities, was never
closed, and the cordiality which animated his intentions
kept him reminded of every one on it.

And yet, whenever his wife wisely prepared for a suitable
time and made engagements for some sort of hospitality
otherwise than by hap-hazard, it was perversely likely to
be the case, when the appointed hour arrived, that James
was "going on his nerves" and in no mood for "being en-
tertaining." The most comradely of men, nothing galled
him like having to be sociable. The "hollow mockery of
our social conventions" would then be described in furious
and lurid speech. Luckily the guests were not yet there to
hear him. But they did not always get away without
catching a glimpse of his state of mind. On one such occa-
sion,— an evening reception for his graduate class had been
arranged, — Mrs. James encountered a young man in the
hall whose expression was so perturbed that she asked him
what had happened to him. "I've come in again," he
replied, " to get my hat. I was trying to find my way to the
dining-room when Mr. James swooped at me and said,
'Here, Smith, you want to get out of this Hell, don't you?
I '11 show you how. There!' And before I could answer,
he 'd popped me out through a back-door. But, really, I
do not want to go!"

The dinners of a club to which allusions will occur in
this volume, (in letters to Henry L. Higginson, T. S. Perry,
and John C. Gray) were occasions apart from all others;
for James could go to them at the last moment, without
any sense of responsibility and knowing that he would find
congenial company and old friends. So he continued to

io LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1893-99

go to these dinners, even after he had stopped accepting all
invitations to dine. The Club (for it never had any name)
had been started in 1870. James had been one of the
original group who agreed to dine together once a month
during the winter. Among the other early members had
been his brother Henry, W. D. Howells, O. W. Holmes, Jr.,
John Fiske, John C. Gray, Henry Adams, T. S. Perry,
John C. Ropes, A. G. Sedgwick, and F. Parkman. The
more faithful diners, who constituted the nucleus of the
Club during the later years, included Henry L. Higginson,
Sturgis Bigelow, John C. Ropes, John T. Morse, Charles
Grinnell, James Ford Rhodes, Moorfield Storey, James W.
Crafts, and H. P. Walcott.

Every little while James's sleep would "go to pieces," and
he would go off to Newport, the Adirondacks, or elsewhere,
for a few days. This happened both summer and winter.
It was not the effect of the place or climate in which he was
living, but simply that his dangerously high average of
nervous tension had been momentarily raised to the snap-
ping point. Writing was almost certain to bring on this
result. When he had an essay or a lecture to prepare, he
could not do it by bits. In order to begin such a task, he
tried to seize upon a free day — more often a Sunday than
any other. Then he would shut himself into his library, or
disappear into a room at the top of the house, and remain
hidden all day. If things went well, twenty or thirty sheets
of much-corrected manuscript (about twenty-five hundred
words in his free hand) might result from such a day. As
many more would have gone into the waste-basket. Two
or three successive days of such writing "took it out of
him" visibly.

Short holidays, or intervals in college lecturing, were

l893_99] LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES n

often employed for writing in this way, the longer vaca-
tions of the latter nineties being filled, as has been said,
with traveling and lecture engagements. In the intervals
there would be a few days, or sometimes two or three whole
weeks, at Chocorua. Or, one evening, all the windows of
the deserted Irving Street house would suddenly be wide
open to the night air, and passers on the sidewalk could see
James sitting in his shirt-sleeves within the circle of the
bright light that stood on his library table. He was writ-
ing letters, making notes, and skirmishing through the piles
of journals and pamphlets that had accumulated during an
absence.

The impression which he made on a student who sat
under him in several classes shortly before the date at
which this volume begins have been set down in a form in
which they can be given here.

"I have a vivid recollection" (writes Dr. Dickinson S.
Miller) "of James's lectures, classes, conferences, seminars,
laboratory interests, and the side that students saw of him
generally. Fellow-manliness seemed to me a good name
for his quality. The one thing apparently impossible to
him was to speak ex cathedra from heights of scientific eru-
dition and attainment. There were not a few 'ifV and
'maybe's' in his remarks. Moreover he seldom followed
for long an orderly system of argument or unfolding of a
theory, but was always apt to puncture such systematic
pretensions when in the midst of them with some entirely
unaffected doubt or question that put the matter upon a
basis of common sense at once. He had drawn from his
laboratory experience in chemistry and his study of medi-
cine a keen sense that the imposing formulas of science that
impress laymen are not so 'exact' as they sound. He was

12 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1893-99

not, in my time at least, much of a believer in lecturing in
the sense of continuous exposition.

"I can well remember the first meeting of the course in
psychology in 1890, in a ground-floor room of the old Law-
rence Scientific School. He took a considerable part of the
hour by reading extracts from Henry Sidgwick's Lecture
against Lecturing, proceeding to explain that we should use
as a textbook his own 'Principles of Psychology,' appearing
for the first time that very week from the press, and should
spend the hours in conference, in which we should discuss
and ask questions, on both sides. So during the year's
course we read the two volumes through, with some amount
of running commentary and controversy. There were four
or five men of previous psychological training in a class of
(I think) between twenty and thirty, two of whom were
disposed to take up cudgels for the British associational
psychology and were particularly troubled by the repeated
doctrine of the 'Principles' that a state of consciousness
had no parts or elements, but was one indivisible fact. He
bore questions that really were criticisms with inexhaustible
patience and what I may call (the subject invites the word
often) human attention; invited written questions as well,
and would often return them with a reply penciled on the
back when he thought the discussion too special in interest
to be pursued before the class. Moreover, he bore with us
with never a sign of impatience if we lingered after class,
and even walked up Kirkland Street with him on his way
home. Yet he was really not argumentative, not inclined
to dialectic or pertinacious debate of any sort. It must
always have required an effort of self-control to put up with
it. He almost never, even in private conversation, contended
for his own opinion. He had a way of often falling back on
the language of perception, insight, sensibility, vision of

1893-99] LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES 13

possibilities. I recall how on one occasion after class, as I
parted with him at the gate of the Memorial Hall triangle,
his last words were something like these: 'Well, Miller,
that theory 's not a warm reality to me yet - - still a cold
conception'; and the charm of the comradely smile with
which he said it! The disinclination to formal logical sys-
tem and the more prolonged purely intellectual analyses was
felt by some men as a lack in his classroom work, though
they recognized that these analyses were present in the
'Psychology.' On the other hand, the very tendency to
feel ideas lent a kind of emotional or sesthetic color which
deepened the interest.

"In the course of the year he asked the men each to write
some word of suggestion, if he were so inclined, for improve-
ment in the method with which the course was conducted;
and, if I remember rightly, there were not a few respectful
suggestions that too much time was allowed to the few
wrangling disputants. In a pretty full and varied experi-
ence of lecture-rooms at home and abroad I cannot recall
another where the class was asked to criticize the methods
of the lecturer.

"Another class of twelve or fourteen, in the same year,
on Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibnitz, met in one of the
'tower rooms' of Sever Hall, sitting around a table. Here
we had to do mostly with pure metaphysics. And more
striking still was the prominence of humanity and sensi-
bility in his way of taking philosophic problems. I can see
him now, sitting at the head of that heavy table of light-
colored oak near the bow-window that formed the end of
the room. My brother, a visitor at Cambridge, dropping
in for an hour and seeing him with his vigorous air, bronzed
and sanguine complexion, and brown tweeds, said, 'He
looks more like a sportsman than a professor.' I think that

i4 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1893-99

the sporting men in college always felt a certain affinity to
themselves on one side in the freshness and manhood that
distinguished him in mind, appearance, and diction. It
was, by the way, in this latter course that I first heard some
of the philosophic phrases now identified with him. There
was a great deal about the monist and pluralist views of
the universe. The world of the monist was described as a
'block-universe' and the monist himself as 'wallowing in
a sense of unbridled unity,' or something of the sort. He
always wanted the men to write one or two 'theses' in the
course of the year and to get to work early on them. He
made a great deal of bibliography. He would say, 'I am
no man for editions and references, no exact bibliographer.'
But none the less he would put upon the blackboard full
lists of books, English, French, German, and Italian, on
our subject. His own reading was immense and system-
atic. No one has ever done justice to it, partly because he
spoke with unaffected modesty of that side of his equipment.
"Of course this knowledge came to the foreground in his
'seminar.' In my second year I was with him in one of
these for both terms, the first half-year studying the psy-
chology of pleasure and pain, and the second, mental path-
ology. Here each of us undertook a special topic, the
reading for which was suggested by him. The students were
an interesting group, including Professor Santayana, then
an instructor, Dr. Herbert Nichols, Messrs. Mezes (now
President of the City College, New York), Pierce (late Pro-
fessor at Smith College), Angell (Professor of Psychology
at Chicago, and now President of the Carnegie Corpora-
tion), Bakewell (Professor at Yale), and Alfred Hodder
(who became instructor at Bryn Mawr College, then aban-
doned academic life for literature and politics). In this
seminar I was deeply impressed by his judicious and often

1893-99] LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES 15

judicial quality. His range of intellectual experience, his
profound cultivation in literature, in science and in art (has
there been in our generation a more cultivated man?), his
absolutely unfettered and untrammeled mind, ready to do
sympathetic justice to the most unaccredited, audacious,
or despised hypotheses, yet always keeping his own sense
of proportion and the balance of evidence — merely to know
these qualities, as we sat about that council-board, was
to receive, so far as we were capable of absorbing it, in a
heightened sense of the good old adjective, 'liberal' edu-
cation. Of all the services he did us in this seminar perhaps
the greatest was his running commentary on the students'
reports on such authors as Lombroso and Nordau, and all
theories of degeneracy and morbid human types. His
thought was that there is no sharp line to be drawn between
'healthy' and 'unhealthy' minds, that all have something
of both. Once when we were returning from two insane
asylums which he had arranged for the class to visit, and at
one of which we had seen a dangerous, almost naked maniac,
I remember his saying, 'President Eliot might not like to
admit that there is no sharp line between himself and the
men we have just seen, but it is true.' He would emphasize
that people who had great nervous burdens to carry, heredi-
tary perhaps, could order their lives fruitfully and perhaps
derive some gain from their 'degenerate' sensitiveness,
whatever it might be. The doctrine is set forth with regard
to religion in an early chapter of his 'Varieties of Religious
Experience,' but for us it was applied to life at large.

"In private conversation he had a mastery of words, a
voice, a vigor, a freedom, a dignity, and therefore what one
might call an authority, in which he stood quite alone. Yet
brilliant man as he was, he never quite outgrew a percepti-
ble shyness or diffidence in the lecture-room, which showed

16 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1893

sometimes in a heightened color. Going to lecture in one
of the last courses he ever gave at Harvard, he said to a col-
league whom he met on the way, ' I have lectured so and so
many years, and yet here am I on the way to my class in
trepidation!'

"Professor Royce's style of exposition was continuous,
even, unfailing, composed. Professor James was more
conversational, varied, broken, at times struggling for
expression — in spite of what has been mentioned as his
mastery of words. This was natural, for the one was
deeply and comfortably installed in a theory (to be sure a
great theory), and the other was peering out in quest of
something greater which he did not distinctly see. James's
method gave us in the classroom more of his own explora-
tion and apergu. We felt his mind at work.

"Royce in lecturing sat immovable. James would rise
with a peculiar suddenness and make bold and rapid strokes
for a diagram on the black-board — I can remember his
abstracted air as he wrestled with some idea, standing by
his chair with one foot upon it, elbow on knee, hand to chin.
A friend has described a scene at a little class that, in a still
earlier year, met in James's own study. In the effort to
illustrate he brought out a black-board. He stood it on a
chair and in various other positions, but could not at once
write upon it, hold it steady, and keep it in the class's
vision. Entirely bent on what he was doing, his efforts
resulted at last in his standing it on the floor while he lay
down at full length, holding it with one hand, drawing
with the other, and continuing the flow of his commentary.
I can myself remember how, after one of his lectures on
Pragmatism in the Horace Mann Auditorium in New York,
being assailed with questions by people who came up to the
edge of the platform, he ended by sitting on that edge him-

Aet.5i\ TO DICKINSON S. MILLER 17

self, all in his frock-coat as he was, his feet hanging down,
with his usual complete absorption in the subject, and the
look of human and mellow consideration which distinguished
him at such moments, meeting the thoughts of the inquirers,
whose attention also was entirely riveted. If this suggests
a lack of dignity, it misleads, for dignity never forsook him,
such was the inherent strength of tone and bearing. In
one respect these particular lectures (afterwards published
as his book on Pragmatism) stand alone in my recollection.
An audience may easily be large the first time, but if there
is a change it usually falls away more or less on the subse-
quent occasions. These lectures were announced for one
of the larger lecture-halls. This was so crowded before the
lecture began, some not being able to gain admittance,
that the audience had to be asked to move to the large
'auditorium' I have mentioned. But in it also the numbers
grew, till on the last day it presented much the same ap-
pearance as the other hall on the first."

To Dickinson S. Miller.

Cambridge, Nov. 19, 1893.

My dear Miller, — I have found the work of recom-
mencing teaching unexpectedly formidable after our year
of gentlemanly irresponsibility. I seem to have forgotten
everything, especially psychology, and the subjects them-
selves have become so paltry and insignificant-seeming that
each lecture has appeared a ghastly farce. Of late things
are getting more real; but the experience brings startlingly
near to one the wild desert of old-age which lies ahead,
and makes me feel like impressing on all chicken-professors
like you the paramount urgency of providing for the time
when you '11 be old fogies, by laying by from your very first
year of service a fund on which you may be enabled to

I 18 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1893

"retire" before you 're sixty and incapable of any cognitive
operation that was n't ground into you twenty years before,
or of any emotion save bewilderment and jealousy of the
thinkers of the rising generation.

I am glad to hear that you have more writings on the
stocks. I read your paper on "Truth and Error" with
bewilderment and jealousy. Either it is Dr. Johnson
redivivus striking the earth with his stick and saying,
"Matter exists and there 's an end on 't," or it is a new
David Hume, reincarnated in your form, and so subtle
in his simplicity that a decaying mind like mine fails to
seize any of the deeper import of his words. The trouble is,
I can't tell which it is. But with the help of God I will
go at it again this winter, when I settle down to my final
bout with Royce's theory, which must result in my either
actively becoming a propagator thereof, or actively its
enemy and destroyer. It is high time that this more de-
cisive attitude were generated in me, and it ought to take
place this winter.

I hardly see more of my colleagues this winter than I
did last year. Each of us lies in his burrow, and we meet on
the street. Miinsterberg is going really splendidly and
the Laboratory is a bower of delight. But I do not work
there. Royce is in powerful condition. . . . Yours ever,

W.J.

Although, in the next letter, James poked fun at reformed
spelling, he was really in sympathy with the movement to
which his correspondent was giving an outspoken support
— as Mr. Holt of course understood. "Is n't it abomi-
nable"— Professor Palmer has quoted James as exclaim-
ing — "that everybody is expected to spell the same way!"
He lent his name to Mr. Carnegie's simplified spelling

Aet. 52] TO HENRY HOLT 19

program, and used to wax honestly indignant when people
opposed spelling reform with purely conservative arguments.
He cared little about etymology, and saw clearly enough
that mere accident and fashion have helped to determine
orthography. But in his own writing he never put himself to
great pains to reeducate his reflexes. He let his hand write
through as often as thro' or thru, and only occasionally be-
thought him to write 'filosofy' and 'telefone.' When he
published, the text of his books showed very few reforms.

To Henry Holt.

Cambridge, March 27 [1894].

Autographic ally written, and spelt spontaneously .

Dear Holt, — The Introduction to filosofy is what I
ment — I dont no the other book.

I will try Nordau's Entartung this summer — as a rule
however it duzn't profit me to read Jeremiads against evil
— the example of a little good has more effect.

A propo of kitchen ranges, I wish you wood remoov your
recommendation from that Boynton Furnace Company's
affair. We have struggld with it for five years — lost 2
cooks in consequens — burnt countless tons of extra coal,
never had anything decently baikt, and now, having got
rid of it for 15 dollars, are having a happy kitchen for the
1st time in our experience — all through your unprinsipld
recommendation! You ought to hear my wife sware when
she hears your name!

I will try about a translator for Nordau — though the
only man I can think of needs munny more than fame, and
cood n't do the job for pure love of the publisher or author,
or on an unsertainty.

Yours affectionately,

William James.

2o LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1895

To Henry James.

Princeton, Dec. 29, 1894.
Dear H., — I have been here for three days at my co-
psychologist Baldwin's house, presiding over a meeting of
the American Association of Psychologists, which has proved
a very solid and successful affair.1 Strange to say, we are
getting to be veterans, and the brunt of the discussions was
borne by former students of mine. It is a very healthy
movement. Alice is with me, the weather is frosty clear
and cold, touching zero this a.m. and the country robed in
snow. Princeton is a beautiful place. . . .

To Henry James.

Cambridge, Apr. 26, 1895.
... I have been reading Balfour's "Foundations of
Belief" with immense gusto. It almost makes me a Liberal-
Unionist! If I mistake not, it will have a profound effect
eventually, and it is a pleasure to see old England coming
to the fore every time with some big stroke. There is more
real philosophy in such a book than in fifty German ones of
which the eminence consists in heaping up subtleties and
technicalities about the subject. The English genius makes
the vitals plain by scuffing the technicalities away. B. is a
great man. . . .

To Mrs. Henry Whitman.

Springfield Centre, N.Y., June 16, 1895.

My dear Friend, — About the 22nd! I v/ill come if

you command it; but reflect on my situation ere you do so.

Just reviving from the addled and corrupted condition in

which the Cambridge year has left me; just at the portals

At this meeting he delivered a presidential address "On the Knowing of Things
Together," a part of which is reprinted in The Meaning of Truth, p. 43, under the
title, "The Tigers in India." Vide, also. Collected Essays and Reviews.

Aet. ss] TO MRS. HENRY WHITMAN 21

of that Adirondack wilderness for the breath of which I
have sighed for years, unable to escape the cares of domes-
ticity and get there; just about to get a little health into me,
a little simplification and solidification and purification and
sanification — things which will never come again if this one
chance be lost; just filled to satiety with all the simpering
conventions and vacuous excitements of so-called civiliza-
tion; hungering for their opposite, the smell of the spruce,
the feel of the moss, the sound of the cataract, the bath in its
waters, the divine outlook from the cliff or hill-top over the
unbroken forest — oh, Madam, Madam! do you know what
medicinal things you ask me to give up? Alas!

I aspire downwards, and really am nothing, not becoming
a savage as I would be, and failing to be the civilizee that
I really ought to be content with being! But I wish that
you also aspired to the wilderness. There are some nooks
and summits in that Adirondack region where one can really
"recline on one's divine composure," and, as long as one
stays up there, seem for a while to enjoy one's birth-right
of freedom and relief from every fever and falsity. Stretched
out on such a shelf, — with thee beside me singing in the
wilderness, — what babblings might go on, what judgment-
day discourse!

Command me to give it up and return, if you will, by
telegram addressed "Adirondack Lodge, North Elba, N.Y."
In any case I shall return before the end of the month, and
later shall be hanging about Cambridge some time in July,
giving lectures (for my sins) in the Summer School. I
am staying now with a cousin on Otsego Lake, a dear old
country-place that has been in their family for a century,
and is rich and ample and reposeful. The Kipling visit
went off splendidly — he's a regular little brick of a man;
but it 's strange that with so much sympathy with the in-

22 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1895

sides of every living thing, brute or human, drunk or sober,
he should have so little sympathy with those of a Yankee —
who also is, in the last analysis, one of God's creatures, I
have stopped at Williamstown, at Albany, at Amsterdam,
at Utica, at Syracuse, and finally here, each time to visit
human beings with whom I had business of some sort or
other. The best was Benj. Paul Blood at Amsterdam, a
son of the soil, but a man with extraordinary power over the
English tongue, of whom I will tell you more some day. I
will by the way enclose some clippings from his latest
"effort." 'Yes, Paul is quite a correspondent!" as a citizen
remarked to me from whom I inquired the way to his dwell-
ing. Don't you think "correspondent" rather a good
generic term for "man of letters," from the point of view
of the country-town newspaper reader? . . .

Now, dear, noble, incredibly perfect Madam, you won't
take ill my reluctance about going to Beverly, even to your
abode, so soon. I am a badly mixed critter, and I expe-
rience a certain organic need for simplification and solitude
that is quite imperious, and so vital as actually to be re-
spectable even by others. So be indulgent to your ever
faithful and worshipful,

W.J.

To G. H. Howison.

Cambridge, July ij, 1895.
My dear Howison, — How you have misunderstood the
application of my word "trivial" as being discriminativelv
applied to your pluralistic idealism! Quite the reverse —
if there be a philosophy that I believe in, it 's that. The
word came out of one who is unfit to be a philosopher be-
cause at bottom he hates philosophy, especially at the
beginning of a vacation, with the fragrance of the spruces

Aet. S3] TO THEODORE FLOURNOY 23

and sweet ferns all soaking him through with the convic-
tion that it is better to be than to define your being. I am
a victim of neurasthenia and of the sense of hollowness and
unreality that goes with it. And philosophic literature
will often seem to me the hollowest thing. My word trivial
was a general reflection exhaling from this mood, vile indeed
in a supposed professor. Where it will end with me, I do
not know. I wish I could give it all up. But perhaps it
is a grand climacteric and will pass away. At present 1
am philosophizing as little as possible, in order to do it the
better next year, if I can do it at all. And I envy you
your stalwart and steadfast enthusiasm and faith. Al-
ways devotedly yours,

Wm. James.

To Theodore Flournoy.

Glexwood Springs,
Colorado, Aug. 13, 1895.

My dear Flournoy, — Ever since last January an en-
velope addressed to you has been lying before my eyes on
my library table. I mention this to assure you that you
have not been absent from my thoughts; but I will waste
no time or paper in making excuses. As the sage Emerson
says, when you visit a man do not degrade the occasion with
apologies for not having visited him before. Visit him now!
Make him feel that the highest truth has come to see him
in you its lowliest organ. I don't know about the highest
truth transpiring through this letter, but I feel as if there
were plenty of affection and personal gossip to express them-
selves. To begin with, your photograph and Mrs. Flour-
noy's were splendid. What we need now is the photographs
of those fair demoiselles! I may say that one reason of my
long silence has been the hope that when I wrote I should

24 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1895

have my wife's photograph to send you. But alas! it has
not been taken yet. She is well, very well, and is now in
our little New Hampshire country-place with the children,
living very quietly and happily. We have had a rather
large train de maison hitherto, and this summer we are
shrunken to our bare essentials — a very pleasant change.

I, you see, am farther away from home than I have ever
been before on this side of the Atlantic, namely, in the state
of Colorado, and just now in the heart of the Rocky Moun-
tains. I have been giving a course of six lectures on psy-
chology "for teachers" at a so-called "summer-school" in
Colorado Springs. I had to remain for three nights and
three days in the train to get there, and it has made me
understand the vastness of my dear native land better than
I ever did before. . . . The trouble with all this new civili-
zation is that it is based, not on saving, but on borrowing;
and when hard times come, as they did come three years
ago, everyone goes bankrupt. But the vision of the future,
the dreams of the possible, keep everyone enthusiastic, and
so the work goes on. Such conditions have never existed
before on so enormous a scale. But I must not write you
a treatise on national economy! — I got through the year
very well in regard to health, and gave in the course of it,
what I had never done before, a number of lectures to
teachers in Boston and New York. I also repeated my
course in Cosmology in the new woman's College which
has lately been established in connection with our Uni-
versity. The consequence is that I laid by more than a
thousand dollars, an absolutely new and proportionately
pleasant experience for me. To make up for it, 1 have n't
had an idea or written anything to speak of except the
"presidential address" which I sent you, and which really
contained nothing new. . . .

Aet.53\ TO HIS DAUGHTER 25

And now is not that enough gossip about ourselves? I
wish I could, by telephone, at this moment, hear just where
and how you all are, and what you are all doing. In the
mountains somewhere, of course, and I trust all well; but it
is perhaps fifteen or twenty years too soon for transatlan-
tic telephone. My surroundings here, so much like those
of Switzerland, bring you before me in a lively manner.
I enclose a picture of one of the streets at Colorado Springs
for Madame Flournoy, and another one of a "cowboy"
for that one of the demoiselles who is most romanesque.
Alice, Blanche — but I have actually gone and been and
forgotten the name of the magnificent third one, whose
resplendent face I so well remember notwithstanding.
Dulcissima mundi nomina^ all of them; and I do hope that
they are being educated in a thoroughly emancipated way,
just like true American girls, with no laws except those
imposed by their own sense of fitness. I am sure it produces
the best results! How did the teaching go last year? I
mean your own teaching. Have you started any new lines?
And how is Chantre? and how Ritter? And how Monsieur
Gowd? Please give my best regards to all round, especially
to Ritter. Have you a copy left of your "Metaphysique et
Psychologie"? In some inscrutable way my copy has
disappeared, and the book is reported epuise.

With warmest possible regards to both of you, and to all
five of the descendants, believe me ever faithfully yours,

W. James.

To his Daughter.

El Paso, Colo., Aug. 8, 1895.

Sweetest of living Pegs, — Your letter made glad my
heart the day before yesterday, and I marveled to see what
an improvement had come over your handwriting in the

26 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1895

short space of six weeks. "Orphly" and "ofly" are good
ways to spell "awfully," too. I went up a high mountain
yesterday and saw all the kingdoms of the world spread
out before me, on the illimitable prairie which looked like
a map. The sky glowed and made the earth look like a
stained-glass window. The mountains are bright red. All
the flowers and plants are different from those at home.
There is an immense mastiff in my house here. I think
that even you would like him, he is so tender and gentle
and mild, although fully as big as a calf. His ears and face
are black, his eyes are yellow, his paws are magnificent,
his tail keeps wagging all the time, and he makes on me the
impression of an angel hid in a cloud. He longs to do good.
I must now go and hear two other men lecture. Many
kisses, also to Tweedy, from your ever loving,

Dad.

On December 17, 1895, President Cleveland's Venezuela
message startled the world and created a situation with
which the next three letters are concerned. The boundary
dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana had been
dragging along for years. The public had no reason to
suppose that it was becoming acute, or that the United
States was particularly interested in it, and had, in fact,
not been giving the matter so much as a thought. All at
once the President sent a message to Congress in which he
announced that it was incumbent upon the United States
to "take measures to determine . . . the true" boundary
line, and then to "resist by every means in its power as a
willful aggression upon its rights and interests" any appro-
priation by Great Britain of territory not thus determined
to be hers. In addition he sent to Congress, and thus
published, the diplomatic despatches which had already

Aet.53\ LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES 27

passed between Mr. Olney and Lord Salisbury. In these
Mr. Olney had informed the representative of the Empire
which was sovereign in British Guiana "that distance and
three thousand miles of intervening ocean make any per-
manent political union between a European and an Amer-
ican state unnatural and inexpedient," and that "today the
United States is practically sovereign on this continent,
and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its
interposition." Lord Salisbury had squarely declined to
concede that the United States could, of its own initiative,
assume to settle the boundary dispute. It was difficult to
see how either Great Britain or the United States could with
dignity alter the position which its minister had assumed.

James was a warm admirer of the President, but this
seemingly wanton provocation of a friendly nation horrified
him. He considered that no blunder in statesmanship
could be more dangerous than a premature appeal to a
people's fighting pride, and that no perils inherent in the
Venezuela boundary dispute were as grave as was the danger
that popular explosions on one or both sides of the Atlantic
would make it impossible for the two governments to pro-
ceed moderately. He was appalled at the outburst ot
Anglophobia and war-talk which followed the message.
The war-cloud hung in the heavens for several weeks. Then,
suddenly, a breeze from a strange quarter relieved the
atmosphere. The Jameson raid occurred in Africa, and the
Kaiser sent his famous message to President Kruger.1 The

1 In a brief letter to the Harvard Crimson (Jan. 9, 1896), James urged the right
and duty of individuals to stand up for their opinions publicly during such crises,
even though in opposition to the administration. Mr. Rhodes, in his History
of the United States, 1877-1896, makes the following observation: "Cleveland, in
his chapter on the 'Venezuelan Boundary Controversy,' rates the un-Americans
who lauded 'the extreme forbearance and kindness of England.' . . . The reference
. . . need trouble no one who allows himself to be guided by two of Cleveland's
trusted servants and friends. Thomas F. Bayard, Secretary of State during the

28 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1895

English press turned its fire upon the Kaiser. The world's
attention was diverted from Venezuela, and the boundary
dispute was quietly and amicably disposed of.

To E. L. Godkin.

Cambridge, Christmas Eve [1895].

Darling old Godkin, — The only Christmas present I
can send you is a word of thanks and a bravo bravissimo for
your glorious fight against the powers of darkness. I
swear it brings back the days of '61 again, when the worst
enemies of our country were in our own borders. But now
that defervescence has set in, and the long, long campaign
of discussion and education is about to begin, you will have
to bear the leading part in it, and I beseech you to be as
non-expletive and patiently explanatory as you can, for
thus will you be the more effective. Father, forgive them
for they know not what they do! The insincere propaganda
of jingoism as a mere weapon of attack on the President
was diabolic. But in the rally of the country to the Presi-
dent's message lay that instinct of obedience to leaders which
is the prime condition of all effective greatness in a nation.
And after all, when one thinks that the only England most
Americans are taught to conceive of is the bugaboo coward-
England, ready to invade the Globe wherever there is no
danger, the rally does not necessarily show savagery, but
only ignorance. We are all ready to be savage in some
cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one
is the choice of the cause.

Two things are, however, desormais certain: Three days

first administration, and actual ambassador to Great Britain, wrote in a private
letter on May 25, 1895, 'There is no question now open between the United States
and Great Britain that needs any but frank, amicable and just treatment.' Edward
J. Phelps, his first minister to England, in a public address on March 30, 1896,
condemned emphatically the President's Venezuela policy." See Rhodes, History „
vol. viii, p. 454; also p. 443 et seq.

Aet. 53\ TO E. L. GODKIX 29

of fighting mob-hysteria at Washington can at any time
undo peace habits of a hundred years; and the only per-
manent safeguard against irrational explosions of the fight-
ing instinct is absence of armament and opportunity.
Since this country has absolutely nothing to fear, or any
other country anything to gain from its invasion, it seems
to me that the party of civilization ought immediately, at
any cost of discredit, to begin to agitate against any increase
of either army, navy, or coast defense. That is the one
form of protection against the internal enemy on which we
can most rely. We live and learn: the labor of civilizing
ourselves is for the next thirty years going to be complicated
with this other abominable new issue of which the seed
was sown last week. You saw the new kind of danger,
as you always do, before anyone else; but it grew gigantic
much more suddenly than even you conceived to be possible.
Olney's Jefferson Brick style makes of our Foreign Office a
laughing-stock, of course. But why, oh why, could n't he
and Cleveland and Congress between them have left out
the infernal war-threat and simply asked for $100,000 for a
judicial commission to enable us to see exactly to what
effect we ought, in justice, to exert our influence. That
commission, if its decision were adverse, would have put
England "in a hole," awakened allies for us in all countries,
been a solemn step forward in the line of national righteous-
ness, covered us with dignity, and all the rest. But no —
omnia ademit una dies infesta tibi tot pramia vita! — Still,
the campaign of education may raise us out of it all yet.
Distrust of each other must not be suffered to go too far,
for that way lies destruction.

Dear old Godkin — I don't know whether you will have
read more than the first page — I did n't expect to write
more than one and a half, but the steam will work off. I
have n't slept right for a week.

30 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1896

I have just given my Harry, now a freshman, your
"Comments and Reflections," and have been renewing my
youth in some of its admirable pages. But why the dickens
did you leave out some of the most delectable of the old
sentences in the cottager and boarder essay? x

Don't curse God and die, dear old fellow. Live and be
patient and fight for us a long time yet in this new war.
Best regards to Mrs. Godkin and to Lawrence, and a merry
Christmas. Yours ever affectionately,

Wm. James.

To F. W. H. Myers.

Cambridge, Jan. 1, 1896.

My dear Myers, — Here is a happy New Year to you
with my presidential address for a gift.2 Vale at quantum.
The end could have been expanded, but probably this is
enough to set the S. P. R. against a lofty Kultur-historisch
background; and where we have to do so much champing
of the jaws on minute details of cases, that seems to me a
good point in a president's address.

In the first half, it has just come over me that what I
say of one line of fact being "strengthened in the flank"
by another is an "uprush" from my subliminal memory
of words of Gurney's — but that does no harm. . . .

Well, our countries will soon be soaked in each other's
gore. You will be disemboweling me, and Hodgson cleav-
ing Lodge's skull. It will be a war of extermination when it
comes, for neither side can tell when it is beaten, and the
last man will bury the penultimate one, and then die him-
self. The French will then occupy England and the Span-

1 "The Evolution of the Summer Resort."

2 "Address of the President before the Society for Psychical Research." Proc.
of the (Eng.) Soc. for Psych. Res. 1896, vol. xn, pp. 2-10; also in Science, 1896,
N. S., vol. iv, pp. 881-8

Aet.53\ TO F. W. H. MYERS

iards America. Both will unite against the Germans, and
no one can foretell the end.

But seriously, all true patriots here have had a hell of
a time. It has been a most instructive thing for the dis-
passionate student of history to see how near the surface
in all of us the old fighting instinct lies, and how slight an
appeal will wake it up. Once really waked, there is no
retreat. So the whole wisdom of governors should be to
avoid the direct appeals. This your European govern-
ments know; but we in our bottomless innocence and igno-
rance over here know nothing, and Cleveland in my opinion,
by his explicit allusion to war, has committed the biggest
political crime I have ever seen here. The secession of the
southern states had more excuse. There was absolutely
no need of it. A commission solemnly appointed to pro-
nounce justice in the Venezuela case would, if its decision
were adverse to your country, have doubtless aroused the
Liberal party in England to espouse the policy of arbitrat-
ing, and would have covered us with dignity, if no threat of
war had been uttered. But as it is, who can see the way out?

Every one goes about now saying war is not to be. But
with these volcanic forces who can tell? I suppose that
the offices of Germany or Italy might in any case, however,
save us from what would be the worst disaster to civiliza-
tion that our time could bring forth.

The astounding thing is the latent Anglophobia now re-
vealed. It is most of it directly traceable to the diabolic
machinations of the party of protection for the past twenty
years. They have lived by every sort of infamous sophisti-
cation, and hatred of England has been one of their most
conspicuous notes. . . .

I hope you '11 read my address — unless indeed Gladstone
will consent!!

32 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1896

Ever thine — I hate to think of "embruing" my hands
in (or with?) your blood.

W. J.

[S. P. R.] Proceedi?7gs XXIX just in — hurrah for your
200-odd pages!

I have been ultra non-committal as to our evidence, —
thinking it to be good presidential policy, — but I may
have overdone the impartiality business.

To F. IV. H. Myers.

Cambridge, Feb. 5, 1896.

Dear Myers, — Void the proof! Pray send me a revise
— Cattell wants to print it simultaneously in extenso in
"Science," which I judge to be a very good piece of luck
for it. When will the next "Proceedings" be likely to
appear?

I hope your rich tones were those that rolled off its periods,
and that you did n't flinch, but rather raised your voice,
when your own genius was mentioned. I read it both in
New York and Boston to full houses, but heard no comments
on the spot. . . .

As for Venezuela, Ach! of that be silent! as Carlyle would
have said. It is a sickening business, but some good may
come out of it yet. Don't feel too badly about the Anglo-
phobia here. It does n't mean so much. Remember by
what words the country was roused: "Supine submission
to wrong and injustice and the consequent loss of national
self-respect and honor." x If any other country's ruler had
expressed himself with equal moral ponderosity would n't
the population have gone twice as fighting-mad as ours?
Of course it would; the wolf would have been aroused; and
when the wolf once gets going, we know that there is no

1 From the last paragraph of Cleveland's Venezuela message.

Aet. 54\ TO HIS RADCLIFFE CLASS 33

crime of which it doesn't sincerely begin to believe its
oppressor, the lamb down-stream, to be guilty. The great
proof that civilization does move, however, is the magnifi-
cent conduct of the British press. Yours everlastingly,

W.J.

To Henry Holt, Esq.

Cambridge, Jan. 19, 1896.
My dear Holt, — At the risk of displeasing you, I think
I won't have my photograph taken, even at no cost to my-
self. I abhor this hawking about of everybody's phiz
which is growing on every hand, and don't see why having
written a book should expose one to it. I am sorry that
you should have succumbed to the supposed trade necessity.
In any case, I will stand on my rights as a free man. You
may kill me, but you shan't publish my photograph. Put
a blank "thumbnail" in its place. Very very sorry to dis-
please a man whom I love so much. Always lovingly
yours,

Wm. James.

To his Class at Radcliffe College which had sent a potted azalea
to him at Easter.

Cambridge, Apr. 6, 1896.

Dear Young Ladies, — I am deeply touched by your
remembrance. It is the first time anyone ever treated me
so kindly, so you may well believe that the impression on
the heart of the lonely sufferer will be even more durable
than the impression on your minds of all the teachings of
Philosophy 2A. I now perceive one immense omission in
my Psychology, — the deepest principle of Human Nature
is the craving to be appreciated, and I left it out altogether
from the book, because I had never had it gratified till now.

34 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1896

I fear you have let loose a demon in me, and that all my
actions will now be for the sake of such rewards. However,
I will try to be faithful to this one unique and beautiful
azalea tree, the pride of my life and delight of my existence.
Winter and summer will I tend and water it — even with
my tears. Mrs. James shall never go near it or touch it.
If it dies, I will die too; and if I die, it shall be planted on
my grave.

Don't take all this too jocosely, but believe in the extreme
pleasure you have caused me, and in the affectionate feel-
ings with which I am and shall always be faithfully your
friend,

Wm. James.

To Henry James.

[Cambridge] Apr. 17, 1896.

Dear H., — Too busy to live almost, lectures and labora-
tory, dentists and dinner-parties, so that I am much played
out, but get off today for eight days' vacation via New Haven,
where I deliver an "address" tonight, to the Yale Philos-
ophy Club. I shall make it the title of a small volume
of collected things called "The Will to Believe, and Other
Essays in Popular Philosophy," and then I think write no
more addresses, of which the form takes it out of one un-
duly. If I do anything more, it will be a book on general
Philosophy. I have been having a bad conscience about
not writing to you, when your letter of the 7th came yester-
day expressing a bad conscience of your own. You certainly
do your duty best. I am glad to think of you in the country
and hope it will succeed with you and make you thrive.
I look forward with much excitement to the fruit of all this
work. . . . Just a word of good-will and good wish. I
think I shall go to the Hot Springs of Virginia for next

Act.54\ LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES 35

week. The spring has burst upon us, hot and droughtily,
after a glorious burly winter-playing March. Yours e\ ,

W. J.

The next letter begins by acknowledging one which had
alluded to the death of a Cambridge gentleman who had
been run over in the street, almost under William James's
eyes. Henry James had closed his allusion by exclaiming,
"What melancholy, what terrible duties vous incombent
when your neighbours are destroyed. And telling that
poor man's wife!- — Life is heroic -- however we 'fix' it!
Even as I write these words the St. Louis horror bursts in
upon me in the evening paper. Inconceivable -- I can't
try; and I wont. Strange how practically all one's sense
of news from the U. S. here is huge Horrors and Catastro-
phes. It 's a terrible country not to live in." He would
have exclaimed even more if he had witnessed the mescal
experiment, that is briefly mentioned in the letter that fol-
lows. He might then have gone on to remark that the "fix-
ing" of life seemed, in William's neighborhood, to be quite
gratuitously heroic. William James and his wife and the
youngest child were alone in the Chocorua cottage for a
few days, picnicking by themselves without any servant.
They had no horse; at that season of the year hours often
went by without any one passing the house; there was no
telephone, no neighbor within a mile, no good doctor within
eighteen miles. It was quite characteristic of James that
he should think such conditions ideal for testing an unknown
drug on himself. There would be no interruptions. He had
no fear. He was impatient to satisfy his curiosity about
the promised hallucinations of color. But the effects of
one dose were, for a while, much more alarming than his
letter would give one to understand.

36 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1896

To Henry James.

Chocorua, Juyie n, 1896.

Your long letter of Whitsuntide week in London came
yesterday evening, and was read by me aloud to Alice and
Harry as we sat at tea in the window to get the last rays
of the Sunday's [sun]. You have too much feeling of duty
about corresponding with us, and, I imagine, with everyone.
I think you have behaved most handsomely of late — and
always, and though your letters are the great fete of our
lives, I won't be "on your mind" for worlds. Your general
feeling of unfulfilled obligations is one that runs in the family
— I at least am often afflicted by it — but it is "morbid."
The horrors of not living in America, as you so well put it,
are not shared by those who do live here. All that the
telegraph imparts are the shocks; the "happy homes,"
good husbands and fathers, fine weather, honest business
men, neat new houses, punctual meetings of engagements,
etc., of which the country mainly consists, are never cabled
over. Of course, the Saint Louis disaster is dreadful, but
it will very likely end by "improving" the city. The
really bad thing here is the silly wave that has gone over
the public mind — protection humbug, silver, jingoism, etc.
It is a case of "mob-psychology." Any country is liable
to it if circumstances conspire, and our circumstances have
conspired. It is very hard to get them out of the rut. It
may take another financial crash to get them out — which,
of course, will be an expensive method. It is no more
foolish and considerably less damnable than the Russo-
phobia of England, which would seem to have been respon-
sible for the Armenian massacres. That to me is the big-
gest indictment "of our boasted civilization"!! It requires
England, I say nothing of the other powers, to maintain
the Turks at that business. We have let our little place,

Act. 54\ TO HENRY JAMES 37

our tenant arrives the day after tomorrow, and Alice and
I and Tweedie have been here a week enjoying it and clean-
ing house and place. She has worked like a beaver. I
had two days spoiled by a psychological experiment with
mescal, an intoxicant used by some of our Southwestern
Indians in their religious ceremonies, a sort of cactus bud,
of which the U. S. Government had distributed a supply
to certain medical men, including Weir Mitchell, who sent
me some to try. He had himself been "in fairyland."
It gives the most glorious visions of color — every object
thought of appears in a jeweled splendor unknown to the
natural world. It disturbs the stomach somewhat, but
that, according to W. M., was a cheap price, etc. I took
one bud three days ago, was violently sick for 24 hours,
and had no other symptom whatever except that and the
Katzen jammer the following day. I will take the visions on
trust!

We have had three days of delicious rain — it all soaks
into the sandy soil here and leaves no mud whatever. The
little place is the most curious mixture of sadness with
delight. The sadness of things — things every one of
which was done either by our hands or by our planning, old
furniture renovated, there is n't an object in the house
that is n't associated with past life, old summers, dead
people, people who will never come again, etc., and the way
it catches you round the heart when you first come and
open the house from its long winter sleep is most extraor-
dinary.

I have been reading Bourget's Idylle Tragique, " which
he very kindly sent me, and since then have been reading in
Tolstoy's "War and Peace," which I never read before,
strange to say. I must say that T. rather kills B., for my mind.
B.'s moral atmosphere is anyhow so foreign to me, a lewd-

38 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1896

ness so obligatory that it hardly seems as if it were part of
a moral donnee at all; and then his overlabored descriptions,
and excessive explanations. But with it all an earnestness
and enthusiasm for getting it said as well as possible, a
richness of epithet, and a warmth of heart that makes you
like him, in spite of the unmanliness of all the things he
writes about. I suppose there is a stratum in France to
whom it is all manly and ideal, but he and I are, as Rosina
says, a bad combination. . . .

Tolstoy is immense!

I am glad you are in a writing vein again, to go still
higher up the scale! I have abstained on principle from
the "Atlantic" serial, wishing to get it all at once. I am not
going abroad; I can't afford it. I have a chance to give
$1500 worth of summer lectures here, which won't recur.
I have a heavy year of work next year, and shall very likely
need to go the following summer, which will anyhow be
after a more becoming interval than this, so, somme toute^
it is postponed. If I went I should certainly enjoy seeing
you at Rye more than in London, which I confess tempts
me little now. I love to see it, but staying there does n't
seem to agree with me, and only suggests constraint and
money-spending, apart from seeing you. I wish you could
see how comfortable our Cambridge house has got at last
to be. Alice who is upstairs sewing whilst I write below
by the lamp — a great wood fire hissing in the fireplace —
sings out her thanks and love to you. . . .

To Benjamin Paul Blood.

Chatham, Mass., June 28, 1896.

My dear Blood, — Your letter was an "event," as any-
thing always is from your pen — though of course I never
expected any acknowledgment of my booklet. Fear of life

Aet. 54\ TO BENJAMIN PAUL BLOOD 39

in one form or other is the great thing to exorcise; but it
is n't reason that will ever do it. Impulse without reason
is enough, and reason without impulse is a poor makeshift.
I take it that no man is educated who has never dallied
with the thought of suicide. Barely more than a year ago
I was sitting at your table and dallying with the thought of
publishing an anthology of your works. But, like many
other projects, it has been postponed in indefinition. The
hour never came last year, and pretty surely will not come
next. Nevertheless I shall work for your fame some time!
Count on W. J.1 I wound up my "seminary" in specula-
tive psychology a month ago by reading some passages
from the "Flaw in Supremacy" — "game flavored as a
hawk's wing." "Ever not quite" covers a deal of truth —
yet it seems a very simple thing to have said. 'There is
no Absolute" were my last words. Whereupon a number
of students asked where they could get "that pamphlet"
and I distributed nearly all the copies I had from you. I
wish you would keep on writing, but I see you are a man
of discontinuity and insights, and not a philosophic pack-
horse, or pack-mule. . . .

I rejoice that ten hours a day of toil makes you feel so
hearty. Verily Mr. Rindge says truly. He is a Cambridge
boy, who made a fortune in California, and then gave a lot
of public buildings to his native town. Unfortunately he
insisted on bedecking them with "mottoes" of his own
composition, and over the Manual Training School near my
house one reads: "Work is 077e of our greatest blessings.
Every man should have an honest occupation' — which, if
not lapidary in style, is at least what my father once said

1 In 1910 — during his final illness, in fact — James fulfilled this promise. See
"A Pluralistic Mystic," included in Memories and Studies; also letter of June
25, 19 10, p. 348 infra.

4o LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1896

Swedenborg's writings were, viz., "insipid with veracity,"
as your case now again demonstrates. Have you read
Tolstoy's "War and Peace"? I am just about finishing it.
It is undoubtedly the greatest novel ever written — also
insipid with veracity. The man is infallible — and the
anesthetic revelation * plays a part as in no writer. You
have very likely read it. If you have n't, sell all you have
and buy the book, for I know it will speak to your very
gizzard. Pray thank Mrs. Blood for her appreciation of
my "booklet" (such things encourage a writer!), and
believe me ever sincerely yours,

Wm. James.

In July, 1896, James delivered, in Buffalo and at the
Chautauqua Assembly, the substance of the lectures that
were later published as "Talks to Teachers." His impres-
sions of Chautauqua were so characteristic and so lively
that they must be included here, even though they dupli-
cate in some measure a well-known passage in the essay
called "A Certain Blindness in Human Beings."

To Mrs. James.

Chautauqua, July 23, 1896.

. . . The audience is some 500, in an open-air auditorium
where (strange to say) everyone seems to hear well; and it
is very good-looking — mostly teachers and women, but
they make the best impression of any audience of that sort
that I have seen except the Brooklyn one. So here I go
again! . . .

July 24, 9.30 p.m.

. . . X departed after breakfast — a good inarticulate

man, farmer's boy, four years soldier from private to major,

1 Cf. William James's unsigned review of Blood's Ancesthetic Revelation in the
Atlantic Monthly , 1874, vol. xxxiv, p. 627.

Aet.54\ TO MRS. JAMES 4i

business man in various States, great reader, editor of a
"Handbook of Facts," full of swelling and bursting Welt-
schmerz and religious melancholy, yet no more flexibility or
self-power in his mind than in a boot-jack. Altogether,
what with the teachers, him and others whom I 've met,
I'm put in conceit of college training. It certainly gives
glibness and flexibility, if it does n't give earnestness and
depth. I've been meeting minds so earnest and helpless
that it takes them half an hour to get from one idea to its
immediately adjacent next neighbor, and that with infinite
creaking and groaning. And when they've got to the
next idea, they lie down on it with their whole weight and
can get no farther, like a cow on a door-mat, so that you
can get neither in nor out with them. Still, glibness is not
all. Weight is something, even cow-weight. Tolstoy feels
these things so — I am still in "Anna Karenina," volume I, a
book almost incredible and supernatural for veracity. I
wish we were reading it aloud together. It has rained at
intervals all day. Young Vincent, a powerful fellow, took
me over and into the whole vast college side of the institu-
tion this a.m. I have heard 4K lectures, including the one
I gave myself at 4 o'clock, to about 1200 or more in the vast
open amphitheatre, which seats 6000 and which has very
good acoustic properties. I think my voice sufficed. I
can't judge of the effect. Of course I left out all that gos-
sip about my medical degree, etc. But I don't want any
more sporadic lecturing — I must stick to more inward

things.

July 26, 12:30 p.m.

... 'T is the sabbath and I am just in from the amphi-
theatre, where the Rev. ■ has been chanting, calling and

bellowing his hour-and-a-quarter-long sermon to 6000
people at least — a sad audition. The music was bully, a

42 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1896

chorus of some 700, splendidly drilled, with the audience to
help. I have myself been asked to lead, or, if not to lead,
at least to do something prominent — I declined so quick
that I did n't fully gather what it was — in the exercise
which I have marked on the program I enclose. Young
Vincent, whom I take to be a splendid young fellow, told me
it was the characteristically "Chautauquan" event of the
day. I would give anything to have you here. I did n't
write yesterday because there is no mail till tomorrow. I
went to four lectures, in whole or in part. All to hundreds
of human beings, a large proportion unable to get seats,
who transport themselves from one lecture-room to another
en ?nasse. One was on bread-making, with practical dem-
onstrations. One was on walking, by a graceful young
Delsartian, who showed us a lot. One was on telling stories
to children, the psychology and pedagogy of it. The au-
diences interrupt and ask questions occasionally in spite
of their size. There is hardly a pretty woman's face in the
lot, and they seem to have little or no humor in their com-
position. No epicureanism of any sort!

Yesterday was a beautiful day, and I sailed an hour and
a half down the Lake again to "Celoron," "America's
greatest pleasure resort," — in other words popcorn and
peep-show place. A sort of Midway-Pleasance in the wilder-
ness — supported Heaven knows how, so far from any
human habitation except the odd little Jamestown from
which a tramway leads to it. Good monkeys, bears, foxes,
etc. Endless peanuts, popcorn, bananas, and soft drinks;
crowds of people, a ferris wheel, a balloon ascension, with
a man dropping by a parachute, a theatre, a vast concert
hall, and all sorts of peep-shows. I feel as if I were in a
foreign land; even as far east as this the accent of everyone
is terrific. The "Nation" is no more known than the

Aet.54\ TO MRS. J AMI.S 43

London "Times." I see no need of going to Europe when
such wonders are close by. I breakfasted with a Metho-
dist parson with 32 false teeth, at the X's table, and dis-
coursed of demoniacal possession. The wife said she had
my portrait in her bedroom with the words written under
it, "I want to bring a balm to human lives"!!!!! Supposed
to be a quotation from me!!! After breakfast an extremely
interesting lady who has suffered from half-possessional
insanity gave me a long account of her case. Life is heroic
indeed, as Harry wrote. I shall stay through tomorrow,
and get to Syracuse on Tuesday. . . .

July 27.
... It rained hard last night, and today a part of the
time. I took a lesson in roasting, in Delsarte, and I made
with my own fair hands a beautiful loaf of graham bread
with some rolls, long, flute-like, and delicious. I should
have sent them to you by express, only it seemed unneces-
sary, since I can keep the family in bread easily after my
return home. Please tell this, with amplifications, to
Peggy and Tweedy. . . .

Buffalo, N.Y., July 29.

. . . The Chautauqua week, or rather six and a half days,
has been a real success. I have learned a lot, but I 'm glad
to get into something less blameless but more admiration-
worthy. The flash of a pistol, a dagger, or a devilish eye,
anything to break the unlovely level of 10,000 good people
— a crime, murder, rape, elopement, anything would do.
I don't see how the younger Vincents stand it, because they
are people of such spirit. . . .

Syracuse, N.Y., July 31.

. . . Now for Utica and Lake Placid by rail, with East Hill
in prospect for tomorrow. You bet I rejoice at the out-
look — I long to escape from tepidity. Even an Armenian

44 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1896

massacre, whether to be killer or killed, would seem an
agreeable change from the blamelessness of Chautauqua
as she lies soaking year after year in her lakeside sun and
showers. Man wants to be stretched to his utmost, if not
in one way then in another! . . .

To Miss Rosina H. Emmet.

Burlington, Vt., Aug. 2, 1896.

... I have seen more women and less beauty, heard more
voices and less sweetness, perceived more earnestness and
less triumph than I ever supposed possible. Most of the
American nation (and probably all nations) is white-trash, —
but Tolstoy has borne me up — and I say unto you: "Smooth
out your voices if you want to be saved"!! . . .

To Charles Renouvier.

Burlington, Vt., Aug. 4, 1896.

Dear Mr. Renouvier, — My wife announces to me from
Cambridge the reception of two immense volumes from you
on the Philosophy of History. I thank you most heartily
for the gift, and am more and more amazed at your intel-
lectual and moral power — physical power, too, for the
nervous energy required for your work has to be extremely
great.

My own nervous energy is a small teacup-full, and is
more than consumed by my duties of teaching, so that
almost none is left over for writing. I sent you a "New
World" the other day, however, with an article in it called
"The Will to Believe," in which (if you took the trouble
to glance at it) you probably recognized how completely
I am still your disciple. In this point perhaps more fully
than in any other; and this point is central!

I have to lecture on general "psychology" and "morbid

Aet.54\ TO CHARLES REXOUVIER 45

psychology," "the philosophy of nature" and the "philos-
ophy of Kant," thirteen lectures a week for half the year
and eight for the rest. Our University moreover inHicts
a monstrous amount of routine business on one, faculty
meetings and committees of every sort,1 so that during term-
time one can do no continuous reading at all - - reading of
books, I mean. When vacation comes, my brain is so
tired that I can read nothing serious for a month. During
the past month I have only read Tolstoy's two great novels,
which, strange to say, I had never attacked before. I
don't like his fatalism and semi-pessimism, but for infallible
veracity concerning human nature, and absolute simplicity
of method, he makes all the other writers of novels and plays
seem like children.

All this proves that I shall be slow in attaining to the read-
ing of your book. I have not yet read Pillon's last Annee
except some of the book notices and Danriac's article. How
admirably clear P. is in style, and what a power of reading
he possesses.

'James always did a reasonable share of college committee work, especially
for the committee of his own department. But although he had exercised a deter-
mining influence in the selection of every member of the Philosophical Depart-
ment who contributed to its fame in his time (except Professor Palmer, who was
his senior in service), he never consented to be chairman of the Department.
He attended the weekly meetings of the whole Faculty for any business in which
he was concerned; otherwise irregularly. He spoke seldom in Faculty. Occa-
sionally he served on special committees. He usually formed an opinion ofhis own
quite quickly, but his habitual tolerance in matters of judgment showed itself in
good-natured patience with discussion — this despite the fact that he often chafed at
the amount of time consumed. "Now although I happen accidentally to have
been on all the committees which have had to do with the proposed reform, and
have listened to the interminable Faculty debates last winter, I disclaim all powers
or right to speak in the name of the majority. Members of our dear Faculty have
a way of discovering reasons fitted exclusively for their idiosyncratic use, and
though voting with their neighbors, will often do so on incommunicable grounds.
This is doubtless the effect of much learning upon originally ingenious minds;
and the result is that the abundance of different points and aspects which a simple
question ends by presenting, after a long Faculty discussion, beggars both cal-
culation beforehand and enumeration after the fact." — "The Proposed Shorten-
ing of the College Course." Harvard Monthly, Jan., 1891.

46 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1896

I hope, dear Mr. Renouvier, that the years are not weigh-
ing heavily upon you, and that this letter will find you well
in body and in mind. Yours gratefully and faithfully,

Wm. James.

To Theodore Flournoy.

Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, Aug. 30, 1896.

My dear Flournoy, — You see the electric current of
sympathy that binds the world together — I turn towards
you, and the place I write from repeats the name of your
Lake Leman. I was informed yesterday, however, that
the lake here was named after Lake Geneva in the State of
New York! and that Lake only has Leman for its Godmother.
Still you see how dependent, whether immediately or
remotely, America is on Europe. I was at Niagara some
three weeks ago, and bought a photograph as souvenir
and addressed it to you after getting back to Cambridge.
Possibly Madame Flournoy will deign to accept it. I have
thought of you a great deal without writing, for truly, my
dear Flournoy, there is hardly a human being with whom I
feel as much sympathy of aims and character, or feel as
much "at home," as I do with you. It is as if we were of
the same stock, and I often mentally turn and make a
remark to you, which the pressure of life's occupations pre-
vents from ever finding its way to paper.

I am hoping that you may have figured, or at any rate
been, at the Munich "Congress" — that apparently stu-
pendous affair. If they keep growing at this rate, the next
Paris one will be altogether too heavy. I have heard no
details of the meeting as yet. But whether you have been
at Munich or not, I trust that you have been having a salu-
brious and happy vacation so far, and that Mrs. Flournoy
and the young people are all well. I will venture to suppose

Aet.54\ TO THEODORE FLOURNOY 47

that your illness of last year has left no bad effects what-
ever behind. I myself have had a rather busy and instruc-
tive, though possibly not very hygienic summer, making
money (in moderate amounts) by lecturing on psychology
to teachers at different "summer schools" in this land.
There is a great fermentation in "psedagogy" at present
in the U.S., and my wares come in for their share of patron-
age. But although I learn a good deal and become a better
American for having all the travel and social experience,
it has ended by being too tiresome; and when I give the
lectures at Chicago, which I begin tomorrow, I shall have
them stenographed and very likely published in a very small
volume, and so remove from myself the temptation ever to
give them again.

Last year was a year of hard work, and before the end of
the term came, I was in a state of bad neurasthenic fatigue,
but I got through outwardly all right. I have definitely
given up the laboratory, for which I am more and more
unfit, and shall probably devote what little ability I may
hereafter have to purely "speculative" work. My inability
to read troubles me a good deal: I am in arrears of several
years with psychological literature, which, to tell the truth,
does grow now at a pace too rapid for anyone to follow.
I was engaged to review Stout's new book (which I fancy is
very good) for "Mind," and after keeping it two months
had to back out, from sheer inability to read it, and to ask
permission to hand it over to my colleague Royce. Have
you seen the colossal Renouvier's two vast volumes on the
philosophy of history?- — that will be another thing worth
reading no doubt, yet very difficult to read. I give a course
in Kant for the first time in my life (!) next year, and at
present and for many months to come shall have to put most
of my reading to the service of that overgrown subject. . . .

48 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1896

Of course you have read Tolstoy's "War and Peace" and
"Anna Karenina." I never had that exquisite felicity
before this summer, and now I feel as if I knew perfection
in the representation of human life. Life indeed seems less
real than his tale of it. Such infallible veracity! The im-
pression haunts me as nothing literary ever haunted me
before.

I imagine you lounging on some steep mountainside, with
those demoiselles all grown too tall and beautiful and proud
to think otherwise than with disdain of their elderly com-
mensal who spoke such difficult French when he took walks
with them at Vers-chez-les-Blanc. But I hope that they
are happy as they were then. Cannot we all pass some
summer near each other again, and can't it next time be in
Tyrol rather than in Switzerland, for the purpose of in-
creasing in all of us that "knowledge of the world" which
is so desirable? I think it would be a splendid plan. At
any rate, wherever you are, take my most affectionate re-
gardsfor yourself and Madame Flournoy and all of yours,
and believe me ever sincerely your friend,

Wm. James.

To Dickinson S. Miller.

Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, Aug. 30, 1896.
Dear Miller, — Your letter from Halle of June 22nd
came duly, but treating of things eternal as it did, I thought
it called for no reply till I should have caught up with more
temporal matters, of which there has been no lack to press
on my attention. To tell the truth, regarding you as my
most penetrating critic and intimate enemy, I was greatly
relieved to find that you had nothing worse to say about
'The Will to Believe." You say you are no "rationalist,"
and yet you speak of the "sharp" distinction between beliefs

Aet.54\ TO DICKINSON S. MILLER 49

based on "inner evidence" and beliefs based on "craving."
I can find nothing sharp (or susceptible of schoolmaster's
codification) in the different degrees of "liveliness" in hy-
potheses concerning the universe, or distinguish a priori be-
tween legitimate and illegitimate cravings. And when an
hypothesis is once a live one, one risks something in one's
practical relations towards truth and error, whichever of the
three positions (affirmation, doubt, or negation) one may
take up towards it. The individual himself is the only right-
ful chooser of his risk. Hence respectful toleration, as the
only law that logic can lay down.

You don't say a word against my logic, which seems to
me to cover your cases entirely in its compartments. I
class you as one to whom the religious hypothesis is von
vornherein so dead, that the risk of error in espousing it now
far outweighs for you the chance of truth, so you simply
stake your money on the field as against it. If you say
this, of course I can, as logician, have no quarrel with you,
even though my own choice of risk (determined by the
irrational impressions, suspicions, cravings, senses of direc-
tion in nature, or what not, that make religion for me a
more live hypothesis than for you) leads me to an opposite
methodical decision.

Of course if any one comes along and says that men at
large don't need to have facility of faith in their inner con-
victions preached to them, [that] they have only too much
readiness in that way already, and the one thing needful to
preach is that they should hesitate with their convictions,
and take their faiths out for an airing into the howling
wilderness of nature, I should also agree. But my paper
was n't addressed to mankind at large but to a limited set
of studious persons, badly under the ban just now of certain
authorities whose simple-minded faith in "naturalism" also

5o LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1896

is sorely in need of an airing — and an airing, as it seems to
me, of the sort I tried to give.

But all this is unimportant; and I still await criti-
cism of my Auseinandersetzung of the logical situation of
man's mind gegenuber the Universe, in respect to the risks
it runs.

I wish I could have been with you at Munich and heard
the deep-lunged Germans roar at each other. I care not
for the matters uttered, if I only could hear the voice. I
hope you met [Henry] Sidgwick there. I sent him the
American Hallucination-Census results, after considerable
toil over them, but S. never acknowledges or answers any-
thing, so I '11 have to wait to hear from someone else whether
he "got them off." I have had a somewhat unwholesome
summer. Much lecturing to teachers and sitting up to
talk with strangers. But it is instructive and makes one
patriotic, and in six days I shall have finished the Chicago
lectures, which begin tomorrow, and get straight to Keene
Valley for the rest of September. My conditions just now
are materially splendid, as I am the guest of a charming
elderly lady, Mrs. Wilmarth, here at her country house,
and in town at the finest hotel of the place. The political
campaign is a bully one. Everyone outdoing himself in
sweet reasonableness and persuasive argument — hardly
an undignified note anywhere. It shows the deepening
and elevating influence of a big topic of debate. It is
difficult to doubt of a people part of whose life such an
experience is. But imagine the country being saved by a
McKinley! If only Reed had been the candidate! There
have been some really splendid speeches and documents. . . .

Ever thine,

W.J.

Aet.54\ TO HENRY JAMES 51

To Henry James.

Burlington, Vt., Sept. 28, 1896.

Dear Henry,— The summer is over! alas! alas! I left
Keene Valley this a.m. where I have had three life-and-
health-giving weeks in the forest and the mountain air,
crossed Lake Champlain in the steamer, not a cloud in
the sky, and sleep here tonight, meaning to take the train
for Boston in the a.m. and read Kant's Life all day, so as
to be able to lecture on it when I first meet my class. School
begins on Thursday — this being Monday night. It has
been a rather cultivating summer for me, and an active
one, of which the best impression (after that of the Adiron-
dack woods, or even before it) was that of the greatness of
Chicago. It needs a Victor Hugo to celebrate it. But as
you won't appreciate it without demonstration, and I
can't give the demonstration (at least not now and on
paper), I will say no more on that score! Alice came up
for a week, but went down and through last night. She
brought me up your letter of I don't remember now what
date (after your return to London, about Wendell Holmes,
Baldwin and Royalty, etc.) which was very delightful and
for which I thank. But don't take your epistolary duties
hard! Letter-writing becomes to me more and more ot an
affliction, I get so many business letters now. At Chicago,
I tried a stenographer and type-writer with an alleviation
that seemed almost miraculous. I think that I shall have
to go in for one some hours a week in Cambridge. It just
goes "whiff" and six or eight long letters are done, so far
as you 're concerned. I hear great reports of your "old
things," and await the book. My great literary impression
this summer has been Tolstoy. On the whole his atmos-
phere absorbs me into it as no one's else has ever done, and

52 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1896

even his religious and melancholy stuff, his insanity, is prob-
ably more significant than the sanity of men who have n't
been through that phase at all.

But I am forgetting to tell you (strange to say, since it
has hung over me like a cloud ever since it happened) of
dear old Professor Child's death. We shall never see his
curly head and thickset figure more. He had aged greatly
in the past three years, since being thrown out of a carriage,
and went to the hospital in July to be treated surgically.
He never recovered and died in three weeks, after much
suffering, his family not being called down from the country
till the last days. He had a moral delicacy and a richness
of heart that I never saw and never expect to see equaled.1
The children bear it well, but I fear it will be a bad blow for
dear Mrs. Child. She and Alice, I am glad to say, are
great friends. . . . Good-night. LeV wohl !

W. J.

1 "I loved Child more than any man I know." Sept. 12, '96.

XII

i893~!899 (Continued)

The Will to Believe — Talks to Teachers - - Defense of
Mental Healers — Excessive Climbing in the Adi-
rondack s

To Theodore Flournoy.

[Dictated]

Cambridge, Dec. 7, 1896.

My dear Flournoy, — Your altogether precious and
delightful letter reached me duly, and you see I am making
a not altogether too dilatory reply. In the first place, we
congratulate you upon the new-comer, and think if she only
proves as satisfactory a damsel as her charming elder
sisters, you will never have any occasion to regret that she
is not a boy. I hope that Madame Flournoy is by this
time thoroughly strong and well, and that everything is
perfect with the baby. I should like to have been at
Munich with you; I have heard a good many accounts of
the jollity of the proceedings there, but on the whole I
did a more wholesome thing to stay in my own country,
of which the dangers and dark sides are singularly exag-
gerated in Europe.

Your lamentations on your cerebral state make me smile,
knowing, as I do, under all your subjective feelings, how
great your vigor is. Of course I sympathize with you
about the laboratory, and advise you, since it seems to me
you are in a position to make conditions rather than have
them imposed on you, simply to drop it and teach what
you prefer. Whatever the latter may be, it will be as good

54 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1896

for the students as if they had something else from you in
its place, and I see no need in this world, when there is
someone provided somewhere to do everything, for anyone
of us to do what he does least willingly and well.

I have got rid of the laboratory forever, and should re-
sign my place immediately if they reimposed its duties
upon me. The results that come from all this laboratory
work seem to me to grow more and more disappointing
and trivial. What is most needed is new ideas. For every
man who has one of them one may find a hundred who
are willing to drudge patiently at some unimportant experi-
ment. The atmosphere of your mind is in an extraordinary
degree sane and balanced on philosophical matters. That
is where your forte lies, and where your University ought
to see that its best interests lie in having you employed.
Don't consider this advice impertinent. Your tempera-
ment is such that I think you need to be strengthened
from without in asserting your right to carry out your true
vocation.

Everything goes well with us here. The boys are develop-
ing finely; both of them taller than I am, and Peggy healthy
and well. I have just been giving a course of public lec-
tures of which I enclose you a ticket to amuse you.1 The
audience, a thousand in number, kept its numbers to the
last. I was careful not to tread upon the domains of psy-
chical research, although many of my hearers were eager
that I should do so. / am teaching Kant for the first time in

'Eight lectures on "Abnormal Mental States" were delivered at the Lowell
Institute in Boston, but were never published. Their several titles were "Dreams
and Hypnotism," "Hysteria," "Automatisms," "Multiple Personality," "De-
moniacal Possession," "Witchcraft," "Degeneration," "Genius." In a letter
to Professor Howison (Apr. 5, 1897) James said, "In these lectures I did not go
into psychical research so-called, and although the subjects were decidedly morbid,
I tried to shape them towards optimistic and hygienic conclusions, and the audience
regarded them as decidedly anti-morbid in their tone."

Aet.54\ LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES

my life, and it gives me much satisfaction. I am also send-
ing a collection of old essays through the press, of which I
will send you a copy as soon as they appear; I am sure
of your sympathy in advance for much of their contents.
But I am afraid that what you never will appreciate is
their wonderful English style! Shakespeare is a little street-
boy in comparison!

Our political crisis is over, but the hard times still endure.
Lack of confidence is a disease from which convalescence
is not quick. I doubt, notwithstanding certain appearances,
whether the country was ever morally in as sound a state
as it now is, after all this discussion. And the very silver
men, who have been treated as a party of dishonesty, are
anything but that. They very likely are victims of the
economic delusion, but their intentions are just as good as
those of the other side. . . .

If you meet my friend Ritter, please give him my love.
I shall write to you again ere long eigenhandig. Mean-
while believe me, with lots of love to you all, especially to
ces demoiselles, and felicitations to their mother, Always
yours,

Wm. James.

My wife wishes to convey to Madame Flournoy her most
loving regards and hopes for the little one.

James had already been invited to deliver a course of
"Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion" at the University
of Edinburgh. He had not yet accepted for a definite date;
but he had begun to collect illustrative material for the
proposed lectures. A large number of references to such
material were supplied to him by Mr. Henry W. Rankin of
East Northfield.

56 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1897

To Henry W. Rankin.

Newport, R.I., Feb. 1, 1897.

Dear Mr. Rankin, — A pause in lecturing, consequent
upon our midyear examinations having begun, has given
me a little respite, and I am paying a three-days' visit upon
an old friend here, meaning to leave for New York tomorrow
where I have a couple of lectures to give. It is an agree-
able moment of quiet and enables me to write a letter or
two which I have long postponed, and chiefly one to you,
who have given me so much without asking anything in
return.

One of my lectures in New York is at the Academy of
Medicine before the Neurological Society, the subject being
"Demoniacal Possession." I shall of course duly advertise
the Nevius book.1 I am not as positive as you are in
the belief that the obsessing agency is really demonic indi-
viduals. I am perfectly willing to adopt that theory if the
facts lend themselves best to it; for who can trace limits
to the hierarchies of personal existence in the world? But
the lower stages of mere automatism shade off so continu-
ously into the highest supernormal manifestations, through
the intermediary ones of imitative hysteria and "suggesti-
bility," that I feel as if no general theory as yet would cover
all the facts. So that the most I shall plead for before the
neurologists is the recognition of demon possession as a regu-
lar "morbid-entity" whose commonest homologue today
is the "spirit-control" observed in test-mediumship, and
which tends to become the more benignant and less alarm-
ing, the less pessimistically it is regarded. This last remark
seems certainly to be true. Of course I shall not ignore
the sporadic cases of old-fashioned malignant possession
which still occur today. I am convinced that we stand

1 Demon Possession and Allied Themes, by John C. Nevius.

Aet.55\ TO HENRY W. RANKIN 57

with all these things at the threshold of a long inquiry, of
which the end appears as yet to no one, least of all to my-
self. And I believe that the best theoretic work yet done
in the subject is the beginning made by F. W. 11. Myers
in his papers in the S. P. R. Proceedings. The first thing
is to start the medical profession out of its idiotically con-
ceited ignorance of all such matters - - matters which have
everywhere and at all times played a vital part in human
history.

You have written me at different times about conversion,
and about miracles, getting as usual no reply, but not
because I failed to heed your words, which come from a
deep life-experience of your own evidently, and from a
deep acquaintance with the experiences of others. In
the matter of conversion I am quite willing to believe that
a new truth may be supernaturally revealed to a subject
when he really asks. But I am sure that in many cases
of conversion it is less a new truth than a new power gained
over life by a truth always known. It is a case of the con-
flict of two self-systems in a personality up to that time
heterogeneously divided, but in which, after the conversion-
crisis, the higher loves and powers come definitively to
gain the upper-hand and expel the forces which up to that
time had kept them down in the position of mere grumblers
and protesters and agents of remorse and discontent. This
broader view will cover an enormous number of cases
psychologically, and leaves all the religious importance to
the result which it has on any other theory.

As to true and false miracles, I don't know that I can
follow you so well, for in any case the notion of a miracle
as a mere attestation of superior power is one that I cannot
espouse. A miracle must in any case be an expression of
personal purpose, but the demon-purpose of antagonizing

58 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1897

God and winning away his adherents has never yet taken
hold of my imagination. I prefer an open mind of in-
quiry, first about the facts •, in all these matters; and I believe
that the S. P. R. methods, if pertinaciously stuck to, will
eventually do much to clear things up. — You see that,
although religion is the great interest of my life, I am rather
hopelessly non-evangelical, and take the whole thing too
impersonally.

But my College work is lightening in a way. Psychology
is being handed over to others more and more, and I see a
chance ahead for reading and study in other directions from
those to which my very feeble powers in that line have
hitherto been confined. I am going to give all the frag-
ments of time I can get, after this year is over, to religious
biography and philosophy. Shield's book, Steenstra's, Gra-
try's, and Harris's, I don't yet know, but can easily get at
them.

I hope your health is better in this beautiful winter which
we are having. I am very well, and so is all my family.
Believe me, with affectionate regards, truly yours,

Wm. James.

To Benjamin Paul Blood.

Cambridge, Apr. 28, 1897.

Dear Blood, — Your letter is delectable. From your
not having yet acknowledged the book,1 I began to wonder
whether you had got it, but this acknowledgment is almost
too good. Your thought is obscure — lightning flashes
darting gleams — but that 's the way truth is. And altho'
I "put pluralism in the place of philosophy," I do it only
so far as philosophy means the articulate and the scientific.
Life and mysticism exceed the articulable, and if there is

1 The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy had just appeared.

Aet. 55\ LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES 59

a One (and surely men will never be weaned from the idea
of it) j it must remain only mystically expressed.

I have been roaring over and quoting some of the pas-
sages of your letter, in which my wife takes as much delight
as I do. As for your strictures on my English, I accept
them humbly. I have a tendency towards too great col-
loquiality, I know, and I trust your sense of English better
than any man's in the country. I have a fearful job on
hand just now: an address on the unveiling of a military
statue. Three thousand people, governor and troops, etc.
Why they fell upon me, God knows; but being challenged,
I could not funk. The task is a mechanical one, and the
result somewhat of a school-boy composition. It I thought
it would n't bore you, I should send you a copy for you to
go carefully over and correct or rewrite as to the English.
I should probably adopt every one of your corrections.
What do you say to this? Yours ever,

Wm. James.
P.S. Please don't betitle me!

The "copy" which was offered for correction with so
much humility was the "Oration" on the unveiling of St.
Gaudens's monument to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw of the
54th Massachusetts Infantry (the first colored regiment).
James was quite accustomed to lecturing from brief notes
and to reading from a complete manuscript; but on this
occasion he thought it necessary to commit his address to
memory. He had never done this before and he never
tried to do it again. He memorized with great difficulty,
found himself placed in an entirely unfamiliar relation to
his audience, and felt as much nervous trepidation as any
inexperienced speaker.1

1 The Address has been reprinted in Memories and Studies.

6o LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1897

To Henry 'James.

Cambridge, "June 5, 1897.

Dear H., — Alice wrote you (I think) a brief word after
the crisis of last Monday. It took it out of me nervously
a good deal, for it came at the end of the month of May,
when I am always fagged to death; and for a week previous
I had almost lost my voice with hoarseness. At nine o'clock
the night before I ran in to a laryngologist in Boston, who
sprayed and cauterized and otherwise tuned up my throat,
giving me pellets to suck all the morning. By a sort of
miracle I spoke for three-quarters of an hour without be-
coming perceptibly hoarse. But it is a curious kind of
physical effort to fill a hall as large as Boston Music Hall,
unless you are trained to the work. You have to shout and
bellow, and you seem to yourself wholly unnatural. The
day was an extraordinary occasion for sentiment. The
streets were thronged with people, and I was toted around
for two hours in a barouche at the tail end of the procession.
There were seven such carriages in all, and I had the great
pleasure of being with St. Gaudens, who is a most charming
and modest man. The weather was cool and the skies were
weeping, but not enough to cause any serious discomfort.
They simply formed a harmonious background to the
pathetic sentiment that reigned over the day. It was very
peculiar, and people have been speaking about it ever since
— the last wave of the war breaking over Boston, everything
softened and made poetic and unreal by distance, poor little
Robert Shaw erected into a great symbol of deeper things
than he ever realized himself, — " the tender grace of a day
that is dead," — etc. We shall never have anything like it
again. The monument is really superb, certainly one of the
finest things of this century. Read the darkey [Booker T.]

Aet.55\ LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES 61

Washington's speech, a model of elevation and brevity.
The thing that struck me most in the day was the faces of
the old 54th soldiers, of whom there were perhaps about
thirty or forty present, with such respectable old darkey
faces, the heavy animal look entirely absent, and in its
place the wrinkled, patient, good old darkey citizen.

As for myself, I will never accept such a job again. It is
entirely outside of my legitimate line of business, although
my speech seems to have been a great success, if I can judge
by the encomiums which are pouring in upon me on every
hand. I brought in some mugwumpery at the end, but
it was very difficult to manage it. . . . Always affectionately
yours,

W.m. James.

Letters to Ellen and Rosina Emmet, which now enter
the series, will be the better understood for a word of re-
minder. "Elly" Temple, one of the Newport cousins
referred to in the very first letters, had married, and gone
with her husband, Temple Emmet, to California. But
in 1887, after his death, she had returned to the East to
place her daughters in a Cambridge school. In 1895 and
1896 Ellen and Rosina had made several visits to the house
in Irving Street; and thus the comradely cousinship of the
sixties had been maintained and reestablished with the
younger generation. At the date now reached, Ellen, or
"Bay" as she was usually called, was studying painting.
She and Rosina had been in Paris during the preceding
winter. Now they and their mother were spending the
summer on the south coast of England, at Iden, quite close
to Rye, where Henry James was already becoming estab-
lished.

62 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1897

To Miss Ellen Emmet (Mrs. Blanchard Rand).

Bar Harbor, Me., Aug. 11, 1897.

Dear Old Bay (and dear Rosina), — For I have letters
from both of you and my heart inclines to both so that I
can't write to either without the other — I hope you are
enjoying the English coast. A rumor reached me not long
since that my brother Henry had given up his trip to the
Continent in order to be near to you, and I hope for the
sakes of all concerned that it is true. He will find in you
both that eager and vivid artistic sense, and that direct
swoop at the vital facts of human character from which I
am sure he has been weaned for fifteen years at least. And
I am sure it will rejuvenate him again. It is more Celtic
than English, and when joined with those faculties of
soul, conscience, or whatever they be that make England
rule the waves, as they are joined in you, Bay, they leave
no room for any anxiety about the creature's destiny. But
Rosina, who is all senses and intelligence, alarms me by
her recital of midnight walks on the Boulevard des Ital-
iens with bohemian artists. . . . You can't live by gaslight
and excitement, nor can naked intelligence run a jeune
fillers life. Affections, pieties, and prejudices must play
their part, and only let the intelligence get an occasional
peep at things from the midst of their smothering embrace.
That again is what makes the British nation so great.
Intelligence does n't flaunt itself there quite naked as in
France.

As for the MacMonnies Bacchante,1 1 only saw her faintly
looming through the moon-light one night when she was
sub judice, so can frame no opinion. The place certainly
calls for a lightsome capricious figure, but the solemn Boston

1 For a short while MacMonnies's Bacchante stood in the court of the Boston
Public Library.

Aet.55\ TO MISS ELLEN EMMET 63

mind declared that anything but a solemn figure would be
desecration. As to her immodesty, opinions got very hot.
My knowledge of MacMonnies is confined to one statue,
that of Sir Henry Vane, also in our Public Library, an
impressionist sketch in bronze (I think), sculpture treated
like painting — and I must say I don't admire the result
at all. But you know; and I wish I could see other things of
his also. How I wish I could talk with Rosina, or rather
hear her talk, about Paris, talk in her French which I
doubt not is by this time admirable. The only book she
has vouchsafed news of having read, to me, is the d'Annunzio
one, which I have ordered in most choice Italian; but
of Lemaitre, France, etc., she writes never a word. Nor
of V. Hugo. She ought to read "La Legende des Siecles."
For the picturesque pure and simple, go there! laid on with
a trowel so generous that you really get your glut. But
the things in French literature that I have gained most
from — the next most to Tolstoy, in the last few years -
are the whole cycle of Geo. Sand's life: her "Histoire," her
letters, and now lately these revelations of the de Musset
episode. The whole thing is beautiful and uplifting — an
absolute "liver" harmoniously leading her own life and
neither obedient nor defiant to what others expected or
thought.

We are passing the summer very quietly at Chocorua,
with our bare feet on the ground. Children growing up bul-
lily, a pride to the parental heart. . . . Alice and I have just
spent a rich week at North Conway, at a beautiful "place,"
the Merrimans'. I am now here at a really grand place,
the Dorrs' — tell Rosina that I went to a domino party
last night but was so afraid that some one of the weird and
sinister sisters would speak to me that I came home at
12 o'clock, when it had hardly begun. I am so sensitive!

64 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1897

Tell her that a lady from Michigan was recently shown the
sights of Cambridge by one of my Radcliffe girls. She
took her to the Longfellow house, and as the visitor went
into the gate, said, "I will just wait here." To her sur-
prise, the visitor went up to the house, looked in to one
window after the other, then rang the bell, and the door
closed upon her. She soon emerged, and said that the ser-
vant had shown her the house. "I'm so sensitive that at
first I thought I would only peep in at the windows. But
then I said to myself, 'What 's the use of being so sensitive?'
So I rang the bell."

Pray be happy this summer. I see nothing more of
Rosina's in the papers. How is that sort of thing going
on? . . . As for your mother, give her my old-fashioned
love. For some unexplained reason, I find it very hard to
write to her — probably it is the same reason that makes it
hard for her to write to me — so we can sympathize over
so strange a mystery. Anyhow, give her my best love, and
with plenty for yourself, old Bay, and for Rosina, believe
me, yours ever,

W7m. James.

To E. L. Godkin.

Chocorua, Aug. 17, 1897.

Dear Godkin, — Thanks for your kind note in re "Will
to Believe." I suppose you expect as little a reply to it as
I expected one from you to the book; but since you ask
what I du mean by Religion, and add that until I define
that word my essay cannot be effective, I can't forbear
sending you a word to clear up that point. I mean by
religion for a man anything that for him is a live hypothesis
in that line, altho' it may be a dead one for anyone else.
And what I try to show is that whether the man believes,

Act. tf] TO F. C. S. SCHILLER 65

disbelieves, or doubts his hypothesis, the moment he docs
either, on principle and methodically, he runs a risk of one
sort or the other from his own point of view. There is no
escaping the risk; why not then admit that one's human
function is to run it? By settling down on that basis, and
respecting each other's choice of risk to run, it seems to me
that we should be in a clearer-headed condition than we
now are in, postulating as most all of us do a rational cer-
titude which does n't exist and disowning the semi-voluntary
mental action by which we continue in our own severally
characteristic attitudes of belief. Since our willing natures
are active here, why not face squarely the fact without
humbug and get the benefits of the admission?

I passed a day lately with the [James] Bryces at Bar
Harbor, and we spoke — not altogether unkindly — of you.
I hope you are enjoying, both of you, the summer. All
goes well with us. Youis always truly,

Wm. James.

To F. C. S. Schiller [Corpus Christi, Oxford].

Cambridge, Oct. 23, 1897.

Dear Schiller, — Did you ever hear of the famous inter-
national prize fight between Tom Sayers and Heenan the
Benicia Boy, or were you too small a baby in 1857 [i860?]
The "Times" devoted a couple of pages of report and one or
more eulogistic editorials to the English champion, and the
latter, brimming over with emotion, wrote a letter to the
"Times" in which he touchingly said that he would live in
future as one who had been once deemed worthy of com-
memoration in its leaders. After reading your review of
me in the October "Mind" (which only reached me two
days ago) I feel as the noble Sayers felt, and think I ought
to write to Stout to say I will try to live up to such a char-

66 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1898

acter. My past has not deserved such words, but my future
shall. Seriously, your review has given me the keenest
possible pleasure. This philosophy must be thickened up
most decidedly — your review represents it as something
to rally to, so we must fly a banner and start a school.
Some of your phrases are bully: "reckless rationalism,"
"pure science is pure bosh," "infallible a priori test of truth
to screen us from the consequences of our choice," etc.,
etc. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

The enclosed document [a returned letter addressed to
Christ Church] explains itself. The Church and the Body
of Christ are easily confused and I have n't a scholarly mem-
ory. I wrote you a post-card recently to the same address,
patting you on the back for your article on Immortality in
the "New World." A staving good thing. I am myself
to give the "Ingersoll Lecture on Human Immortality"
here in November — the second lecturer on the foundation.
I treat the matter very inferiorly to you, but use your con-
ception of the brain as a sifting agency, which explains my
question in the letter. Young [R. B.] Merriman is at Bal-
liol and a really good fellow in all possible respects. Pray
be good to him if he calls on you. I hope things have a
peacock hue for you now that term has begun. They are
all going well here. Yours alwavs gratefully,

W. J.

To James J. Putnam.

Cambridge, Mar. 2, 1898.

Dear Jim, — On page 7 of the "Transcript" tonight you
will find a manifestation of me at the State House, protest-
ing against the proposed medical license bill.

If you think I enjoy that sort of thing you are mistaken.
I never did anything that required as much moral effort

Aet.56) LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES 67

in my life. My vocation is to treat of things in an all-round
manner and not make ex-parte pleas to influence for seek
to) a peculiar jury. Aussi^ why do the medical brethren
force an unoffending citizen like me into such a position:
Legislative license is sheer humbug - - mere abstract paper
thunder under which every ignorance and abuse can still
go on. Why this mania for more laws? Why seek to stop
the really extremely important experiences which these pecul-
iar creatures are rolling up?

Bah! I'm sick of the whole business, and I well know
how all my colleagues at the Medical School, who go only
by the label, will view me and my efforts. But if Zola
and Col. Picquart can face the whole French army, can't
I face their disapproval? — Much more easily than that of
my own conscience!

You, I fancy, are not one of the fully disciplined de-
manders of more legislation. So I write to you, as on the
whole my dearest friend hereabouts, to explain just what
my state of mind is. Ever yours,

W. J.

James was not indulging in empty rhetoric when he said
that his conscience drove him to face the disapproval of his
medical colleagues. Some of them never forgave him, and
to this day references to his "appearance" at the State
House in Boston are marked by partisanship rather than
understanding.

What happened cannot be understood without recalling
that thirty-odd years ago the licensing of medical practi-
tioners was just being inaugurated in the United States.
Today it is evident that everyone must be qualified and
licensed before he can be permitted to write prescriptions,
to sign statements upon which public records, inquests, and

68 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1898

health statistics are to be based, and to go about the com-
munity calling himself a doctor. On the other hand, expe-
rience has proved that those people who do not pretend to
be physicians, who do not use drugs or the knife, and who
attempt to heal only by mental or spiritual influence, can-
not be regulated by the clumsy machinery of the criminal
law. But either because the whole question of medical
registration was new, or because professional men are sel-
dom masters of the science of lawmaking, the sponsors of
the bills proposed to the Massachusetts Legislature in 1894
and 1898 ignored these distinctions. James did not name
them, although his argument implied them and rested upon
them. The bills included clauses which attempted to abol-
ish the faith-curers by requiring them to become Doctors
of Medicine. The "Spiritualists" and Christian Scientists
were a numerous element in the population and claimed a
religious sanction for their beliefs. The gentlemen who
mixed an anti-spiritualist program in their effort to have
doctors examined and licensed by a State Board were either
innocent of political discretion or blind to the facts. For
it was idle to argue that faith-curers would be able to con-
tinue in their own ways as soon as they had passed the
medical examinations of the State Board, and that accord-
ingly the proposed law could not be said to involve their
suppression. Obviously, medical examinations were bar-
riers which the faith-curers could not climb over. This was
the feature of the proposed law which roused James to
opposition, and led him to take sides for the moment with
all the spokesmen of all the -isms and -opathies.

"I will confine myself to a class of diseases" (he wrote to
the Boston "Transcript" in 1894) "with which my occu-
pation has made me somewhat conversant. I mean the
diseases of the nervous system and the mind. ... Of all

Aet.56\ LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES 69

the new agencies that our day has seen, there is but one that
tends steadily to assume a more and more commanding
importance, and that is the agency of the patient's mind
itself. Whoever can produce effects there holds the key
of the situation in a number of morbid conditions of which
we do not yet know the extent; for systematic experiments
in this direction are in their merest infancy. They began
in Europe fifteen years ago, when the medical world so tardily
admitted the facts of hypnotism to be true; and in this
country they have been carried on in a much bolder and
more radical fashion by all those 'mind-curers' and 'Chris-
tian Scientists' with whose results the public, and even the
profession, are growing gradually familiar.

"I assuredly hold no brief for any of these healers, and
must confess that my intellect has been unable to assimi-
late their theories, so far as I have heard them given. But
their facts are patent and startling; and anything that
interferes with the multiplication of such facts, and with
our freest opportunity of observing and studying them,
will, I believe, be a public calamity. The law now proposed
will so interfere, simply because the mind-curers will not
take the examinations. . . . Nothing would please some of
them better than such a taste of imprisonment as might, by
the public outcry it would occasion, bring the law rattling
down about the ears of the mandarins who should have
enacted it.

"And whatever one may think of the narrowness of the
mind-curers, their logical position is impregnable. They
are proving by the most brilliant new results that the thera-
peutic relation may be what we can at present describe
only as a relation of one person to another person; and they
are consistent in resisting to the uttermost any legisla-
tion that would make 'examinable' information the root of

7o LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1898

medical virtue, and hamper the free play of personal force
and affinity by mechanically imposed conditions."

James knew as well as anyone that in the ranks of the
healers there were many who could fairly be described as

preying on superstition and ignorance. "X personally

is a rapacious humbug" was his privately expressed opinion
of one of them who had a very large following. He had no
reverence for the preposterous theories with which their
minds were befogged; but "every good thing like science in
medicine," as he once said, "has to be imitated and grimaced
by a rabble of people who would be at the required height;
and the folly, humbug and mendacity is pitiful." Further-
more he saw a quackery quite as odious and much more
dangerous than that of the "healers" in the patent-medicine
business, which was allowed to advertise its lies and secret
nostrums in the newspapers and on the bill-boards, and
which flourished behind the counter of every apothecary
and village store-keeper at that time. (The Federal Pure
Food and Drug Act was still many years off.)

The spokesmen of the medical profession were ignoring
what he believed to be instructive phenomena. 'What the
real interests of medicine require is that mental therapeutics
should not be stamped out, but studied, and its laws ascer-
tained. For that the mind-curers must at least be suffered
to make their experiments. If they cannot interpret their
results aright, why then let the orthodox M.D.'s follow up
their facts, and study and interpret them? But to force
the mind-curers to a State examination is to kill the experi-
ments outright." But instead of the open-minded attitude
which he thus advocated, he saw doctors who "had no more
exact science in them than a fox terrier" 1 invoking the

1 These words were not employed in public, but were once applied to a well-
known professor in a private letter.

Aet.56\ LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES 7i

holy name of Science and blundering ahead with an air of
moral superiority.

"One would suppose," he exclaimed again in the [898
hearing, "that any set of sane persons interested in the
growth of medical truth would rejoice if other persons were
found willing to push out their experiences in the mental-
healing direction, and provide a mass of material out of
which the conditions and limits of such therapeutic methods
may at last become clear. One would suppose that our
orthodox medical brethren might so rejoice; but instead of
rejoicing they adopt the fiercely partisan attitude of a
powerful trades-union, demanding legislation against the
competition of the 'scabs.' . . . The mind-curers and their
public return the scorn of the regular profession with an
equal scorn, and will never come up for the examination.
Their movement is a religious or quasi-religious movement;
personality is one condition of success there, and impres-
sions and intuitions seem to accomplish more than chemical,
anatomical or physiological information. . . . Pray do not
fail, Mr. Chairman, to catch my point. You are not to ask
yourselves whether these mind-curers do really achieve the
successes that are claimed. It is enough for you as legis-
lators to ascertain that a large number of our citizens, per-
sons as intelligent and well-educated as yourself, or I, per-
sons whose number seems daily to increase, are convinced
that they do achieve them, are persuaded that a valuable
new department of medical experience is by them opening
up. Here is a purely medical question, regarding which
our General Court, not being a well-spring and source of
medical virtue, not having any private test of therapeutic
truth, must remain strictly neutral under penalty of making
the confusion worse. . . . Above all things, Mr. Chairman,
let us not be infected with the Gallic spirit of regulation and

72 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1898

reglementation for their own abstract sakes. Let us not
grow hysterical about law-making. Let us not fall in love
with enactments and penalties because they are so logical
and sound so pretty, and look so nice on paper." x

To James J. Putnam.

Cambridge, Mar. [3?] 1898.

Dear Jim, — Thanks for your noble-hearted letter, which
makes me feel warm again. I am glad to learn that you
feel positively agin the proposed law, and hope that you will
express yourself freely towards the professional brethren
to that effect.

Dr. Russell Sturgis has written me a similar letter.

Once more, thanks!

W.J.

P. S. March 3. The "Transcript" report, I am sorry to
say, was a good deal cut. I send you another copy, to
keep and use where it will do most good. The rhetorical
problem with me was to say things to the Committee that
might neutralize the influence of their medical advisers,
who, I supposed, had the inside track, and all the prestige.
I being banded with the spiritists, faith-curers, magnetic
healers, etc., etc. Strange affinities!2

W.J.

1 A full report of the speech made at the Legislative hearing was printed in the
Banner of Light, Mar. 12, 1898. The letter to the Boston Transcript in 1894
appeared in the issue of Mar. 24.

2 James J. Putnam to William James

Boston, Mar. 9, 1898.
Dear William, — We have thought and talked a good deal about the subject
of your speech in the course of the last week. I prepared with infinite labor a letter
intended for the Transcript of last Saturday, but it was not a weighty contribution
and I am rather glad it was too late to get in. I think it is generally felt among
the best doctors that your position was the liberal one, and that it would be a
mistake to try to exact an examination of the mind-healers and Christian Scien-
tists. On the other hand, I am afraid most of the doctors, even including myself,
do not have any great feeling of fondness for them, and we are more in the way of

Aet.56\ TO FRANCOIS PILLON 73

To Francois Pillon.

Cambridge, June 15, 1898.

My dear Pillon, — I have just received your pleasant
letter and the Annee, volume 8, and shall immediately pro-
ceed to read the latter, having finished reading my examina-
tions yesterday, and being now free to enjoy the vacation,
but excessively tired. I grieve to learn of poor Mrs. Pillon's
continued ill health. How much patience both of you
require. I think of you also as spending most of the sum-
mer in Paris, when the country contains so many more
elements that are good for body and soul.

How much has happened since I last heard from you!
To say nothing of the Zola trial, we now have the Cuban
War! A curious episode of history, showing how a nation's
ideals can be changed in the twinkling of an eye, by a
succession of outward events partly accidental. It is quite
possible that, without the explosion of the Maine, we should
still be at peace, though, since the basis of the whole Ameri-
can attitude is the persuasion on the part of the people
that the cruelty and misrule of Spain in Cuba call for her
expulsion (so that in that sense our war is just what a war
of " the powers" against Turkey for the Armenian atrocities
would have been), it is hardly possible that peace could
have been maintained indefinitely longer, unless Spain had
gone out — a consummation hardly to be expected by
peaceful means. The actual declaration of war by Con-
gress, however, was a case of psychologie des Joules, a genuine
hysteric stampede at the last moment, which shows how

seeing the fanatical spirit in which they proceed and the harm that they sometimes
do than you are. Of course they do also good things which would remain other-
wise not done, and that is the important point, and sincere fanatics are almost
always, and in this case I think certainly, of real value.

Always affectionately,

James J. P.

74 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1898

unfortunate that provision of our written constitution is
which takes the power of declaring war from the Executive
and places it in Congress. Our Executive has behaved
very well. The European nations of the Continent cannot
believe that our pretense of humanity, and our disclaiming
of all ideas of conquest, is sincere. It has been absolutely
sincere! The self-conscious feeling of our people has been
entirely based in a sense of philanthropic duty, without
which not a step would have been taken. And when, in
its ultimatum to Spain, Congress denied any project of
conquest in Cuba, it genuinely meant every word it said.
But here comes in the psychologic factor: once the excite-
ment of action gets loose, the taxes levied, the victories
achieved, etc., the old human instincts will get into play
with all their old strength, and the ambition and sense of
mastery which our nation has will set up new demands.
We shall never take Cuba; I imagine that to be very cer-
tain — unless indeed after years of unsuccessful police duty
there, for that is what we have made ourselves responsible
for. But Porto Rico, and even the Philippines, are not so
sure. We had supposed ourselves (with all our crudity and
barbarity in certain ways) a better nation morally than
the rest, safe at home, and without the old savage ambition,
destined to exert great international influence by throwing
in our "moral weight," etc. Dreams! Human Nature is
everywhere the same; and at the least temptation all the
old military passions rise, and sweep everything before
them. It will be interesting to see how it will end.

But enough of this! — It all shows by what short steps
progress is made, and it confirms the "criticist" views of
the philosophy of history. .1 am going to a great popular
meeting in Boston today where a lot of my friends are to
protest against the new "Imperialism."

Aet. 56\ TO MRS. JAMES 75

In August I go for two months to California to do some
lecturing. As I have never crossed the continent or seen
the Pacific Ocean or those beautiful parages^ I am very glad
of the opportunity. The year after next (i.e. one year
from now) begins a new year of absence from my college
duties. I may spend it in Europe again. In any case I
shall hope to see you, for I am appointed to give the "Gif-
ford Lectures" at Edinburgh during 1899-1901 — two
courses of 10 each on the philosophy of religion. A great
honor. — I have also received the honor of an election as
"Correspondent" of the Academie des Sciences Morales et
Politiques. Have I your influence to thank for this?
Believe me, with most sympathetic regards to Mrs. Pillon
and affectionate greetings to yourself, yours most truly

Wm. James.

Before starting for California, James went to the Adiron-
dack Lodge to snatch a brief holiday. One episode in this
holiday can best be described by an extract from a letter to
Mrs. James.

To Mrs. James.

St. Hubert's Inn,
Keene Valley, July 9, 1898.

... I have had an eventful 24 hours, and my hands are
so stiff after it that my fingers can hardly hold the pen.
I left, as I informed you by post-card, the Lodge at seven,
and five hours of walking brought us to the top of Marcy —
I carrying 18 lbs. of weight in my pack. As usual, I met
two Cambridge acquaintances on the mountain top — "Ap-
palachians" from Beede's. At four, hearing an axe below,
I went down (an hour's walk) to Panther Lodge Camp, and
there found Charles and Pauline Goldmark, Waldo Adler

76 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1898

and another schoolboy, and two Bryn Mawr girls — the
girls all dressed in boys' breeches, and cutaneously dese-
crated in the extreme from seven of them having been
camping without a male on Loon Lake to the north of this.
My guide had to serve for the party, and quite unexpectedly
to me the night turned out one of the most memorable of
all my memorable experiences. I was in a wakeful mood
before starting, having been awake since three, and I may
have slept a little during this night; but I was not aware of
sleeping at all. My companions, except Waldo Adler,
were all motionless. The guide had got a magnificent pro-
vision of firewood, the sky swept itself clear of every trace
of cloud or vapor, the wind entirely ceased, so that the
fire-smoke rose straight up to heaven. The temperature
was perfect either inside or outside the cabin, the moon
rose and hung above the scene before midnight, leaving only
a few of the larger stars visible, and I got into a state of
spiritual alertness of the most vital description. The in-
fluences of Nature, the wholesomeness of the people round
me, especially the good Pauline, the thought of you and
the children, dear Harry on the wave, the problem of the
Edinburgh lectures, all fermented within me till it became
a regular Walpurgis Nacht. I spent a good deal of it in
the woods, where the streaming moonlight lit up things
in a magical checkered play, and it seemed as if the Gods
of all the nature-mythologies were holding an indescrib-
able meeting in my breast with the moral Gods of the
inner life. The two kinds of Gods have nothing in com-
mon — the Edinburgh lectures made quite a hitch ahead.
The intense significance of some sort, of the whole scene,
if one could only tell the significance; the intense inhuman
remoteness of its inner life, and yet the intense appeal of it;
its everlasting freshness and its immemorial antiquity and

Aet.56\ TO MRS. JAMES 77

decay; its utter Americanism, and every sort of patriotic
suggestiveness, and you, and my relation to you part and
parcel of it all, and beaten up with it, so that memory and
sensation all whirled inexplicably together; it was indeed
worth coming for, and worth repeating year by year, if
repetition could only procure what in its nature I suppose
must be all unplanned for and unexpected. It was one of
the happiest lonesome nights of my existence, and I under-
stand now what a poet is. He is a person who can feel the
immense complexity of influences that I felt, and make some
partial tracks in them for verbal statement. In point of
fact, I can't find a single word for all that significance, and
don't know what it was significant of, so there it remains,
a mere boulder of impression. Doubtless in more ways
than one, though, things in the Edinburgh lectures will be
traceable to it.

In the morning at six, I shouldered my undiminished pack
and went up Marcy, ahead of the party, who arrived half
an hour later, and we got in here at eight [p.m.] after 10^
hours of the solidest walking I ever made, and I, I think,
more fatigued than I have been after any walk. We
plunged down Marcy, and up Bason Mountain, led by
C. Goldmark, who had, with Mr. White, blazed a trail the
year before; r then down again, away down, and up the
Gothics, not counting a third down-and-up over an inter-
mediate spur. It was the steepest sort of work, and,
as one looked from the summits, seemed sheer impossible,
but the girls kept up splendidly, and were all fresher than I.
It was true that they had slept like logs all night, whereas
I was "on my nerves." I lost my Norfolk jacket at the
last third of the course — high time to say good-bye to that
possession - - and staggered up to the Putnams to find

1 That is, there was here no path to follow, only "blazes" on the trees.

78 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1898

Hatty Shaw I taking me for a tramp. Not a soul was
there, but everything spotless and ready for the arrival
today. I got a bath at Bowditch's bath-house, slept in
my old room, and slept soundly and well, and save for the
unwashable staining of my hands and a certain stiffness
in my thighs, am entirely rested and well. But I don't be-
lieve in keeping it up too long, and at the Willey House will
lead a comparatively sedentary life, and cultivate sleep, if
I can. . . .

W.J.

The intense experience which James thus described had
consequences that were not foreseen at the time. He had
gone to the Adirondacks at the close of the college term in a
much fatigued condition. He had been sleeping badly for
some weeks, and when he started up Mount Marcy he had
neuralgia in one foot; but he had characteristically deter-
mined to ignore and "bully" this ailment. Under such
conditions the prolonged physical exertion of the two days'
climb, aggravated by the fact that he carried a pack all
the second day, was too much for a man of his years and
sedentary occupations. As the summer wore on, pain or
discomfort in the region of his heart became constant. He
tried to persuade himself that it signified nothing and would
pass away, and concealed it from his wife until mid-winter.
To Howison — who was himself a confessed heart case —
he wrote, "My heart has been kicking about terribly of
late, stopping, and hurrying and aching and so forth, but
I do not propose to give up to it too much." The fact was
that the strain of the two days' climb had caused a val-
vular lesion that was irreparable, although not great enough
seriously to curtail his activities if he had given heed to

1 The housekeeper at the Putnam-Bowditch "shanty."

Aet. 56] TO G. H. HOWISON

his general condition and avoided straining himself again.
In August James went to California to give the lectures
which have already been mentioned in a letter to Pillon.
Again, these lectures were in substance the "Talks to
Teachers." The next letter, written just before he left
Cambridge, answers a request to him to address the Philo-
sophical Club at the University of California.

To G. H. How is on.

Cambridge, July 24, 1898.

Dear Howison, — Your kind letter greeted me on my
arrival here three days ago — but I have waited to answer
it in order to determine just what my lecture's title should
be. I wanted to make something entirely popular, and as
it were emotional, for technicality seems to me to spell
"failure" in philosophy. But the subject in the margin
of my consciousness failed to make connexion with the centre,
and I have fallen back on something less vital, but still, I
think, sufficiently popular and practical, which you can
advertise under the rather ill-chosen title of "Philosophical
Conceptions and Practical Results," if you wish.

I am just back from a month of practical idleness in the
Adirondacks, but such is the infirmity of my complexion
that I am not yet in proper working trim. You ask me,
like an angel, in what form I like to take my sociability.
The spirit is willing to take it in any form, but the flesh is
weak, and it runs to destruction of nerve-tissue and mad-
ness in me to go to big stand-up receptions where the people
scream and breathe in each other's faces. But I know my
duties; and one such reception I will gladly face. For the
rest, I should infinitely prefer a chosen few at dinner. But
this enterprise is going, my friend, to give you and Mrs.
Howison a heap of trouble. My purpose is to arrive on

8o LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1898

the eve of the 26th. I will telegraph you the hour and train.
When the lectures to the teachers are over, I will make for
the Yosemite Valley, where I want to spend a fortnight if I
can, and come home. . . . Yours ever truly,

Wm. James.

To Henry "James.

Occidental Hotel,
San Francisco, Aug. 11, 1898.

Dear old Henry, — You see I have worked my way
across the Continent, and, full of the impressions of this
queer place, I must overflow for a page or two to you. I
saw some really grand and ferocious scenery on the Cana-
dian Pacific, and wish I could go right back to see it again.
But it does n't mean much, on the whole, for human habi-
tation, and the British Empire's investment in Canada is
in so far forth but scenic. It is grand, though, in its vast-
ness and simplicity. In Washington and Oregon the whole
foreground consisted of desolation by fire. The magnifi-
cent coniferous forests burnt and burning, as they have
been for years and years back. Northern California one
pulverous earth-colored mass of hills and heat, with green
spots produced by irrigation hardly showing on the back-
ground. I drove through a wheatfield at Harry's Uncle
Christopher's on a machine, drawn by 26 mules, which cut
a swathe 18 feet wide through the wheat and threw it out
in bags to be taken home, as fast as the leisurely mules
could walk. It is like Egypt. Down here, splendid air,
and a city so indescribably odd and unique in its sugges-
tions that I have been saying to myself all day that you
ought to have taken it in when you were under 30 and
added it to your portraits of places. So remote and ter-
minal, so full of the sea-port nakedness, yet so new and

Aet.56\ TO HIS SON ALEXANDER 81

American, with its queer suggestions of a history based on
the fifties and the sixties. But at my age those impres-
sions are curiously weak to what they once were, and the
time to travel is between one's 20th and 30th year. This
hotel — an old house cleaned into newness - - is redolent
of '59 or '6o, when it must have been built. Hideous vast
stuccoed thing, with long undulating balustrades and wells
and lace curtains. The fare is very good, but the servants
all Irish, who seem cowed in the dining-room, and go about
as if they had corns on their feet and for that reason had
given up the pick and shovel. . . . Tomorrow, in spite of
drouth and dust, I leave for the Yosemite Valley, with
a young Californian philosopher, named [Charles M.]
Bakewell, as companion. On the whole I prefer the works
of God to those of man, and the alternative, a trip down
the coast, beauties as it would doubtless show, would in-
clude too much humanity. . . .

To his Son Alexander.

Berkeley, Cal., Aug. 28, 1898.

Darling old Cherubini, — See how brave this girl and
boy are in the Yosemite Valley! l I saw a moving sight the
other morning before breakfast in a little hotel where I
slept in the dusty fields. The young man of the house had
shot a little wolf called a coyote in the early morning. The
heroic little animal lay on the ground, with his big furry
ears, and his clean white teeth, and his jolly cheerful little
body, but his brave little life was gone. It made me
think how brave all these living things are. Here little
coyote was, without any clothes or house or books or any-
thing, with nothing but his own naked self to pay his way

1 Photograph of a boy and girl standing on a rock which hangs dizzily over a
great precipice above the Yosemite Valley.

82 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1898

with, and risking his life so cheerfully — and losing it —
just to see if he could pick up a meal near the hotel. He
was doing his coyote-business like a hero, and you must do
your boy-business, and I my man-business bravely too, or
else we won't be worth as much as that little coyote. Your
mother can find a picture of him in those green books of
animals, and I want you to copy it. Your loving

Dad.

To Miss Rosina H. Emmet.

Monterey, Sept. 9, 1898.

Dear old Rosina, — I have seen your native state and
even been driven by dear, good, sweet Hal Dibblee (who is
turning into a perfectly ideal fellow) through the charming
and utterly lovable place in which you all passed your child-
hood. (How your mother must sometimes long for it
again! ) Of California and its greatness, the half can never
be told. I have been on a ranch in the white, bare dry-
ness of Siskiyou County, and reaped wheat with a swathe
of 18 feet wide on a machine drawn by a procession of 26
mules. I've been to Yosemite, and camped for five days
in the high Sierras; I've lectured at the two universities of
the state, and seen the youths and maidens lounge together
at Stanford in cloisters whose architecture is purer and
more lovely than aught that Italy can show. I've heard
Mrs. Dibblee read letter after letter from Anita concerning
your life together; and even one letter to Anita from Bay,
which the former enclosed. (Dear Bay!) All this, dear
old Rosina, is a "summation of stimuli" which at last car-
ries me over the dam that has so long obstructed all my
epistolary efforts in your direction.

Over and over again I have been on the point of writing
to you, more than once I have actually written a page or

Aet.56\ TO MISS ROSINA H. EMMET 83

two, but something has always checked the flow, and ar-
rested the current of the soul. What is it? I think it is
this: I naturally tend, when "familiar" with what the
authors of the beginning of the century used to call "a
refined female," to indulge in charring personalities in writ-
ing to her. There is something in you that doubtfully
enjoys the chaffing; and subtly feeling that, I stop. But
some day, when experience shall have winnowed you with
her wing; when the illusions and the hopes of youth alike
are faded; when eternal principles of order are more to
you than sensations that pass in a day, however exciting;
when friends that know you and your roots and derivations
are more satisfactory, however humdrum and hoary they
be, than the handsome recent acquaintances that know
nothing of you but the hour; when, in short, your being is
mellowed, dulled and harmonized by time so as to be a
grave, wise, deep, and discerning moral and intellectual
unity (as mine is already from the height of my 40 centuries!),
then, Rosina, we two shall be the most perfect of combina-
tions, and I shall write to you every week of my life and
you will be utterly unable to resist replying. That will
not be, however, before you are forty years old. You are
sure to come to it! For you see the truth, irrespective of
persons, as few people see it; and after all, you care for that
more than for anything else — and that means a rare and
unusual destiny, and ultimate salvation.— - But here I am,
chaffing, quite against my intentions and altogether in spite
of myself. The ruling passion is irresistible. Let me stop!
But still I must be personal, and not write merely of the
climate and productions of California, as I have been doing
to others for the past four weeks. How I do wish I could
be dropped amongst you for but 24 hours! What talk I
should hear! What perceptions of truth from you and Bay

84 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1898

(and probably young Leslie) would pour into my receptive
soul. How I should like to hear you hold forth about the
French, their art, their literature, their nature, and all else
about them! How I should like to hear you talk French!
How I should like to note the changes wrought in you by
all this experience, and take all sorts of excursions in your
company! Don't come home for one more year if you can
help it. Stay and let the impressions set and tie them-
selves in with a hard knot, so that they will be worth some-
thing and definitive.

I am so glad to hear that Bay is doing so well, and doubly
glad (as Mrs. Dibblee tells me from Anita) that H. J. is
going to sit to her for his portrait. I am a bit sorry that
the youthful Harry did n't accept your invitation, but his
time was after all so short that it has been perhaps good
for him to get the massive English impression. What times
we live in! Dreyfus, Cuba, and Khartoum! — I keep well,
though fragile as a worker. You will have heard of my
Edinburgh appointment and my election to the Institut
de France as Correspondent. The latter is silly, but the
former a serious scrape out of which I am praying all the
gods to help me, as the time for preparation is so short.
All Cambridge friends are well. You heard of dear Child's
death, last summer, I suppose. Good-bye! Write to me,
dear old Rosina. Kiss Bay and Leslie — even effleurez
your own cheek, for me. Give my best love to your mother,
and believe me always your affectionate

W. J.

To Dickinson S. Miller.

Cambridge, Dec. 3, 1898.

Illustrious friend and Joy of my Liver, — I am much
pleased to hear from you, for I have wished to know of

Act. 56] TO DICKINSON S. MILLER 85

your destinies, and Bakewell could n't give me a very pre-
cise account. I congratulate you on getting your review
of me off your hands- you must experience a relief similar
to that of Christian when he lost his bag of sin. I imagine
your account of its unsatisfactoriness is a little hyper-
aesthetic, and that what you have brooded over so long
will, in spite of anything in the accidents of its production,
prove solid and deep, and reveal ex pede the Hercules. Of
course, if you do not unconditionally subscribe to my "Will
to Believe" essay, it shows that you still are groping in the
darkness of misunderstanding either of my meaning or of
the truth; for in spite of "the bludgeonings of fate," my
head is " bloody but unbowed " as to the rightness of my con-
tention there, in both its parts. But we shall see; and I
hope you are now free for more distant flights.

I am extremely sorry to hear you have been not well
again, even though you say you are so much better now.
You ought to be entirely well and every inch a king. Re-
member that, whenever you need a change, your bed is made
in this house for as many weeks as you care to stay. I
know there will come feelings of disconsolateness over you
occasionally, from being so out of the academic swim. But
that is nothing! And while this time is on, you should
think exclusively of its unique characteristics of blessedness,
which will be irrecoverable when you are in the harness again.

I spent the first six weeks after term began in trying to
clear my table of encumbering tasks, in order to get at my
own reading for the Gifford lectures. In vain. Each day
brought its cargo, and I never got at my own work, until
a fortnight ago the brilliant resolve was communicated to
me, by divine inspiration, of not doing anything for any-
body else, not writing a letter or looking at a MS., on any
day until I should have done at least one hour of work for

86 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1899

myself. If you spend your time preparing to be ready,
you never will be ready. Since that wonderful insight into
the truth, despair has given way to happiness. I do my
hour or hour and a half of free reading; and don't care what
extraneous interest suffers. . . . Good-night, dear old Miller.
Your ever loving,

W. J.

To Dickinson S. Miller.

Cambridge, Jan. 31, 1899.

. . . Your account of Josiah Royce is adorable — we have
both gloated over it all day. The best intellectual charac-
ter-painting ever limned by an English pen! Since teach-
ing the "Conception of God," I have come to perceive what
I did n't trust myself to believe before, that looseness of
thought is R.'s essential element. He wants it. There is n't
a tight joint in his system; not one. And yet I thought
that a mind that could talk me blind and black and numb
on mathematics and logic, and whose favorite recreation is
works on those subjects, must necessarily conceal closeness
and exactitudes of ratiocination that I had n't the wit to
find out. But no! he is the Rubens of philosophy. Rich-
ness, abundance, boldness, color, but a sharp contour never,
and never any perfection. But is n't fertility better than
perfection? Deary me! Ever thine,

W. J.

To Henry Rutgers Marshall.

Cambridge [Feb. 7, 1899?].

Dear Marshall, — I will hand your paper to Eliot,
though I am sure that nothing will come of it in this Uni-
versitv.

Moreover, it strikes me that no good will ever come to

Aet. 57] TO HENRY RUTGERS MARSHALL 87

Art as such from the analytic study of /Esthetics - - harm
rather, if the abstractions could in any way he made the
basis of practice. We should get stark things done on
system with all the intangible personal je ne sgais quaw left
out. The difference between the first- and second-best
things in art absolutely seems to escape verbal definition -
it is a matter of a hair, a shade, an inward quiver of some
kind — yet what miles away in point of preciousness!
Absolutely the same verbal formula applies to the supreme
success and to the thing that just misses it, and yet verbal
formulas are all that your aesthetics will give.

Surely imitation in the concrete is better for results than
any amount of gabble in the abstract. Let the rest of us
philosophers gabble, but don't mix us up with the interests
of the art department as such! Them's my sentiments.

Thanks for the "cudgels" you are taking up for the
"Will to Believe." Miller's article seems to be based solely
on my little catchpenny title. Where would he have been
if I had called my article "a critique of pure faith" or
words to that effect? As it is, he doesn't touch a single
one of my points, and slays a mere abstraction. I shall
greedily read what you write.

I have been too lazy and hard pressed to write to you
about your "Instinct and Reason," which contains many
good things in the way of psychology and morals, but
which — I tremble to say it before you - - on the whole
does disappoint me. The religious part especially seems to
me to rest on too narrow a phenomenal base, and the for-
mula to be too simple and abstract. But it is a good con-
tribution to American scholarship all the same, and I hope
the Philippine Islanders will be forced to study it.

Forgive my brevity and levity. Yours ever,

W. J.

88 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1899

To Henry Rutgers Marshall.

Cambridge, Feb. 8 [1899].

Dear Marshall, — Your invitation was perhaps the
finest "tribute" the Jameses have ever received, but it is
plumb impossible that either of us should accept. Pinned
down, by ten thousand jobs and duties, like two Gullivers
by the threads of the Lilliputians.

I should "admire" to see the Kiplings again, but it is no
go. Now that by his song-making power he is the might-
iest force in the formation of the "Anglo-Saxon" character,
I wish he would hearken a bit more to his deeper human
self and a bit less to his shallower jingo self. If the Anglo-
Saxon race would drop its sniveling cant it would have a
good deal less of a "burden" to carry. We 're the most
loathsomely canting crew that God ever made. Kipling
knows perfectly well that our camps in the tropics are not
college settlements or our armies bands of philanthropists,
slumming it; and I think it a shame that he should repre-
sent us to ourselves in that light. I wish he would try a
bit interpreting the savage soul to us, as he could, instead of
using such official and conventional phrases as "half-devil
and half-child," which leaves the whole insides out.

Heigh ho!

I have only had time to glance at the first }4 of your
paper on Miller. I am delighted you are thus going for
him. His whole paper is an ignoratio elenchi, and he does n't
touch a single one of my positions.

Believe me with great regrets and thanks, yours ever,

Wm. James.

To Mrs. Henry Whitman. „ _

Lhocorua, June 7, 1899.

Dear Mrs. Whitman, — I got your penciled letter the
day before leaving. The R.R. train seems to be a great

Aet. 57] TO MRS. HENRY WHITMAN 89

stimulus to the acts of the higher epistolary activity and
correspondential amicality in you - - a fact for which I have
(occasional) reason to be duly grateful. So here, in the
cool darkness of my road-side "sitting-room," with no pen
in the house, with the soft tap of the carpenter's hammer
and the pensive scrape of the distant wood-saw stealing
through the open wire-netting door, along with the fra-
grant air of the morning woods, I get stimulus responsive,
and send you penciled return. Yes, the daylight that now
seems shining through the Dreyfus case is glorious, and if
the President only gets his back up a bit, and mows down
the whole gang of Satan, or as much of it as can be
touched, it will perhaps be a great day for the distracted
France. I mean it may be one of those moral crises that
become starting points and high-water marks and leave tra-
ditions and rallying cries and new forces behind them. One
thing is certain, that no other alternative form of govern-
ment possible to France in this century could have stood
the strain as this democracy seems to be standing it.

Apropos of which, a word about YVoodberry's book.1 I
did n't know him to be that kind of a creature at all. The
essays are grave and noble in the extreme. I hail another
American author. They can't be popular, and for cause.
The respect of him for the Queen's English, the classic
leisureliness and explicitness, which give so rare a dignity
to his style, also take from it that which our generation
seems to need, the sudden word, the unmediated transition,
the flash of perception that makes reasonings unnecessary.
Poor Woodberry, so high, so true, so good, so original in his
total make-up, and yet so unoriginal if you take him spot-
wise — and therefore so ineffective. His paper on Democ-
racy is very fine indeed, though somewhat too abstract.

1 G. E. Woodberry: The Heart of Man; 1899.

9o LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1899

I have n't yet read the first and last essays in the book,
which I shall buy and keep, and even send a word of gratu-
lation to the author for it.

As for me, my bed is made: I am against bigness and
greatness in all their forms, and with the invisible molec-
ular moral forces that work from individual to individual,
stealing in through the crannies of the world like so many
soft rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, and yet
rending the hardest monuments of man's pride, if you give
them time. The bigger the unit you deal with, the hollower,
the more brutal, the more mendacious is the life displayed.
So I am against all big organizations as such, national ones
first and foremost; against all big successes and big results;
and in favor of the eternal forces of truth which always
work in the individual and immediately unsuccessful way,
under-dogs always, till history comes, after they are long
dead, and puts them on the top. - ■ You need take no notice
of these ebullitions of spleen, which are probably quite un-
intelligible to anyone but myself. Ever your

W.J.

When the College term ended in June, 1899, the sailing
date of the European steamer on which James had taken
passage for his wife and daughter and himself was still
three weeks away. He turned again to the Adirondack
Lodge and there persuaded himself, to his intense satisfac-
tion, that if he walked slowly and alone, so that there was
no temptation to talk while walking, or to keep on when he
felt like stopping, he could still spend several hours a day
on the mountain sides without inconvenience to his heart.
But one afternoon he took a wrong path and did not dis-
cover his mistake until he had gone so far that it seemed
safer to go on than to turn back. So he kept on. But the

Aet.57\ LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES 91

"trail" he was following was not the one he supposed it to
be and led him farther and farther. He fainted twice;
it grew dark; but having neither food, coat, nor matches,
he stumbled along until at last he came out on the Keene
Valley road and, at nearly eleven o'clock at night, reached
a house where he could get food and a conveyance.

He ought to have avoided all exertion for weeks there-
after, but he tried again to make light of what had occurred,
and, on getting back to Cambridge, spent a very active
few days over final arrangements for his year of absence.
When his boat had sailed and the stimulus which his last
duties supplied had been withdrawn, he began to discover
what condition he was in.

XIII

i899_I9°2

Two years of Illness in Europe — Retirement from Active
Duty at Harvard — The First and Second Series of
the Gifford Lectures

When James sailed for Hamburg on July 15, he planned
quite definitely to devote the summer to rest and the treat-
ment of his heart, then to write out the GifFord Lectures
during the winter, and to deliver them by the following
spring; and, happily, could not foresee that he was to spend
nearly two years in exile and idleness. For nearly six years
he had driven himself beyond the true limits of his strength.
Now it became evident that the strain of his second over-
exertion in the Adirondacks had precipitated a complete
collapse. He had been advised during the winter to go to
Nauheim for a course of baths. But when he got there,
the eminent specialists who examined his heart ignored his
nervous prostration. He was doubtless a difficult patient
to diagnose or prescribe for. Matters went from bad to
worse; little by little all his plans had to be abandoned.
A year went by, and a return to regular work in Cambridge
was unthinkable. He was no better in the summer of 1900
than when he landed in Germany in July of 1 899. His daugh-
ter had been sent to school in England. The three other
children remained in America. He and Mrs. James moved
about between England, Nauheim, the south of France,
Switzerland and Rome, consulting a specialist in one place
or trying the baths or the climate in another — with how

1 899-1902] LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES

much homesickness, and with how much courage none the
less, the letters will indicate.

His only systematic reading was a persistent, though
frequently intermitted, exploration of religious biographies
and the literature of religious conversion, in preparation for
the Gifford Lectures. During the second year he managed
to get one course of these lectures written out. Not until
he had delivered them in Edinburgh, in May, 1901, did he
know that he had turned the corner and feel as if he had
begun to live again.

Every letter that came to him from his family and friends
at home was comforting beyond measure, and he poured
out a stream of acknowledgment in long replies, which he
dictated to Mrs. James. His own writing was usually
limited to jottings in a note-book and to post-cards. He
always had a fountain-pen and a few post-cards in his pocket,
and often, when sitting in a chair in the open air, or at a
little table in one of the outdoor restaurants that abound
in Nauheim and in southern Europe, he would compress
more news and messages into one of these little missives
than most men ever get into a letter. A few of his friends
at home divined his situation, and were at pains to write
him regularly and fully. Letters that follow show how
grateful he was for such devotion.

In this state of enforced idleness he browsed through
newspapers and journals more than he had before or than
he ever did again, and so his letters contained more comments
on daily events. It will be clear that what was happening
did not always please him. He was an individualist and a
liberal, both by temperament and by reason of having grown
up with the generation which accepted the doctrines of the
laissez-faire school in a thoroughgoing way. The Philip-

94 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1899

pine policy of the McKinley administration seemed to him
a humiliating desertion of the principles that America had
fought for in the Revolution and the War of Emancipation.
The military occupation of the Philippines, described by
the President as "benevolent assimilation," and what he
once called the "cold pot-grease of McKinley's eloquence"
rilled him with loathing. He saw the Republican Party in
the light in which Mr. Dooley portrayed it when he repre-
sented its leaders as praying "that Providence might remain
under the benevolent influence of the present administra-
tion." When McKinley and Roosevelt were nominated by
the Republicans in 1900, he called them "a combination of
slime and grit, soap and sand, that ought to scour anything
away, even the moral sense of the country." He was ready
to vote for Bryan if there were no other way of turning out
the administration responsible for the history of our first
years in the Philippines, "although it would doubtless have
been a premature victory of a very mongrel kind of reform."
In the same way, the cant with which many of the sup-
porters of England's program in South Africa extolled the
Boer War in the British press provoked his irony. The up-
roar over the Dreyfus case was at its height. The "intel-
lectuels," as they were called in France, the "Little Eng-
enders" as they were nicknamed in England, and the
Anti-Imperialists in his own country had his entire sym-
pathy. The state of mind of a member of the liberal
minority, observing the phase of history that was disclosing
itself at the end of the century, is admirably indicated in
his correspondence.

Miss Pauline Goldmark, next addressed, and her family
were in the habit of spending their summers in Keene Valley,
where they had a cottage that was not far from the Putnam

Aet.57\ TO MISS PAULINE GOLDMARK 95

Shanty. James had often joined forces with them for a day's
climb when he was staying at the Shanty. The reader will
recall that it was their party that he had joined on Mt.
Marcy the year before.

To Miss Pauline Goldmark.

Bad-Nauheim, Aug. 12, 1899.

My dear Pauline, — I am afraid we are stuck, here till
the latter half of September. Once a donkey, always a
donkey; at the Lodge in June, after some slow walks which
seemed to do me no harm at all, I drifted one day up to the
top of Marcy, and then (thanks to the Trail Improvement
Society!) found myself in the Johns Brook Valley instead
of on the Lodge trail back; and converted what would have
been a three-hours' downward saunter into a seven-hours'
scramble, emerging in Keene Valley at 10.15 p.m. This
did me no good — quite the contrary; so I have come to
Nauheim just in time. My carelessness was due to the
belief that there was only one trail in the Lodge direction,
so I did n't attend particularly, and when I found myself off
the track (the trail soon stopped) I thought I was going
to South Meadow, and did n't reascend. Anyhow I was an
ass, and you ought to have been along to steer me straight.
I fear we shall ascend no more acclivities together. "Bent
is the tree that should have grown full straight!" You
have no idea of the moral repulsiveness of this Curort life.
Everybody fairly revelling in disease, and abandoning
themselves to it with a sort of gusto. "Heart," "heart,"
"heart," the sole topic of attention and conversation. As a
"phase," however, one ought to be able to live through it,
and the extraordinary nerve-rest, crawling round as we do,
is beneficial. Man is never satisfied! Perhaps I shall be
when the baths, etc., have had their effect. We go then

96 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1899

straight to England. — I do hope that you are all getting
what you wish in Switzerland, and that for all of you the
entire adventure is proving golden. Mrs. James sends her
love, and I am, as always, yours most affectionately,

Wm. James.

To Mrs. E. P. Gibbens.

Villa Luise, Bad-Nauheim, Aug. 22, 1899.

Darling Belle-Mere, — The day seems to have come for
another letter to you, though my fingers are so cold that
I can hardly write. We have had a most conveniently
dry season — convenient in that it does n't coop us up in
the house — but a deal of cloud and cold. Today is sunny
but frigid — like late October. Altogether the difference
of weather is very striking. European weather is stagnant
and immovable. It is as if it got stuck, and needed a kick
to start it; and although it is doubtless better for the nerves
than ours, I find my soul thinking most kindly from this
distance of our glorious quick passionate American climate,
with its transparency and its impulsive extremes. This
weather is as if fed on solid pudding. We inhabit one
richly and heavily furnished bedroom, 21 x 14, with good
beds and a balcony, and are rapidly making up for all our
estrangement, locally speaking, in the past. It is a great
"nerve-rest," though the listlessness that goes with all
nerve-rest makes itself felt. Alice seems very well. . . .
The place has wonderful adaptation to its purposes in the
possession of a vast park with noble trees and avenues and
incessant benches for rest; restaurants with out-of-door
tables everywhere in sight; music morning, afternoon and
night; and charming points to go to out of town. Cab-
fare is cheap. But nothing else. . . . The Gifford lectures
are in complete abeyance. I have word from Seth that

Act.57\ TO MRS. E. P. GIBBENS 97

under the circumstances the Academic Senate will be sure to
grant me any delay or indulgence I may ask for; so this re-
lieves tension. I can make nothing out yet about my heart.
... So I try to take long views and not fuss about tem-
porary feelings, though I dare say I keep dear Alice worried
enough by the fuss I imagine myself ?wt to make. It is a
loathsome world, this medical world; and I confess that
the thought of another six weeks here next year does n't
exhilarate me, in spite of the decency of all our physical
conditions. I still remain faithful to Irving St. (95 and
107),1 Chocorua, Silver Lake, and Keene Valley!

We get almost no syllable of American news, in spite
of the fact that we take the London "Chronicle." Pray
send the "Nation" and the "Literary Digest." Don't
send the "Sciences" as heretofore. Let them accumulate.
I think that after reception of this you had better address
us care of H. J., Rye, Sussex. We shall probably be off
by the 10th or 12th of Sept. I hope that public opinion
is gathering black against the Philippine policy — in spite
of my absence! I hope that Salter will pitch in well in the
fall. The still blacker nightmare of a Dreyfus case hangs
over us; and there is little time in the day save for reading
the "Figaro's" full reports of the trial. Like all French
happenings, it is as if they were edited expressly for liter-
ary purpose. Every "witness" so-called has a power of
statement equal to that of a first-class lawyer; and the
various human types that succeed each other, exhibiting
their several peculiarities in full blossom, make the thing
like a novel. Esterhazy seems to me the great hero. How
Shakespeare would have enjoyed such a fantastic scoun-
drel,— knowing all the secrets, saying what he pleases,
mystifying all Europe, leading the whole French army

1 James's house was number 95, his mother-in-law's number 107.

98 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1899

(except apparently Picquart) by the nose, — a regular Shake-
spearean type of villain, with an insane exuberance of
rhetoric and fancy about his vanities and hatreds, that
literature has never given yet. It would seem incredible
that the Court-Martial should condemn. Henry was evi-
dently the spy, employed by Esterhazy, and afterwards Du
Paty helped their machinations, in order not to stultify his
own record at the original trial — at least this seems the
plausible theory. The older generals seem merely to have
been passive connivers, stupidly and obstinately holding
to the original official mistake rather than surrender under
fire. And such is the prestige of caste-opinion, such the
solidity of the professional spirit, that, incredible as it may
seem, it is still quite probable that the officers will obey the
lead of their superiors, and condemn Dreyfus again. The
President, Jouaust, who was supposed to be impartial, is
showing an apparently bad animus against Picquart. P. is
a real hero — a precious possession for any country. He
ought to be made Minister of War; though that would
doubtless produce a revolution. I suppose that Loubet will
pardon Dreyfus immediately if he is recondemned. Then
Dreyfus, and perhaps Loubet, will be assassinated by some
Anti-Semite, and who knows what will follow? But be-
fore you get this, you will know far more about the trial
than I can tell you.

We long for news from the boys — not a word from Billy
since he left Tacoma. I am glad their season promises
to be shorter! Enough is as good as a feast! What a
scattered lot we are! I hope that Margaret will be happy
in Montreal. As for you in your desolation, I could almost
weep for you. My only advice is that you should cling to
Aleck as to a life-preserver. I trust you got the $200 I
told Higginson to send you. I am mortified beyond meas-

Aet.57\ TO WILLIAM M. SALTER

ure by that overdrawn bank account, and do not understand
it at all.

Oceans of love from your affectionate son,

William.

To William M. Salter.

Bad-Nauheim, Sept. 11, 1899.
Dear Mackintire, — The incredible has happened, and
Dreyfus, without one may say a single particle of positive
evidence that he was guilty, has been condemned again.
The French Republic, which seemed about to turn the most
dangerous corner in her career and enter on the line of
political health, laying down the finest set of political
precedents in her history to serve as standards for future
imitation and habit, has slipped Hell-ward and all the
forces of Hell in the country will proceed to fresh excesses
of insolence. But I don't believe the game is lost. "Les
intellectuels," thanks to the Republic, are now aggressively
militant as they never were before, and will grow stronger
and stronger; so we may hope. I have sent you the
"Figaro" daily; but of course the reports are too long for
you to have read through. The most grotesque thing about
the whole trial is the pretension of awful holiness, of semi-
divinity in the diplomatic documents and waste-paper-
basket scraps from the embassies — a farce kept up to the
very end — - these same documents being, so far as they
were anything (and most of them were nothing), mere rec-
ords of treason, lying, theft, bribery, corruption, and every
crime on the part of the diplomatic agents. Either the
German and Italian governments will now publish or not
publish all the details of their transactions - - give the exact
documents meant by the bordereaux and the exact names
of the French traitors. If they do not, there will be only

o7586

ioo LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1899

two possible explanations: either Dreyfus's guilt, or the
pride of their own sacrosanct etiquette. As it is scarcely
conceivable that Dreyfus can have been guilty, their silences
will be due to the latter cause. (Of course it can't be due
to what they owe in honor to Esterhazy and whoever their
other allies and servants may have been. E. is safe over
the border, and a pension for his services will heal all his
wounds. Any other person can quickly be put in similar
conditions of happiness.) And they and Esterhazy will
then be exactly on a par morally, actively conspiring to
have an innocent man bear the burden of their own sins.
By their carelessness with the documents they got Dreyfus
accused, and now they abandon him, for the sake of their
own divine etiquette.

The breath of the nostrils of all these big institutions is
crime — that is the long and short of it. We must thank
God for America; and hold fast to every advantage of our
position. Talk about our corruption! It is a mere fly-
speck of superficiality compared with the rooted and per-
manent forces of corruption that exist in the European
states. The only serious permanent force of corruption in
America is party spirit. All the other forces are shifting
like the clouds, and have no partnerships with any per-
manently organized ideal. Millionaires and syndicates
have their immediate cash to pay, but they have no in-
trenched prestige to work with, like the church sentiment,
the army sentiment, the aristocracy and royalty sentiment,
which here can be brought to bear in favor of every kind of
individual and collective crime — appealing not only to
the immediate pocket of the persons to be corrupted, but
to the ideals of their imagination as well. . . . My dear
Mack, we "intellectuals" in America must all work to keep
our precious birthright of individualism, and freedom from

Aet.57\ TO WILLIAM M. SALTER 101

these institutions. Every great institution is perforce a
means of corruption — whatever good it may also do. Only
in the free personal relation is full ideality to be found.—
I have vomited all this out upon you in the hope that it
may wake a responsive echo. One must do something to work
off the effect of the Dreyfus sentence.

I rejoice immensely in the purchase [on our behalf] of
the two pieces of land [near Chocorua], and pine for the
day when I can get back to see them. If all the same to
you, I wish that you would buy Burke's in your name, and
Mother-in-law Forrest's in her name. But let this be
exactly as each of you severally prefers.

We leave here in a couple of days, I imagine. I am bet-
ter; but I can't tell how much better for a few weeks yet.
I hope that you will smite the ungodly next winter. What
a glorious gathering together of the forces for the great
fight there will be. It seems to me as if the proper tac-
tics were to pound McKinley — put the whole responsi-
bility on him. It is he who by his purely drifting "non-
entanglement" policy converted a splendid opportunity into
this present necessity of a conquest of extermination. It is
he who has warped us from our continuous national habit,
which, if we repudiate him, it will not be impossible to
resume.

Affectionately thine, Mary's, Aleck's, Dinah's, Augusta's,1
and everyone's,

W.J.

P.S. Damn it, America does n't know the meaning of
the word corruption compared with Europe! Corruption
is so permanently organized here that it is n't thought of
as such — it is so transient and shifting in America as to
make an outcry whenever it appears.

1 Augusta was the house-maid; Dinah, a bull-terrier.

io2 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1899

To Miss Frances R. Morse.

Bad-Nauheim, Sept. 17, 1899.

... In two or three days more I shall be discharged
(in very decent shape, I trust) and after ten days or so of
rigorously prescribed "Nachkur" in the cold and rain of
Switzerland (we have seen the sun only in short but en-
trancing glimpses since Sept. 1, and you know what bad
weather is when it once begins in Europe), we shall pick
up our Peggy at Vevey, and proceed to Lamb House, Rye,
uber Paris, with all possible speed. God bless the American
climate, with its transparent, passionate, impulsive variety
and headlong fling. There are deeper, slower tones of
earnestness and moral gravity here, no doubt, but ours is
more like youth and youth's infinite and touching promise.
God bless America in general! Conspuez McKinley and
the Republican party and the Philippine war, and the
Methodists, and the voices, etc., as much as you please,
but bless the innocence. Talk of corruption! We don't
know what the word corruption means at home, with our
improvised and shifting agencies of crude pecuniary bribery,
compared with the solidly intrenched and permanently
organized corruptive geniuses of monarchy, nobility, church,
army, that penetrate the very bosom of the higher kind as
well as the lower kind of people in all the European states
(except Switzerland) and sophisticate their motives away
from the impulse to straightforward handling of any simple
case. Temoin the Dreyfus case! But no matter! Of all
the forms of mental crudity, that of growing earnest over
international comparisons is probably the most childish.
Every nation has its ideals which are a dead secret to other
nations, and it has to develop in its own way, in touch with
them. It can only be judged by itself. If each of us does
as well as he can in his own sphere at home, he will do all

Aet. 57\ TO MRS. HENRY WHITMAN 103

he can do; that is why I hate to remain so long abroad. . . .

We have been having a visit from an extraordinary Pole
named Lutoslawski, 36 years old, author of philosophical
writings in seven different languages,— "Plato's Logic,"
in English (Longmans) being his chief work, — and knower
of several more, handsome, and to the last degree genial.
He has a singular philosophy - - the philosophy of friend-
ship. He takes in dead seriousness what most people
admit, but only half-believe, viz., that we are Souls (Zoolss,
he pronounces it), that souls are immortal, and agents of
the world's destinies, and that the chief concern of a soul
is to get ahead by the help of other souls with whom it can
establish confidential relations. So he spends most of his
time writing letters, and will send 8 sheets of reply to a
post-card — that is the exact proportion of my correspond-
ence with him. Shall I rope you in, Fanny? He has a
great chain of friends and correspondents in all the countries
of Europe. The worst of them is that they think a secret
imparted to one may at his or her discretion become, de
proche en proche, the property of all. He is a wunderlicher
Mensch: abstractly his scheme is divine, but there is some-
thing on which I can't yet just lay my defining finger
that makes one feel that there is some need of the corrective
and critical and arresting judgment in his manner of carry-
ing it out. These Slavs seem to be the great radical livers-
out of their theories. Good-bye, dearest Fanny. . . .

Your affectionate

W.J.

To Mrs. Henry Whitman.

Lamb House, Rye, Oct. 5, 1899.

Dear Mrs. Whitman, — You see where at last we have
arrived, at the end of the first etape of this pilgrimage — the

io4 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1899

second station of the cross, so to speak — with the Con-
tinent over, and England about to begin. The land is
bathed in greenish-yellow light and misty drizzle of rain.
The little town, with its miniature brick walls and houses
and nooks and coves and gardens, makes a curiously vivid
and quaint picture, alternately suggesting English, Dutch,
and Japanese effects that one has seen in pictures — all
exceedingly tiny (so that one wonders how families ever
could have been reared in most of the houses) and neat and
zierlich to the last degree. Refinement in architecture
certainly consists in narrow trim and the absence of heavy
mouldings. Modern Germany is incredibly bad from that
point of view — much worse, apparently, than America.
But the German people are a good safe fact for great powers
to be intrusted to — earnest and serious, and pleasant to
be with, as we found them, though it was humiliating enough
to find how awfully imperfect were one's powers of con-
versing in their language. French not much better. I re-
member nothing of this extreme mortification in old times,
and am inclined to think that it is due less to loss of ability
to speak, than to the fact that, as you grow older, you speak
better English, and expect more of yourself in the way of
accomplishment. I am sure you spoke no such English as
now, in the seventies, when you came to Cambridge! And
how could I, as yet untrained by conversation with you?

Seven mortal weeks did we spend at the Curort^ Nauheim,
for an infirmity of the heart which I contracted, apparently,
not much more than a year ago, and which now must be
borne, along with the rest of the white man's burden, until
additional visits to Nauheim have removed it altogether
for ordinary practical purposes. N. was a sweetly pretty
spot, but I longed for more activity. A glorious week in
Switzerland, solid in its sometimes awful, sometimes beefy

Aet. 57] TO MRS. HENRY WHITMAN 105

beautv; two davs in Paris, where I could gladly have staved
the winter out, merely for the fun of the sight of the intelli-
gent and interesting streets; then hither, where H. J. has
a real little bijou of a house and garden, and seems ab-
solutely adapted to his environment, and very well and
contented in the leisure to write and to read which the place
affords.

In a few days we go almost certainly to the said H. J.'s
apartment, still unlet, in London, where we shall in all
probability stay till January, the world forgetting, by
the world forgot, or till such later date as shall witness the
completion of the awful Gifford job, at which I have not
been able to write one line since last January. I long for
the definitive settlement and ability to get to work. I am
very glad indeed, too, to be in an English atmosphere again.
Of course it will conspire better with my writing tasks, and
after all it is more congruous with one's nature and one's
inner ideals. Still, one loves America above all things, for
her youth, her greenness, her plasticity, innocence, good
intentions, friends, everything. Je veux que mes cendres
reposent sur les bords du Charles, au milieu de ce bon
peuple de Harvarr Squerre que j'ai tant aime. That is
what I say, and what Napoleon B. would have said, had
his life been enriched by your and my educational and other
experiences — poor man, he knew too little of life, had
never even heard of us, whilst we have heard of him!

Seriously speaking, though, I believe that international
comparisons are a great waste of time — at any rate, in-
ternational judgments and passings of sentence are. Every
nation has ideals and difficulties and sentiments which are
an impenetrable secret to one not of the blood. Let them
alone, let each one work out its own salvation on its own
lines. They talk of the decadence of France. The hatreds^

106 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1899

and the coups de gueule of the newspapers there are awful.
But I doubt if the better ideals were ever so aggressively
strong; and I fancy it is the fruit of the much decried re-
publican regime that they have become so. My brother
represents English popular opinion as less cock-a-whoop for
war than newspaper accounts would lead one to imagine;
but I don't know that he is in a good position forjudging.
I hope if they do go to war that the Boers will give them
fits, and I heartily emit an analogous prayer on behalf of
the Philippinos.

I have had pleasant news of Beverly, having had letters
both from Fanny Morse and Paulina Smith. I hope that
your summer has been a good one, that work has prospered
and that Society has been less enervante and more nutritious
for the higher life of the Soul than it sometimes is. We
have met but one person of any accomplishments or inter-
est all summer. But I have managed to read a good deal
about religion, and religious people, and care less for accom-
plishments, except where (as in you) they go with a sancti-
fied heart. Abundance of accomplishments, in an unsanctified
heart, only make one a more accomplished devil.

Good bye, angelic friend! We both send love and best
wishes, both to you and Mr. W7hitman, and I am as ever
yours affectionately,

W.J.

To Thomas Davidson.

34 De Vere Gardens,
London, Nov. 2, 1899.

Dear old T. D., — A recent letter from Margaret Gibbens
says that you have gone to New York in order to undergo
a most "radical operation." I need not say that my
thoughts have been with you, and that I have felt anxiety

Aet.57\ TO THOMAS DAVIDSON 107

mixed with my hopes for you, ever since. I do ind<
hope that, whatever the treatment was, it has gone off with
perfect success, and that by this time you are in the durable
enjoyment of relief, and nerves and everything upon the
upward track. It has always seemed to me that, were I
in a similar plight, I should choose a kill-or-cure operation
rather than anything merely palliative — so poisonous to
one's whole mental and moral being is the irritation and
worry of the complaint. It would truly be a spectacle for
the Gods to see you rising like a phoenix from your ashes
again, and shaking off even the memory of disaster like
dew-drops from a lion's mane, etc. — and I hope the spec-
tacle will be vouchsafed to us men also, and that you will
be presiding over Glenmore as if nothing had happened,
different from the first years, save a certain softening of
your native ferocity of heart, and gentleness towards the
shortcomings of weaker people. Dear old East Hill!1 I
shall never forget the beauty of the morning (it had rained
the night before) when I took my bath in the brook, before
driving down to Westport one day last June.

We got your letter at Nauheim, a sweet safe little place,
made for invalids, to which it took long to reconcile me on
that account. But nous en avons vu bien d'autres depuis,
and from my present retirement in my brother's still unlet
flat (he living at Rye), Nauheim seems to me like New
York for bustle and energy. My heart, in short, has gone
back upon me badly since I was there, and my doctor,
Bezley Thorne, the first specialist here, and a man who
inspires me with great confidence, is trying to tide me over
the crisis, by great quiet, in addition to a dietary of the

1 It will be recalled that Davidson had a summer School of Philosophy at his
place called Glenmore on East Hill, and that East Hill is at one end of Keene Valley.
See also James's essay on Thomas Davidson, "A Knight Errant of the Intellectual
Life," in Memories and Studies.

io8 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1899

strictest sort, and more Nauheim baths, a domicile. Pro-
vided I can only get safely out of the Gifford scrape, the
deluge has leave to come. — Write, dear old T. D., and tell
how you are, and let it be good news if possible. Give
much love to the Warrens, and believe me always affec-
tionately yours,

Wm. James.
The woman thou gavest unto me comes out strong as a
nurse, and treats me much better than I deserve.

To John C. Gray.

[Dictated to Mrs. James]

Lontdon, Nov. 23, 1899.

Dear John, — A week ago I learnt from the "Nation" —
strange to have heard it in no directer way! — that dear old
John Ropes had turned his back on us and all this mortal
tragi-comedy. No sooner does one get abroad than that
sort of thing begins. I am deeply grieved to think of never
seeing or hearing old J. C. R. again, with his manliness,
good-fellowship, and cheeriness, and idealism of the right
sort, and can't hold in any longer from expression. You,
dear John, seem the only fitting person for me to condole
with, for you will miss him most tremendously. Pray write
and tell me some details of the manner of his death. I hope
he did n't suffer much. Write also of your own personal and
family fortunes and give my love to the members of our
dining club collectively and individually, when you next meet.

I have myself been shut up in a sick room for five weeks
past, seeing hardly anyone but my wife and the doctor, a
bad state of the heart being the cause. We shall be at
West Malvern in ten days, where I hope to begin to mend.

Hurrah for Henry Higginson and his gift x to the Uni-

1 A gift which provided for building the "Harvard Union."

Aet.57\ TO MISS FRANCES R. MORSE 109

versity! I think the Club cannot fail to be useful if they
make it democratic enough.

I hope that Roland is enjoying Washington, but not so
far transubstantiated into a politician as to think that
McKinley 5: Co. are the high-water mark of human great-
ness up to date.

John Ropes, more than most men, seems as if he would be
natural to meet again.

Please give our love to Mrs. Gray, and believe me, affec-
tionatelv vours,

YVm. James.

To Miss Frances R. Morse.

Lamb House, Dec. 23, 1899.

Dearest Faxxy, — About a week ago I found myself
thinking a good deal about you.

I may possibly have begun by wondering how it came
that, after showing such a spontaneous tendency towards
that "clandestine correspondence" early in the season, you
should recently, in spite of pathetic news about me, and
direct personal appeals, be showing such great epistolary
reserve. I went on to great lengths about you; and ended
by realizing your existence, and its significance, as it were,
very acutely. I composed a letter to you in my mind,
whilst lying awake, dwelling in a feeling manner on the fact
that human beings are born into this little span of life of
which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies, and
soon their places will know them no more, and yet they
leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation,
to grow as they will by the roadside, expecting them to
"keep" by force of mere inertia; they contribute nothing
empirical to the relation, treating it as something tran-
scendental and metaphysical altogether; whereas in truth

no LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i899

it deserves from hour to hour the most active care and
nurture and devotion. 'There 's that Fanny," thought I,
" the rarest and most precious, perhaps, of all the phenomena
that enter into the circle of my experience. I take her for
granted; I seldom see her — she has never -passed a night in
our house! x and yet of all things she is the one that probably
deserves the closest and most unremitting attention on my
part. This transcendental relation of persons to each other
in the absolute won't do! I must write to Fanny and tell
her, in spite of her deprecations, just how perfect and rare
and priceless a fact I know her existence in this Universe
eternally to be. This very morrow I will dictate such a
letter to Alice." The morrow came, and several days suc-
ceeded, and brought each its impediment with it, so that
letter does n't get written till today. And now Alice, who
had suddenly to take Peggy (who is with us for ten days)
out to see a neighbor's little girl, comes in; so I will give
the pen to her.

[Remainder of letter dictated to Mrs. James]

Sunday, 24th.
Brother Harry and Peggy came in with Alice last even-
ing, so my letter got postponed till this morning. What I
was going to say was this. The day before yesterday we
received in one bunch seven letters from you, dating from
the 20th of October to the 8th of December, and showing
that you, at any rate, had been alive to the duty of actively
nourishing friendship by deeds. . . . Your letters were sent
to Baring Brothers, instead of Brown, Shipley and Co.,
and it was a mercy that we ever got them at all. You are
a great letter-writer inasmuch as your pen flows on, giving
out easily such facts and feelings and thoughts as form the

1 "You have never spent a night under our roof, or eaten a meal in our house!"
This fictitious charge had become the recognized theme of frequent elaborations.

Aet.57\ TO MISS FRANCES R. MORSE in

actual contents of your day, so that one gets a live impres-
sion of concrete reality. My letters, I find, tend to escape
into humorisms, abstractions and flights of fancy, which
are not nutritious things to impart to friends thousands
of miles away who wish to realize the facts of your private
existence. We are now received into the shelter of 11. J.'s
"Lamb House," where we have been a week, having found
West Malvern (where the doctor sent me after my course of
baths) rather too bleak a retreat for the drear-nighted
December. (Heaven be praised! we have just lived down
the solstice after which the year always seems a brighter,
hopefuller thing.) Harry's place is a most exquisite collec-
tion of quaint little stage properties, three quarters of an
acre of brick-walled English garden, little brick courts and
out-houses, old-time kitchen and offices, paneled chambers
and tiled fire-places, but all very simple and on a small
scale. Its host, soon to become its proprietor, leads a very
lonely life but seems in perfect equilibrium therewith,
placing apparently his interest more and more in the opera-
tions of his fancy. His health is good, his face calm, his
spirits equable, and he will doubtless remain here for many
years to come, with an occasional visit to London. He has
spoken of you with warm affection and is grateful for the
letters which you send him in spite of the lapse of years. . . .
I have resigned my Gifford lectureship, but they will un-
doubtedly grant me indefinite postponement. I have also
asked for a second year of absence from Harvard, which of
course will be accorded. If I improve, I may be able to
give my first Gifford course next year. I can do no work
whatsoever at present, but through the summer and halt
through the fall was able to do a good deal of reading in
religious biography. Since July, in fact, my only com-
panions have been saints, most excellent, though sometimes

ii2 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1900

rather lop-sided company. In a general manner I can
see my way to a perfectly bully pair of volumes, the first
an objective study of the "Varieties of Religious Experi-
ence," the second, my own last will and testament, setting
forth the philosophy best adapted to normal religious needs.
I hope I may be spared to get the thing down on paper.
So far my progress has been rather downhill, but the last
couple of days have shown a change which possibly may
be the beginning of better things. I mean to take great
care of myself from this time on. In another week or two
we hope to move to a climate (possibly near Hyeres) where
I may sit more out of doors. Gathering some strength
there, I trust to make for Nauheim in May. If I am bene-
fited there, we shall stay over next winter; otherwise we
return by midsummer. Were Alice not holding the pen,
I should celebrate her unselfish devotion, etc., and were
I not myself dictating, I should celebrate my own uncom-
plaining patience and fortitude. As it is, I leave you to
imagine both. Both are simply beautiful!

. . . There, dear Fanny, this is all I can do today in
return for your seven glorious epistles. Take a heartful of
love and gratitude from both of us. Remember us most
affectionately to your Mother and Mary. Write again soon,
I pray you, but always to Brown, Shipley and Co. Stir up
Jim Putnam to write when he can, and believe me, lovingly

yours,

Wm. James.

To Mrs. Glendower Evans.

[Dictated to Mrs. James]

Costebelle, Hyeres, Jan. 17, 1900.
Dear Bessie, — Don't think that this is the first time
that my spirit has turned towards you since our departure.

Aet.58] TO MRS. GLEN DOWER EVANS 113

Away back in Nauheim I began meaning to write to you,
and although that meaning was " fulfilled " long before
you were born, in Royce's Absolute, yet there was a hitch
about it in the finite which gave me perplexity. I think
that the real reason why I kept finding myself able to dic-
tate letters to other persons --not many, 'tis true-- and
yet postponing ever until next time my letter unto you,
was that my sense of your value was so much greater than
almost anybody else's- - though I would n't have anything
in this construed prejudicial to Fanny Morse. Bowed as
I am by the heaviest of matrimonial chains, ever dependent
for expression on Alice here, how can my spirit move with
perfect spontaneity, or "voice itself" with the careless free-
dom it would wish for in the channels of its choice? I am
sure you understand, and under present conditions of com-
munication anything more explicit might be imprudent.

She has told you correctly all the outward facts. I feel
within a week past as if I might really be taking a turn for
the better, and I know you will be glad.

I have, in the last days, gone so far as to read Royce's
book l from cover to cover, a task made easy by the famil-
iarity of the thought, as well as the flow of the style. It is
a charming production - - it is odd that the adjectives
"charming" and "pretty" emerge so strongly to characterize
my impression. R. has got himself much more organically
together than he ever did before, the result being, in its
ensemble, a highly individual and original Weltanschauung,
well-fitted to be the storm-centre of much discussion, and
to form a wellspring of suggestion and education for the next
generation of thought in America. But it makes youthful
anew the paradox of philosophy — so trivial and so pon-
derous at once. The book leaves a total effect on you like

1 The World and the Individual, vol. I. Mrs. Evans was inclined to contend for
Royce's philosophy.

ii4 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1900

a picture — a summary impression of charm and grace as
light as a breath; yet to bring forth that light nothing less
than Royce's enormous organic temperament and tech-
nical equipment, and preliminary attempts, were required.
The book consolidates an impression which I have never
before got except by glimpses, that Royce's system is through
and through to be classed as a light production. It is a
charming, romantic sketch; and it is only by handling it
after the manner of a sketch, keeping it within sketch tech-
nique, that R. can make it very impressive. In the few places
where he tries to grip and reason close, the effect is rather
disastrous, to my mind. But I do think of Royce now in a
more or less settled way as primarily a sketcher in philos-
ophy. Of course the sketches of some masters are worth
more than the finished pictures of others. But stop! if
this was the kind of letter I meant to write to you, it is no
wonder that I found myself unable to begin weeks ago.
My excuse is that I only finished the book two hours ago,
and my mind was full to overflowing.

Next Monday we are expecting to move into the neigh-
boring Chateau de Carqueiranne, which my friend Pro-
fessor Richet of Paris has offered conjointly to us and the
Fred Myerses, who will soon arrive. A whole country
house in splendid grounds and a perfect Godsend under the
conditions. If I can only bear the talking to the Myerses
without too much fatigue! But that also I am sure will
come. Our present situation is enviable enough. A large
bedroom with a balcony high up on the vast hotel facade;
a terrace below it graveled with white pebbles containing
beds of palms and oranges and roses; below that a down-
ward sloping garden full of plants and winding walks and
seats; then a wide hillside continuing southward to the
plain below, with its gray-green olive groves bordered by

Aet.5S\ TO DICKINSON S. MILLER 115

great salt marshes with salt works on them, shut in from
the sea by the causeways which lead to a long rocky island,
perhaps three miles away, that limits the middle of our
view due south, and beyond which to the East and West
appears the boundless Mediterranean. But delightful as
this is, there is no place like home; Otis Place is better
than Languedoc and Irving Street than Provence. And
I am sure, dear Bessie, that there is no maid, wife or widow
in either of these countries that is half as good as you. But
here I must absolutely stop; so with a good-night and a
happy New Year to you, I am as ever, affectionately your
friend,

Wm. James.

To Dickinson S. Miller.

[Dictated to Mrs. James]

Hotel d' Albion,
Costebelle, Hyeres, Jan. 18, 1900.

Darling Miller, — Last night arrived your pathetically
sympathetic letter in comment on the news you had just
received of my dropping out for the present from the active
career. I want you to understand how deeply I value
your unflagging feeling of friendship, and how much we
have been touched by this new expression of it. . . . My
strength and spirits are coming back to me with the open-
air life, and I begin to feel quite differently towards the
future. Even if this amelioration does not develop fast,
it is a check to the deterioration, and shows that curative
forces are still there. I look perfectly well at present, and
that of itself is a very favorable sign. In a couple of weeks
I mean to begin the Gifford lectures, writing, say, a page
a day, and having all next year before me empty, am very
likely to get, at any rate, the first course finished. A letter

n6 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1900

from Seth last night told me that the Committee [on the
Gifford Lectureship] had refused my resignation and simply
shoved my appointment forward by one year. So be of
good cheer, Miller; we shall yet fight the good fight, some-
times side by side, sometimes agin one another, as merrily
as if no interruption had occurred. Show this to Harry,
to whom his mother will write today.

We enjoyed Royce's visit very much, and yesterday I
finished reading his book, which I find perfectly charming
as a composition, though as far as cogent reasoning goes,
it leaks at every joint. It is, nevertheless, a big achieve-
ment in the line of philosophic fancy-work, perhaps the
most important of all except religious fancy-work. He has
got himself together far more intricately than ever before,
and ought, after this, to be recognized by the world accord-
ing to the measure of his real importance. To me, how-
ever, the book has brought about a curious settlement in
my way of classing Royce. In spite of the great technical
freight he carries, and his extraordinary mental vigor, he
belongs essentially among the lighter skirmishers of phi-
losophy. A sketcher and popularizer, not a pile-driver,
foundation-layer, or wall-builder. Within his class, of
course, he is simply magnificent. It all goes with his easy
temperament and rare good-nature in discussion. The
subject is not really vital to him, it is just fancy-work. All
the same I do hope that this book and its successor will
prove a great ferment in our philosophic schools. Only
with schools and living masters can philosophy bloom in a
country, in a generation.

No more, dear Miller, but endless thanks. All you tell
me of yourself deeply interests me. I am deeply sorry about
the eyes. Are you sure it is not a matter for glasses? With
much love from both of us. Your ever affectionate,

W.J.

Aet.58\ TO FRANCIS BOOTT 117

To Francis Boott.

[Dictated to Mrs. James]

Chateau de Carqueiranxe, Jan. 31, 1900.

Dear old Friend,— - Every day for a month past I have
said to Alice, "Today we must get off a letter to Mr. Boott";
but every day the available strength was less than the call
upon it. Yours of the 28th December reached us duly at
Rye and was read at the cheerful little breakfast table. I
must say that you are the only person who has caught the
proper tone for sympathizing with an invalid's feelings.
Everyone else says, "We are glad to think that you are by
this time in splendid condition, richly enjoying your rest,
and having a great success at Edinburgh" — this, where
what one craves is mere pity for one's unmerited sufferings!
You say, "it is a great disappointment, more I should think
than you can well bear. I wish you could give up the whole
affair and turn your prow toward home." That, dear Sir, is
the proper note to strike — la voix du coeur qui seul au coeur
arrive; and I thank you for recognizing that it is a case of
agony and patience. I, for one, should be too glad to turn
my prow homewards, in spite of all our present privileges
in the way of simplified life, and glorious climate. What
would n't I give at this moment to be partaking of one of
your recherches dejeuners a la fourchette, ministered to by
the good Kate. From the bed on which I lie I can "sense"
it as if present - - the succulent roast pork, the apple sauce,
the canned asparagus, the cranberry pie, the dates, the "To
Kalon," x — above all the rire en barbe of the ever-youthful
host. Will they ever come again?

Don't understand me to be disparaging our present
meals which, cooked by a broadbuilt sexagenarian Pro-

1 The name of an American claret which his correspondent had "discovered"
and in which it also pleased James to find merit.

n8 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1900

vengale, leave nothing to be desired. Especially is the
fish good and the artichokes, and the stewed lettuce. Our
commensaux, the Myerses, form a good combination. The
house is vast and comfortable and the air just right for one
in my condition, neither relaxing nor exciting, and floods of
sunshine.

Do you care much about the war? For my part I think
Jehovah has run the thing about right, so far; though on
utilitarian grounds it will be very likely better if the English
win. When we were at Rye an interminable controversy
raged about a national day of humiliation and prayer. I
wrote to the "Times" to suggest, in my character of travel-
ing American, that both sides to the controversy might be
satisfied by a service arranged on principles suggested by
the anecdote of the Montana settler who met a grizzly so
formidable that he fell on his knees, saying, "O Lord, I
hain't never yet asked ye for help, and ain't agoin' to ask
ye for none now. But for pity's sake, O Lord, don't help
the bear." The solemn "Times" never printed my letter
and thus the world lost an admirable epigram. You, I
know, will appreciate it.

Mrs. Gibbens speaks with great pleasure of your friendly
visits, and I should think you might find Mrs. Merriman
good company. I hope you are getting through the winter
without any bronchial trouble, and I hope that neither
the influenza nor the bubonic plague has got to Cambridge
yet. The former is devastating Europe. If you see dear
Dr. Driver, give him our warmest regards. One ought
to stay among one's own people. I seem to be mending —
though very slowly, and the least thing knocks me down.
This noon I am still in bed, a little too much talking with
the Myerses yesterday giving me a strong pectoral distress
which is not yet over. This dictation begins to hurt me,

Aet.58\ TO HUGO MUNSTERBERG u9

so I will stop. My spirits now are first-rate, which is a
great point gained.

Good-bye, dear old man! We both send our warmest love
and are, ever affectionately yours,

YVm. James.

To Hugo Mihisterberg.

Carqueiranne, March 13, 1900.

Dear Munsterberg, — Your letter of the 7th "ult."
was a most delightful surprise — all but the part of it which
told of your being ill again — and of course the news of poor
Solomons's death was a severe shock. ... As regards Sol-
omons, it is pathetically tragic, and I hope that you will send
me full details. There was something so lonely and self-sus-
taining about poor little S., that to be snuffed out like this
before he had fairly begun to live in the eyes of the world
adds a sort of tragic dramatic unity to his young career.
Certainly the keenest intellect we ever had, and one of the
loftiest characters! But there was always a mysterious
side to me about his mind: he appeared so critical and de-
structive, and yet kept alluding all the while to ethical and
religious ideals of his own which he wished to live for, and
of which he never vouchsafed a glimpse to anyone else. He
was the only student I have ever had of whose criticisms I
felt afraid: and that was partly because I never quite under-
stood the region from which they came, and with the au-
thority of which he spoke. His surface thoughts, however,
of a scientific order, were extraordinarily treffend and clearly
expressed; in fact, the way in which he went to the heart
of a subject in a few words was masterly. Of course he
must have left, apart from his thesis, a good deal of MS.
fit for publication. I have not seen our philosophical
periodicals since leaving home. Have any parts of his

i2o LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1900

thesis already appeared? If not, the whole thing should be
published as "Monograph Supplement" to the "Psycho-
logical Review," and his papers gone over to see what else
there may be. An adequate obituary of him ought also to
be written. Who knew him most intimately? I think the
obituary and a portrait ought also to be posted in the labo-
ratory. Can you send me the address of his mother? — I
think his father is dead. I should also like to write a word

about him to Miss S , if you can give me her address.

If we had foreseen this early end to poor little Solomons, how
much more we should have made of him, and how con-
siderate we should have been!

It pleases me much to think of so many other good young
fellows, as you report them, in the laboratory this year.
How many candidates for Ph.D.? How glad I am to be
clear of those examinations, certainly the most disagreeable
part of the year's work. . . .

To George H. Palmer.

Carqueiranne, Apr. 2, 1900.

Glorious old Palmer, — I had come to the point of
feeling that my next letter must be to you, when in comes
your delightful "favor" of the 1 8th, with all its news, its
convincing clipping, and its enclosures from Bakewell and
Sheldon. I have had many impulses to write to Bakewell,
but they have all aborted — my powers being so small and
so much in Anspruch genommen by correspondence already
under way. I judge him to be well and happy. What
think you of his wife? I suppose she is no relation of yours.
I should n't think any of your three candidates would do
for that conventional Bryn Mawr. She stoneth the proph-
ets, and I wish she would get X and get stung. He

made a deplorable impression on me many years ago. The

Aet.5S\ TO GEORGE H. PALMER 121

only comment I heard when I gave my address there lately
(the last one in my "Talks") was that A— -had hoped
for something more technical and psychological! Never-
theless, some good girls seem to come out at Bryn Mawr.
I am awfully sorry that Perry is out of place. Unless he
gets something good, it seems to me that we ought to get
him for a course in Kant. He is certainly the soundest,
most normal all-round man of our recent production. Your
list for next year interests me muchly. I am glad of Miin-
sterberg's and Santayana's new courses, and hope they '11
be good. I 'm glad you 're back in Ethics and glad that
Royce has "Epistemology" — portentous name, and small
result, in my opinion, but a substantive discipline which
ought, par le temps qui court, to be treated with due for-
mality. I look forward with eagerness to his new volume.1
What a colossal feat he has performed in these two years —
all thrown in by the way, as it were.

Certainly Gifford lectures are a good institution for stim-
ulating production. They have stimulated me so far to pro-
duce two lectures of wishy-washy generalities. What is that
for a "showing" in six months of absolute leisure? The sec-
ond lecture used me up so that I must be off a good while
again.

No! dear Palmer, the best I can possibly hope for at Cam-
bridge after my return is to be able to carry one half-course.
So make all calculations accordingly. As for Windelband,
how can I ascertain anything except by writing to him?
I shall see no one, nor go to any University environment.
My impression is that we must go in for budding genius,
if we seek a European. If an American, we can get a som-
mitel But who? in either case? Verily there is room at

1 The second volume of The World and the Individual. (Gifford Lectures at the
University of Aberdeen.)

i22 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1900

the top. S seems to be the only Britisher worth think-
ing of. I imagine we had better train up our own men.

A , B , C , either would no doubt do, especially

A if his health improves. D is our last card, from

the point of view of policy, no doubt, but from that of inner
organization it seems to me that he may have too many
points of coalescence with both Miinsterberg and Royce,
especially the latter.

The great event in my life recently has been the reading
of Santayana's book.1 Although I absolutely reject the
platonism of it, I have literally squealed with delight at the
imperturbable perfection with which the position is laid down
on page after page; and grunted with delight at such a
thickening up of our Harvard atmosphere. If our students
now could begin really to understand what Royce means
with his voluntaristic-pluralistic monism, what Miinsterberg
means with his dualistic scientiflcism and platonism, what
Santayana means by his pessimistic platonism (I wonder if he
and Mg. have had any close mutally encouraging intercourse
in this line?), what I mean by my crass pluralism, what you
mean by your ethereal idealism, that these are so many
religions, ways of fronting life, and worth fighting for, we
should have a genuine philosophic universe at Harvard.
The best condition of it would be an open conflict and
rivalry of the diverse systems. (Alas! that I should be out
of it, just as my chance begins !) The world might ring with
the struggle, if we devoted ourselves exclusively to belabor-
ing each other.

I now understand Santayana, the man. I never under-
stood him before. But what a perfection of rottenness in a
philosophy! I don't think I ever knew the anti-realistic
view to be propounded with so impudently superior an air.

1 Interpretations of Poetry and Religion. New York, 1900.

Aet.5S\ TO GEORGE H. PALMER n3

It is refreshing to see a representative ot moribund Latinity
rise up and administer such reproof to us barbarians in the
hour of our triumph. I imagine Santayana's style to be
entirely spontaneous. But it has curious classic echoes.
Whole pages of pure Hume in style; others of pure Renan.
Nevertheless, how fantastic a philosophy! - as if the
"world of values" were independent of existence. It is
only as being, that one thing is better than another. The
idea of darkness is as good as that of light, as ideas. There
is more value in light's being. And the exquisite consola-
tion, when you have ascertained the badness of all fact, in
knowing that badness is inferior to goodness, to the end —
it only rubs the pessimism in. A man whose egg at break-
fast turns out always bad says to himself, "Well, bad and
good are not the same, anyhow." That is just the trouble!
Moreover, when you come down to the facts, what do your
harmonious and integral ideal systems prove to be? in the
concrete? Always things burst by the growing content of
experience. Dramatic unities; laws of versification; eccle-
siastical systems; scholastic doctrines. Bah! Give me
Walt Whitman and Browning ten times over, much as the
perverse ugliness of the latter at times irritates me, and
intensely as I have enjoyed Santayana's attack. The bar-
barians are in the line of mental growth, and those who do
insist that the ideal and the real are dynamically continuous
are those by whom the world is to be saved. But I 'm
nevertheless delighted that the other view, always existing
in the world, should at last have found so splendidly imper-
tinent an expression among ourselves. I have meant to
write to Santayana; but on second thoughts, and to save
myself, I will just ask you to send him this. It saves him
from what might be the nuisance of having to reply, and
on my part it has the advantage of being more free-spoken

i24 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1900

and direct. He is certainly an extraordinarily distingue
writer. Thank him for existing!

As a contrast, read Jack Chapman's " Practical Agitation."
The other pole of thought, and a style all splinters — but a
gospel for our rising generation — I hope it will have its
effect.

Send me your Noble lectures. I don't see how you could
risk it without a MS. If you did fail (which I doubt) you
deserved to. Anyhow the printed page makes everything
good.

I can no more! Adieu! How is Mrs. Palmer this winter?
I hope entirely herself again. You are impartially silent
of her and of my wife! The "Transcript" continues to bless
us. We move from this hospitable roof to the hotel at
Costebelle today. Thence after a fortnight to Geneva,
and in May to Nauheim once more, to be reexamined and
sentenced by Schott. Affectionately yours,

W. J.

To Miss Frances R. Morse.

Costebelle, Apr. 12, 1900.

Dearest Fanny, — Your letters continue to rain down
upon us with a fidelity which makes me sure that, however
it may once have been, now, on the principle of the immortal
Monsieur Perrichon, we must be firmly rooted in your affec-
tions. You can never "throw over" anybody for whom you
have made such sacrifices. All qualms which I might have
in the abstract about the injury we must be inflicting on so
busy a Being by making her, through our complaints of
poverty, agony, and exile, keep us so much "on her mind"
as to tune us up every two or three days by a long letter to
which she sacrifices all her duties to the family and state,
disappear, moreover, when I consider the character of the

Aet.5S] TO MISS FRANCES R. MORSE 125

letters themselves. They are so easy, the facts are so much
the immediate out-bubblings of the moment, and the deli-
cious philosophical reflexions so much like the spontaneous
breathings of the soul, that the effort is manifestly at the
zero-point, and into the complex state of affection which
necessarily arises in you for the objects of so much loving
care, there enter none of those curious momentary arrows
of impatience and vengefulness which might make others
say, if they were doing what you do for us, that they wished
we were dead or in some way put beyond reach, so that our
eternal "appeal" might stop. No, Fanny! we have no re-
pinings and feel no responsibilites towards you, but accept
you and your letters as the gifts you are. The infrequency
of our answering proves this fact; to which you in turn
must furnish the correlative, if the occasion comes. On the
day when you temporarily hate us, or don't "feel like"
the usual letter, don't let any thought of inconsistency with
your past acts worry you about not taking up the pen.
Let us go; though it be for weeks and months — I shall
know you will come round again. "Neither heat nor frost
nor thunder shall ever do away, I ween, the marks of that
which once hath been." And to think that you should never
have spent a night, and only once taken a meal, in our house!
When we get back, we must see each other daily, and may
the days of both of us be right long in the State of Massa-
chusetts! Bless her!

I got a letter from J. J. Chapman praising her strongly
the other day. And sooth to say the "Transcript" and
the "Springfield Republican," the reception of whose "week-
lies" has become one of the solaces of my life, do make a
first-rate showing for her civilization. One can't just say
what "tone" consists in, but these papers hold their own
excellently in comparison with the English papers. There

126 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1900

is far less alertness of mind in the general make-up of the
latter; and the "respectability" of the English editorial
columns, though it shows a correcter literary drill, is apt to
be due to a remorseless longitude of commonplace conven-
tionality that makes them deadly dull. (The "Spectator"
appears to be the only paper with a nervous system, in
England — that of a carnassier at present!) The English
people seem to have positively a passionate hunger for this
mass of prosy stupidity, never less than a column and a
quarter long. The Continental papers of course are "no-
where." As for our yellow papers — every country has its
criminal classes, and with us and in France, they have simply
got into journalism as part of their professional evolution,
and they must be got out. Mr. Bosanquet somewhere
says that so far from the "dark ages" being over, we are
just at the beginning of a new dark-age period. He means
that ignorance and unculture, which then were merely
brutal, are now articulate and possessed of a literary voice,
and the fight is transferred from fields and castles and town
walls to "organs of publicity"; but it is the same fight, of
reason and goodness against stupidity and passions; and
it must be fought through to the same kind of success. But
it means the reeducating of perhaps twenty more gen-
erations; and by that time some altogether new kind of
institutional opportunity for the Devil will have been
evolved.

April 13th. I had to stop yesterday. . . . Six months
ago, I should n't have thought it possible that a life de-
liberately founded on pottering about and dawdling through
the day would be endurable or even possible. I have at-
tained such skill that I doubt if my days ever at any time
seemed to glide by so fast. But it corrodes one's soul never-
theless. I scribble a little in bed every morning, and have

Aet.58] TO MISS FRANCES R. MORSE 127

reached page 48 of my third Gifford lecture — though
Lecture II, alas! must be rewritten entirely. The condi-
tions don't conduce to an energetic grip of the subject, and I
am afraid that what I write is pretty slack and not what it
would be if my vital tone were different. The problem I
have set myself is a hard one: first, to defend (against all the
prejudices of my 'class") "experience" against "philosophy"
as being the real backbone of the world's religious life — I
mean prayer, guidance, and all that sort of thing immedi-
ately and privately felt, as against high and noble general
views of our destiny and the world's meaning; and second,
to make the hearer or reader believe, what I myself invincibly
do believe, that, although all the special manifestations of
religion may have been absurd (I mean its creeds and theo-
ries), yet the life of it as a whole is mankind's most important
function. A task well-nigh impossible, I fear, and in which
I shall fail; but to attempt it is my religious act.

We got a visit the other day from [a Scottish couple here
who have heard that I am to give the Gifford lectures];
and two days ago went to afternoon tea with them at their
hotel, next door. She enclosed a tract (by herself) in the
invitation, and proved to be a [mass] of holy egotism and
conceit based on professional invalidism and self-worship.
I wish my sister Alice were there to "react" on her with a
description! Her husband, apparently weak, and the slave
of her. No talk but evangelical talk. It seemed assumed
that a Gifford lecturer must be one of Moody's partners,
and it gave me rather a foretaste of what the Edinburgh
atmosphere may be like. Well, I shall enjoy sticking a
knife into its gizzard — if atmospheres have gizzards?
Blessed be Boston — probably the freest place on earth,
that is n't merely heathen and sensual.

I have been supposing, as one always does, that you "ran

128 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1900

in" to the Putnams' every hour or so, and likewise they to
No. 1 2. But your late allusion to the telephone and the
rarity of your seeing Jim [Putnam] reminded me of the
actual conditions - - absurd as they are. (Really you and
we are nearer together now at this distance than we have
ever been.) Well, let Jim see this letter, if you care to,
flattering him by saying that it is more written for him than
for you (which it certainly has not been till this moment!),
and thanking him for existing in this naughty world. His
account of the Copernican revolution (studento-centric)
in the Medical School is highly exciting, and I am glad to
hear of the excellent little Cannon becoming so prominent
a reformer. Speaking of reformers, do you see Jack Chap-
man's "Political Nursery"? of which the April number
has just come. (I have read it and taken my bed-break-
fast during the previous page of this letter, though you may
not have perceived the fact.) If not, do subscribe to it; it
is awful fun. He just looks at things, and tells the truth
about them — a strange thing even to try to do, and he
doesn't always succeed. Office 141 Broadway, $1.00 a
year.

Fanny, you won't be reading as far as this in this inter-
minable letter, so I stop, though ioo pent-up things are
seeking to be said. The weather has still been so cold
v/henever the sun is withdrawn that we have delayed our
departure for Geneva to the 22nd — a week later. We
make a short visit to our friends the Flournoys (a couple
of days) and then proceed towards Nauheim via Heidelberg,
where I wish to consult the great Erb about the advisability
of more baths in view of my nervous complications, before
the great Schott examines me again. I do wish I could
send for Jim for a consultation. Good-bye, dearest and
best of Fannys. I hope your Mother is wholly well again.

Aet.5S\ TO HIS SON ALEXANDER 129

Much love to her and to Mary Elliot. It interested me to
hear of Jack E.'s great operation. Yours ever,

W.J.

To his Son Alexander.

[Geneva, circa May 3, 1900.]

Dear Francois, — Here we are in Geneva, at the Flour-
noys' - dear people and splendid children. I wish Harry
could marry Alice, Billy marry Marguerite, and you marry
Ariane-Dorothee -- the absolutely jolliest and beauti-
fullest 3-year old I ever saw. I am trying to get you en-
gaged! I enclose pictures of the dog. Ariane-Dorothee
r-r-r-olls her r-r-r's like fury. I got your picture of the
elephant - - very good. Draw everything you see, no matter
how badlv, trying to notice how the lines run - - one line
every day! — just notice it and draw it, no matter how
badly, and at the end of the year you '11 be s'prised to see
how well you can draw. Tell Billy to get you a big blank
book at the Coop., and every day take one page, just draw-
ing down on it some thing, or dog, or horse, or man or woman,
or part of a man or woman, which you have looked at that
day just for the purpose, to see how the lines run. I bet
the last page of that book will be better than the first! Do
this for my sake. Kiss your dear old Grandma. P'r'aps, we
shall get home this summer after all. In two or three days
I shall see a doctor and know more about myself. Will
let you know. Keep motionless and listen as much as you
can. Take in things without speaking — it '11 make you a
better man. Your Ma thinks you '11 grow up into a filos-
opher like me and write books. It is easy enuff, all but the
writing. You just get it out of other books, and write it
down. Always your loving,

Dad.

130 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9oo

At this time James's thirteen-year-old daughter was
living with family friends — the Joseph Thatcher Clarkes —
in Harrow, and was going to an English school with their
children. She had been passing through such miseries as
a homesick child often suffers, and had written letters which
evoked the following response.

To his Daughter.

Villa Luise,
Bad-Nauheim, May 26, 1900.

Darling Peg, — Your letter came last night and explained
sufficiently the cause of your long silence. You have evi-
dently been in a bad state of spirits again, and dissatisfied
with your environment; and I judge that you have been
still more dissatisfied with the inner state of trying to con-
sume your own smoke, and grin and bear it, so as to carry
out your mother's behests made after the time when you
scared us so by your inexplicable tragic outcries in those
earlier letters. Well! I believe you have been trying to
do the manly thing under difficult circumstances, but one
learns only gradually to do the best thing; and the best
thing for you would be to write at least weekly, if only a
post-card, and say just how things are going. If you are
in bad spirits, there is no harm whatever in communicating
that fact, and defining the character of it, or describing it
as exactly as you like. The bad thing is to pour out the
contents of one's bad spirits on others and leave them with
it, as it were, on their hands, as if it was for them to do some-
thing about it. That was what you did in your other letter
which alarmed us so, for your shrieks of anguish were so
excessive, and so unexplained by anything you told us in
the way of facts, that we did n't know but what you had
suddenly gone crazy. That is the worst sort of thing you

Aet.5S\ TO HIS DAUGHTER 131

can do. The middle sort of thing is what you do this time
— namely, keep silent for more than a fortnight, and when
you do write, still write rather mysteriously about your
sorrows, not being quite open enough.

Now, my dear little girl, you have come to an age when
the inward life develops and when some people (and on the
whole those who have most of a destiny) find that all is
not a bed of roses. Among other things there will be waves
of terrible sadness, which last sometimes for days; and
dissatisfaction with one's self, and irritation at others, and
anger at circumstances and stony insensibility, etc., etc.,
which taken together form a melancholy. Now, painful
as it is, this is sent to us for an enlightenment. It always
passes off, and we learn about life from it, and we ought to
learn a great many good things if we react on it rightly.
[From margin.} (For instance, you learn how good a thing
your home is, and your country, and your brothers, and
you may learn to be more considerate of other people, who,
you now learn, may have their inner weaknesses and suffer-
ings, too.) Many persons take a kind of sickly delight in
hugging it; and some sentimental ones may even be proud
of it, as showing a fine sorrowful kind of sensibility. Such
persons make a regular habit of the luxury of woe. That
is the worst possible reaction on it. It is usually a sort
of disease, when we get it strong, arising from the organ-
ism having generated some poison in the blood; and we
must n't submit to it an hour longer than we can help, but
jump at every chance to attend to anything cheerful or
comic or take part in anything active that will divert us
from our mean, pining inward state of feeling. When it
passes off, as I said, we know more than we did before.
And we must try to make it last as short a time as possible.
The worst of it often is that, while we are in it, we don't

i32 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1900

want to get out of it. We hate it, and yet we prefer staying
in it — that is a part of the disease. If we find ourselves
like that, we must make ourselves do something different,
go with people, speak cheerfully, set ourselves to some hard
work, make ourselves sweat, etc.; and that is the good way
of reacting that makes of us a valuable character. The
disease makes you think of yourself all the time; and the
way out of it is to keep as busy as we can thinking of things
and of other people — no matter what 's the matter with
our self.

I have no doubt you are doing as well as you know how,
darling little Peg; but we have to learn everything, and I
also have no doubt that you '11 manage it better and better
if you ever have any more of it, and soon it will fade away,
simply leaving you with more experience. The great thing
for you now, I should suppose, would be to enter as friendlily
as possible into the interest of the Clarke children. If you
like them, or acted as if you liked them, you need n't trouble
about the question of whether they like you or not. They
probably will, fast enough; and if they don't, it will be
their funeral, not yours. But this is a great lecture, so I
will stop. The great thing about it is that it is all true.

The baths are threatening to disagree with me again, so
I may stop them soon. Will let you know as quick as any-
thing is decided. Good news from home: the Merrimans
have taken the Irving Street house for another year, and
the Wambaughs (of the Law School) have taken Chocorua,
though at a reduced rent. The weather here is almost con-
tinuously cold and sunless. Your mother is sleeping, and
will doubtless add a word to this when she wakes. Keep a
merry heart — "time and the hour run through the rough-
est day" — and believe me ever your most loving

W.J.

Act. 5S\ TO MISS FRANCES R. MORSE 133

To Miss Frances R. Morse.

[Post-card]
Altdorf, Lake Luzerx, July 20, [1900].
Your last letter was, if anything, a more unmitigated
blessing than its predecessors; and I, with my curious
inertia to overcome, sit thinking of letters ', and of the soul-
music with which they might be filled if my tongue could
only utter the thoughts that arise in me to youward, the
beauty of the world, the conflict of life and death and youth
and age and man and woman and righteousness and evil,
etc., and Europe and America! but it stays all caked within
and gets no articulation, the power of speech being so non-
natural a function of our race. We are staying above
Luzern, near a big spruce wood, at "Gutsch," and today
being hot and passivity advisable, we came down and took
the boat, for a whole day on the Lake. The works both of
Nature and of Man in this region seem too perfect to be
credible almost, and were I not a bitter Yankee, I would,
without a moment's hesitation, be a Swiss, and probably
then glad of the change. The goodliness of this land is
one of the things I ache to utter to you, but can't. Some
day I will write, also to Jim P. My condition baffles me.
I have lately felt better, but been bad again, and altogether
can do nothing without repentance afterwards. We have
just lunched in this bowery back verandah, water trickling,
beautiful old convent sleeping up the hillside. Love to you
all!

W.J.

To Miss Frances R. Morse.

Bad-Nauheim, Sept. 16, 1900.

Dearest Fanny, — . . . Here I am having a little private
picnic all by myself, on this effulgent Sunday morning —

i34 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1900

real American September weather, by way of a miracle. I
ordered my bath-chair man to wheel me out to the"Hoch-
wald," where, he having been dismissed for three hours,
until two o'clock, I am lying in the said luxurious throne,
writing this on my knee, with nothing between but a num-
ber of Kuno Fischer's "Hegel's Leben, Werke und Lehre,"
now in process of publication, and the flexibility of which ac-
counts for the poor handwriting. I am alone, save for the
inevitable restaurant which hovers on the near horizon,
in a beautiful grove of old oak trees averaging some 16 or
18 feet apart, through whose leaves the sunshine filters and
dapples the clear ground or grass that lies between them.
Alice is still in England, having finally at my command had
to give up her long-cherished plan of a run home to see her
mother, the children, you, and all the other dulcissima
mundi nomina that make of life a thing worth living for.
I junked the idea of being alone so long when I came to the
point. It is not that I am worse, but there will be cold
weather in the next couple of months; and, unable to sit
out of doors then, as here and now, I shall probably either
have to over-walk or over-read, and both things will be
bad for me.

As things are now, I get on well enough, for the bath
business (especially the "bath-chair") carries one through
a good deal of the day. The great Schott has positively
forbidden me to go to England as I did last year; so, early
in October, our faces will be turned towards Italy, and by
Nov. 1 we shall, I hope, be ensconced in a pension close
to the Pincian Garden in Rome, to see how long that resource
will last. I confess I am in the mood of it, and that there
is a suggestion of more richness about the name of Rome
than about that of Rye, which, until Schott's veto, was the
plan. How the Gifford lectures will fare, remains to be

" Damn the Absolute! "
Chocorua, September, 1903. One morning James and Royce
strolled into the road and sat down on a wall in earnest discus-
sion. When James heard the camera click, as his daughter took
the upper snap-shot, he cried, "Royce, you're being photo-
graphed' Look, out! I say Damn the Absolute /"

Aet. 58\ TO JOSIAH ROYCE 135

seen. I have felt strong movings towards home this fall,
but reflection says: "Stay another winter," and I confess
that now that October is approaching, it feels like the home-
stretch and as if the time were getting short and the limbs
of "next summer" in America burning through the veil
which seems to hide them in the shape of the second Euro-
pean winter months. Who knows? perhaps I may be spry
and active by that time! I have still one untried card up
my sleeve, that may work wonders. All I can say of this
third course of baths is that so far it seems to be doing me
no harm. That it will do me any substantial good, after
the previous experiences, seems decidedly doubtful. But
one must suffer some inconvenience to please the doctors!
Just as in most women there is a wife that craves to suffer
and submit and be bullied, so in most men there is a patient
that needs to have a doctor and obey his orders, whether
they be believed in or not. . . .

Don't take the Malwida book1 too seriously. I sent it
faute de mieux. I don't think I ever told you how much I
enjoyed hearing the Lesley volume 2 read aloud by Alice.
We were just in the exactly right condition for enjoying
that breath of old New England. Good-bye, dearest Fanny.
Give my love to your mother, Mary, J. J. P., and all your
circle. LeV wohl yourself, and believe me, your ever

affectionate,

W.J.

To Josiah Royce.

Nauheim, Sept. 26, 1900.

Beloved Royce, — Great was my, was our pleasure in
receiving your long and delightful letter last night. Like

1 Memoiren einer Idealistin, by Malvida von Meysenbug, Stuttgart, 1877.

3 Recollections 0/ My Mother [Anne Jean Lyman], by Susan I. Lesley, Boston, 1886.

136 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1900

the lioness in yEsop's fable, you give birth to one young
one only in the year, but that one is a lion. I give birth
mainly to guinea-pigs in the shape of post-cards; but de-
spite such diversities of epistolary expression, the heart of
each of us is in the right place. I need not say, my dear
old boy, how touched I am at your expressions of affection,
or how it pleases me to hear that you have missed me. I
too miss you profoundly. I do not find in the hotel waiters,
chambermaids and bath-attendants with whom my lot is
chiefly cast, that unique mixture of erudition, originality,
profundity and vastness, and human wit and leisureliness,
by accustoming me to which during all these years you have
spoilt me for inferior kinds of intercourse. You are still
the centre of my gaze, the pole of my mental magnet. When
I write, 't is with one eye on the page, and one on you.
When I compose my Gifford lectures mentally, 't is with the
design exclusively of overthrowing your system, and ruining
your peace. I lead a parasitic life upon you, for my highest
flight of ambitious ideality is to become your conqueror,
and go down into history as such, you and I rolled in one
another's arms and silent (or rather loquacious still) in one
last death-grapple of an embrace. How then, O my dear
Royce, can I forget you, or be contented out of your close
neighborhood? Different as our minds are, yours has
nourished mine, as no other social influence ever has, and
in converse with you I have always felt that my life was
being lived importantly. Our minds, too, are not different
in the Object which they envisage. It is the whole paradox-
ical physico-moral-spiritual Fatness, of which most people
single out some skinny fragment, which we both cover
with our eye. We "aim at him generally" — and most
others don't. I don't believe that we shall dwell apart for-
ever, though our formulas may.

Act. 58] TO JOSIAH ROYCE 137

Home and Irving Street look very near when seen through
these few winter months, and tho' it is still doubtful what I
may be able to do in College, for social purposes I shall be
available for probably numerous years to come. I have n't
got at work yet — only four lectures of the first course
written (strange to say) — but I am decidedly better today
than I have been for the past ten months, and the matter
is all ready in my mind; so that when, a month hence, I
get settled down in Rome, I think the rest will go off fairly
quickly. The second course I shall have to resign from,
and write it out at home as a book. It must seem strange
to you that the way from the mind to the pen should be as
intraversable as it has been in this case of mine — you in
whom it always seems so easily pervious. But Miller will
be able to tell you all about my condition, both mental and
physical, so I will waste no more words on that to me de-
cidedly musty subject.

I fully understand your great aversion to letters and other
off-writing. You have done a perfectly Herculean amount
of the most difficult productive work, and I believe you to
be much more tired than you probably yourself suppose or
know. Both mentally and physically, I imagine that a long
vacation, in other scenes, with no sense of duty, would do
you a world of good. I don't say the full fifteen months —
for I imagine that one summer and one academic half-year
would perhaps do the business better — you could preserve
the relaxed and desultory condition as long as that probably,
whilst later you 'd begin to chafe, and then you 'd better be
back in your own library. If my continuing abroad is hin-
dering this, my sorrow will be extreme. Of course I must
some time come to a definite decision about my own rela-
tions to the College, but I am reserving that till the end of
1900, when I shall write to Eliot in full. There is still a thera-

i38 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1900

peutic card to play, of which I will say nothing just now, and
I don't want to commit myself before that has been tried.

You say nothing of the second course of Aberdeen lec-
tures, nor do you speak at all of the Dublin course. Strange
omissions, like your not sending me your Ingersoll lecture!
I assume that the publication of [your] Gifford Volume II
will not be very long delayed. I am eager to read them. I
can read philosophy now, and have just read the first three
Lieferungen of K. Fischer's "Hegel." I must say I prefer the
original text. Fischer's paraphrases always flatten and dry
things out; and he gives no rich sauce of his own to com-
pensate. I have been sorry to hear from Palmer that he
also has been very tired. One can't keep going forever! P.
has been like an archangel in his letters to me, and I am
inexpressibly grateful. Well! everybody has been kinder
than I deserve. . . .

To Miss Frances R. Morse.

Rome, Dec. 25, 1900.

. . . Rome is simply the most satisfying lake of pictur-
esqueness and guilty suggestiveness known to this child.
Other places have single features better than anything in
Rome, perhaps, but for an ensemble Rome seems to beat
the world. Just a feast for the eye from the moment you
leave your hotel door to the moment you return. Those
who say that beauty is all made up of suggestion are well
disproved here. For the things the eyes most gloat on, the
inconceivably corrupted, besmeared and ulcerated surfaces,
and black and cavernous glimpses of interiors, have no
suggestions save of moral horror, and their "tactile values,"
as Berenson would say, are pure gooseflesh. Nevertheless
the sight of them delights. And then there is such a geo-
logic stratification of history! I dote qn the fine equestrian

Aet.58\ TO MISS FRANCES R. MORSE 139

statue of Garibaldi, on the Janiculum, quietly bending his
head with a look half-meditative, half-strategical, but wholly
victorious, upon Saint Peter's and the Vatican. What
luck for a man and a party to have opposed to it an enemy
that stood up for nothing that was ideal, for everything
that was mean in life. Austria, Naples, and the Mother
of harlots here, were enough to deify anyone who defied
them. What glorious things are some of these Italian
inscriptions — for example on Giordano Bruno's statue: -

A BRUNO

il secolo da lui divinato

qui

dove il rogo arse.

— "here, where the faggots burned." It makes the tears
come, for the poetic justice; though I imagine B. to have
been a very pesky sort of a crank, worthy of little sympa-
thy had not the "rogo" done its work on him. Of the aw-
ful corruptions and cruelties which this place suggests there
is no end.

Our neighbors in rooms and commensaux at meals are the
J. G. Frazers — he of the "Golden Bough," "Pausanias,"
and other three- and six-volume works of anthropological
erudition, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a
sucking babe of humility, unworldliness and molelike sight-
lessness to everything except print. . . . He, after Tylor,
is the greatest authority now in England on the religious
ideas and superstitions of primitive peoples, and he knows
nothing of psychical research and thinks that the trances,
etc., of savage soothsayers, oracles and the like, are all
feigned! Verily science is amusing! But he is conscience

i4o LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1901

incarnate, and I have been stirring him up so that I imagine
he will now proceed to put in big loads of work in the morbid
psychological direction.

Dear Fanny ... I can write no more this morning.
I hope your Christmas is "merry," and that the new year
will be "happy" for you all. Pray take our warmest love,
give it to your mother and Mary, and some of it to the
brothers. I will write better soon. Your ever grateful
and affectionate

W. J.

Don't let up on your own writing, so say we both! Your
letters are pure blessings.

To James Sully.

Rome, Mar. 3, 1901.

Dear Sully,— -Your letter of Feb. 8th arrived duly and
gave me much pleasure qua epistolary manifestation of
sympathy, but less qua revelation of depression on your own
part. I have been so floundering up and down, now above
and now below the line of bad nervous prostration, that I
have written no letters for three weeks past, hoping thereby
the better to accomplish certain other writing; but the
other writing had to be stopped so letters and post-cards
may begin.

I see you take the war still very much to heart, and I
myself think that the blundering way in which the Colonial
Office drove the Dutchmen into it, with no conception
whatever of the psychological situation, is only outdone by
our still more anti-psychological blundering in the Philip-
pines. Both countries have lost their moral prestige — we
far more completely than you, because for our conduct
there is literally no excuse to be made except absolute stu-
pidity, whilst you can make out a very fair case, as such

Aet.59\ TO JAMES SULLY i4i

cases go. But we can, and undoubtedly shall, draw back,
whereas that for an Empire like yours seems politically im-
possible. Empire anyhow is half crime by necessity of
Nature, and to see a country like the United States, lucky
enough to be born outside of it and its fatal traditions and
inheritances, perversely rushing to wallow in the mire of
it, shows how strong these ancient race instincts be. And
that is my consolation ! We are no worse than the best of
men have ever been. We are simply not superhuman;
and the loud reaction against the brutal business, in both
countries, shows how the theory of the matter has really
advanced during the last century.

Yes! H. Sidgwick is a sad loss, with all his remaining
philosophic wisdom unwritten. I feel greatly F. W. H.
Myers's loss also. He suffered terribly with suffocation,
but bore it stunningly well. Fie died in this very hotel,
where he had been not more than a fortnight. I don't
know how tolerant (or intolerant) you are towards his pur-
suits and speculations. I regard them as fragmentary and
conjectural — of course; but as most laborious and praise-
worthy; and knowing how much psychologists as a rule
have counted him out from their profession, I have thought
it my duty to write a little tribute to his service to psy-
chology to be read on March 8th, at a memorial meeting
of the S. P. R. in his honor. It will appear, whether read
or not, in the Proceedings, and I hope may not appear to
you exaggerated. I seriously believe that the general
problem of the subliminal, as Myers propounds it, promises
to be one of the great problems, possibly even the greatest
problem, of psychology. . . .

We leave Rome in three days, booked for Rye the first of
April. I must get into the country! If I do more than just
pass through London, I will arrange for a meeting. My

i42 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1901

Edinburgh lectures begin early in May — after that I shall
have freedom. Ever truly yours,

Wm. James.

To Miss Frances R. Morse.

[Post-card]

Florence, March 18, 1901.

Thus far towards home, thank Heaven! after a week
at Perugia and Assisi. Glorious air, memorable scenes.
Made acquaintance of Sabatier, author of St. Francis's life
— very jolly. Best of all, made acquaintance with Francis's
retreat in the mountain. Navrant! — it makes one see
medieval Christianity face to face. The lair of the individ-
ual wild animal, and that animal the saint! I hope you saw
it. Thanks for your last letter to Alice. Lots of love.

W.J.

To F. C. S. Schiller.

Rye, April 13, 1901.

Dear Schiller, — You are showering benedictions on
me. I return the bulky ones, keeping the lighter weights.
I think the parody on Bradley amazingly good — if I had
his book here I would probably revive my memory of his
discouraged style and scribble a marginal contribution of
my own. He is, really, an extra humble-minded man, I
think, but even more humble-minded about his reader than
about himself, which gives him that false air of arrogance.
How you concocted those epigrams, a la preface of B., I
don't see. In general I don't see how an epigram, being a
pure bolt from the blue, with no introduction or cue, ever
gets itself writ. On the Limericks, as you call them, I set
less store, much less. If everybody is to come in for a
share of allusion, I am willing, but I don't want my name to

Act. 59] TO MISS FRANCES R. MORSE 143

figure in the ghostly ballet with but few companions. Royce
wrote a very funny thing in pedantic German some years
ago, purporting to be the proof by a distant-future professor
that I was an habitual drunkard, based on passages culled
from my writings. He may have it yet. If I ever get any
animal spirits again, I may get warmed up, by your example,
into making jokes, and may then contribute. But I beg
you let this thing mull till you get a lot of matter — and then
sift. It 's the only way. But Oxford seems a better climate
for epigram than is the rest of the world.

I shall stay here — I find myself much more comfortable
thoracically already than when I came — until my Edin-
burgh lectures begin on May 16th, though I shall have to
run up to London towards the end of the month to get
some clothes made, and to meet my son who arrives from
home. I much regret that it will be quite impossible for
me to go either to Oxford or Cambridge — though, if things
took an unexpectedly good turn, I might indeed do so after
June 1 8th, when my lecture course ends. Do you mean-
while keep hearty and "funny"! I stopped at Gersau half
a day and found it a sweet little place. Fondly yours,

W.J.

To Miss Frances R. Morse.

Roxburghe Hotel,
Edinburgh, May 15, 1901.

Dearest Fanny, — You see where we are! I give you
the first news of life's journey being so far advanced! It
is a deadly enterprise, I 'm afraid, with the social entangle-
ments that lie ahead, and I feel a cake of ice in my epigas-
trium at the prospect, but le vin est verse > il faut le boire,
and from the other point of view, that it is real life beginning
once more, it is perfectly glorious, and I feel as if yesterday

i44 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1901

in leaving London I had said good-bye to a rather dreadful
and death-bound segment of life. As regards the socia-
bility, it is fortunately a time of year in which only the
medical part of the University is present. The professors
of the other faculties are already in large part scattered, I
think, — at least the two Seths (who are the only ones I
directly know) are away, and I have written to the Secretary
of the Academic Senate, Sir Ludovic Grant of the Law
Faculty, that I am unable to "dine out" or attend afternoon
receptions, so we may be pretty well left alone. I always
hated lecturing except as regular instruction to students, of
whom there will probably be none now in the audience.
But to compensate, there begins next week a big convoca-
tion here of all ministers in Scotland, and there will doubt-
less be a number of them present, which, considering the
matter to be offered, is probably better.

We had a splendid journey yesterday in an American
(almost!) train, first-class, and had the pleasure of some
talk with our Cambridge neighbor, Mrs. Ole Bull, on her
way to Norway to the unveiling of a monument to her
husband. She was accompanied by an extraordinarily fine
character and mind — odd way of expressing myself! — a
young Englishwoman named Noble, who has Hinduized
herself (converted by Vivekananda to his philosophy) and
lives now for the Hindu people. These free individuals
who live their own life, no matter what domestic prejudices
have to be snapped, are on the whole a refreshing sight to me,
who can do nothing of the kind myself. And Miss Noble *
is a most deliberate and balanced person — no frothy en-
thusiast in point of character, though I believe her philos-
ophy to be more or less false. Perhaps no more so than
anyone else's!

1 Sister Nivedita.

Aet.59\ TO MISS FRANCES R. MORSE 145

We are in one of those deadly respectable hotels where
you have to ring the front-door-bell. Give me a cheerful,
blackguardly place like the Charing Cross, where we were in
London. The London tailor and shirtmaker, it being in the
height of the Season, did n't fulfill their promises; and as I
sloughed my ancient cocoon at Rye, trusting to pick up my
iridescent wings the day before yesterday in passing through
the metropolis, I am here with but two chemises at present
(one of them now in the wash) and fear that tomorrow,
in spite of tailors' promises to send, I may have to lecture
in my pyjamas — that would give a cachet of American
originality. The weather is fine — we have just finished
breakfast.

Our son Harry . . . and his mother will soon sally out
to explore the town, whilst I lie low till about noon, when I
shall report my presence and receive instructions from my
boss, Grant, and prepare to meet the storm. It is astonish-
ing how pusillanimous two years of invalidism can make
one. Alice and Harry both send love, and so do I in heaps
and steamer-loads, dear Fanny, begging your mother to
take of it as much as she requires for her share. I will
write again — doubtless — tomorrow.

May 17.

It proved quite impossible to write to you yesterday, so
I do it the first thing this morning. I have made my plunge
and the foregoing chill has given place to the warm "reac-
tion." The audience was more numerous than had been
expected, some 250, and exceedingly sympathetic, laughing
at everything, even whenever I used a polysyllabic word.
I send you the "Scotsman," with a skeleton report which
might have been much worse made. I am all right this
morning again, so have no doubts of putting the job through,
if only I don't have too much sociability. I have got a

146 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1901

week free of invitations so far, and all things considered,
fancy that we shan't be persecuted.

Edinburgh is surely the noblest city ever built by man.
The weather has been splendid so far, and cold and bracing
as the top of Mount Washington in early April. Everyone
here speaks of it however as "hot." One needs fires at
night and an overcoat out of the sun. The full-bodied air,
half misty and half smoky, holds the sunshine in that way
which one sees only in these islands, making the shadowy
side of everything quite black, so that all perspectives and
vistas appear with objects cut blackly against each other
according to their nearness, and plane rising behind plane of
flat dark relieved against flat light in ever-receding grada-
tion. It is magnificent.

But I mustn't become a Ruskin! — the purpose of this
letter being merely to acquaint you with our well-being and
success so far. We have found bully lodgings, spacious to
one's heart's content, upon a cheerful square, and actually
with a book-shelf fully two feet wide and two stories high,
upon the wall, the first we have seen for two years! (There
were of course book-cases enough at Lamb House, but all
tight packed already.) We now go out to take the air. I
feel as if a decidedly bad interlude in the journey of my life
were closed, and the real honest thing gradually beginning
again. Love to you all! Your ever affectionate

W.J.

To Miss Frances R. Morse.

Edinburgh, May 30, 1901.

Dearest Fanny, — . . . Beautiful as the spring is here,
the words you so often let drop about American weather
make me homesick for that article. It is blasphemous,
however, to pine for anything when one is in Edinburgh in

Aei.59\ TO MISS FRANCES R. MORSE 147

May, and takes an open drive every afternoon in the sur-
rounding country by way of a constitutional. The green
is of the vividest, splendid trees and acres, and the air it-
self an object, holding watery vapor, tenuous smoke, and an-
cient sunshine in solution, so as to yield the most exquisite
minglings and gradations of silvery brown and blue and
pearly gray. As for the city, its vistas are magnificent.

We are combles with civilities, which Harry and Alice are
to a certain extent enjoying, though I have to hang back
and spend much of the time between my lectures in bed,
to rest off the aortic distress which that operation gives.
I call it aortic because it feels like that, but I can get no
information from the Drs., so I won't swear I 'm right. My
heart, under the influence of that magical juice, tincture of
digitalis, — only 6 drops daily, — is performing beautifully
and gives no trouble at all. The audiences grow instead of
dwindling, and in spite of rain, being about 300 and just
crowding the room. They sit as still as death and then
applaud magnificently, so I am sure the lectures are a success.
Previous Gifford lectures have had audiences beginning with
60 and dwindling to 15. In an hour and a half (I write
this in bed) I shall be beginning the fifth lecture, which will,
when finished, put me half way through the arduous job.
I know you will relish these details, which please pass on to
Jim P. I would send you the reports in the "Scotsman,"
but they distort so much by their sham continuity with
vast omission (the reporters get my MS.), that the result
is caricature. Edinburgh is spiritually much like Boston,
only stronger and with more temperament in the people.
But we 're all growing into much of a sameness everywhere.

I have dined out once — an almost fatal experiment! I
was introduced to Lord Somebody: "How often do you
lecture?" — "Twice a week." — "What do you do between?

i48 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1901

— play golf?" Another invitation: "Come at 6 — the din-
ner at 7.30 — and we can walk or play bowls till dinner so
as not to fatigue you" — I having pleaded my delicacy of
constitution.

I rejoice in the prospect of Booker W.'s l book, and thank
your mother heartily. My mouth had been watering for
just that volume. Autobiographies take the cake. I mean
to read nothing else. Strange to say, I am now for the first
time reading Marie Bashkirtseff. It takes hold of me tre-
menjus. I feel as if I had lived inside of her, and in spite
of her hatefulness, esteem and even like her for her incor-
ruptible way of telling the truth. I have not seen Hux-
ley's life yet. It must be delightful, only I can't agree to
what seems to be becoming the conventionally accepted
view of him, that he possessed the exclusive specialty of
living for the truth. A good deal of humbug about that!

— at least when it becomes a professional and heroic atti-
tude.

Your base remark about Aguinaldo is clean forgotten,
if ever heard. I know you would n't harm the poor man,
who, unless Malay human nature is weaker than human
nature elsewhere, has pretty surely some surprises up his
sleeve for us yet. Best love to you all. Your affectionate

Wm. James.

To Henry W. Rankin.

Edinburgh, June 16, 1901.

Dear Mr. Rankin, — I have received all your letters
and missives, inclusive of the letter which you think I must
have lost, some months back. I professor-ed you because
I had read your name printed with that title in a newspaper
letter from East Northfield, and supposed that, by courtesy

1 Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery.

Aet.59\ TO HENRY \V. RANKIN i49

at any rate, that title was conferred on you by a public
opinion to which I liked to conform.

I have given nine of my lectures and am to give the tenth
tomorrow. They have been a success, to judge by the
numbers of the audience (300-odd) and their non-diminu-
tion towards the end. No previous "GifTords" have drawn
near so many. It will please you to know that I am stronger
and tougher than when I began, too; so a great load is off
my mind. You have been so extraordinarily brotherly to
me in writing of your convictions and in furnishing me ideas,
that I feel ashamed of my churlish and chary replies. You,
however, have forgiven me. Now, at the end of this first
course, I feel my "matter" taking firmer shape, and it will
please you less to hear me say that I believe myself to be
(probably) permanently incapable of believing the Chris-
tian scheme of vicarious salvation, and wedded to a more
continuously evolutionary mode of thought. The reasons
you from time to time have given me, never better expressed
than in your letter before the last, have somehow failed to
convince. In these lectures the ground I am taking is this:
The mother sea and fountain-head of all religions lie in the
mystical experiences of the individual, taking the word
mystical in a very wide sense. All theologies and all ecclesi-
asticisms are secondary growths superimposed; and the
experiences make such flexible combinations with the in-
tellectual prepossessions of their subjects, that one may
almost say that they have no proper intellectual deliverance
of their own, but belong to a region deeper, and more vital
and practical, than that which the intellect inhabits. For
this they are also indestructible by intellectual arguments
and criticisms. I attach the mystical or religious conscious-
ness to the possession of an extended subliminal self, with a
thin partition through which messages make irruption. We

iSo LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1901

are thus made convincingly aware of the presence of a
sphere of life larger and more powerful than our usual con-
sciousness, with which the latter is nevertheless continuous.
The impressions and impulsions and emotions and excite-
ments which we thence receive help us to live, they found
invincible assurance of a world beyond the sense, they melt
our hearts and communicate significance and value to every-
thing and make us happy. They do this for the individual
who has them, and other individuals follow him. Religion
in this way is absolutely indestructible. Philosophy and
theology give their conceptual interpretations of this ex-
periential life. The farther margin of the subliminal field
being unknown, it can be treated as by Transcendental
Idealism, as an Absolute mind with a part of which we
coalesce, or by Christian theology, as a distinct deity acting
on us. Something, not our immediate self, does act on
our life! So I seem doubtless to my audience to be blow-
ing hot and cold, explaining away Christianity, yet defend-
ing the more general basis from which I say it proceeds.
I fear that these brief words may be misleading, but let
them go! When the book comes out, you will get a truer
idea.

Believe me, with profound regards, your always truly,

Wm. James.

To Charles Eliot Norton.

Rye, June 26, 1901.

Dear Charles Norton, — Your delightful letter of
June 1st has added one more item to my debt of gratitude
to you; and now that the Edinburgh strain is over, I can
sit down and make you a reply a little more adequate than
heretofore has been possible. The lectures went off most
successfully, and though I got tired enough, I feel that I

Aet.59\ TO CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 151

am essentially tougher and stronger for the old familiar
functional activity. My tone is changed immensely, and
that is the main point. To be actually earning one's salt
again, after so many months of listless waiting and wonder-
ing whether such a thing will ever again become possible,
puts a new heart into one, and I now look towards the future
with aggressive and hopeful eyes again, though perhaps
not with quite the cannibalistic ones of the youth of the new
century.

Edinburgh is great. A strong broad city, and, in its
spiritual essence, almost exactly feeling to me like old Boston,
nuclear Boston, though on a larger, more important scale.
People were very friendly, but we had to dodge invitations
— hqffentlich I may be able to accept more of them next
year. The audience was extraordinarily attentive and
reactive — I never had an audience so keen to catch every
point. I flatter myself that by blowing alternately hot and
cold on their Christian prejudices I succeeded in baffling
them completely till the final quarter-hour, when I satisfied
their curiosity by showing more plainly my hand. Then,
I think, I permanently dissatisfied both extremes, and
pleased a mean numerically quite small. Qui vivra verra.
London seemed curiously profane and free-and-easy, not
exactly shabby ', but go-as-you-please, in aspect, as we came
down five days ago. Since then I spent a day with poor
Mrs. Myers. ... I mailed you yesterday a notice I wrote
in Rome of him.1 He "looms" upon me after death more
than he did in life, and I think that his forthcoming book
about "Human Personality" will probably rank hereafter
as "epoch-making."

At London I saw Theodora [Sedgwick] and the W. Dar-

1 "Frederick Myers's Services to Psychology." Reprinted in Memories and
Studies.

i5a LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1901

wins. Theodora was as good and genial as ever, and Sara
[Darwin] looked, I thought, wonderfully "distinguished"
and wonderfully little changed considering the length of
intervening years and the advance of the Enemy. I was
too tired to look up Leslie Stephen, or anyone else save Mrs.
John Bancroft when in London, although I wanted much
to see L. S. The first volume of his "Utilitarians" seems
to me a wonderfully spirited performance — I have n't yet
got at the other two.

I am hoping to get off to Nauheim tomorrow, leaving
Alice and Harry to follow a little later. I confess that the
Continent "draws" me again. I don't know whether it be
the essential identity of soul that expresses itself in English
things, and makes them seem known by heart already and
intellectually dead and unexciting, or whether it is the
singular lack of visible sentiment in England, and absence
of "charm," or the oppressive ponderosity and superfluity
and prominence of the unnecessary, or what it is, but I'm
blest if I ever wish to be in England again. Any conti-
nental country whatever stimulates and refreshes vastly
more, in spite of so much strong picturesqueness here, and
so beautiful a Nature. England is ungracious, unamiable
and heavy; whilst the Continent is everywhere light and
amiably quaint, even where it is ugly, as in many elements
it is in Germany. To tell the truth, I long to steep myself
in America again and let the broken rootlets make new
adhesions to the native soil. A man coquetting with too
many countries is as bad as a bigamist, and loses his soul
altogether.

I suppose you are at Ashfield and I hope surrounded, or
soon to be so, by more children than of late, and all well
and happy. Don't feel too bad about the country. We 've
thrown away our old privileged and prerogative position

Aet.59\ TO NATHANIEL S. SHALER 153

among the nations, but it only showed we were less sincere
about it than we supposed we were. The eternal fight of
liberalism has now to be fought by us on much the same
terms as in the older countries. We have still the better
chance in our freedom from all the corrupting influences
from on top from which they suffer. — Good-bye and love
from both of us, to you all. Yours ever faithfully,

Wm. James.

To Nathaniel S. Shaler.

[1901?]

Dear Shaler, — Being a man of methodical sequence in
my reading, which in these days is anyhow rather slower
than it used to be, I have only just got at your book.1 Once
begun, it slipped along "like a novel," and I must confess
to you that it leaves a good taste behind; in fact a sort of
haunting flavor due to its individuality, which I find it hard
to explain or define.

To begin with, it does n't seem exactly like you, but
rather like some quiet and conscientious old passive con-
templator of life, not bristling as you are with "points,"
and vivacity. Its light is dampened and suffused — and
all the better perhaps for that. Then it is essentially a con
fession of faith and a religious attitude - - which one does
n't get so much from you upon the street, although even
there 't is clear that you have that within which passeth
show. The optimism and healthy-mindedness are yours
through and through, so is the wide imagination. But the
moderate and non-emphatic way of putting things is not;
nor is the absence of any "x^merican humor." So I don't
know just when or where or how you wrote it. I can't

1 The Individual, A Study of Life and Death. New York, 1900. This letter is
reproduced from the Autobiography of N. S. Shaler, where it has already been
published.

154 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1901

place it in the Museum or University Hall. Probably it
was in Quincy Street, and in a sort of Piperio-Armadan
trance! Anyhow it is a sincere book, and tremendously
impressive by the gravity and dignity and peacefulness with
which it suggests rather than proclaims conclusions on these
eternal themes. No more than you can I believe that
death is due to selection; yet I wish you had framed some
hypothesis as to the physico-chemical necessity thereof, or
discussed such hypotheses as have been made. I think
you deduce a little too easily from the facts the existence of
a general guiding tendency toward ends like those which
our mind sets. We never know what ends may have been
kept from realization, for the dead tell no tales. The sur-
viving witness would in any case, and whatever he were,
draw the conclusion that the universe was planned to make
him and the like of him succeed, for it actually did so. But
your argument that it is millions to one that it did n't do
so by chance does n't apply. It would apply if the witness
had preexisted in an independent form and framed his
scheme, and then the world had realized it. Such a coinci-
dence would prove the world to have a kindred mind to his.
But there has been no such coincidence. The world has
come but once; the witness is there after the fact and sim-
ply approves, dependency. As I understand improbability,
it only exists where independents coincide. Where only
one fact is in question, there is no relation of "probability"
at all. I think, therefore, that the excellences we have
reached and now approve may be due to no general design
but merely to a succession of the short designs we actually
know of, taking advantage of opportunity, and adding
themselves together from point to point. We are all you
say we are, as heirs; we are a mystery of condensation, and
yet of extrication and individuation, and we must worship

Aet.59\ TO MISS FRANCES R. MORSE 155

the soil we have so wonderfully sprung from. Yet I don't
think we are necessitated to worship it as the Theists do,
in the shape of one all-inclusive and all-operative designing
power, but rather like polytheists, in the shape of a collec-
tion of beings who have each contributed and are now con-
tributing to the realization of ideals more or less like those
for which we live ourselves. This more pluralistic style of
feeling seems to me both to allow of a warmer sort of loyalty
to our past helpers, and to tally more exactly with the mixed
condition in which we find the world as to its ideals. What
if we did come where we are by chance, or by mere fact,
with no one general design? What is gained, is gained, all
the same. As to what may have been lost, who knows of
it, in any case? or whether it might not have been much
better than what came? But if it might, that need not
prevent us from building on what zve have.

There are lots of impressive passages in the book, which
certainly will live and be an influence of a high order.
Chapters 8, 10, 14, 15 have struck me most particularly.

I gave at Edinburgh two lectures on "The Religion of
Healthy-Mindedness," contrasting it with that of "the
sick soul." I shall soon have to quote your book as a
healthy-minded document of the first importance, though
I believe myself that the sick soul must have its say, and
probably carries authority too. . . . Ever yours,

Wm. James.

To Miss Frances R. Morse.

Nauheim, July 10, 1 901.

Dearest Fanny, — Your letter of June 28th comes just
as I was working myself up to a last European farewell to
you, anyhow, the which has far more instigative spur now,
with your magnificent effusion in my hands. Dear Fanny,

156 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1901

whatever you do, don't die before our return! In these
two short years so many of my best friends have been mown
down, that I feel uncertainty everywhere, and gasp till the
interval is over. John Ropes, Henry Sidgwick, F. Myers,
T. Davidson, Carroll Everett, Edward Hooper, John Fiske,
all intimate and valuable, some of them extremely so, and
the circle grows ever smaller and will grow so to the end of
one's own life. Now comes Whitman, whom I never knew
very well, but whom I always liked thoroughly, and wish I
had known better. ... It will be interesting to know what
new turn it will give to S. W.'s existence. I have n't the
least idea how it will affect her outward life. Doubtless
she will be freer to come abroad; but I hope and trust she
will not be taking to staying any time in London or Paris,
in the brutal cynical atmosphere of which places her little
eagerness and efflorescences and cordialities would receive
no such sympathetic treatment as they do with us, until
she had stayed long enough for people to know her thoroughly
and conquered a position by living down the first impres-
sion. Nothing so anti-English as S. W.'s whole "sphere."
So keep her at home — with occasional sallies abroad; and
if she must ever winter abroad, let it be in delightful slip-
shod old Rome! All which, as you perceive, is somewhat
confidential. I trust that the present failure of health with
her is something altogether transient, and that she will keep
swimming long after everyone else has put into shore.

Which simile reminds me of Mrs. Holmes's panel, with its
superb inscription.1 What a sense she has for such things!

1 Mrs. O. W. Holmes had used the following translation of an epitaph in the
Greek Anthology: —

A shipwrecked sailor buried on this coast
Bids thee take sail.

Full many a gallant ship, when we were lost,
Weathered the gale.

Aet.59\ TO MISS FRANCES R. MORSE 157

and how I thank you for quoting it! With your and her
permission, I shall make a vital use of it in a future book.
It sums up the attitude towards life of a urood philosophic
pluralist, and that is what, in my capacity of author of that
book, I am to be. I thank you also for the reference to I
Corinthians, 1, 28, etc.1 I had never expressly noticed that
text; but it will make the splendidest motto for Myers's
two posthumous volumes, and I am going to write to Mrs.
Myers to suggest the same. I thank you also for your
sympathetic remarks about my paper on Myers. Fifty or
a hundred years hence, people will know better than now
whether his instinct for truth was a sound one; and perhaps
will then pat me on the back for backing him. At present
they give us the cold shoulder. We are righter, in any
event, than the Miinsterbergs and Jastrows are, because we
don't undertake, as a condition of our investigating phe-
nomena, to bargain with them that they shan't upset our
"presuppositions. "

It is a beautiful summer morning, and I write under an
awning on the high-perched corner balcony of the bedroom
in which we live, of a corner house on the edge of the little
town, with houses on the west of us and the fertile country
spreading towards the east and south. A lovely region,
though a climate terribly flat. I expect to take my last
bath today, and to get my absolution from the terrible
Schott; whereupon we shall leave tomorrow morning for
Strassburg and the Vosges, for a week of touring up in
higher air, and thence, fiber Paris, as straight as may be for
Rye. I keep in a state of subliminal excitement over our
sailing on the 31st. It seems too good to be really possible.
Yet the ratchet of time will work along its daily cogs, and

1 "And base things of the world and things which are despised hath God chosen,
yes, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are."

1.58 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1901

doubtless bring it safe within our grasp. Last year I felt
no distinctly beneficial effect from the baths. This year
it is distinct. I have, in other words, continued pretty
steadily getting better for four months past; so it is evident
that I am in a genuinely ameliorative phase of my existence,
of which the acquired momentum may carry me beyond any
living man of my age. At any rate, I set no limits now!

When we return I shall go straight up to Chocorua to the
Salters'. What I crave most is some wild American country.
It is a curious organic-feeling need. One's social relations
with European landscape are entirely different, everything
being so fenced or planted that you can't lie down and sprawl.
Kipling, alluding to the "bleeding raw" appearance of some
of our outskirt settlements, says, "Americans don't mix
much with their landscape as yet." But we mix a darned
sight more than Europeans, so far as our individual organ-
isms go, with our camping and general wild-animal personal
relations. Thank Heaven that our Nature is so much less
"redeemed"! . . .

You see, Fanny, that we are in good spirits on the
whole, although my poor dear Alice has long sick-headaches
that consume a good many days — she is just emerging
from a bad one. Happiness, I have lately discovered, is
no positive feeling, but a negative condition of freedom from
a number of restrictive sensations of which our organism
usually seems to be the seat. When they are wiped out,
the clearness and cleanness of the contrast is happiness.
This is why anaesthetics make us so happy. But don't
you take to drink on that account! Love to your mother,
Mary, and all. Write to us no more. How happy that re-
sponsibility gone must make you! We both send warmest
love,

W. J.

Aet.59\ TO E. L. GODKIN 159

To Henry James.

[Post-card]

Bad-Nauheim, July u, [1901].
Your letter and paper, with the shock of John Fiske's
death, came yesterday. It is too bad, for he had lots of
good work in him yet, and is a loss to American letters as
well as to his family. Singularly simple, solid, honest crea-
ture, he will be hugely missed by many! Everybody seems
to be going! We stay. Life here is absolutely monotonous,
but very sweet. The country is so innocently pretty. I sit
up here on a terrace-restaurant, looking down on park
and town, with the leaves playing in the warm breeze above
me, and the little Gothic town of Friedberg only a mile off,
in the midst of the great fertile plain all chequer-boarded
with the different tinted crops and framed in a far-off hori-
zon of low hills and woods. Alice and Harry, kept in by the
heat, come later. He went for a distant walk yesterday
p.m. and, not returning till near eleven, we thought he might
have got lost in the woods. Yale beat the University race,
but Bill's four[-oared crew] beat the Yale four. On such
things is human contentment based. The baths stir up
my aortic feeling and make me depressed, but I 've had 6
of them, and the rest will pass quickly. Love.

W.J.

To E. L. Godkin.

Bad-Nauheim, July 25, 1901.

Dear Godkin, — Yours of the 9th, which came duly,
gave me great pleasure, first because it showed that your
love for me had not grown cold, and, second, because it
seemed to reveal in you tendencies towards sociability at
large which are incompatible with a very alarming condi-
tion of health. Nothing can give us greater pleasure than

i6o LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1901

to come and see you before we sail. We shall stick here,
probably, for a fortnight longer, then go for a week to the
Hartz mountains to brace up a little — the baths being very
debilitating and the air of Nauheim sedative. Then straight
to Rye until we sail — on August 31st. I hope that you
enjoy the "New Forest" — the "Children" thereof, by
Capt. Mayne Reid, I think, was one of my most mysteriously
impressive books about the age of ten. But I fear that
there is not much primeval forest to be seen there nowadays.
Nauheim is a sweet little place. One never sees a soldier
and would n't know that Militarismus existed. There are
two policemen, one of them an old fellow of 70 who shuffles
along to keep his weak knees from giving way. I went on
business to the police office t' other day. The building stood
in a fine cabbage garden, and over the first door one met
on entering stood the word Kiiche x in large letters. Quite
like the old idyllic pre-Sadowan German days. My heart
is getting well! I made an excursion to Homburg yesterday,
with J. B. Warner of Cambridge, counsellor at law, and
general disputant. For about six hours we discussed the
Philippine question, he damning the anti-Imperialists —
yet my thoracic contents remained as solid as if cast in
Portland cement. Six months ago I should have had the
wildest commotion there. Congratulate me! Kindest re-
gards to you both, in which my wife joins. Yours ever
affectionately,

Wm. James.

It should perhaps be explained that E. L. Godkin had
had a cerebral hemorrhage the year before. It had left him
clear in mind, but a permanent invalid, with little power of
locomotion. James spent several days with him at Castle

1 Kitchen.

William James and Henry James posing for a Kodak in I 900.

Aet. 59\ TO E. L. GODKIN 161

Malwood near Stony Cross before he sailed for home; and
when he was in England again the next year, he repeated
the visit.

To E. L. Godkin.

Lamb House, Aug. 29, 1901.

My dear Godkin, — Just a line to bid you both farewell!
We leave for London tomorrow morning and at four on
Saturday we shall be ploughing the deep. All goes well,
save that the wife has sprained her ankle, and with the
"firmness" that characterizes her lovely sex insists on hob-
bling about and doing all the packing. I shan't be aisy till
I see her in her berth.

After all, in spite of you and Henry, and all Americo-
phobes, I 'm glad I 'm going back to my own country again.
Notwithstanding its " humble "ness, its fatigues, and its
complications, there 's no place like home — though I think
the New Forest might come near it as a substitute. Eng-
land in general is too padded and cushioned for my rustic
taste.

The most elevating moral thing I 've seen during these
two years abroad, after Myers's heroic exit from this world
at Rome last winter, has been the gentleness and cheerful
spirit with which you are still able to remain in it after such
a blow as you have received. Who could suppose so much
public ferocity to cover so much private sweetness? Seri-
ously speaking, it is more edifying to us others, dear God-
kin, than you yourself can understand it to be, and I for
one have learned by the example. I pray that your winter
problems may gradually solve themselves without per-
plexity, and that next spring may find you relieved of all
this helplessness. It is a very slow progress, with many
steps backwards, but if the length of the forward steps

162 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1901

preponderates, one may be well content. Good-bye and
bless you both. Affectionately yours,

Wm. James.

James returned to America in early September, in advance
of the beginning of the College term. But from this time
on he limited his teaching to one half-course during the
year. His intention was to husband his strength for writing.
The course which he offered during the first half of the
College year was accordingly announced as a course on
'The Psychological Elements of Religious Life." By the
end of the winter, the second series of Gifford lectures, con-
stituting the last half of the "Varieties," had been written
out.

To Miss Pauline Goldmark.

Silver Lake, N. H., Sept. 14, 1901.
Dear Pauline, — Your kind letter (excuse pencil — pen
won't write) appears to have reached London after our de-
parture and has just followed us hither. I had hoped for a
word from you, first at Nauheim, then on the steamer, then
at Cambridge; but this makes everything right. How
good to think of you as the same old loveress of woods and
skies and waters, and of your Bryn-Mawr friends. May
none of the lot of you ever grow insufficient or forsake each
other! The sight of you sporting in Nature's bosom once
lifted me into a sympathetic region, and made a better boy
of me in ways which it would probably amuse and surprise
you to learn of, so strangely are characters useful to each
other, and so subtly are destinies intermixed. But with
you on the mountain-tops of existence still, and me ap-
parently destined to remain grubbing in the cellar, we seem
far enough apart at present and may have to remain so.

Aet.59\ TO MISS PAULINE GOLDMARK 163

Alas! how brief is life's glory, at the best. I can't get to
Keene Valley this year, and [may] possibly never get there.
Give a kindly thought, my friend, to the spectre who once
for a few times trudged by your side, and who would do so
again if he could. I 'm a "motor," and morally ill-adapted
to the game of patience. I have reached home in pretty
poor case, but I think it 's mainly "nerves" at present, and
therefore remediable; so I live on the future, but keep my
expectations modest. Two years away has been too long,
and the "strangeness" which I dreaded (from past experience
of it) covers all things American as with a veil. Pathetic and
poverty-stricken is all I see! This will pass away, but I
don't want good things to pass away also, so I beseech you,
Pauline, to sit down and write me a good intimate letter
telling me what your life and interest were in New York
last winter.

I am verv sorrv to hear of vour sister Susan's illness, and
pray that the summer will set her right. Did you see
much of Miller this summer? I hate to think of his having
grown so delicate! Did you see Perry again? He was
at the Putnam Camp? How is Adler after his Cur? - -or
is he not yet back? What have you read? What have
you cared for? Be indulgent to me, and write to me here
— I stay for 10 days longer — the family - - all well - - re-
main in Cambridge. I find letters a great thing to keep
one from slipping out of life.

Love to you all! Your

W. J.

The next letter was written across the back of a circu-
lar invitation to join the American Philosophical Associa-
tion, then being formed, of which Professor Gardiner was
Secretary.

164 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1902

To H. N. Gardiner.

Cambridge, Nov. 14, 1901.

Dear Gardiner, — I am still pretty poorly and can't
"jine" anything — but, apart from that, I don't foresee
much good from a Philosophical Society. Philosophical
discussion proper only succeeds between intimates who have
learned how to converse by months of weary trials and
failure. The philosopher is a lone beast dwelling in his
individual burrow. — Count me out ! — I hope all goes well
with you. I expect to get well, but it needs patience.

Wm. James.

On April 1, 1902, James sailed for England, to deliver the
second "course" of his series of Gifford Lectures in Edin-
burgh.

'to'

To F. C. S. Schiller.

Hatley St. George,
Torquay, Apr. 20, 1902.

My dear Schiller, — I could shed tears that you should
have been so near me and yet been missed. I got your big
envelope on Thursday at the hotel, and your two other
missives here this morning. Of the Axioms paper I have
only read a sheet and a half at the beginning and the superb
conclusion which has just arrived. I shall fairly gloat upon
the whole of it, and will write you my impressions and
criticisms, if criticisms there be. It is an uplifting thought
that truth is to be told at last in a radical and attention-
compelling manner. I think I know, though, how the
attention of many will find a way not to be compelled —
their will is so set on having a technically and artificially and
professionally expressed system, that all talk carried on as
yours is on principles of common-sense activity is as remote

Aet. 60] TO F. C. S. SCHILLER 165

and little worthy of being listened to as the slanging each
other of boys in the street as we pass. Men disdain to
notice that. It is only alter our {i.e. your and my) general
way of thinking gets organized enough to become a regular
part of the bureaucracy of philosophy that we shall get a
serious hearing. Then, I feel inwardly convinced, our day
will have come. But then, you may well say, the brains
will be out and the man will be dead. Anyhow, vive the
Anglo-Saxon amateur, disciple of Locke and Hume, and
pereat the German professional!

We are here for a week with the Godkins — poor old G.,
once such a power, and now an utter wreck after a stroke of
paralysis three years ago. Beautiful place, southeast gale,
volleying rain and streaming panes and volumes of soft
sea-laden wind.

I hope you are not serious about an Oxford degree for your
humble servant. If you are, pray drop the thought! I
am out of the race for all such vanities. Write me a degree
on parchment and send it yourself — in any case it would
be but your award ! - - and it will be cheaper and more
veracious. I had to take the Edinburgh one, and accepted
the Durham one to please my wife. Thank you, no corona-
tion either! I am a poor New Hampshire rustic, in bad
health, and long to get back, after four summers' absence,
to my own cottage and children, and never come away
again for lectures or degrees or anything else. It all depends
on a man's age; and after sixty, if ever, one feels as if one
ought to come to some sort of equilibrium with one's native
environment, and by means of a regular life get one's small
message to mankind on paper. That nowadays is my only
aspiration. The Gifford lectures are all facts and no philos-
ophy - - I trust that you may receive the volume by the
middle of June.

166 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1902

When, oh, when is your volume to appear? The sheet
you send me leaves off just at the point where Boyle-Gibson
begins to me to be most interesting! Ever fondly yours,

Wm. James.

Your ancient President, Schurman, was also at Edinburgh
getting LL. D'd. He is conducting a campaign in favor of
Philippino independence with masterly tactics, which recon-
cile me completely to him, laying his finger on just the right
and telling points.

To Charles Eliot Norton.

Lamb House, Rye, May 4, 1902.

Dear Norton, — I hear with grief and concern that you
have had a bad fall. In a letter received this morning you
are described as better, so I hope it will have had no un-
toward consequences beyond the immediate shock. We
need you long to abide with us in undiminished vigor and
health. Our voyage was smooth, though cloudy, and we
found Miss Ward a very honest and lovable girl. Henry
D. Lloyd, whose name you know as that of a state-socialist
writer, sat opposite to us, and proved one of the most "win-
ning" men it was ever my fortune to know.

W7e went to Stratford for the first time. The absolute
extermination and obliteration of every record of Shake-
speare save a few sordid material details, and the general
suggestion of narrowness and niggardliness which ancient
Stratford makes, taken in comparison with the way in which
the spiritual quantity "Shakespeare" has mingled into the
soul of the world, was most uncanny, and I feel ready to
believe in almost any mythical story of the authorship. In
fact a visit to Stratford now seems to me the strongest
appeal a Baconian can make. The country round about
was exquisite. Still more so the country round about

Aet. 60] TO MRS. HENRY WHITMAN 167

Torquay, where we stayed with the Godkins for eight days -
he holding his own, as it seemed to me, but hardly improving,
she earning palms of glory by her strength and virtue. A
regular little trump! They have taken for the next two
months the most beautiful country place I ever saw, occupy-
ing an elbow of the Dart, and commanding a view up and
down. We are here for but a week, my lectures beginning
on the 13th. H. J. seems tranquil and happy in his work,
though he has been much pestered of late by gout.

I suppose you are rejoicing as much as I in the public
interest finally aroused in the Philippine conquest. A per-
sonal scandal, it seems, is really the only thing that will
wake the ordinary man's attention up. It should be the
first aim of every good leader of opinion to rake up one on
the opposite side. It should be introduced among our
Faculty methods!

Don't think, dear Norton, that you must answer this
letter, which only your accident has made me write. We
shall be home so soon that I shall see you face to face. The
wife sends love, as I do, to you all. No warm weather
whatever as yet — I am having chilblains!! Ever affec-
tionately yours,

Wm. James.

To Mrs. Henry Whitman.

R.M.S. Ivernia, June 18, 1902.

Dear Mrs. Whitman, — We ought to be off Boston to-
night. After a cold and wet voyage, including two days of
head-gale and heavy sea, and one of unbroken fog with
lugubriously moo-ing fog-horn, the sun has risen upon
American weather, a strong west wind like champagne,
blowing out of a saturated blue sky right in our teeth, the
sea all effervescing and sparkling with white caps and lace,

168 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1902

the strong sun lording it in the sky, and hope presiding in
the heart. What more natural than to report all this
happy turn of affairs to you, buried as you probably still
are in the blankets of the London atmosphere, beautiful
opalescent blankets though they be, and (when one's vitals
once are acclimated) yielding more wonderful artistic effects
than anything to be seen in America. "C'est le pays de
la couleur," as my brother is fond of saying in the words of
Alphonse Daudet! But no matter for international com-
parisons, which are the least profitable of human employ-
ments. Christ died for us all, so let us all be as we are,
save where we want to reform ourselves. (The only un-
pardonable crime is that of wanting to reform one another,
after the fashion of the U. S. in the Philippines.) . „ . Your
sweet letter of several dates reached us just before we left
Edinburgh — excuse the insipid adjective "sweet," which
after all does express something which less simple vocables
may easily miss — and gave an impression of harmony and
inner health which it warms the heart to become sensible
of. I understand your temptation to stay over, but I also
understand your temptation to get back; and I imagine
that more and more you will solve the problem by a good
deal of alternation in future years. It is curious how utterly
distinct the three countries of England, Ireland and Scot-
land are, which we so summarily lump together — Scotland
so democratic and so much like New England in many re-
spects. But it would be a waste of time for you to go there.
Keep to the South and spend one winter in Rome, before
you die, and a spring in the smaller Italian cities!

I hope that Henry will have managed to get you and
Miss Tuckerman to Rye for a day — it is so curiously quaint
and characteristic. I had a bad conscience about leaving
him, for I think he feels lonely as he grows old, and friends

Act. 60] LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES 169

pass over to the majority. He and I are so utterly different
in all our observances and springs of action, that we can't
rightly judge each other. I even feel great shrinking from
urging him to pay us a visit, fearing it might yield him
little besides painful shocks - - and, after all, what besides
pain and shock is the right reaction for anyone to make
upon our vocalization and pronunciation? The careful
consonants and musical cadences of the Scotchwomen were
such a balm to the ear! I wish that you and poor Henry
could become really intimate. He is at bottom a very
tender-hearted and generous being! No more paper! so I
cross! I wish when we once get settled again at Chocorua
that we might enclose you under our roof, even if only for
one night, on your way to or from the Merrimans. I should
like to show you true simplicity. [No signature.]

The Gifford Lectures were published as "The Varieties
of Religious Experience, a Study in Human Nature," in
June, 1902. The immediate "popularity" of this psy-
chological survey of man's religious propensities was great;
and the continued sales of the book contributed not a little
to relieve James of financial anxiety during the last years
of his life.

The cordiality with which theological journals and private
correspondents of many creeds greeted the "Varieties," as
containing a fair treatment of facts which other writers had
approached with a sectarian or anti-theological bias, was
striking. James was amused at being told that the book
had "supplied the protestant pulpits with sermons for a
twelve-month." Regarding himself as "a most protestant
protestant," as he once said, he was especially pleased by
the manner in which it was received by Roman Catholic
reviewers.

i7o LETTERS OF WLLIAM JAMES [1902

Certain philosophical conclusions were indicated broadly
in the 'Varieties" without being elaborated. The book
was a survey, an examination, of the facts. James had
originally conceived of the Gifford appointment as giving
him "an opportunity for a certain amount of psychology
and a certain amount of metaphysics," and so had thought
of making the first series of lectures descriptive of man's
religious propensities and the second series a metaphysical
study of their satisfaction through philosophy. The psy-
chological material had grown to unforeseen dimensions,
and it ended by filling the book. The metaphysical study
remained to be elaborated; and to such work James now
turned.

XIV

I 902-1905

The Last Period (I) — Philosophical Writing —
Statements of Religious Belief

James now limited his teaching in Harvard University, as
has been said, to half a course a year and tried to devote his
working energies to formulating a statement of his philo-
sophical conceptions. For two years he published almost
nothing; then the essays which were subsequently collected
in the volumes called "Pragmatism," 'The Pluralistic Uni-
verse," "The Meaning of Truth," and "Essays in Radical
Empiricism," began to appear in the philosophic journals, or
were delivered as special lectures. Whenever he accepted
invitations to lecture outside the College, as he still did
occasionally, it was with the purpose of getting these con-
ceptions expressed and of throwing them into the arena of
discussion. But demands which correspondents and callers
from all parts of the globe now made on his time and sym-
pathy were formidable, for he could not rid himself of the
habit of treating the most trivial of these with considera-
tion, or acquire the habit of using a secretary. In this way
there continued to be a constant drain on his strength.
" It is probably difficult [thus he wrote wearily to Mr. Lutos-
lawski, who had begged him to collaborate with him on a
book in 1904] for a man whose cerebral machine works with
such facility as yours does to imagine the kind of conscious-
ness of men like Flournoy and myself. The background of
my consciousness, so far as my own achievements go, is
composed of a sense of impossibility - - a sense well warranted
by the facts. For instance, two years ago, the 'Varieties'

172 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1902

being published, I decided that everything was cleared and
that my duty was immediately to begin writing my meta-
physical system. Lip to last October, when the academic
year began, I had written some 200 pages of notes, i.e. dis-
connected brouillons. I hoped this year to write 400 or 500
pages of straight composition, and could have done so
without the interruptions. As a matter of fact, with the
best will in the world, I have written exactly 32 pages!
For an academic year's work, that is not brilliant! You
see that, when I refuse your request, it is, after a fashion,
in order to save my own life. My working day is anyhow,
at best, only three hours long — by working I mean writing
and reading philosophy." This estimate of his "notes"
was, as always, self-deprecatory; but there was no denying
a great measure of truth to the statement. Frequently his
health made it necessary for him to escape from Cambridge
and his desk. These incidents will be noted separately
wherever the context requires.

Yet in spite of these difficulties and notwithstanding his
complaints of constant frustration, the spirit with which
James still did his work emerges from the essays of this time
as well as from his letters. It was as if the years that had
preceded had been years of preparation for just what he
was now doing. At the age of sixty-three he turned to the
formulation of his empirical philosophy with the eagerness of
a schoolboy let out to play. Misunderstanding disturbed
him only momentarily, opposition stimulated him, he re-
joiced openly in the controversies which he provoked, and
engaged in polemics with the good humor and vigor that
were the essence of his genius. His "truth" must prevail!
the Absolute should suffer its death-blow! Flournoy,
Bergson, Schiller, Papini, and others too were "on his side."
He made merry at the expense of his critics, or bewailed

Aet. 60] TO MISS GRACE NORTON 173

the perversity of their opposition; but he always encouraged
them to "lay on." The imagery of contest and battle ap-
peared in the letters which he threw off, and he expressed
himself as freely as only a man can who has outgrown the
reserves of his youth.

To Henry L. Higginson.

Chocorua, July 3, 1902.

Dear Henry, — Thanks for your letter of the other day,
etc. Alice tells me of a queer conversation you and she
had upon the cars. I am not anxious about money, beyond
wishing not to live on capital. ... As I have frequently
said, I mean to support you in your old age. In fact the
hope of that is about all that I now live for, being surfeited
with the glory of academic degrees just escaped, like this
last one which, in the friendliness of its heart, your [Harvard]
Corporation designed sponging upon me at Commence-
ment.1 Boil it and solder it up from the microbes, and it
may do for another year, if I am not in prison! The friend-
liness of such recognition is a delightful thing to a man
about to graduate from the season of his usefulness. "La
renomme vient," as I have heard John La Farge quote,
"a ceux qui ont la patience d'attendre, et s'accroit a raison
de leur imbecillite." Best wishes to you all. Yours ever,

Wm. James.

To Miss Grace Norton.

Chocorua, Aug. 29, 1902.

My dear Grace,— - Will you kindly let me know, by the
method of effacement, on the accompanying post-card,

1 Although James had received the usual hint that Harvard intended to confer
an honorary degree upon him, he had absented himself from both the honors and
fatigues of Commencement time. The next year he was present, and the LL.D.
was conferred.

i74 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1902

whether the box from Germany of which I wrote you some
time ago has or has not yet been left at your house. I paid
the express, over twenty dollars, on it three weeks ago,
directing it to be left with you.

The ice being thus broken, let me ramble on! How do-ist
thou? And how is the moist and cool summer suiting thee?
I hope, well! It has certainly been a boon to most people.
Our house has been full of company of which tomorrow the
last boys will leave, and I confess I shall enjoy the change
to no responsibility. The scourge of life is responsibility —
always there with its scowling face, and when it ceases tc
someone else, it begins to yourself, or to your God, if you
have one. Consider the lilies, how free they are from it, and
yet how beautiful the expression of their face. Especially
should those emerging from "nervous prostration" be suf-
fered to be without it — they have trouble enough in any
case. I am getting on famously, but for that drawback, on
which my temper is liable to break; but I walk somewhat as
in old times, and that is the main corner to have turned.
The country seems as beautiful as ever — it is good that,
when age takes away the zest from so many things, it seems
to make no difference at all in one's capacity for enjoying
landscape and the aspects of Nature. We are all well,
and shall very soon be buzzing about Irving Street as of
yore. Keep well yourself, dear Grace; and believe me ever
your friend,

Wm. James.

To this word about enjoying the aspects of nature may be
added a few lines from a letter to his son William, which
James wrote from Europe in 1900: —

"Scenery seems to wear in one's consciousness better
than any other element in life. In this year of much solemn

Aet. 60] TO MISS FRANCES R. MORSE 175

and idle meditation, I have often been surprised to find
what a predominant part in my own spiritual experience it
has played, and how it stands out as almost the only thing
the memory of which I should like to carry over with me
beyond the veil, unamended and unaltered. From the
midst of every thing else, almost, surgit amari aliquid; but
from the days in the open air, never any bitter whiff, save
that they are gone forever."

To Miss Frances R. Morse.

Stonehurst,
Intervale, N. H., Sept. 18, 1902.

Dearest Fanny, — How long it is since we have ex-
changed salutations and reported progress! Happy the
country which is without a history! / have had no history
to communicate, and I hope that you have had none either,
and that the summer has glided away as happily for you
as it has for us. Now it begins to fade towards the horizon
over which so many ancient summers have slipped, and our
household is on the point of "breaking up" just when the
season invites one most imperiously to stay. Dang all
schools and colleges, say I. Alice goes down tomorrow (I
being up here with the Merrimans only for one day) to
start Billy for Europe — he will spend the winter at Geneva
University — and to get "the house" ready for our general
reception on the 26th. I may possibly make out to stay up
here till the Monday following, and spend the interval of
a few days by myself among the mountains, having stuck
to the domestic hearth unusually tight all summer. . . .

We have had guests — too many of them, rather, at one
time, for me — and a little reading has been done, mostly
philosophical technics, which, by the strange curse laid
upon Adam, certain of his descendants have been doomed

i76 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1902

to invent and others, still more damned, to learn. But
I 've also read Stevenson's letters, which everybody ought
to read just to know how charming a human being can be.
and I 've read a good part of Goethe's Gedichte once again,
which are also to be read, so that one may realize how abso-
lutely healthy an organization may every now and then
eventuate into this world. To have such a lyrical gift and
to treat it with so little solemnity, so that most of the out-
put consists of mere escape of the over-tension into bits of
occasional verse, irresponsible, unchained, like smoke-
wreaths! — it du give one a great impression of personal
power. In general, though I 'm a traitor for saying so, it
seems to me that the German race has been a more massive
organ of expression for the travail of the Almighty than the
Anglo-Saxon, though we did seem to have something more
like it in Elizabethan times. Or are clearness and dapper-
ness the absolutely final shape of creation? Good-bye!
dear Fanny — you see how mouldy I am temporarily be-
come. The moment I take my pen, I can write in no other
way. Write thou, and let me know that things are greener
and more vernal where you are. Alice would send much
love to you, were she here. Give mine to your mother,
brother, and sister-in-law, and all. Your loving,

W.J.

To Henry L. Higginson.

Cambridge, Mass., Nov. i, 1902.

Dear Henry, — I am emboldened to the step I am taking
by the consciousness that though we are both at least sixty
years old and have known each other from the cradle, I
have never but once (or possibly twice) traded on your
well-known lavishness of disposition to swell any "sub-
scription" which I was trying to raise.

Art. 60] TO HENRY L. HIGGINSON 177

Now the doom ful hour has struck. The altar is read}',
and I take the victim by the ear. I choose you for a victim
because you still have some undesiccated human feeling
about you and can think in terms of pure charity - - for the
love of God, without ulterior hopes of returns from the
investment.

The subject is a man of fifty who can be recommended
to no other kind of a benefactor. His story is a long one,
but it amounts to this, that Heaven made him with no
other power than that of thinking and writing, and he has
proved by this time a truly pathological inability to keep
bodv and soul together. He is abstemious to an incredible
degree, is the most innocent and harmless of human beings,
is n't propagating his kind, has never had a dime to spend
except for vital necessities, and never has had in his life an
hour of what such as we call freedom from care or of "pleas-
ure" in the ordinary exuberant sense of the term. He is
refinement itself mentally and morally; and his writings
have all been printed in first-rate periodicals, but are too
scanty to "pay." There 's no excuse for him, I admit. But
God made him; and after kicking and curling and prod-
ding him for twenty years, I have now come to believe that he
ought to be treated in charity pure and simple (even though
that be a vice) and I want to guarantee him S3 50 a year as
a pension to be paid to the Mills Hotel in Bleecker Street,
New York, for board and lodging and a few cents weekly
over and above. I will put in $150. I have secured Sioo
more. Can I squeeze £50 a year out of you for such a non-
public cause? If not, don't reply and forget this letter.
If "ja" and you think you really can afford it, and it is n't
wicked, let me know, and I will dun you regularly every
year for the $50. Yours as ever,

Wm. James.

178 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1902

It is a great compliment that I address you. Most men
say of such a case, "Is the man deserving?" Whereas the
real point is, "Does he need us?" What is deserving now-
adays?

The beneficiary of this appeal was that same unfulfilled
promise of a metaphysician who appeared as "X" on page
292 of the first volume — a man upon whom, in Cicero's
phrase, none but a philosopher could look without a groan.
There were more parallels to X's case than it would be
permissible to cite here. James did not often appeal to
others to help such men with money, but he did things for
them himself, even after it had become evident that thev
could give nothing to the world in return, and even when
they had exhausted his patience. "Damn your half-suc-
cesses, your imperfect geniuses!" he exclaimed of another
who shall be called Z. "I'm tired of making allowances for
them and propping them up. . . . Z has never constrained
himself in his life. Selfish, conceited, affected, a monster
of desultory intellect, he has become now a seedy, almost
sordid, old man without even any intellectual residuum
from his work that can be called a finished construction;
only 'suggestions' and a begging old age." But Z, too,
was helped to the end.

To Henri Bergson.

Cambridge, Dec. 14, 1902.

My dear Sir, — I read the copy of your "Matiere et
Memoire" which you so kindly sent me, immediately on
receiving it, four years ago or more. I saw its great origi-
nality, but found your ideas so new and vast that I could
not be sure that I fully understood them, although the

Aet. 60] TO HEXRI BERGSOX i79

style, Heaven knows, was lucid enough. So I laid the book
aside for a second reading, which I have just accomplished,
slowly and carefully, along with that of the "Donnees Im-
mediates," etc.

I think I understand the main lines of your system very
well at present — though of course I can't yet trace its
proper relations to the aspects of experience of which you
do not treat. It needs much building out in the direction
of Ethics, Cosmology and Cosmogony, Psychogenesis, etc.,
before one can apprehend it fully. That I should take it
in so much more easilv than I did four vears ago shows that
even at the age of sixty one's mind can grow — a pleasant
thought.

It is a work of exquisite genius. It makes a sort of Co-
pernican revolution as much as Berkeley's "Principles" or
Kant's "Critique" did, and will probably, as it gets better
and better known, open a new era of philosophical discus-
sion. It fills my mind with all sorts of new questions and
hypotheses and brings the old into a most agreeable lique-
faction. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

The Hauptpunkt acquired for me is your conclusive dem-
olition of the dualism of object and subject in perception.
I believe that the "transcendency" of the object will not
recover from your treatment, and as I myself have been
working for many years past on the same line, only with
other general conceptions than yours, I find myself most
agreeably corroborated. My health is so poor now that
work goes on very slowly; but I am going, if I live, to write
a general system of metaphysics which, in many of its funda-
mental ideas, agrees closely with what you have set forth,
and the agreement inspires and encourages me more than
you can well imagine. It would take far too many words

180 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i go-

to attempt any detail, but some day I hope to send you the
book.1

How good it is sometimes simply to break away from all
old categories, deny old worn-out beliefs, and restate things
ab initio, making the lines of division fall into entirely new
places!

I send you a little popular lecture of mine on immor-
tality,2— no positive theory but merely an argumentum ad
hominem for the ordinary cerebralistic objection, — in which
it mav amuse vou to see a formulation like vour own that
the brain is an organ of filtration for spiritual life.

I also send you my last book, the "Varieties of Religious
Experience," which may some time beguile an hour. Be-
lieve, dear Professor Bergson, the high admiration and regard
with which I remain, always sincerely yours,

Wm. James.

To Mrs. Louis Agassiz.

Cambridge, Dec. 15, 1902.
Dear Mrs. Agassiz, — I never dreamed of your replying
to that note of mine (of Dec. 5th). If you are replying to
all the notes you received on that eventful day, it seems to
me a rather heavy penalty for becoming an octogenarian.3
But glad I am that you replied to mine, and so beautifully.
Indeed I do remember the meeting of those two canoes,
and the dance, over the river from Manaos; and many an-

1 "I have been re-reading Bergson's books, and nothing that I have read in years
has so excited and stimulated my thought. Four years ago I could n't under-
stand him at all, though I felt his power. I am sure that that philosophy has a
great future. It breaks through old cadres and brings things into a solution from
kvhich new crystals can be got." (From a letter to Flournoy, Jan. 27, 1902.)

2 The Ingersoll Lecture on Human Immortality.

3 There had been a celebration of Mrs. Agassiz's eightieth birthday at Radcliffe
College, of which she was President.

Aet. 60] LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES 181

other incident and hour of that wonderful voyage.1 I
remember your freshness of interest, and readiness to take
hold of everything, and what a blessing to me it was to have
one civilized lady in sight, to keep the memory of cultivated
conversation from growing extinct. I remember my own folly
in wishing to return home after I came out of the hospital
at Rio; and my general greenness and incapacity as a nat-
uralist afterwards, with my eyes gone to pieces. It was all
because my destiny was to be a "philosopher" — a fact
which then I did n't know, but which only means, I think,
that, if a man is good for nothing else, he can at least teach
philosophy. But I 'm going to write one book worthy of
you, dear Mrs. Agassiz, and of the Thayer expedition, if
I am spared a couple of years longer.

I hope you were not displeased at the applause the other
night, as you went out. / started it; if I had n't, someone
else would a moment later, for the tension had grown in-
tolerable.

How delightful about the Radcliffe building!

Well, once more, dear Mrs. Agassiz, we both thank you
for this beautiful and truly affectionate letter. Your affec-
tionate,

Wm. James.

E. L. Godkin had recently died, and at the date of the
next letter a movement was on foot to raise money for a
memorial in commemoration of his public services. The
money was soon subscribed and the Memorial took shape in
the endowment of the Godkin Lectureship at Harvard.
James had started discussion of the project at a meeting of
the dinner Club and Henry L. Higginson had continued it
in a letter to which the following replied.

1 On the Amazon in 1 865-66.

1 82 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1903

To Henry L. Higginson.

Cambridge, Feb. 8, 1903.

Dear Henry, — I am sorry to have given a wrong im-
pression, and made you take the trouble of writing — nutri-
tious though your letters be to receive. My motive in
mentioning the Godkin testimonial was pure curiosity, and
not desire to promote it. We were ten "liberals" together,
and I wanted to learn how many of us had been alienated
from Godkin by his temper in spite of having been influenced
by his writing. I found that it was just about half and
half. I never said — Heaven bear me witness — that I had
learned more from G. than from anyone. I said I had got
more political education from him. You see the "Nation"
took me at the age of 22 — you were already older and
wickeder. If you follow my advice now, you don't sub-
scribe a cent to this memorial. / shall subscribe $100, for
mixed reasons. Godkin's "home life" was very different
from his life against the world. When a man differed in
type from him, and consequently reacted differently on
public matters, he thought him a preposterous monster,
pure and simple, and so treated him. He could n't imagine
a different kind of creature from himself in politics. But
in private relations he was simplicity and sociability and
affectionateness incarnate, and playful as a young opossum.
I never knew his first wife well, but I admire the pluck and
fidelity of the second, and I note your chivalrous remarks
about the sex, including Mrs. W. J., to whom report has
been made of them, making her blush with pleasure.

Don't subscribe, dear Henry. I am not trying to raise
subscriptions. You left too early Friday eve. Ever affec-
tionately yours,

W.J.

Aet.6i] TO HENRI BERGSON 183

James's college class finished its work at the end of the
first half of the academic year, and in early February he
turned for a few days to the thought of a Mediterranean
voyage, as a vacation and a means of escape from Cam-
bridge during the bad weather of March. While consider-
ing this plan, he cabled M. Bergson to inquire as to the
possibility of a meeting in Paris or elsewhere.

To Henri Bergson.

Cambridge, Feb. 25, 1903.

Dear Professor Bergson, — Your most obliging cable-
gram (with 8 words instead of four!) arrived duly a week
ago, and now I am repenting that I ever asked you to send
it, for I have been feeling so much less fatigued than I did
a month ago, that I have given up my passage to the Mediter-
ranean, and am seriously doubting whether it will be neces-
sary to leave home at all. I ought not to, on many grounds,
unless my health imperatively requires it. Pardon me for
having so frivolously stirred you up, and permit me at least
to pay the cost (as far as I can ascertain it) of the despatch
which you were so liberal as to send.

There is still a bare possibility (for I am so strongly
tempted) that I may, after the middle of March, take a
cheaper vessel direct to England or to France, and spend
ten days or so in Paris and return almost immediately. In
that case, we could still have our interview. I think there
must be great portions of your philosophy which you have
not yet published, and I want to see how well they combine
with mine. Writing is too long and laborious a process,
and I would not inflict on you the task of answering my
questions by letter, so I will still wait in the hope of a per-
sonal interview some time.

i84 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1903

I am convinced that a philosophy of pure experience,
such as I conceive yours to be, can be made to work, and
will reconcile many of the old inveterate oppositions of the
schools. I think that your radical denial (the manner of
it at any rate) of the notion that the brain can be in any way
the causa fiendi of consciousness, has introduced a very
sudden clearness, and eliminated a part of the idealistic
paradox. But your unconscious or subconscious permanence
of memories is in its turn a notion that offers difficulties,
seeming in fact to be the equivalent of the "soul" in another
shape, and the manner in which these memories "insert"
themselves into the brain action, and in fact the whole con-
ception of the difference between the outer and inner worlds
in your philosophy, still need to me a great deal of elucida-
tion. But behold me challenging you to answer me par ecrit!

I have read with great delight your article in the "Revue
de Metaphysique" for January, agree thoroughly with all
its critical part, and wish that I might see in your intuition
metaphysique the full equivalent for a philosophy of con-
cepts. Neither seems to be a full equivalent for the other,
unless indeed the intuition becomes completely mystical (and
that I am willing to believe), but I don't think that that is
just what you mean. The Syllabus l which I sent you the
other day is (I fear), from its great abbreviation, somewhat
unintelligible, but it will show you the sort of lines upon
which I have been working. I think that a normal philos-
ophy, like a science, must live by hypotheses — I think that
the indispensable hypothesis in a philosophy of pure experi-
ence is that of many kinds of other experience than ours,

, , J co-consciousness L- ,. . , N

that the question on . . [(its conditions, etc.)

I conscious synthesis^

1 An 8-page Syllabus printed for the use of his students in the course on the
" Philosophy of Nature " which James was giving during the first half of the college
year.

Aet.6i] TO THEODORE FLOURNOY 185

becomes a most urgent question, as docs also the question
of the relations of what is possible only to what is actual,
what is past or future to what is present. These are all ur-
gent matters in your philosophy also, I imagine. How ex-
quisitely you do write! Believe me, with renewed thanks for
the telegram, yours most sincerely,

Wm. James.

To Theodore Flournoy.

Cambridge, Apr. 30, 1903.

My dear Flournoy, — I forget whether I wrote you my
applause or not, on reading your chapter on religious psy-
chology in the "Archives." I thought it a splendid thing,
and well adapted to set the subject in the proper light before
students. Abauzit has written to me for authorization to
translate my book, and both he and W. J., Junior, have
quoted you as assured of his competency. I myself feel
confident of it, and have given him the authorization re-
quired. Possibly you may supply him with as much of your
own translation as you have executed, so that the time you
have spent on the latter may not be absolutely lost. " Billy "
also says that you have executed a review of Myers's book,1
finding it a more difficult task than you had anticipated. I
am highly curious to see what you have found to say. I,
also, wrote a notice of the volumes, and found it exceeding
difficult to know how to go at the job. At last I decided
just to skeletonize the points of his reasoning, but on correct-
ing the proof just now, what I have written seems deadly
flat and unprofitable and makes me wish that I had stuck
to my original intention of refusing to review the book at
all. The fact is, such a book need not be criticized at all at
present. It is obviously too soon for it to be either refuted

1 Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, by_F. W. H. Myers.

1 86 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1903

or established by mere criticism. It is a hypothetical con-
struction of genius which must be kept hanging up, as it
were, for new observations to be referred to. As the years
accumulate these in a more favorable or in a more unfavor-
able sense, it will tend to stand or to fall. I confess that
reading the volumes has given me a higher opinion than
ever of Myers's constructive gifts, but on the whole a lower
opinion of the objective solidity of the system. So many
of the facts which form its pillars are still dubious.1

Bill says that you were again convinced by Eusapia,2 but
that the conditions were not satisfactory enough (so I un-
derstood) to make the experiments likely to convince absent
hearers. Forever baffling is all this subject, and I confess
that I begin to lose my interest. Believe me, in whatever
difficulties your review of Myers may have occasioned you,
you have my fullest sympathy!

Bill has had a perfectly splendid winter in Geneva, thanks
almost entirely to your introductions, and to the generous
manner in which you took him into your own family. I
wish we could ever requite you by similar treatment of
Henri, or of ces demoiselles. He seems to labor under an
apprehension of not being able to make you all believe how
appreciative and grateful he is, and he urges me to "Make
you understand it" when I write. I imagine that you
understand it anyhow, so far as he is concerned, so I simply
assure you that our gratitude here is of the strongest and
sincerest kind. I imagine that this has been by far the most
profitable and educative winter of his life, and I rejoice
exceedingly that he has obtained in so short a time so com-

1 "The piles driven into the quicksand are too few for such a structure. But it
is essential as a preliminary attempt at methodizing, and will doubtless keep a very
honorable place in history." To F. C. S. Schiller, April 8, 1903.

2 Eusapia Paladino, the Italian "medium." The physical manifestations which
occurred during her trance had excited much discussion.

Aet.6i\ TO THEODORE FLOURNOY 187

plete a sense of being at home in, and so lively an affection
for, the Swiss people and country. I As for your family he
has written more than once that the Flournoy family seems
to be "the finest family" he has ever seen in his life.)

His experience is a good measure of the improvement in
the world's conditions. Thirty years ago / spent nine
months in Geneva — but in how inferior an "Academy,"
and with what inferior privileges and experiences! Never
inside a private house, and only after three months or more
familiar enough with other students to be admitted to
Zofingue.1 Ignorant of 1000 things which have come to
my son and yours in the course of education. It is a more
evolved world, and no mistake.

I find myself very tired and unable to work this spring,
but I think it will depart when I get to the country, as we
soon shall. I am neither writing nor lecturing, and reading
nothing heavy, only Emerson's works again (divine things,
some of them!) in order to make a fifteen-minute address
about him on his centennial birthday. What I want to get
at, and let no interruptions interfere, is (at last) my system
of tychistic and pluralistic philosophy of pure experience.

I wish, and even more ardently does Alice wish, that you
and Mrs. Flournoy, and all the children, or any of them,
might pay us a visit. I don't urge you, for there is so little
in America that pays one to come, except sociological ob-
servation. But in the big slow steamers, the voyage is
always interesting — and once here, how happy we should
be to harbor you. In any case, perhaps Henri and one of
his sisters will come and spend a year. From the point of
view of education, Cambridge is first-rate. Love to you all

from us both.

Wm. James.

1 The name of a student-society.

1 88 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1903

Late in April came a letter from Henry James in which
he spoke, as if with many misgivings, of returning to America
for a six months' visit. "I should wish," he said, "to
write a book of 'impressions' and to that end get quite away
from Boston and New York — really see the country at
large. On the other hand I don't see myself prowling alone
in Western cities and hotels or finding my way about by
myself, and it is all darksome and tangled. Some light may
break — but meanwhile next Wednesday (awful fact) is
my 60th birthday." He had not been in America for more
than twenty years, and had never known anything of the
country outside of New England and New York.

To Henry James.

Cambridge, May 3, 1903.

. . . Your long and inhaltsvoll letter of April 10th arrived
duly, and constituted, as usual, an "event." Theodora had
already given us your message of an intended visit to these
shores; and your letter made Alice positively overflow with
joyous anticipations. On my part they are less unmixed,
for I feel more keenly a good many of the desagrements to
which you will inevitably be subjected, and imagine the
sort of physical loathing with which many features of our
national life will inspire you. It takes a long time to notice
such things no longer. One thing, for example, which would
reconcile me most easily to abandoning my native country
forever would be the certainty of immunity, when traveling,
from the sight of my fellow beings at hotels and dining-cars
having their boiled eggs brought to them, broken by a
negro, two in a cup, and eaten with butter. How irrational
this dislike is, is proved both by logic, and by the pleasure
taken in the custom by the elite of mankind over here. . . .
Yet of such irrational sympathies and aversions (quite con-

Aet. 6 ] TO HENRY JAMES 189

ventional for the most part) does our pleasure in a country
depend, and in your case far more than in that of most men.
The vocalization of our countrymen is really, and not con-
ventionally, so ignobly awful that the process of hardening
oneself thereto is very slow, and would in your case be im-
possible. It is simply incredibly loathsome. I should hate
to have you come and, as a result, feel that you had now
done with America forever, even in an ideal and imagina-
tive sense, which after a fashion you can still indulge in.
As far as your copyright interests go, could n't they be
even more effectually and just as cheaply or more cheaply
attended to by your [engaging an agent] over here. Alice
foresees Lowell [Institute] lectures; but lectures have such
an awful side (when not academic) that I myself have fore-
sworn them — it is a sort of prostitution of one's person.
This is rather a throwing of cold water; but it is well to
realize both sides, and I think I can realize certain things
for you better than the sanguine and hospitable Alice does.
Now for the other side, there are things in the American
out-of-door nature, as well as comforts indoors that can't
be beat, and from which / get an infinite pleasure. If you
avoided the banalite of the Eastern cities, and traveled far
and wide, to the South, the Colorado, over the Canadian
Pacific to that coast, possibly to the Hawaiian Islands, etc.,
you would get some reward, at the expense, it is true, of a
considerable amount of cash. I think you ought to come
in March or April and stay till the end of October or into
November. The hot summer months you could pass in
an absolutely quiet way — if you wished to — at Chocorua
with us, where you could do as much writing as you liked,
continuous, and undisturbed, and would (I am sure) grow
fond of, as you grew more and more intimate with, the sweet
rough country there. After June, 1904, / shall be free, to

i9o LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1903

go and come as I like, for I have fully decided to resign, and
nothing would please me so well (if I found then that I could
afford it) as to do some of that proposed traveling along
with you. I could take you into certain places that perhaps
you would n't see alone. Don't come therefore, if you do
come, before the spring of 1904!

I have been doing nothing in the way of work of late, and
consequently have kept my fatigue somewhat at bay. The
reading of the divine Emerson, volume after volume, has
done me a lot of good, and, strange to say, has thrown a
strong practical light on my own path. The incorruptible
way in which he followed his own vocation, of seeing such
truths as the Universal Soul vouchsafed to him from day
to day and month to month, and reporting them in the
right literary form, and thereafter kept his limits absolutely,
refusing to be entangled with irrelevancies however urging
and tempting, knowing both his strength and its limits, and
clinging unchangeably to the rural environment which he
once for all found to be most propitious, seems to me a
moral lesson to all men who have any genius, however small,
to foster. I see now with absolute clearness, that greatly
as I have been helped and enlarged by my University busi-
ness hitherto, the time has come when the remnant of my
life must be passed in a different manner, contemplatively
namely, and with leisure and simplification for the one re-
maining thing, which is to report in one book, at least,
such impression as my own intellect has received from the
Universe. This I mean to stick to, and am only sorry
that I am obliged to stay in the University one other year.
It is giving up the inessentials which have grown beyond
one's powers, for the sake of the duties which, after all,
are most essentially imposed on one by the nature of one's
powers.

Aet. 6i\ TO HENRY JAMES 191

Emerson is exquisite! I think I told you that I have
to hold forth in praise of him at Concord on the 25th — in
company with Senator Hoar, T. W. Higginson, and Charles
Norton - - quite a vieille garde, to which I now seem to be-
long. You too have been leading an Emersonian life —
though the environment differs to suit the needs of the
different psychophysical organism which you present.

I have but little other news to tell you. Charles Peirce
is lecturing here — queer being. . . . Boott is in good
spirits, and as sociable as ever. Grace Norton ditto. I
breakfasted this Sunday morning, as of yore, with Theo-
dora [Sedgwick], who had a bad voyage in length but not
in quality, though she lay in her berth the whole time. I
can hardly conceive of being willing to travel under such
conditions. Otherwise we are well enough, except Peggy,
whose poor condition I imagine to result from influenza.
Aleck has been regenerated through and through by " bird
lore," happy as the day is long, and growing acquainted
with the country all about Boston. All in consequence of
a neighboring boy on the street, 14 years old and an orni-
thological genius, having taken him under his protection.
Yesterday, all day long in the open air, from seven to seven,
at Wayland, spying and listening to birds, counting them,
and writing down their names!

I shall go off tomorrow or next day to the country again,
by myself, joining Henry Higginson and a colleague at the
end of the week, and returning by the 14th for Ph.D. exam-
inations which I hate profoundly. H. H. has bought some
five miles of the shore of Lake Champlain adjoining his own
place there, and thinks of handing it over to the University
for the surveying, engineering, forestry and mining school.
He is as liberal-hearted a man as the Lord ever walloped
entrails into. . . .

1 92 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1903

What a devil of a bore your forced purchase of the un-
necessary neighboring land must have been. / am just
buying 1 50 acres more at Chocorua, to round off our second
estate there. Keep well and prolific — everyone speaks
praise of your "Better Sort," which I am keeping for the
country. . . .

To his Daughter.

Fabyans, N. H., May 6, 1903.

Sweet Mary, — Although I wrote to thy mother this
p.m. I can't refrain from writing to thee ere I go up to bed.
I left Intervale at 3.30 under a cloudy sky and slight rain,
passing through the gloomy Notch to Crawford's and then
here, where I am lodged in a house full of working men,
though with a good clean bedroom. I write this in the
office, with an enormous air-tight stove, a parrot and some
gold-fish as my companions. I took a slow walk of an hour
and a half before supper over this great dreary mountain
plateau, pent in by hills and woods still free from buds.
Although it is only 1500 feet high, the air is real mountain
air, soft and strong at once. I wish that you could have
taken that four-hour drive with Topsy x and me this morn-
ing. You would already be well — it had so healing an
influence. Poverty-stricken this New Hampshire country
may be — weak in a certain sense, shabby, thin, pathetic —
say all that, yet, like "Jenny," it kissed me; and it is not
vulgar — even H. J. can't accuse it of that — or of "stodgi-
ness," especially at this emaciated season. It remains pure,
and clear and distinguished — Bless it! Once more, would
thou hadst been along! I have just been reading Emerson's
"Representative Men." What luminous truths he com-
municates about their home-life — for instance: "Nature

1 The horse.

Aet. 6i\ TO MISS FRANCES R. MORSE 193

never sends a Great Man into the planet without confiding
the secret to another soul" — namely your mother's! How
he hits her off, and how I recognized whom he meant im-
mediately. Kiss the dear tender-hearted thing.

Common men also have their advantages. I have seen
all day long such a succession of handsome, stalwart, burnt-
faced, out-of-door workers as made me glad to be, however
degenerate myself, one of their tribe. Splendid, honest,
good-natured fellows.

Good-night! I 'm now going to bed, to read myself to
sleep with a tiptop novel sent me by one Barry, an old pupil
of mine. 'T is called "A Daughter of Thespis." Is this
the day of your mother's great and noble lunch? If so, I
pray that it may have gone off well. Kisses to her, and all.
Your loving

Papa.

The next letter describes the Emerson Centenary at
Concord. The Address which James delivered was pub-
lished in the special volume commemorative of the proceed-
ings, and also in "Memories and Studies."

To Miss Frances R. Morse.

Cambridge, May 26, 1903.

Dearest Fanny, — On Friday I called at your house
and to my sorrow found the blinds all down. I had not
supposed that you would leave so soon, though I might
well have done so if I had reflected. It has been a sorrow
to me to have seen so little of you lately, but so goes the
train du monde. Collapsed condition, absences, interrup-
tions of all sorts, have made the year end with most of the
desiderata postponed to next year. I meant to write to
you on Friday evening, then on Saturday morning. But

i94 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1903

I went to Lincoln on Saturday p.m. and stayed over the
Emerson racket, without returning home, and have been
packing and winding up affairs all day in order to get off to
Chocorua tomorrow at 7.30. These windings up of un-
finished years continue till the unfinished life winds up.

I wish that you had been at Concord. It was the most
harmoniously aesthetic or aesthetically harmonious thing!
The weather, the beauty of the village, the charming old
meeting-house, the descendants of the grand old man in
such profusion, the mixture of Concord and Boston heads,
so many of them of our own circle, the allusions to great
thoughts and things, and the old-time New England rus-
ticity and rurality, the silver polls and ancient voices of
the vieille garde who did the orating (including this 'yer
child), all made a matchless combination, took one back
to one's childhood, and made that rarely realized marriage
of reality with ideality, that usually only occurs in fiction
or poetry.

It was a sweet and memorable day, and I am glad that I
had an active share in it. I thank you for your sweet words
to Alice about my address. I let R. W. E. speak for him-
self, and I find now, hearing so much from others of him,
that there are only a few things that can be said of him;
he was so squarely and simply himself as to impress every
one in the same manner. Reading the whole of him over
again continuously has made me feel his real greatness as
I never did before. He 's really a critter to be thankful
for. Good-night, dear Fanny. I shall be back here by
Commencement, and somehow we must see you at Cho-
corua this summer.

Love to your mother as well as to yourself, from your ever
affectionate

Wm. James.

Aet. 6i\ TO HENRY JAMES 195

The letter of May 3rd drew from Henry James a long reply
which may be found in the "Letters of Henry James,"
under date of May 24th; the reply, in its turn, elicited this
response: —

To Henry James.

Chocorua, June 6, 1903.

Dearest Henry, — Your long and excitingly interesting
type-written letter about coming hither arrived yesterday,
and I hasten to retract all my dampening remarks, now that
I understand the motives fully. The only ones I had imag-
ined, blindling that I am, were fraternal piety and patriotic
duty. Against those I thought I ought to proffer the
thought of "eggs" and other shocks, so that when they
came I might be able to say that you went not unwarned.
But the moment it appears that what you crave is millions
of just such shocks, and that a new lease of artistic life,
with the lamp of genius fed by the oil of twentieth-century
American life, is to be the end and aim of the voyage, all
my stingy doubts wither and are replaced by enthusiasm
that you are still so young-feeling, receptive and hungry
for more raw material and experience. It cheers me im-
mensely, and makes me feel more so myself. It is pathetic
to hear you talk so about your career and its going to seed
without the contact of new material; but feeling as you do
about the new material, I augur a great revival of energy
and internal effervescence from the execution of your pro-
ject. Drop your English ideas and take America and
Americans as they take themselves, and you will certainly
experience a rejuvenation. This is all I have to say today —
merely to let you see how the prospect exhilarates us.

August, 1904, will be an excellent time to begin. I
should like to go South with you, — possibly to Cuba,— but

i96 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o3

as for California, I fear the expense. I am sending you a
decidedly moving book by a mulatto ex-student of mine,
Du Bois, professor of history at Atlanta (Georgia) negro
College.1 Read Chapters VII to XI for local color, etc.

We have been up here for ten days; the physical luxury
of the simplification is something that money can't buy.
Every breath is a pleasure — this in spite of the fact that
the whole country is drying up and burning up — it makes
one ashamed that one can be so happy. The smoke here
has been so thick for five days that the opposite shore [of
the Lake] is hidden. We have a first-rate hired man, a
good cow, nice horse, dog, cook, second-girl, etc. Come up
and see us in August, 1904! Your ever loving

W.J.

To Henry W. Rankin.

Chocorua, June 10, 1903.

My dear Rankin, — Once more has my graphophobia
placed me heavily in your debt. Your two long letters,
though unanswered, were and are appreciated, in spite of
the fact that, as you know, I do not (and I fear cannot)
follow the gospel scheme as you do, and that the Bible it-
self, in both its testaments (omitting parts of John and the
Apocalypse) seems to me, by its intense naturalness and
humanness, the most fatal document that one can read
against the orthodox theology, in so far as the latter claims
the words of the Bible to be its basis. I myself believe
that the orthodox theology contains elements that are per-
manently true, and that such writers as Emerson, by reason
of their extraordinary healthy-mindedness and " once-born "-
ness, are incapable of appreciating. I believe that they will
have to be expressed in any ultimately valid religious philos-

1 W. E. B. Du Bois: The Souls of Black Folk.

Aet. 6i\ TO DICKINSON S. MILLER 197

ophy; and I see in the temper of friendliness of such a man
as you for such writings as Emerson's and mine {magnus
comp. parco) a foretaste of the day when the abstract essen-
tials of belief will be the basis of communion more than the
particular forms and concrete doctrines in which they ar-
ticulate themselves. Your letter about Emerson seemed
to me so admirably written that I was on the point of send-
ing it back to you, thinking it might be well that you should
publish it somewhere. I will still do so, if you ask me. I
have myself been a little scandalized at the non-resisting
manner in which orthodox sheets have celebrated his anni-
versary. An "Emerson number" of "Zion's Herald"
strikes me as tant soit peu of an anomaly, and yet I am told
that such a number appeared. Rereading him in extenso,
almost in toto, lately, has made him loom larger than ever
to me as a human being, but I feel the distinct lack in him
of too little understanding of the morbid side of life.

I have been in the country two weeks, delicious in spite
of drought and smoke, and still more delicious now that
rain has come, and I cannot bear to think of you still linger-
ing in Brooklyn. Perhaps you are already at Northfield.
Indeed I hope so, and that the long Brooklyn winter will
have put you in a condition for its better enjoyment, and
for better cooperation with its work.

I shall get at Shields some day — but I 'm slow in getting
round! Yours ever faithfully,

Wm. James.

To Dickinson S. Miller. _ .

Cambridge, Aug. 18, 1903.

Dear M., — ... I am in good condition, but in some-
what of a funk about my lectures,1 now that the audience

1 These five lectures were delivered at the summer school at "Glenmore," which
Thomas Davidson had founded. Their subject was "Radical Empiricism as a
Philosophy"; but they were neither written out nor reported.

i98 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1903

draws near. I have got my mind working on the infernal
old problem of mind and brain, and how to construct the
world out of pure experiences, and feel foiled again and
inwardly sick with the fever. But I verily believe that it
is only work that makes one sick in that way that has any
chance of breaking old shells and getting a step ahead. It
is a sort of madness however when it is on you. The total
result is to make me admire "Common Sense" as having
done by far the biggest stroke of genius ever made in philos-
ophy when it reduced the chaos of crude experience to
order by its luminous Denkmittel of the stable "thing,"
and its dualism of thought and matter.

I find Strong's book charming and a wonderful piece of
clear and thorough work — quite classical in fact, and surely
destined to renown. The Cliffbrd-Prince-Strong theory
has now full rights to citizenship.

Nevertheless, in spite of his so carefully blocking every
avenue which leads sideways from his conclusion, he has
not convinced me yet. But I can[not] say briefly why. . . .
Yours in haste,

W. J.

To Mrs. Henry Whitman.

Hotel ,

Port Henry, N.Y., Aug. 22, 1903.

Dear Friend, — Obliged to "stop over" for the night at
this loathsome spot, for lack of train connexion, what is
more natural than that I should seek to escape the odious
actual by turning to the distant Ideal — by which term you
will easily recognize Yourself. I did n't write the conven-
tional letter to you after leaving your house in June, pre-
ferring to wait till the tension should accumulate, and know-
ing your indulgence of my unfashionable ways. I have n't

Aet. 6i\ TO MRS. HENRY WHITMAN i99

heard a word about you since that day, but I hope that the
times have treated you kindly, and that you have not been
"overdoing" in your usual naughty way. I, with the ex-
ception of six days lately with the Merrimans, have been
sitting solidly at home, and have found myself in much
better condition than I was in last summer, and consequently
better than for several years. It is pleasant to find that
one's organism has such reparative capacities even after
sixty years have been told out. But I feel as if the remainder
couldn't be very long, at least for "creative" purposes,
and I find myself eager to get ahead with work which un-
fortunately won't allow itself to be done in too much of a
hurry. I am convinced that the desire to formulate truths
is a virulent disease. It has contracted an alliance lately
in me with a feverish personal ambition, which I never had
before, and which I recognize as an unholy thing in such
a connexion. I actually dread to die until I have settled
the Universe's hash in one more book, which shall be epoch-
machend at last, and a title of honor to my children! Child-
ish idiot — as if formulas about the Universe could ruffle
its majesty, and as if the common-sense world and its duties
were not eternally the really real! — I am on my way from
Ashfield, where I was a guest at the annual dinner, to feu
Davidson's "school" at Glenmore, where, in a sanguine
hour, I agreed to give five discourses. Apparently they are
having a good season there. Mrs. Booker Washington was
the hero of the Ashfield occasion — a big hearty handsome
natural creature, quite worthy to be her husband's mate.
Fred Pollock made a tip-top speech. . . . Charles Norton
appeared to great advantage as a benignant patriarch, and
the place was very pretty. Have you read Loti's "Inde
sans les Anglais"? If not, then begin. I seem to myself
to have been doing some pretty good reading this summer,

2oo LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o3

but when I try to recall it, nothing but philosophic works
come up. Good-bye! and Heaven keep you! Yours
affectionately,

W.J.

To Miss Frances R. Morse.

Chocorua, Sept. 24, 1903.

Dearest Fanny, — It is so long since we have held
communion that I think it is time to recommence. Our
summer is ending quietly enough, not only you, but Theo-
dora and Mary Tappan, having all together conspired to
leave us in September solitude, and some young fellows,
companions of Harry and Billy, having just gone down.
The cook goes tomorrow for a fortnight of vacation, but
Alice and I, and probably both the older boys, hope to stay
up here more or less until the middle of October. My
"seminary" begins on Friday, October 2nd, and for the
rest of the year Friday is my only day with a college exercise
in it — an arrangement which leaves me extraordinarily
free, and of which I intend to take advantage by making
excursions. Hitherto, during the entire 30 years of my
College service, I have had a midday exercise every day
in the week. This has always kept me tied too tight to
Cambridge. I am vastly better in nervous tone than I was
a year ago, my work is simplified down to the exact thing
I want to do, and I ought to be happy in spite of the lopping
off of so many faculties of activity. The only thing to do,
as with the process of the suns one finds one's faculties
dropping away one by one, is to be good-natured about it,
remember that the next generation is as young as ever, and
try to live and have a sympathetic share in their activities.
I spent three days lately (only three, alas!) at the "Shanty"
[in Keene Valley], and was moved to admiration at the foun-

Aet. 6 1] TO MRS. HENRY WHITMAN 201

dation for a consciousness that was being laid in the children
by the bare-headed and bare-legged existence "close to
nature" of which the memory was being stored up in them
in these years. They lay around the camp-fire at night at
the feet of their elders, in every attitude of soft recumbency,
heads on stomachs and legs mixed up, happy and dreamy,
just like the young of some prolific carnivorous species.
The coming generation ought to reap the benefit of all this
healthy animality. What would n't I give to have been
educated in it! . . .

To Mrs. Henry Whitman.

Cambridge, Oct. 29, 1903.

My dear "S. W.j" — On inquiry at your studio last
Monday I was told that you would be in the country for
ten days or a fortnight more. I confess that this pleased
me much for it showed you both happy and prudent. Surely
the winter is long enough, however much we cut off" of this
end — the city winter I mean; and the country this month
has been little short of divine.

We came down on the 16th, and I have to get mine (my
country, I mean) from the "Norton Woods." But they
are very good indeed, — indeed, indeed!

I am better, both physically and morally, than for years
past. The whole James family thrives; and were it not
for one's "duties" one could be happy. But that things
should give pain proves that something is being effected, so
I take that consolation. I have the duty on Monday of
reporting at a "Philosophical Conference" on the Chicago
School of Thought. Chicago University has during the
past six months given birth to the fruit of its ten years of
gestation under John Dewey. The result is wonderful — a
real school, and real Thought. Important thought, too!

202 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o4

Did you ever hear of such a city or such a University? Here
we have thought, but no school. At Yale a school, but no
thought. Chicago has both. . . . But this, dear Madam,
is not intended as a letter — only a word of greeting and
congratulation at your absence. I don't know why it
makes me so happy to hear of anyone being in the country.
I suppose they must be happy.

Your last letter went to the right spot — but I don't
expect to hear from you now until I see you. Ever affec-
tionately yours,

W.J.

To Henry 'James.

Newport, Jan. 20, 1904.

... I came down here the night before last, to see if a
change of air might loosen the grip of my influenza, now in
its sixth week and me still weak as a baby, almost, from its
virulent effects. . . . Yesterday a.m. the thermometer fell
to 4 below zero. I walked as far as Tweedy's (I am staying
at a boarding-house, Mrs. Robinson's, Catherine St., close
to Touro Avenue, Daisy Waring being the only other
boarder) — the snow loudly creaking under foot and under
teams however distant, the sky luminously white and
dazzling, no distance, everything equally near to the eye,
and the architecture in the town more huddled, discordant,
cheap, ugly and contemptible than I had ever seen it. It
brought back old times so vividly. So it did in the evening,
when I went after sunset down Kay Street to the termina-
tion. That low West that I 've so often fed on, with a
sombre but intense crimson vestige smouldering close to the
horizon-line, economical but profound, and the western
well of sky shading upward from it through infinite shades
of transparent luminosity in darkness to the deep blue dark-

Aet. 62) TO FRANCOIS PILLON 203

ness overhead. It was purely American. You never see
that western sky anywhere else. Solemn and wonderful.
I should think you 'd like to see it again, if only for the sake
of shuddering at it! . . .

To Francois Pillon.

Cambridge, June 12, 1904.

Dear Pillon, — Once more I get your faithful and in-
defatigable "Annee" and feel almost ashamed of receiving
it thus from you, year after year, when I make nothing of
a return! So you are 75 years old — 1 had no idea of it,
but thought that you were much younger. I am only(!) 62,
and wish that I could expect another 13 years of such ac-
tivity as you have shown. I fear I cannot. My arteries
are senile, and none of my ancestors, so far as I know of
them, have lived past 72, many of them dying much earlier.
This is my last day in Cambridge; tomorrow I get away
into the country, where "'the family" already is, for my
vacation. I shall take your "Annee" with me, and shall
be greatly interested in both Danriac's article and yours.
What a mercy it is that your eyes, in spite of cataract-
operations, are still good for reading. I have had a very
bad winter for work — two attacks of influenza, one very
long and bad, three of gout, one of erysipelas, etc., etc. I
expected to have written at least 400 or 500 pages of my
magnum opus, — a general treatise on philosophy which has
been slowly maturing in my mind, — but I have written
only 32 pages! That tells the whole story. I resigned from
my professorship, but they would not accept my resigna-
tion, and owing to certain peculiarities in the financial situa-
tion of our University just now, I felt myself obliged in
honor to remain.

My philosophy is what I call a radical empiricism, a

2o4 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o4

pluralism, a "tychism," which represents order as being
gradually won and always in the making. It is theistic,
but not essentially so. It rejects all doctrines of the Abso-
lute. It is finitist; but it does not attribute to the question
of the Infinite the great methodological importance which
you and Renouvier attribute to it. I fear that you may
find my system too bottomless and romantic. I am sure that,
be it in the end judged true or false, it is essential to the
evolution of clearness in philosophic thought that someone
should defend a pluralistic empiricism radically. And all
that I fear is that, with the impairment of my working
powers from which I suffer, the Angel of Death may over-
take me before I can get my thoughts on to paper. Life
here in the University consists altogether of interruptions.

I thought much of you at the time of Renouvier's death,
and I wanted to write; but I let that go, with a thousand
other things that had to go. What a life! and what touch-
ing and memorable last words were those which M. Pratt
published in the "Revue de Metaphysique" — memorable,
I mean from the mere fact that the old man could dictate
them at all. I have left unread his last publications, except
for some parts of the " Monadologie " and the " Personal-
isme." He will remain a great figure in philosophic history;
and the sense of his absence must make a great difference to
your consciousness and to that of Madame Pillon. My own
wife and children are well. . . . Ever affectionately yours,

Wm. James.

To Henry 'James.

Cambridge, June 28, 1904.

Dear H., — I came down from Chocorua yesterday a.m.
to go to —

Mrs. Whitman's funeral!

Aet. 62) TO HENRY JAMES 205

She had lost ground steadily during the winter. The last
time I saw her was five weeks ago, when at noon I went up
to her studio thinking she might be there. . . . She told me that
she was to go on the following day to the Massachusetts
General Hospital, for a cure of rest and seclusion. There
she died last Friday evening, having improved in her cardiac
symptoms, but pneumonia supervening a week ago. It 's a
great mercy that the end was so unexpectedly quick. What
I had feared was a slow deterioration for a year or more to
come, with all the nameless misery — peculiarly so in her
case — of death by heart disease. As it was, she may be
said to have died standing, a thing she always wished to do.
She went to every dinner-party and evening party last
winter, had an extension, a sort of ball-room, built to her
Mount Vernon house, etc. The funeral was beautiful both
in Trinity Church and at the grave in Mt. Auburn. I was
one of the eight pall-bearers — the others of whom you would
hardly know. The flowers and greenery had been arranged
in absolutely Whitmanian style by Mrs. Jack Gardner,
Mrs. Henry Parkman, and Sally Fairchild. The scene at
the grave was beautiful. She had no blood relatives, and
all Boston — I mean the few whom we know — had gone
out, and seemed swayed by an overpowering emotion which
abolished all estrangement and self-consciousness. It was
the sort of ending that would please her, could she know of
it. An extraordinary and indefinable creature! I used
often to feel coldly towards her on account of her way of
taking people as a great society "business" proceeding, but
now that her agitated life of tip-toe reaching in so many
directions, of genuinest amiability, is over, pure tenderness
asserts its own. Against that dark background of natural
annihilation she seems to have been a pathetic little slender
worm, writhing and curving blindly through its little day,

2o6 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o4

expending such intensities of consciousness to terminate in
that small grave.

She was a most peculiar person. I wish that you had
known her whole life here more intimately, and understood
its significance. You might then write a worthy article
about her. For me, it is impossible to define her. She leaves
a dreadful vacuum in Boston. I have often wondered
whether I should survive her — and here it has come in the
night, without the sound of a footstep, and the same world
is here — but without her as its witness. . . .

To Charles Eliot Norton.

Cambridge, June 30, 1904.

Dear Charles, — I have just read the July "Atlantic,"
and am so moved by your Ruskin letters that I can't refrain
from overflowing. They seem to me immortal documents —
as the clouds clear away he will surely take his stable place
as one of the noblest of the sons of men. Mere sanity is
the most philistine and (at bottom) unimportant of a man's
attributes. The chief "cloud" is the bulk of "Modern
Painters" and the other artistic writings, which have made
us take him primarily as an art-connoisseur and critic.
Regard all that as inessential, and his inconsistencies and
extravagances fall out of sight and leave the Great Heart
alone visible.

Do you suppose that there are many other correspondents
of R. who will yield up their treasures in our time to the
light? I wish that your modesty had not suppressed cer-
tain passages which evidently expressed too much regard
for yourself. The point should have been his expression of
that sort of thing — no matter to whom addressed! I un-
derstand and sympathize fully with his attitude about our
war. Granted him and his date, that is the way he ought

Aet. 62} TO L. T. HOBHOUSE 207

to have felt, and I revere him perhaps the more for it. . . .

S. W.'s sudden defection is a pathetic thing! It makes
one feel like closing the ranks.

Affectionately — to all of you — including Theodora,

W. J.

To L. T. Hobhouse.

Chocorua, Aug. 12, 1904.

Dear Brother Hobhouse, — Don't you think it a tant
soit pen scurvy trick to play on me ('t is true that you don't
name me, but to the informed reader the reference is trans-
parent — I say nothing of poor Schiller's case) to print in
the "Aristotelian Proceedings" (pages 104 ff.)1 a beautiful
duplicate of my own theses in the "Will to Believe" essay
(which should have been called by the less unlucky title the
Right to Believe) in the guise of an alternative and substitute
for my doctrine, for which latter you, in the earlier pages of
your charmingly written essay, substitute a travesty for which
I defy any candid reader to find a single justification in my
text? My essay hedged the license to indulge in private
over-beliefs with so many restrictions and signboards of
danger that the outlet was narrow enough. It made of
tolerance the essence of the situation; it defined the per-
missible cases; it treated the faith-attitude as a necessity
for individuals, because the total "evidence," which only the
race can draw, has to include their experiments among its
data. It tended to show only that faith could not be abso-
lutely vetoed, as certain champions of "science" (Clifford,
Huxley, etc.) had claimed it ought to be. It was a function
that might lead, and probably does lead, into a wider world.
You say identically the same things; only, from your special
polemic point of view, you emphasize more the dangers;

1 Aristotelian Society Proceedings, vol. iv, pp. 87-110.

io8 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o4

while I, from my polemic point of view, emphasized more
the right to run their risk.

Your essay, granting that emphasis and barring the in-
justice to me, seems to me exquisite, and, taking it as a
unit, I subscribe unreservedly to almost every positive word.

-I say "positive," for I doubt whether you have seen
enough of the extraordinarily invigorating effect of mind-
<r#7w-philosophy on certain people to justify your somewhat
negative treatment of that subject; and I say "almost"
because your distinction between "spurious" and "genuine"
courage (page 91) reminds me a bit too much of "true" and
"false" freedom, and other sanctimonious come-offs. — ■
Could you not have made an equally sympathetic reading
of me?

I should n't have cared a copper for the misrepresentation
were it not a "summation of stimuli" affair. I have just
been reading Bradley on Schiller in the July "Mind," and
A. E. Taylor on the Will to Believe in the "McGill Quar-
terly" of Montreal. Both are vastly worse than you; and
I cry to Heaven to tell me of what insane root my "leading
contemporaries" have eaten, that they are so smitten with
blindness as to the meaning of printed texts. Or are we
others absolutely incapable of making our meaning clear?

I imagine that there is neither insane root nor unclear
writing, but that in these matters each man writes from out
of a field of consciousness of which the bogey in the back-
ground is the chief object. Your bogey is superstition;
my bogey is desiccation; and each, for his contrast-effect,
clutches at any text that can be used to represent the enemy,
regardless of exegetical proprieties.

In my essay the evil shape was a vision of "Science" in
the form of abstraction, priggishness and sawdust, lording
it over all. Take the sterilest scientific prig and cad you

Jet. 62} TO EDWIN D. STARBUCK 209

know, compare him with the richest religious intellect you
know, and you would not, any more than I would, give the
former the exclusive right of way. Rut up to page 104 of
your essay he will deem you altogether on his side.

Pardon the familiarity of this epistle. I like and admire
your theory of Knowledge so much, and you re-duplicate
(I dont mean copy) my views so beautifully in this article,
that I hate to let you go unchidden.

Believe me, with the highest esteem (plus some indigna-
tion, for you ought to know better!), Yours faithfully,

Wm. James.

To Edwin D. Starbuck

Salisbury, Coxn. Aug. 24, 1904.

Dear Starbuck, — ... Of the strictures you make
[in your review of my "Varieties"], the first one (undue
emphasis on extreme case) is, I find, almost universally made;
so it must in some sense be correct. Yet it would never
do to study the passion of love on examples of ordinary
liking or friendly affection, or that of homicidal pugnacity
on examples of our ordinary impatiences with our kind.
So here it must be that the extreme examples let us more
deeply into the secrets of the religious life, explain why the
tamer ones value their religion so much, tame though it be,
because it is so continuous with a so much acuter ideal.
But I have long been conscious that there is on this matter
something to be said which neither my critics have said, nor
I can say, and which I must therefore commit to the future.

The second stricture (in your paragraph 4 on pages lo^jf.)
is of course deeply important, if true. At present I can see
but vaguely just what sort of outer relations our inner organ-
ism might respond to, which our feelings and intellect inter-
pret by religious thought. You ought to work your program

210 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o4

for all it is worth in the way of growth in definiteness. I
look forward with great eagerness to your forthcoming book,
and meanwhile urge strongly that you should publish the
advance article you speak of in Hall's new Journal. I
can't see any possible risk. It will objectify a part of your
material for you, and possibly, by arousing criticism, enable
you to strengthen your points.

Your third stricture, about Higher Powers, is also very
important, and I am not at all sure that you may not
be right. I have frankly to confess that my "Varieties"
carried "theory" as far as I could then carry it, and that I
can carry it no farther today. I can't see clearly over that
edge. Yet I am sure that tracks have got to be made there
— I think that the fixed point with me is the conviction
that our "rational" consciousness touches but a portion of
the real universe and that our life is fed by the "mystical"
region as well. I have no mystical experience of my own,
but just enough of the germ of mysticism in me to recognize
the region from which their voice comes when I hear it.

I was much disappointed in Leuba's review of my book
in the "International Journal of Ethics." ... I confess
that the way in which he stamps out all mysticism what-
ever, using the common pathological arguments, seemed to
me unduly crude. I wrote him an expostulatory letter,
which evidently made no impression at all, and which he
possibly might send you if you had the curiosity to apply.

I am having a happy summer, feeling quite hearty again.
I congratulate you on being settled, though I know nothing
of the place. I congratulate you and Mrs. Starbuck also
on airy fairy Lilian, who makes, I believe, the third. Long
may they live and make their parents proud. With best
regards to you both, I am yours ever truly,

Wm. James.

Aet.62] TO JAMES HENRY LEUBA 211

The "expostulatory " letter to Professor Leuba began
with a series of objections to statements which he had made,
and continued with the passage which follows.

To James Henry Leuba.

Cambridge, Apr. 17, 1904.

. . . My personal position is simple. I have no living
sense of commerce with a God. I envy those who have,
for I know the addition of such a sense would help me im-
mensely. The Divine, for my active life, is limited to ab-
stract concepts which, as ideals, interest and determine me,
but do so but faintly, in comparison with what a feeling of
God might effect, if I had one. It is largely a question of
intensity, but differences of intensity may make one's whole
centre of energy shift. Now, although I am so devoid of
Gottesbewustsein in the directer and stronger sense, yet
there is something in me which makes response when I hear
utterances made from that lead by others. I recognize
the deeper voice. Something tells me, "thither lies truth" —
and I am sure it is not old theistic habits and prejudices of
infancy. Those are Christian; and I have grown so out of
Christianity that entanglement therewith on the part of a
mystical utterance has to be abstracted from and overcome,
before I can listen. Call this, if you like, my mystical germ.
It is a very common germ. It creates the rank and file of
believers. As it withstands in my case, so it will withstand
in most cases, all purely atheistic criticism, but interpretative
criticism (not of the mere "hysteria" and "nerves" order)
it can energetically combine with. Your criticism seems
to amount to a pure non possumus: "Mystical deliverances
must be infallible revelations in every particular, or nothing.
Therefore they are nothing, for anyone else than their owner."
Why may they not be JW7Z<? thing, although not everything?

2i2 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o4

Your only consistent position, it strikes me, would be a
dogmatic atheistic naturalism; and, without any mystical
germ in us, that, I believe, is where we all should unhesi-
tatingly be today.

Once allow the mystical germ to influence our beliefs, and
I believe that we are in my position. Of course the "sub-
liminal" theory is an inessential hypothesis, and the question
of pluralism or monism is equally inessential.

I am letting loose a deluge on you! Don't reply at length,
or at all. / hate to reply to anybody, and will sympathize
with your silence. But I had to restate my position more
clearly. Yours truly,

Wm. James.

The following document is not a letter, but a series of
answers to a questionnaire upon the subject of religious
belief, which was sent out in 1904 by Professor James B.
Pratt of Williams College, and to which James filled out a
reply at an unascertained date in the autumn of that year.

QUESTIONNAIRE1

It is being realized as never before that religion, as one of the
most important things in the life both of the community and of
the individual, deserves close and extended study. Such study
can be of value only if based upon the personal experiences of
many individuals. If you are in sympathy with such study and
are willing to assist in it, will you kindly write out the answers to
the following questions and return them with this questionnaire,
as soon as you conveniently can, to James B. Pratt, 20 Shepard
Street, Cambridge, Mass.

Please answer the questions at length and in detail. Do not
give philosophical generalizations, but your own personal ex-
perience.

1 James's answers are printed in italics.

Aet. 62] ANSWERS TO QUESTIONNAIRE 213

1. What does religion mean to you personally? Is it

(1) A belief that something exists? Yes.

(2) An emotional experience? Not powerfully so, yet a
social reality.

(3) A general attitude of the will toward God or toward
righteousness! // involves these.

(4) Or something else?

If it has several elements, which is for you the most important?
The social appeal for corroboration, consolation, etc., when
things are going wrong with my causes {my truth denied), etc.

2. What do you mean by God? A combination of Ideality
and {final) efficacity.

(1) Is He a person — if so, what do you mean by His being
a person ? He must be cognizant and responsive in some
way.

(2) Or is He only a Force ? He must do.

(3) Or is God an attitude of the Universe toward you ? Yes,
but more conscious. "God," to me, is not the only
spiritual reality to believe in. Religion means primarily
a universe of spiritual relations surrounding the earthly
practical ones, not merely relations of ' ' value," but agencies
and their activities. I suppose that the chief premise for
?ny hospitality towards the religious testimony of others is
my conviction that "normal" or "sane" consciousness is so
small a part of actual experience. What e'er be true, it
is not true exclusively, as philistine scientific opinion
assumes. The other kinds of consciousness bear witness
to a much wider universe of experiences, from which our
belief selects and emphasizes such parts as best satisfy
our needs.

How do you apprehend his relation to mankind
and to you personally?

If your position on any of these matters is uncer-
tain, please state the fact.

3. Why do you believe in God? Is it

(1) From some argument? Emphatically, no.

Or (2) Because you have experienced His presence? No,
but rather because I need it so that it " must" be true.

Or (3) From authority, such as that of the Bible or of some
prophetic person? Only the whole tradition of religious
people, to which something in me makes admiring response.

Or (4) From any other reason? Only for the social reasons.

Uncertain.

2i4 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1904

If from several of these reasons, please indicate carefully the
order of their importance.

4. Or do you not so much believe in God as want to use Him?
/ cant use him very definitely, yet I believe. Do you accept Him not
so much as a real existent Being, but rather as an ideal to live
by? More as a more powerful ally of my own ideals. If you
should become thoroughly convinced that there was no God,
would it make any great difference in your life — either in
happiness, morality, or in other respects? Hard to say. It
would surely make some difference.

5. Is God very real to you, as real as an earthly friend, though
different? Dimly [real]; not [as an earthly friend}.

Do you feel that you have experienced His presence? If so,
please describe what you mean by such an experience. Never.

How vague or how distinct is it? How does it affect you
mentally and physically?

If you have had no such experience, do you accept the testi-
mony of others who claim to have felt God's presence directly?
Please answer this question with special care and in as great
detail as possible. Yes! The whole line of testimony on this point
is so strong that I am unable to pooh-pooh it away. No doubt there
is a germ in me of something similar that makes response.

6. Do you pray, and if so, why? That is, is it purely from
habit, and social custom, or do you really believe that God
hears your prayers? / cant possibly pray — I feel foolish and
artificial.

Is prayer with you one-sided or two-sided — i.e., do you
sometimes feel that in prayer you receive something — such as
strength or the divine spirit — from God? Is it a real com-

munion?

7. What do you mean by "spirituality"? Susceptibility to
ideals, but with a certain freedom to indulge in imagination about
them. A certain amount of "other worldly ''fancy. Otherwise you
have 7nere morality, or "taste."

Describe a typical spiritual person. Phillips Brooks.

8. Do you believe in personal immortality? Never keenly;
but more strongly as I grow older. If so, why? Because I am
just getting fit to live.

9. Do you accept the Bible as authority in religious matters?
Are your religious faith and your religious life based on it? If
so, how would your belief in God and your life toward Him and
your fellow men be affected by loss of faith in the authority of the

Jet. 62] TO MISS PAULINE GOLDMARK 215

Bible? No. No. No. It is so human a book that I don t see
how belief in its divine authorship can survive the reading of it.

10. What do you mean by a "religious experience"? Any
moment of life that brings the reality of spiritual things more
"home" to one.

To Miss Pauline Goldmark.

Chocorua, Sept. 21, 1904.

Dear Pauline, — Alice went off this morning to Cam-
bridge, to get the house ready for the advent of the rest of
us a week hence — viz., Wednesday the 28th. Having
breakfasted at 6:30 to bid her God speed, the weather was
so lordly fine (after a heavy rain in the night) that I trudged
across lots to our hill-top, which you never saw, and now
lie there with my back against a stone, scribbling you these
lines at half-past nine. The vacation has run down with
an appalling rapidity, but all has gone well with us, and I
have been extraordinarily well and happy, and mean to be
a good boy all next winter, to say nothing of remoter futures.
My brother Henry stayed a delightful fortnight, and seemed
to enjoy nature here intensely — found so much sentiment
and feminine delicacy in it all. It is a pleasure to be with
anyone who takes in things through the eyes. Most people
don't. The two "savans" who were here noticed absolutely
nothing, though they had never been in America before.

Naturally I have wondered what things your eyes have
been falling on. Many views from hill-tops? Many magic
dells and brooks? I hope so, and that it has all done you
endless good. Such a green and gold and scarlet morn as
this would raise the dead. I hope that your sister Susan
has also got great good from the summer, and that the fair
Josephine is glad to be at home again, and your mother re-
conciled to losing you. Perhaps even now you are pre-

216 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o4

paring to go down. I have only written as a Lebenszeichen
and to tell you of our dates. I expect no reply, till you
write a word to say when you are to come to Boston. Un-
happily we can't ask you to Irving St , being mortgaged three
deep to foreigners. Ever yours,

W.J.

It will be recalled that the St. Louis Exposition had oc-
curred shortly before the date of the last letter and had led
a number of learned and scientific associations to hold in-
ternational congresses in America. James kept away from
St. Louis, but asked several foreign colleagues to visit him
at Chocorua or in Cambridge before their return to Europe.
Among them were Dr. Pierre Janet of Paris and his wife,
Professor C. Lloyd Morgan of Bristol, and Professor Harold
Hoffding of Copenhagen.

To F. C. S. Schiller.

Cambridge, Oct. 26, 1904.

Dear Schiller, — . . . Last night the Janets left us — a
few days previous, Lloyd Morgan. I am glad to possess
my soul for a while alone. Make much of dear old Hoffding,
who is a good pluralist and irrationalist. I took to him im-
mensely and so did everybody. Lecturing to my class, he
told against the Absolutists an anecdote of an "American"
child who asked his mother if God made the world in six
days. "Yes." — "The whole of it?" - - "Yes."— "Then it
is finished, all done?" — "Yes." — "Then in what business
now is God?" If he tells it in Oxford you must reply:
"Sitting for his portrait to Royce, Bradley, and Taylor."

Don't return the "McGill Quarterly"! — I have another
copy. Good-bye!

W. J.

Aet. 63} TO EDWIN D. STARBUCK 217

To F. J. E. Woodbridge.

Cambridge, Feb. 6, 1905.

Dear Woodbridge, — I appear to be growing into a
graphomaniac. Truth boils over from my organism as
muddy water from a Yellowstone Geyser. Here is another
contribution to my radical empiricism, which I send hot on
the heels of the last one. I promise that, with the possible
exception of one post-scriptual thing, not more than eight
pages of MS. long, I shall do no more writing this academic
year. So if you accept this,1 you have not much more to
fear. ... I think, on the whole, that though the present
article directly hitches on to the last words of my last article,
"The Thing and Its Relations," the article called the "Es-
sence of Humanism" had better appear before it. . . .
Always truly yours

Wm. James.

To Edwin D. Starbuck.

Cambridge,./7^. 12, 1905.

Dear Starbuck, — I have read your article in No. 1 of
Hall's Journal with great interest and profit. It makes
me eager for the book, but pray take great care of your
style in that — it seems to me that this article is less well
written than your "Psychology of Religion" was, less clear,
more involved, more technical in language — probably the
result of rapidity. Our American philosophic literature is
dreadful from a literary point of view. Pierre Janet told
me he thought it was much worse than German stuff — and
I begin to believe so; technical and semi-technical language,
half-clear thought, fluency, and no composition! Turn
your face resolutely the other way! But I did n't start to

1 "How Two Minds Can Know One Thing," Journal of Philosophy, Psychology,
and Scientific Methods, 1905, vol. 11, p. 176.

«8 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1905

say this. Your thought in this article is both important and
original, and ought to be worked out in the clearest possible
manner. . . . Your thesis needs to be worked out with
great care, and as concretely as possible. It is a difficult
one to put successfully, on account of the vague character
of all its terms. One point you should drive home is that
the anti-religious attitudes (Leuba's, Huxley's, Clifford's),
so far as there is any "pathos" in them, obey exactly the
same logic. The real crux is when you come to define ob-
jectively the ideals to which feeling reacts. "God is a
Spirit" — darauf geht es an — on the last available defini-
tion of the term Spirit. It may be very abstract.
Love to Mrs. Starbuck. Yours always truly,

Wm. James.

To F. J. E. Woodbridge.

[Feb. 22, 1905.]

Dear Woodbridge, — Here's another! But I solemnly
swear to you that this shall be my very last offense for some
months to come. This is the "postscriptual" article1 of
which I recently wrote you, and I have now cleaned up the
pure-experience philosophy from all the objections im-
mediately in sight. . . . Truly yours,

Wm. James.

1 "Is Radical Empiricism Solipsistic?" Journal of Philosophy, Psychology; and
Scientific Methods, 1905, vol. 11, p. 235.

XV
I 905-1 907

The Last Period (II) — Italy and Greece — Philosophical
Congress in Rome — Stanford University — The
Earthquake — Resignation of Professorship

In the spring of 1905 an escape from influenza, from Cam-
bridge duties, and from correspondents, became impera-
tive. James had long wanted to see Athens with his own
eyes, and he sailed on April 3 for a short southern holiday.
During the journey he wrote letters to almost no one except
his wife. On his way back from Athens he stopped in Rome
with the purpose of seeing certain young Italian philoso-
phers. A Philosophical Congress was being held there at
the time; and James, though he had originally declined the
invitation to attend it, inevitably became involved in its
proceedings and ended by seizing the occasion to discuss his
theory of consciousness. It was obvious that the appro-
priate language in which to address a full meeting of the
Congress would be French, and so he shut himself up in
his hotel and composed "La Notion de Conscience." His
experience in writing this paper threw an instructive side-
light on his process of composition. Ordinarily — when he
was writing in English — twenty-five sheets of manuscript,
written in a large hand and corrected, were a maximum
achievement for one day. The address in Rome was not
composed in English and then translated, but was written
out in French. When he had finished the last lines of one
day's work, James found to his astonishment that he had
completed and corrected over forty pages of manuscript.

22o LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o5

The inhibitions which a habit of careful attention to points
of style ordinarily called into play were largely inoperative
when he wrote in a language which presented to his mind
a smaller variety of possible expressions, and thus imposed
limits upon his self-criticism.

In the following year (1906), James took leave of absence
from Harvard in January and accepted an invitation from
Stanford University to give a course during its spring term.
He planned the course as a general introduction to Philos-
ophy. Had he not been interrupted by the San Francisco
earthquake, he would have rehearsed much of the projected
"Introductory Textbook of Philosophy," in which he meant
to outline his metaphysical system. But the earthquake
put an end to the Stanford lectures in April, as the reader
will learn more fully. In the ensuing autumn and winter
(1907), James made the same material the basis of a half-
year's work with his last Harvard class.

In November, 1906, the lectures which compose the
volume called 'Pragmatism" were written out and de-
livered in November at the Lowell Institute in Boston. In
January, 1907, they were repeated at Columbia University,
and then James published them in the spring.

The time had now come for him to stop regular teaching
altogether. He had been continuing to teach, partly in
deference to the wishes of the College; but it had become
evident that he must have complete freedom to use his
strength and time for writing when he could write, for
special lectures, like the series on Pragmatism, when such
might serve his ends, and for rest and change when recupera-
tion became necessary. So, in February, 1907, he sent his
resignation to the Harvard Corporation. The last meeting
of his class ended in a way for which he was quite unpre-
pared. His undergraduate students presented him with a

Aet. 63} TO MRS. JAMES 221

silver loving-cup, the graduate students and assistants with
an inkwell. There were a couple of short speeches, and
words were spoken by which he was very much moved. Un-
fortunately there was no record of what was said.

To Mrs. James.

Amalfi, Mar. 30, 1905.

... It is good to get something in full measure, without
haggling or stint, and today I have had the picturesque
ladled out in buckets full, heaped up and running over. I
never realized the beauties of this shore, and forget (in my
habit of never noticing proper names till I have been there)
whether you have ever told me of the drive from Sorrento
to this place. Anyhow, I wish that you could have taken
it with me this day. "Thank God for this day!" We
came to Sorrento by steamer, and at 10:30 got away in a
carriage, lunching at the half-way village of Positano;
and proceeding through Amalfi to Ravello, high up on the
mountain side, whence back here in time for a 7:15 o'clock
dinner. Practically six hours driving through a scenery of
which I had never realized the beauty, or rather the in-
terest, from previous descriptions. The lime-stone moun-
tains are as strong as anything in Switzerland, though of
course much smaller. The road, a Cornice affair cut for the
most part on the face of cliffs, and crossing little ravines
(with beaches) on the side of which nestle hamlets, is posi-
tively ferocious in its grandeur, and on the side of it the
azure sea, dreaming and blooming like a bed of violets.
I did n't look for such Swiss strength, having heard of
naught but beauty. It seems as if this were a race such
that, when anyone wished to express an emotion of any
kind, he went and built a bit of stone-wall and limed it
onto the rock, so that now, when they have accumulated,

222 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o5

the works of God and man are inextricably mixed, and it
is as if mankind had been a kind of immemorial coral in-
sect. Every possible square yard is terraced up, reclaimed
and planted, and the human dwellings are the fiercest ex-
amples of cliff-building, cave-habitation, staircase and foot-
path you can imagine. How I do wish that you could have
been along today. . . .

Mar. 31, 1905.
From half-past four to half-past six I walked alone through
the old Naples, hilly streets, paved from house to house and
swarming with the very poor, vocal with them too (their
voices carry so that every child seems to be calling to the
whole street, goats, donkeys, chickens, and an occasional
cow mixed in), and no light of heaven getting indoors. The
street floor composed of cave-like shops, the people doing
their work on chairs in the street for the sake of light, and
in the black inside, beds and a stove visible among the
implements of trade. Such light and shade, and grease and
grime, and swarm, and apparent amiability would be hard
to match. I have come here too late in life, when the
picturesque has lost its serious reality. Time was when
hunger for it haunted me like a passion, and such sights
would have then been the solidest of mental food. I put
up then with such inferior substitutional suggestions as
Geneva and Paris afforded — but these black old Naples
streets are not suggestions, they are the reality itself — full
orchestra. I have got such an impression of the essen-
tial sociability of this race, especially in the country. A
smile will go so far with them — even without the accom-
panying copper. And the children are so sweet. Tell
Aleck to drop his other studies, learn Italian (real Italian,
not the awful gibberish I try to speak), cultivate his beauti-
ful smile, learn a sentimental song or two, bring a tarn-

Aet. 63] TO HIS DAUGHTER 223

bourine or banjo, and come down here and fraternize with
the common people along the coast - - he can go far, and
make friends, and be a social success, even if he should go
back to a clean hotel of some sort for sleep every night. . . .

To' his Daughter.

On board S. S. Orenogne, approaching
Piraeus, Greece, Apr. 3, 1905.

Darling Peg, — Your loving Dad is surely in luck sailing
over this almost oily sea, under the awning on deck, past
the coast of Greece (whose snow-capped mountains can be
seen on the horizon), towards the Piraeus, where we are due
to arrive at about two. I had some misgivings about the
steamer from Marseilles, but she has turned out splendid,
and the voyage perfect. A 4000-ton boat, bran new as to
all her surface equipment, stateroom all to myself, by a
happy stroke of luck (the boat being full), clean absolutely,
large open window, sea like Lake Champlain, with the color
of Lake Leman, about a hundred and twenty first-class
passengers of the most interesting description, one sixth
English archeologists, one sixth English tourists, one third
French archeologists, etc., — art international archeological
congress opens at Athens this week, — the rest Dagoes
quelconqueSy many distinguished men, almost all educated
and pronounced individualities, and so much acquaintance
and sociability, that the somewhat small upper deck on
which I write resounds with conversation like an afternoon
tea. The meals are tip-top, and the whole thing almost
absurdly ideal in its kind. I only wish your mother could
be wafted here for one hour, to sit by my side and enjoy
the scene. The best feature of the boat is little Miss Boyd,
the Cretan excavatress, from Smith College, a perfect little
trump of a thing, who has been through the Greco-Turkish

224 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o5

war as nurse (as well as being nurse at Tampa during our
Cuban war), and is the simplest, most generally intelligent
little thing, who knows Greece by heart and can smooth
one's path beautifully. Waldstein of Cambridge is on
board, also M. Sylvain of the Theatre Francais, and his
daughter — going to recite prologues or something at the
representation of Sophocles's "Antigone," which is to take
place — Jie looking just like your uncle Henry — both
eminent comedians — I mean the two Sylvains. On the
bench opposite me is the most beautiful woman on board,
a sort of Mary Salter translated into French, though she is
with rather common men. Well, now I will stop, and use
my Zeiss glass on the land, which is getting nearer. My
heart wells over with love and gratitude at having such a
family — meaning Alice, you, Harry, Bill, Aleck, and
Mother-in-law — and resolutions to live so as to be more
worthy of them. I will finish this on land.

Well, dear family, — Wre got in duly in an indescribable
embrouillement of small boats (our boatman, by the way,
when Miss Boyd asked him his name, replied "Dionysos";
our wine-bottle was labelled'" John Solon and Co."), sailing
past the Island of y^Egina and the Bay of Salamis, with the
Parthenon visible ahead — a worthy termination to a
delightful voyage. We drove the three miles from the Piraeus
in a carriage, common and very dusty country road, also
close by the Parthenon, through the cheap little town to
this hotel, -after which George Putnam and I, washing our
hands, strolled forth to see what we could, the first thing
being Mrs. Sam Hoar at the theatre of Bacchus. Then
the rest of the Acropolis, which is all and more than all the
talk. There is a mystery of Tightness about that Parthenon
that I cannot understand. It sets a standard for other

Aet. 63] TO MRS. JAMES 225

human things, showing that absolute Tightness is not out
of reach. But I am not in descriptive mood, so I spare you.
Suffice it that I could n't keep the tears from welling into
my eyes. "J'ai vu la beaute parfaite." Santayana is in a
neighboring hotel, but we have missed each other thrice.
The Forbeses are on the Peloponnesus, but expected back
tomorrow. Well, dear ones all, good-night! Thus far, and
no farther! Hence I turn westward again. The Greek
lower orders seem far less avid and rapacious than the
Southern Italians. God bless you all. I must get to
another hotel, and be more to myself. Good and dear as
the Putnams are and extremely helpful as they 've been,
it keeps me too much in company. Good-night again.
Your loving father, respective husband,

W.J.

To Mrs. lames. ~ A

J Rome, Apr. 25, 1905.

. . . Strong telegraphed me yesterday from Lausanne
that he . . . expected to be at Cannes on the 4th of May.
I was glad of this, for I had been feeling more and more as
if I ought to stay here, and it makes everything square out
well. This morning I went to the meeting-place of the
Congress to inscribe myself definitely, and when I gave my
name, the lady who was taking them almost fainted, saying
that all Italy loved me, or words to that effect, and called
in poor Professor de Sanctis, the Vice President or Secretary
or whatever, who treated me in the same manner, and
finally got me to consent to make an address at one of the
general meetings, of which there are four, in place of Sully,
Flournoy, Richet, Lipps, and Brentano, who were announced
but are not to come. I fancy they have been pretty un-
scrupulous with their program here, printing conditional
futures as categorical ones. So I 'm in for it again, having

226 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1905

no power to resist flattery. I shall try to express my "Does
Consciousness Exist?" in twenty minutes -- and possibly
in the French tongue! Strange after the deep sense of
nothingness that has been besetting me the last two weeks
(mere fatigue symptom) to be told that my name was at-
tracting many of the young professors to the Congress!
Then I went to the Museum in the baths of Diocletian or
whatever it is, off there by the R. R., then to the Capitol,
and then to lunch off the Corso, at a restaurant, after buying
a French book whose author says in his preface that Sully,
W. J., and Bergson are his masters. And I am absolute

O in my own home! . . .

Apr. 30, 1905. 7 p.m.

... If you never had a tired husband, at least you 've
got one now! The ideer of being in such delightful condi-
tions and interesting surroundings, and being conscious of
nothing but one's preposterous physical distress, is too
ridiculous! I have just said good-bye to my circle of ad-
mirers, relatively youthful, at the hotel door, under the
pretext (a truth until this morning) that I had to get ready
to go to Lausanne tonight, and I taper off my activity by
subsiding upon you. Yesterday till three, and the day before
till five, I was writing my address, which this morning I
gave — in French. I wrote it carefully and surprised my-
self by the ease with which I slung the Gallic accent and
intonation, being excited by the occasion.1 Janet expressed
himself as stupefait, from the linguistic point of view. The
thing lasted 40 minutes, and was followed by a discussion
which showed that the critics with one exception had wholly
failed to catch the point of view; but that was quite en
regie, so I don't care; and I have given the thing to Clapa-

1 This address, "La Notion de Conscience," was printed first in the Archives de
Psychologic, 1905, vol. v, p. 1. It will also be found in the Essays in Radical Em-
piricism,

Aet.63\ TO MRS. JAMES

227

rede to print in Flournoy's "Archives." The Congress was
far too vast, but filled with strange and interesting creatures
of all sorts, and socially very nutritious to anyone who can
stand sociability without distress. A fete of some sort
every day -- this p.m. I have just returned from a great
afternoon tea given us by some "Minister" at the Borghese
Palace - - in the Museum. (The King, you know, has
bought the splendid Borghese park and given it to the City
of Rome as a democratic possession in perpetuo. A splendid
gift.) The pictures too! Tonight there is a great banquet
with speeches, to which of course I can't go. I lunched at
the da Vitis, — a big table full, she very simple and nice, —
and I have been having this afternoon a very good and
rather intimate talk with the little band of "pragmatists,"
Papini, Vailati, Calderoni, Amendola, etc., most of whom
inhabit Florence, publish the monthly journal "Leonardo"
at their own expense, and carry on a very serious philosophic
movement, apparently really inspired by Schiller and my-
self (I never could believe it before, although Ferrari had
assured me), and show an enthusiasm, and also a literary
swing and activity that I know nothing of in our own land,
and that probably our damned academic technics and
Ph.D. -machinery and university organization prevents from
ever coming to a birth. These men, of whom Ferrari is one,
are none of them Fach-philosophers, and few of them teachers
at all. It has given me a certain new idea of the way in
which truth ought to find its way into the world.

I have seen such a lot of important-lookmg faces, — prob-
ably everything in the stock in the shop-window, — and
witnessed such charmingly gracious manners, that it is a
lesson. The woodenness of our Anglo-Saxon social ways ! I
had a really splendid audience for quality this a.m. (about
200), even though they did n't understand. . . .

228 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o5

To George S ant ay ana.

Orvieto, May 2, 1905.
Dear Santa yana, — I came here yesterday from Rome
and have been enjoying the solitude. I stayed at the ex-
quisite Albergo de Russie, and did n't shirk the Congress —
in fact they stuck me for a "general" address, to fill the
vacuum left by Flournoy and Sully, who had been announced
and came not (I spoke agin "consciousness," but nobody
understood) and I got fearfully tired. On the whole it was
an agreeable nightmare — agreeable on account of the
perfectly charming gentillezza of the bloody Dagoes, the
way they caress and flatter you — "il piu grand psicologo
del mondo," etc., and of the elaborate provisions for general
entertainment — nightmare, because of my absurd bodily
fatigue. However, these things are "neither here nor
there." What I really write to you for is to tell you to
send (if not sent already) your "Life of Reason" to the
" Revue de Philosophic," or rather to its editor, M. Peillaube,
Rue des Revues 160, and to the editor of "Leonardo" (the
great little Florentine philosophical journal), Sig. Giovanni
Papini, 14 Borgo Albizi, Florence. The most interesting,
and in fact genuinely edifying, part of my trip has been
meeting this little cenacle, who have taken my own writings,
entre autres, au grand serieux, but who are carrying on their
philosophical mission in anything but a technically serious
way, inasmuch as "Leonardo" (of which I have hitherto
only known a few odd numbers) is devoted to good and
lively literary form. The sight of their belligerent young
enthusiasm has given me a queer sense of the gray-plaster
temperament of our bald-headed young Ph.D.'s, boring
each other at seminaries, writing those direful reports of
literature in the "Philosophical Review" and elsewhere,
fed on "books of reference," and never confounding "^Es-

Aet. 63} TO MRS. JAMES 229

thetik" with "Erkentnisstheorie." Faugh! I shall never
deal with them again -- on those terms! Can't you and I,
who in spite of such divergence have yet so much in common
in our Weltanschauung, start a systematic movement at
Harvard against the desiccating and pedantifying process?
I have been cracking you up greatly to both Peillaube and
Papini, and quoted you twice in my speech, which was in
French and will be published in Flournoy's "Archives de
Psychologic" I hope you 're enjoying the Eastern Empire
to the full, and that you had some Grecian "country life."
Miinsterberg has been called to Koenigsberg and has re-
fused. Better be America's ancestor than Kant's successor!
Ostwald, to my great delight, is coming to us next year,
not as your replacer, but in exchange with Germany for
F. G. Peabody. I go now to Cannes, to meet Strong, back
from his operation. Ever truly yours,

Wm. James.

To Mrs. James. „

Cannes, May 13, 1905.

... I came Sunday night, and this is Saturday. The
six days have been busy ones in one sense, but have rested
me very much in another. No sight-seeing fatigues, but
more usual, and therefore more normal occupations. ... I
have written some 25 letters, long and short, to European
correspondents since being here, have walked and driven
with Strong, and have had philosophy hot and heavy with
him almost all the time. I never knew such an unremitting,
untiring, monotonous addiction as that of his mind to truth.
He goes by points, pinning each one definitely, and has, I
think, the very clearest mind I ever knew. Add to it his
absolute sincerity and candor and it is no wonder that he
is a "growing" man. I suspect that he will outgrow us all,
for his rate accelerates, and he never stands still. He is an

23o LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o5

admirable philosophic figure, and I am glad to say that in
most things he and I are fully in accord. He gains a great
deal from such talks, noting every point down afterwards,
and I gain great stimulation, though in a vaguer way. I
shall be glad, however, on Monday afternoon, to relax. . . .

To Mrs. James.

[Post-cardl

Geneva, May 17, 1905.

So far, thank Heaven, on my way towards home! A

rather useful time with the superior, but sticky X , at

Marseilles, and as far as Lyons in the train, into which an
hour beyond Lyons there came (till then I was alone in my
compartment) a Spanish bishop, canon and "familar," an
aged holy woman, sister of the bishop, a lay-brother and
sister, a dog, and more baggage than I ever saw before, in-
cluding a feather-bed. They spoke no French — the bishop
about as much Italian as I, and the lay-sister as much of
English as I of Spanish. They took out their rosaries and
began mumbling their litanies forthwith, whereon I took off
my hat, which seemed to touch them so, when they dis-
covered I was a Protestant, that we all grew very affec-
tionate and I soon felt ashamed of the way in which I had
at first regarded their black and superstitious invasion of
my privacy. Good, saintly people on their way to Rome.
I go now to our old haunts and to the Flournoys'. . . .

To H. G. Wells.

S. S. Cedric, June 6, 1905.

My dear Mr. Wells, — I have just read your "Utopia"
(given me by F. C. S. Schiller on the one day that I spent in
Oxford on my way back to Cambridge, Mass., after a few
weeks on the Continent), and "Anticipations," and "Man-

Aet. 63] TO HENRY L. HIGGIXSON 231

kind in the Making" having duly preceded, together with
numerous other lighter volumes of yours, the "summation
of stimuli" reaches the threshold of discharge and I can't
help overflowing in a note of gratitude. You "have your
faults, as who has not?" but your virtues are unparalleled
and transcendent, and I believe that you will prove to have
given a shove to the practical thought of the next genera-
tion that will be amongst the greatest of its influences for
good. All in the line of the English genius too, no wire-
drawn French doctrines, and no German shop technicalities
inflicted in an unerbittlich consequent manner, but every-
where the sense of the full concrete, and the air of freedom
playing through all the joints of your argument. You
have a tri-dimensional human heart, and to use your own
metaphor, don't see different levels projected on one plane.
In this last book you beautifully soften cocksureness by the
penumbra of the outlines — in fact you 're a trump and a
jewel, and for human perception you beat Kipling, and for
hitting off a thing with the right word, you are unique.
Heaven bless and preserve you! - ■ You are now an eccentric;
perhaps 50 years hence you will figure as a classic! Your
Samurai chapter is magnificent, though I find myself wonder-
ing what developments in the way of partisan politics those
same Samurai would develop, when it came to questions of
appointment and running this or that man in. That I
believe to be human nature's ruling passion. Live long!
and keep writing; and believe me, yours admiringly and sin-
cerely,

Wm. James.

To Henry L. Hi?^son. „ _ , n , n

Cambridge, July 18 [1905].

Dear H., — You asked me how rich I was getting by my
own (as distinguished from your) exertions. . . .

232 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1905

I find on reaching home today a letter from Longmans,
Green & Co. with a check . . . which I have mailed to your
house in State Street. . . .

This ought to please you slightly; but don't reply! In-
stead, think of the virtues of Roosevelt, either as permanent
sovereign of this great country, or as President of Harvard
University. I 've been having a discussion with Fanny
Morse about him, which has resulted in making me his
faithful henchman for life, Fanny was so violent. Think of
the mighty good-will of him, of his enjoyment of his post,
of his power as a preacher, of the number of things to which
he gives his attention, of the safety of his second thoughts,
of the increased courage he is showing, and above all of the
fact that he is an open, instead of an underground leader,
whom the voters can control once in four years, when he
runs away, whose heart is in the right place, who is an enemy
of red tape and quibbling and everything that in general
the word "politician" stands for. That significance of him
in the popular mind is a great national asset, and it would
be a shame to let it run to waste until it has done a lot more
work for us. His ambitions are not selfish — he wants to
do good only! Bless him — and damn all his detractors
like you and F. M.! '

Don't reply, but vote! Your affectionately

Wm. James.

To T. S. Perry.

Cambridge, Aug. 24, 1905.

Dear Thos! — You 're a philosophe sans le savoir and,
when you write your treatise against philosophy, you will
be classed as the arch-metaphysician. Every philosopher

1 "My own desire to see Roosevelt president here for a limited term of years was
quenched by a speech he made at the Harvard Union a couple of years ago." (To
D. S. Miller, Jan. 2, 1908.)

Aet. 63) TO DICKINSON S. MILLER 233

(W. J., e.g.) pretends that all the others are metaphysicians
against whom he is simply defending the rights of common
sense. As for Nietzsche, the worst break of his I recall was
in a posthumous article in one of the French reviews a few
months back. In his high and mighty way he was laying
down the law about all the European countries. Russia,
he said, is "the only one that has any possible future — and
that she owes to the strength of the principle of autocracy
to which she alone remains faithful." Unfortunately one
can't appeal to the principle of democracy to explain Japan's
recent successes.

I am very glad you 've done something about poor dear
old John Fiske, and I should think that you would have no
difficulty in swelling it up to the full "Beacon Biography"
size. If you want an extra anecdote, you might tell how,
when Chauncey Wright, Chas. Peirce, St. John Green,
Warner and I appointed an evening to discuss the "Cosmic
Philosophy," just out, J. F. went to sleep under our noses.

I hope that life as a farmer agrees with you, and that
your "womenkind" wish nothing better than to be farmers'
wives, daughters or other relatives. Unluckily we let our
farm this summer; so I am here in Cambridge with Alice,
both of us a prey to as bad an attack of grippe as the winter
solstice ever brought forth. Today, the 10th day, I am
weaker than any kitten. Don't ever let your farm! Affec-
tionately,

W.J.

To Dickinson S. Miller.

Cambridge, Nov. 10, 1905.

Dear Miller, — W. R. Warren has just been here and
says he has just seen you; the which precipitates me into a
letter to you which has long hung fire. I hope that all goes

234 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1905

well. You must be in a rather cheerful quarter of the City.
Do you go home Sundays, or not? I hope that the work is
congenial. How do you like your students as compared
with those here? I reckon you get more out of your col-
leagues than you did here — barring of course der Einzige.
We are all such old stories to each other that we say nothing.
Santayana is the only [one] about whom we had any curi-
osity, and he has now quenched that. Perry and Holt
have some ideas in reserve. . . . The fact is that the class-
room exhausts our powers of speech. Royce has never
made a syllable of reference to all the stuff I wrote last
year — to me, I mean. He may have spoken of it to others,
if he has read, it, which I doubt. So we live in parallel
trenches and hardly show our heads.

Santayana's book r is a great one, if the inclusion of op-
posites is a measure of greatness. I think it will probably
be reckoned great by posterity. It has no rational founda-
tion, being merely one man's way of viewing things: so much
of experience admitted and no more, so much criticism and
questioning admitted and no more. He is a paragon of
Emersonianism - - declare your intuitions, though no other
man share them; and the integrity with which he does it
is as fine as it is rare. And his naturalism, materialism,
Platonism, and atheism form a combination of which the
centre of gravity is, I think, very deep. But there is some-
thing profoundly alienating in his unsympathetic tone, his
"preciousness" and superciliousness. The book is Emer-
son's first rival and successor, but how different the reader's
feeling! The same things in Emerson's mouth would sound
entirely different. E. receptive, expansive, as if handling
life through a wide funnel with a great indraught; S. as if
through a pin-point orifice that emits his cooling spray out-

1 The Life of Reason. New York, 1905.

Aet. 63] TO DICKINSON S. MILLER 135

ward over the universe like a nose-disinfectant from an
"atomizer." ... I fear that the real originality of the book
will be lost on nineteen-twentieths of the members of the Phil-
osophical and Psychological Association!! The enemies of
Harvard will find lots of blasphemous texts in him to in-
jure us withal. But it is a great feather in our cap to harbor
such an absolutely free expresser of individual convictions.
But enough!

'Phil. 9" is going well. I think I lecture better than I
ever did; in fact I know I do. But this professional evolu-
tion goes with an involution of all miscellaneous faculty. I
am well, and efficient enough, but purposely going slow so
as to keep efficient into the Palo Alto summer, which means
that I have written nothing. I am pestered by doubts
as to whether to put my resignation through this year, in
spite of opposition, or to drag along another year or two. I
think it is inertia against energy, energy in my case mean-
ing being my own man absolutely. American philosophers,
young and old, seem scratching where the wool is short.
Important things are being published; but all of them
too technical. The thing will never clear up satisfactorily
till someone writes out its resultant in decent English. . . .

The reader will have understood "the Palo Alto summer"
to refer to the lectures to be delivered at Stanford Uni-
versity during the coming spring. The Stanford engage-
ment was again in James's mind when he spoke, in the next
letter, of "dreading the prospect of lecturing till mid-May."

To Dickinson S. Miller.

Cambridge, Dec. 6, 1905.

Dear Miller,— . . . You seem to take radical empiri-
cism more simply than I can. What I mean by it is the

236 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o5

thesis that there is no fact "not actually experienced to be
such." In other words, the concept of "being" or "fact"
is not wider than or prior to the concept "content of ex-
perience"; and you can't talk of experiences being this or
that, but only of things experienced as being this or that.
But such a thesis would, it seems to me, if literally taken,
force one to drop the notion that in point of fact one ex-
perience is ex another, so long as the ^-ness is not itself a
"content" of experience. In the matter of two minds
not having the same content, it seems to me that your view
commits you to an assertion about their experiences; and
such an assertion assumes a realm in which the experi-
ences lie, which overlaps and surrounds the "content" of
them. This, it seems to me, breaks down radical empiricism,
which I hate to do; and I can't yet clearly see my way out
of the quandary. I am much boggled and muddled; and
the total upshot with me is to see that all the hoary errors
and prejudices of man in matters philosophical are based on
something pretty inevitable in the structure of our think-
ing, and to distrust summary executions by conviction of
contradiction. I suspect your execution of being too sum-
mary; but I have copied the last paragraph of the sheets
(which I return with heartiest thanks) for the extraor-
dinarily neat statement. ....

I dread the prospect of lecturing till mid-May, but the
wine being ordered, I must drink it. I dislike lecturing more
and more. Have just definitely withdrawn my candidacy
for the Sorbonne job, with great internal relief, and wish
I could withdraw from the whole business, and get at writ-
ing.1 Not a line of writing possible this year — except of
course occasional note-making. All the things that one is

'He had been "sounded" regarding an appointment as Harvard Exchange
Lecturer at the Sorbonne, and had at first been inclined to accept.

Aet. 63] TO DICKINSON S. MILLER 237

really concerned with are too nice and fine to use in lectures.
You remember the definition of T. H. Greene's student:
"The universe is a thick complexus of intelligible relations."
Yesterday I got my system similarly defined in an exami-
nation-book, by a student whom I appear to have converted
to the view that "the Universe is a vague pulsating mass of
next-to-next movement, always feeling its way along to a
good purpose, or trying to." That is about as far as lec-
tures can carry them. I particularly like the " trying to."

I wish I could have been at your recent discussion. I am
getting impatient with the awful abstract rigmarole in
which our American philosophers obscure the truth. It
will be fatal. It revives the palmy days of Hegelianism.
It means utter relaxation of intellectual duty, and God will
smite it. If there 's anything he hates, it is that kind of
oozy writing.

I have just read Busse's book, in which I find a lot of
reality by the way, but a pathetic waste of work on side
issues — for against the Strong-Heymans view of things,
it seems to me that he brings no solid objection whatever.
Heymans's book is a wonder.1 Good-bye, dear Miller.
Come to us, if you can, as soon as your lectures are over.

Your affectionate

W.J.

To Dickinson S. Miller.

[Post-card]

Cambridge, Dec. 9. 1905.

"My idea of Algebra," says a non-mathematically-
minded student, " is that it is a sort of form of low cunning."

W. J.

1 Busse, Leib und Seek, Geist und Korper; Heymans, Einfiihrung in die Meta-
physik.

238 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1906

To Daniel Merriman.

Cambridge, Dec. 9, 1905.

No, dear Merriman, not "e'en for thy sake." After an
unblemished record of declining to give addresses, success-
fully maintained for four years (I have certainly declined
100 in the past twelve-month), I am not going to break down
now, for Abbot Academy, and go dishonored to my grave.
It is better, as the "Bhagavat-Gita" says, to lead your own
life, however bad, than to lead another's, however good.
Emerson teaches the same doctrine, and I live by it as bad
and congenial a life as I can. If there is anything that God
despises more than a man who is constantly making speeches,
it is another man who is constantly accepting invitations.
What must he think, when they are both rolled into one?
Get thee behind me, Merriman, — I 'm sure that your
saintly partner would never have sent me such a request, —
and believe me, as ever, fondly yours,

Wm. James.

To Miss Pauline Goldmark. _ _

El Iovar,

Grand Canyon, Arizona, Jan. 3, 1906.
Dear Paolina, — I am breaking my journey by a day
here, and it seems a good place from which to date my New
Year's greeting to you. But we correspond so rarely that
when it comes to the point of tracing actual words with
the pen, the last impressions of one's day and the more
permanent interest of one's life block the way for each other.
I think, however, that a word about the Canyon may fitly
take precedence. It certainly is equal to the brag; and,
like so many of the more stupendous freaks of nature, seems
at first-sight smaller and more manageable than one had
supposed. But it grows in immensity as the eye penetrates
it more intimately. It is so entirely alone in character,

Aet. 64} TO HENRY JAMES 239

that one has no habits of association with "the likes" of
it, and at first it seems a foreign curiosity; but already in
this one day I am feeling myself grow nearer, and can well
imagine that, with greater intimacy, it might become the
passion of one's life — so far as "Nature" goes. The con-
ditions have been unfavorable for intimate communion.
Three degrees above zero, and a spring overcoat, prevent
that forgetting of "self" which is said to be indispensable to
absorption in Beauty. Moreover, I have kept upon the
"rim," seeing the Canyon from several points some miles
apart. I meant to go down, having but this day; but they
could n't send me or any one today; and I confess that,
with my precipice-disliking soul, I was relieved, though it
very likely would have proved less uncomfortable than I
have been told. (I resolved to go, in order to be worthy of
being your correspondent.) As Chas. Lamb says, there is
nothing so nice as doing good by stealth and being found
out by accident, so I now say it is even nicer to make heroic
decisions and to be prevented by "circumstances beyond
your control" from even trying to execute them. But if
ever I get here in summer, I shall go straight down and live
there. I 'm sure that it is indispensable. But it is vain to
waste descriptive words on the wondrous apparition, with
its symphonies of architecture and of color. I have just
been watching its peaks blush in the setting sun, and slowly
lose their fire. Night nestling in the depths. Solemn,
solemn! And a unity of design that makes it seem like an
individual, an animated being. Good-night, old chasm! . . .

To Henry James.

Stanford University, Feb. 1, 1906.

Beloved H.,— -Verily 'tis long since I have written to
thee, but I have had many and mighty things to do, and

24o LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o6

lately many business letters to write, so I came not at it.
Your last was your delightful reply to my remarks about
your "third manner/' wherein you said that you would
consider your bald head dishonored if you ever came to
pleasing me by what you wrote, so shocking was my taste.1
Well! only write for me, and leave the question of pleasing
open! I have to admit that in "The Golden Bowl" and
'The W7ings of the Dove," you have succeeded in getting
there after a fashion, in spite of the perversity of the method
and its longness, which I am not the only one to deplore.

But enough! let me tell you of my own fortunes!

I got here (after five pestilentially close-aired days in the
train, and one entrancing one off at the Grand Canyon of
the Colorado) on the 8th, and have now given nine lectures,
to 300 enrolled students and about 150 visitors, partly col-
leagues. I take great pains, prepare a printed syllabus,
very fully; and really feel for the first time in my life, as if
I were lecturing well. High time, after 30 years of practice!
It earns me $5000, if I can keep it up till May 27th; but
apart from that, I think it is a bad way of expending energy.
I ought to be writing my everlastingly postponed book,
which this job again absolutely adjourns. I can't write a
line of it while doing this other thing. (A propos to which,
I got a telegram from Eliot this a.m., asking if I would be
Harvard Professor for the first half of next year at the
University of Berlin. I had no difficulty in declining that,
but I probably shall not decline Paris, if they offer it to me
year after next.) I am expecting Alice to arrive in a fort-
night. I have got a very decent little second story, just
enough for the two of us, or rather amply enough, sunny,
good fire-place, bathroom, little kitchen, etc., on one of the
three residential streets of the University land, and with a

1 Vide Letters of Henry 'James, vol. II, p. 43.

Aet. 64) TO THEODORE FLOURNOY 241

boarding-house for meals just opposite, we shall have a
sort of honeymoon picnic time. And, sooth to say, Alice
must need the simplification. . . .

You 've seen this wonderful spot, so I needn't describe it.
It is really a miracle; and so simple the life and so benign
the elements, that for a young ambitious professor who
wishes to leave his mark on Pacific civilization while it is
most plastic, or for any one who wants to teach and work
under the most perfect conditions for eight or nine months,
and who is able to get to the East, or Europe, for the remaining
three, I can't imagine anything finer. It is Utopian. Per-
fection of weather. Cold nights, though above freezing.
Fire pleasant until 10 o'clock a.m., then unpleasant. In
short, the "simple life" with all the essential higher elements
thrown in as communal possessions. The drawback is, of
course, the great surrounding human vacuum — the his-
toric silence fairly rings in your ears when you listen — and
the social insipidity. I 'm glad I came, and with God's
blessing I may pull through. One calendar month is over,
anyway. Do you know aught of G. K. Chesterton? I 've
just read his "Heretics." A tremendously strong writer
and true thinker, despite his mannerism of paradox. Wells's
"Kipps" is good. Good-bye. Of course you 're breathing
the fog of London while I am bathed in warmest lucency.
Keep well. Your loving,

W.J.

To Theodore Flournoy.

Stanford University, Feb. 9, 1906.

Dear Flournoy. — Your post-card of Jan. 22nd arrives
and reminds me how little I have communicated with you
during the past twelve months. . . .

Let me begin by congratulating Mile. Alice, but more

242 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i906

particularly Mr. Werner, on the engagement which you an-
nounce. Surely she is a splendid prize for anyone to cap-
ture. I ho'pe that it has been a romantic love-affair, and
will remain so to the end. May her paternal and maternal
example be the model which their married life will follow!
They could find no better model. You do not tell the day
of the wedding — probably it is not yet appointed.

Yes! [Richard] Hodgson's death was ultra-sudden. He
fell dead while playing a violent game of "hand-ball." He
was tremendously athletic and had said to a friend only a
week before that he thought he could reasonably count on
twenty-five years more of life. None of his work was fin-
ished, vast materials amassed, which no one can ever get
acquainted with as he had gradually got acquainted; so now
good-bye forever to at least two unusually solid and instruct-
ive books which he would have soon begun to write on
"psychic " subjects. As a man, Hodgson was splendid, a real
man; as an investigator, it is my private impression that he
lately got into a sort of obsession about Mrs. Piper, cared
too little for other clues, and continued working with her
when all the sides of her mediumship were amply exhibited.
I suspect that our American Branch of the S. P. R. will
have to dissolve this year, for lack of a competent secretary.
Hodgson was our only worker, except Hyslop, and he is
engaged in founding an "Institute" of his own, which will
employ more popular methods. To tell the truth, I 'm
rather glad of the prospect of the Branch ending, for the
Piper-investigation — and nothing else — had begun to
bore me to extinction. . . .

To change the subject — you ought to see this extraor-
dinary little University. It was founded only fourteen
years ago in the absolute wilderness, by a pair of rich Cali-
fornians named Stanford, as a memorial to their only child,

Aet. 64] TO THEODORE FLOURNOY 243

a son who died at 16. Endowed with I know not how many
square miles of land, which some day will come into the
market and yield a big income, it has already funds that
yield £750,000 yearly, and buildings, of really beautiful
architecture, that have been paid for out of income, and
have cost over $5,000,000. (I mention the cost to let you
see that they must be solid.) There are now 1500 students
of both sexes, who pay nothing for tuition, and a town of
15,000 inhabitants has grown up a mile away, beyond the
gates. The landscape is exquisite and classical, San Fran-
cisco only an hour and a quarter away by train; the climate
is one of the most perfect in the world, life is absolutely
simple, no one being rich, servants almost unattainable
(most of the house-work being done by students who come
in at odd hours), many of them Japanese, and the profes-
sors' wives, I fear, having in great measure to do their own
cooking. No social excesses or complications therefore.
In fact, nothing but essentials, and all the essentials.
Fine music, for example, every afternoon, in the Church of
the University. There could n't be imagined a better en-
vironment for an intellectual man to teach and work in, for
eight or nine months in the year, if he were then free to
spend three or four months in the crowded centres of civili-
zation — for the social insipidity is great here, and the
historic vacuum and silence appalling, and one ought to be
free to change.

Unfortunately the authorities of the University seem not
to be gifted with imagination enough to see its proper role.
Its geographical environment and material basis being
unique, they ought to aim at unique quality all through,
and get sommites to come here to work and teach, by offering
large stipends. They might, I think, thus easily build up
something very distinguished. Instead of which, they pay

244 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o6

small sums to young men who chafe at not being able to
travel, and whose wives get worn out with domestic drudg-
ery. The whole thing might be Utopian; it is only half-
Utopian. A characteristic American affair! But the half-
success is great enough to make one see the great advantages
that come to this country from encouraging public-spirited
millionaires to indulge their freaks, however eccentric. In
what the Stanfords have already done, there is an assured
potentiality of great things of some sort for all future time.
My coming here is an exception. They have had psy-
chology well represented from the first by Frank Angell and
Miss Martin; but no philosophy except for a year at a time.
I start a new regime — next year they will have two good
professors.

I lecture three times a week to 400 listeners, printing a
syllabus daily, and making them read Paulsen's textbook
for examinations. I find it hard work,1 and only pray that
I may have strength to run till June without collapsing.
The students, though rustic, are very earnest and whole-
some.

I am pleased, but also amused, by what you say of Wood-
bridge's Journal: "la palme est maintenant a l'Amerique."
It is true that a lot of youngsters in that Journal are doing
some real thinking, but of all the bad writing that the world
has seen, I think that our American writing is getting to

be the worst. X 's ideas have unchained formlessness

of expression that beats the bad writing of the Hegelian
epoch in Germany. I can hardly believe you sincere when
you praise that journal as you do. I am so busy teaching

'"Also outside 'addresses,' impossible to refuse. Damn them! Four in this
Hotel [in San Francisco] where I was one of four orators who spoke for two hours
on 'Reason and Faith,' before a Unitarian Association of Pacific Coasters. Con-
sequence: gout on waking this morning! Unitarian gout — was such a thing ever
heard of?" (To T. S. Perry, Feb. 6, 1906.)

Act. 64) TO F. C. S. SCHILLER 245

that I do no writing and but little reading this year. I have
declined to go to Paris next year, and also declined an invi-
tation to Berlin, as "International Exchange" [Professor].
The year after, if asked, I may go to Paris - - but never to
Berlin. We have had Ostwald, a most delightful human
Erscheinung, as international exchange at Harvard this
year. But I don't believe in the system. . . .

To F. C. S. Schiller.

Hotel Del Monte,
Monterey, Cal., Apr. 7, 1906.

. . . What I really want to write about is Papini, the
concluding chapter of his "Crepuscolo dei Filosofi," and the
February number of the "Leonardo." Likewise Dewey's
"Beliefs and Realities," in the "Philosophical Review" for
March. I must be very damp powder, slow to burn, and I
must be terribly respectful of other people, for I confess
that it is only after reading these things (in spite of all you
have written to the same effect, and in spite of your tone of
announcing judgment to a sinful world), that I seem to have
grasped the full import for life and regeneration, the great
perspective of the programme, and the renovating character
for all things ', of Humanism; and the outwornness as of a
scarecrow's garments, simulating life by flapping in the
wind of nightfall, of all intellectualism, and the blindness
and deadness of all who worship intellectualist idols, the
Royces and Taylors, and, worse than all, their followers,
who, with no inward excuse of nature (being too unoriginal
really to prefer anything), just blunder on to the wrong scent,
when it is so easy to catch the right one, and then stick to
it with the fidelity of inorganic matter. Ha! ha! would
that I were young again with this inspiration! Papini is
a jewel ! To think of that little Dago putting himself ahead

246 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o6

of every one of us (even of you, with his Uomo-Dio) at a
single stride. And what a writer! and what fecundity!
and what courage (careless of nicknames, for it is so easy to
call him now the Cyrano de Bergerac of Philosophy) ! and
what humor and what truth! Dewey's powerful stuff
seems also to ring the death-knell of a sentenced world.
Yet none of them will see it — Taylor will still write his
refutations, etc., etc., when the living world will all be
drifting after us. It is queer to be assisting at the eclosion
of a great new mental epoch, life, religion, and philosophy
in one — I wish I did n't have to lecture, so that I might
bear some part of the burden of writing it all out, as we must
do, pushing it into all sort of details. But I must for one
year longer. We don't get back till June, but pray tell
Wells (whose address/-?/;// mir) to make our house his head-
quarters if he gets to Boston and finds it the least convenient
to do so. Our boys will hug him to their bosoms. Ever
thine,

W.J.

The San Francisco earthquake occurred at about five
o'clock in the morning on April 18. Rumors of the destruc-
tion wrought in the city reached Stanford within a couple of
hours and were easily credited, for buildings had been shaken
down at Stanford. Miss L. J. Martin, a member of the
philosophical department, was thrown into great anxiety
about relatives of hers who were in the city, and James
offered to accompany her in a search for them, and left
Stanford with her by an early morning train. He also
promised Mrs. Wm. F. Snow to try to get her news of her
husband. Miss Martin found her relatives, and James
met Dr. Snow early in the afternoon, and then spent several
hours in wandering about the stricken city. He subse-

Aet. 64} TO MISS FRANCES R. MORSE 247

quently wrote an account of the disaster, which may be
found in "Memories and Studies."1

To Miss Frances R. Morse.

Stanford University, Apr. 11, 1906.
Dearest Fanny,— Three letters from you and nary one
from us in all these weeks! Well, I have been heavily
burdened, and although disposed to write, have kept post-
poning; and with Alice — cooking, washing dishes and
doing housework, as well as keeping up a large social life -
it has been very much the same. All is now over, since the
earthquake; I mean that lectures and syllabuses are called

1 Dr. Snow kindly wrote an account of the afternoon that he spent in James's
company in the city and it may here be given in part.

"When I met Professor James in San Francisco early in the afternoon of the
day of the earthquake, he was full of questions about my personal feelings and
reactions and my observations concerning the conduct and evidences of self-control
and fear or other emotions of individuals with whom I had been closely thrown,
not only in the medical work which I did, but in the experiences I had on the fire-
lines in dragging hose and clearing buildings in advance of the dynamiting squads.

"I described to him an incident concerning a great crowd of people who desired
to make a short cut to the open space of a park at a time when there was danger of
all of them not getting across before certain buildings were dynamited. Several
of the city's police had stretched a rope across this street and were volubly and
vigorously combating the onrush of the crowd, using their clubs rather freely.
Some one cut the rope. At that instant, a lieutenant of the regular army with
three privates appeared to take up guard duty. The lieutenant placed his guard
and passed on. The three soldiers immediately began their beat, dividing the width
of the street among themselves. The crowd waited, breathless, to see what the
leaders of the charge upon the police would now do. One man started to run
across the street and was knocked down cleverly by the sentry, with the butt of
his gun. This sentry coolly continued his patrol and the man sat up, apparently
thinking himself wounded, then scuttled back into the crowd, drawing from every
one a laugh which was evidently with the soldiers. Immediately, the crowd began
to melt away and proceed up a side street in the direction laid out for them.

"In connection with this story Professor James casually mentioned that not
long before, where there were no soldiers or police, he had run on to a crowd string-
ing a man to a lamp-post because of his endeavor to rob the body of a woman of
some rings. At the time, I did not learn other details of this particular incident,
as Professor James was so full ot the many scenes he had witnessed and was par-
ticularly intent on gathering from me impressions of what I had seen. I suppose
he had similarly been gathering observations from others whom he met.

"An incident which struck me as humorous at the time was that he should have

248 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o6

off, and no more exams, to be held ("ill-wind," etc.), so one
can write. We shall get East again as soon as we can manage
it, and tell you face to face. We can now pose as experts on
Earthquakes — pardon the egotistic form of talking about
the latter, but it makes it more real. The last thing Bake-
well said to me, while I was leaving Cambridge, was: "I
hope they '11 treat you to a little bit of an earthquake while
you 're there. It 's a pity you should n't have that local
experience." Well, when I lay in bed at about half-past
five that morning, wide-awake, and the room began to sway,
my first thought was, "Here 's Bakewell's earthquake, after
all"; and when it went crescendo and reached fortissimo
in less than half a minute, and the room was shaken like a
rat by a terrier, with the most vicious expression you can
possibly imagine, it was to my mind absolutely an entity
that had been waiting all this time holding back its ac-
tivity, but at last saying, "Now, go it!" and it was impossible
not to conceive it as animated by a will, so vicious was the
temper displayed — everything dowtj, in the room, that
could go down, bureaus, etc., etc., and the shaking so rapid
and vehement. All the while no fear, only admiration for
the way a wooden house could prove its elasticity, and glee
over the vividness of the manner in which such an "ab-
stract idea" as "earthquake" could verify itself into sensible
reality. In a couple of minutes everybody was in the
street, and then we saw, what I had n't suspected in my room,

gathered up a box of "Zu-zu gingersnaps," and, as I recall it, some small pieces of
cheese. I do not now recall his comment on where he had obtained these, but
there was some humorous incident connected with the transaction, and he was
quite happy and of opinion that he was enjoying a nourishing meal.

"Professor James told me vividly and in a few words the circumstances of the
damage done by the earthquake at Stanford University, and I left him to make
arrangements for going down to the University that night to provide for my family.
As it turned out, Professor James returned to the campus before I did, and true to
his promise thoughtfully hunted up Mrs. Snow and told her that he had seen me
and that I was alive and well."

Aet. 64] TO MISS FRANCES R. MORSE 249

the extent of the damage. Wooden houses almost all intact,
but every chimney down but one or two, and the higher
University buildings largely piles of ruins. Gabble and
babble, till at last automobiles brought the dreadful news
from San Francisco.

I boarded the only train that went to the City, and got
out in the evening on the only train that left. I should n't
have done it, but that our co-habitant here, Miss Martin,
became obsessed by the idea that she must see what had
become of her sister, and I had to stand by her. Was very
glad I did; for the spectacle was memorable, of a whole
population in the streets with what baggage they could
rescue from their houses about to burn, while the flames
and the explosions were steadily advancing and making
everyone move farther. The fires most beautiful in the
effulgent sunshine. Every vacant space was occupied by
trunks and furniture and people, and thousands have been
sitting by them now for four nights and will have to longer.
The fire seems now controlled, but the city is practically
wiped out (thank Heaven, as to much of its architecture!).
The order has been wonderful, even the criminals struck
solemn by the disaster, and the military has done great

service.

But you will know all these details by the papers better
than I know them now, before this reaches you, and in three
weeks we shall be back.

I am very glad that Jim's [Putnam] lectures went off so
well. He wrote me himself a good letter - - won't you, by
the way, send him this one as a partial answer? — and his
syllabus was first-rate and the stuff must have been help-
ful. It is jolly to think of both him and Marian really
getting off together to enjoy themselves! But between
Vesuvius and San Francisco enjoyment has small elbow-

25o LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o6

room. Love to your mother, dearest Fanny, to Mary and
the men folks, from us both. Your ever affectionate,

W. j.

A few days after the eathquake, train-service from Stan-
ford to the East was reestablished and James and his wife
returned to Cambridge. The reader will infer correctly
from the next letter that Henry James (and William James,
Jr., who was staying with him in Rye) had been in great
anxiety and had been by no means reassured by the brief
cablegram which was the only personal communication that
it was possible to send them during the days immediately
following the disaster.

To Henry James and William James, Jr.

Cambridge, May 9, 1906.
Dearest Brother and Sox,- Your cablegram ot re-
sponse was duly received, and we have been also "joyous"
in the thought of your being together. I knew, of course,
Henry, that you would be solicitous about us in the earth-
quake, but did n't reckon at all on the extremity of your
anguish as evinced by your frequent cablegrams home, and
finally by the letter to Harry which arrived a couple of days
ago and told how you were unable to settle down to any
other occupation, the thought of our mangled forms, hollow
eyes, starving bodies, minds insane with fear, haunting you
so. We never reckoned on this extremity of anxiety on
your part, I say, and so never thought of cabling you direct,
as we might well have done from Oakland on the day we
left, namely April 27th. I much regret this callousness on
our part. For all the anguish was yours; and in general
this experience only rubs in what I have always known,
that in battles, sieges and other great calamities, the pathos

Aet. 64] TO H. JAMES AND W. JAMES, JR. 2,-1

and agony is in general solely felt by those at a distance;
and although physical pain is suffered most by its immediate
victims, those at the scene of action have no sentimental
suffering whatever. Everyone at San Francisco seemed in
a good hearty frame of mind; there was work for every
moment of the day and a kind of uplift in the sense of a
"common lot" that took away the sense of loneliness that
(I imagine) gives the sharpest edge to the more usual kind
of misfortune that may befall a man. But it was a queer
sight, on our journey through the City on the 26th (eight
days after the disaster), to see the inmates of the houses of
the quarter left standing, all cooking their dinners at little
brick camp-fires in the middle of the streets, the chimneys
being condemned. If such a disaster had to happen, some-
how it could n't have chosen a better place than San Fran-
cisco (where everyone knew about camping, and was familiar
with the creation of civilizations out of the bare ground),
and at five-thirty in the morning, when few fires were lighted
and everyone, after a good sleep, was in bed. Later, there
would have been great loss of life in the streets, and the more
numerous foci of conflagration would have burned the city
in one day instead of four, and made things vastly worse.

In general you may be sure that when any disaster be-
falls our country it will be you only who are wringing of
hands, and we who are smiling with "interest or laughing
with gleeful excitement." I did n't hear one pathetic word
uttered at the scene of disaster, though of course the crop
of "nervous wrecks" is very likely to come in a month or so.

Although we have been home six days, such has been the
stream of broken occupations, people to see, and small
urgent jobs to attend to, that I have written no letter till
now. Today, one sees more clearly and begins to rest.
"Home" looks extraordinarily pleasant, and though damp

252 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o6

and chilly, it is the divine budding moment of the year.
Not, however, the lustrous light and sky of Stanford Uni-
versity. . . .

I have just read your paper on Boston in the "North
American Review." I am glad you threw away the scab-
bard and made your critical remarks so straight. What
you say about "pay" here being the easily won "salve"
for privations, in view of which we cease to "mind" them,
is as true as it is strikingly pat. Les intellectuels, wedged
between the millionaires and the handworkers, are the really
pinched class here. They feel the frustrations and they
can't get the salve. My attainment of so much pay in the
past few years brings home to me what an all-benumbing
salve it is. That whole article is of your best. We long to
hear from W., Jr. No word yet. Your ever loving,

W.J.

In "The Energies of Men" there is a long quotation from
an unnamed European correspondent who had been sub-
jecting himself to Yoga disciplinary exercise. What follows
is a comment written upon the first receipt of the report
quoted in the "Energies."

To W. Lutoslawski.

Cambridge, May 6, 1906.

. . . Your long and beautiful letter about Yoga, etc.,
greets me on my return from California. It is a most pre-
cious human document, and some day, along with that
sketch of your religious evolution and other shorter letters
of yours, it must see the light of day. What strikes me first
in it is the evidence of improved moral "tone" — a calm,
firm, sustained joyousness, hard to describe, and striking a
new note in your epistles — which is already a convincing

Act. 64] TO W. LUTOSLAWSK I 253

argument of the genuineness of the improvement wrought
in you by Yoga practices. . . .

You are mistaken about my having tried Yoga discipline
— I never meant to suggest that. I have read several books
(A. B., by the way, used to be a student of mine, but in
spite of many noble qualities, he always had an unbalanced
mind — obsessed by certain morbid ideas, etc.), and in the
slightest possible way tried breathing exercises. These go
terribly against the grain with me, are extremely disagree-
able, and, even when tried this winter (somewhat perse-
veringly), to put myself asleep, after lying awake at night,
failed to have any soporific effect. What impresses me most
in your narrative is the obstinate strength of will shown
by yourself and your chela in your methodical abstentions
and exercises. When could I hope for such will-power? I
find, when my general energy is in Anspruch genommen by
hard lecturing and other professional work, that then par-
ticularly what little ascetic energy I have has to be remitted,
because the exertion of inhibitory and stimulative will
required increases my general fatigue instead of " tonifying"
me.

But your sober experience gives me new hopes. Your
whole narrative suggests in me the wonder whether the
Yoga discipline may not be, after all, in all its phases,
simply a methodical way of waking up deeper levels of will-
power than are habitually used, and thereby increasing the
individual's vital tone and energy. I have no doubt what-
ever that most people live, whether physically, intellect-
ually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential
being. They make use of a very small portion of their pos-
sible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general.,
much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism,
should get into a habit of using and moving only his little

254 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o6

finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much
greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
Pierre Janet discussed lately some cases of pathological
impulsion or obsession in what he has called the "psychas-
thenic" type of individual, bulimia, exaggerated walking,
morbid love of feeling pain, and explains the phenomenon
as based on the underlying sentiment cTincompletude, as he
calls it, or sentiment de Firreel with which these patients are
habitually afflicted, and which they find is abolished by
the violent appeal to some exaggerated activity or other,
discovered accidentally perhaps, and then used habitually.
I was reminded of his article in reading your descriptions
and prescriptions. May the Yoga practices not be, after
all, methods of getting at our deeper functional levels?
And thus only be substitutes for entirely different crises
that may occur in other individuals, religious crises, indig-
nation-crises, love-crises, etc.?

What you say of diet is in striking accordance with the
views lately made popular by Horace Fletcher — I dare
say you have heard of them. You see I am trying to gen-
eralize the Yoga idea, and redeem it from the pretension
that, for example, there is something intrinsically holy in
the various grotesque postures of Hatha Yoga. I have
spoken with various Hindus, particularly with three last
winter, one a Yogi and apostle of Vedanta; one a "Chris-
tian" of scientific training; one a Bramo-Somaj professor.
The former made great claims of increase of "power," but
admitted that those who had it could in no way demon-
strate it ad ocu/os, to outsiders. The other two both said
that Yoga was less and less frequently practised by the more
intellectual, and that the old-fashioned Guru was becoming
quite a rarity.

I believe with you, fully, that the so-called "normal man"

Jet. 64} TO JOHN JAY CHAPMAN 255

of commerce, so to speak, the healthy philistine, is a mere
extract from the potentially realizable individual whom he
represents, and that we all have reservoirs of life to draw
upon, of which we do not dream. The practical problem is
"how to get at them." And the answer varies with the
individual. Most of us never can, or never do get at them.
You have indubitably got at your own deeper levels by the
Yoga methods. I hope that what you have gained will
never again be lost to you. You must keep there! My
deeper levels seem very hard to find - - I am so rebellious
at all formal and prescriptive methods - - a dry and bony
individual, repelling fusion, and avoiding voluntary exer-
tion. No matter, art is long! and qui vivra verra. I shall
try fasting and again try breathing - - discovering perhaps
some individual rhythm that is more tolerable. . . .

To John Jay Chapman.

Cambridge, May 18, 1906.

Dear old Jack C, — Having this minute come into the
possession of a new type-writer, what can I do better than
express my pride in the same by writing to you? *

I spent last night at George Dorr's and he read me sev-
eral letters from you, telling me also of your visit, and of
how well you seemed. For years past I have been on the
point of writing to you to assure [you] of my continued love
and to express my commiseration for your poor wife, who
has had so long to bear the brunt of your temper — you
see I have been there already and I know how one's irri-
tability is exasperated by conditions of nervous prostration
— but now I can write and congratulate you on having
recovered, temper and all. (As I write, it bethinks me that

1 James had not used a type-writer since the time when his eyes troubled him
in the seventies. The machine now had the fascination of a strange toy again.

256 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o6

in a previous letter I have made identical jokes about your
temper which, I fear, will give Mrs. Chapman a very low
opinion of my humoristic resources, and in sooth they are
small; but we are as God makes us and must not try to be
anything else, so pray condone the silliness and let it pass.)
The main thing is that you seem practically to have recov-
ered, in spite of everything; and I am heartily glad.

I too am well enough for all practical purposes, but I
have to go slow and not try to do too many things in a day.
Simplification of life and consciousness I find to be the great
thing, but a hard thing to compass when one lives in city
conditions. How our dear Sarah Whitman lived in the
sort of railroad station she made of her life — I confess it 's a
mystery to me. If I lived at a place called Barrytown, it
would probably go better — don't you ever go back to
New York to live!

Alice and I had a jovial time at sweet little Stanford
University. It was the simple life in the best sense of the
term. I am glad for once to have been part of the working
machine of California, and a pretty deep part too, as it
afterwards turned out. The earthquake also was a memor-
able bit of experience, and altogether we have found it mind-
enlarging and are very glad we ben there. But the whole
intermediate W7est is awful — a sort of penal doom to have
to live there; and in general the result with me of having
lived 65 years in America is to make me feel as if I had at
least bought the right to a certain capriciousness, and were
free now to live for the remainder of my days wherever I
prefer and can make my wife and children consent — it is
more likely to be in rural than in urban surroundings, and
in the maturer than in the rawrer parts of the world. But
the first thing is to get out of the treadmill of teaching,
which I hate and shall resign from next year. After that,

Aet. 64] TO JOHN JAY CHAPMAN 257

I can use my small available store of energy in writing,
which is not only a much more economical way of working
it, but more satisfactory in point of quality, and more
lucrative as well.

Now, J. C, when are you going to get at writing again?
The world is hungry for your wares. No one touches cer-
tain deep notes of moral truth as you do, and your humor
is kbstlich and impayable. You ought to join the band of
"pragmatistic" or "humanistic" philosophers. I almost
fear that Barrytown may not yet have begun to be dis-
turbed by the rumor of their achievements, the which are
of the greatest, and seriously I du think that the world of
thought is on the eve of a renovation no less important than
that contributed by Locke. The leaders of the new move-
ment are Dewey, Schiller of Oxford, in a sense Bergson of
Paris, a young Florentine named Papini, and last and least
worthy, W. J. H. G. Wells ought to be counted in, and if
I mistake not G. K. Chesterton as well.1 I hope you know
and love the last-named writer, who seems to me a great
teller of the truth. His systematic preference for contra-
dictions and paradoxical forms of statement seems to me
a mannerism somewhat to be regretted in so wealthy a
mind; but that is a blemish from which some of our very
greatest intellects are not altogether free — the philosopher
of Barrytown himself being not wholly exempt. Join us,
O Jack, and in the historic and perspective sense your fame
will be secure. All future Histories of Philosophy will
print your name.

But although my love for you is not exhausted, my type-
writing energy is. It communicates stiffness and cramps,
both to the body and the mind. Nevertheless I think I
have been doing pretty well for a first attempt, don't you?

1 He did mistake, as Mr. Chesterton's subsequent utterances showed.

258 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES * [i9o6

If you return me a good long letter telling me more par-
ticularly about the process of your recovery, I will write
again, even if I have to take a pen to do it, and in any case
I will do it much better than this time.

Believe me, dear old J. C, with hearty affection and de-
light at your recovery — all these months I have been on
the brink of writing to find out how you were — and with
very best regards to your wife, whom some day I wish we
may be permitted to know better. Yours very truly,

Wm. James.

Everyone dead! Hodgson, Shaler, James Peirce this winter
— to go no further afield! Resserrons les rangs!

To Henry James.

Cambridge, Sept. 10, 1906.

Dearest H., — I got back from the Adirondacks, where
I had spent a fortnight, the night before last, and in three
or four hours Alice, Aleck and I will be spinning towards
Chocorua, it being now five a.m. Elly [Temple] Hunter
will join us, with Grenville, in a few days; but for the most
part, thank Heaven, we shall be alone till the end of the
month. I found two letters from you awaiting me, and
two from Bill. They all breathed a spirit of happiness,
and brought a waft of the beautiful European summer with
them. It has been a beautiful summer here too; and
now, sad to say, it is counting the last beads of its chaplet
of hot days out - - the hot days which are really the abso-
lutely friendly ones to man - - you wish they would get
cooler when you have them, and when they are departed,
you wish you could have their exquisite gentleness again.
I have just been reading in the volume by Richard Jefferies
called the "Life of the Fields" a wonderful rhapsody, "The
Pageant of Summer." It needs to be read twice over and

Act. 64] TO H. G. WELLS 259

very attentively, being nothing but an enumeration of all
the details visible in the corner of an old field with a hedge
and ditch. But rightly taken in, it is probably the highest
flight of human genius in the direction of nature-worship.
I don't see why it should not count as an immortal thing.
You missed it, when here, in not getting to Keene Valley,
where I have just been, and of which the sylvan beauty,
especially by moonlight, is probably unlike aught that
Europe has to show. Imperishable freshness! . . .

This is definitely my last year of lecturing, but I wish it
were my first of non-lecturing. Simplification of the field
of duties I find more and more to be the summum bonum
for me; and I live in apprehension lest the Avenger should
cut me off before I get my message out. Not that the
message is particularly needed by the human race, which
can live along perfectly well without any one philosopher;
but objectively I hate to leave the volumes I have already
published without their logical complement. It is an es-
thetic tragedy to have a bridge begun, and stopped in the
middle of an arch.

But I hear Alice stirring upstairs, so I must go up and
finish packing. I hope that you and W. J., Jr., will again
form a harmonious combination. I hope also that he will
stop painting for a time. He will do all the better, when he
gets home, for having had a fallow interval.

Good-bye! and my blessing upon both of you. Your
ever loving,

W. J.

To H. G. Wells.

Chocorua, Sept. 11, 1906.

Dear Mr. Wells, — I've read your "Two Studies in
Disappointment" in "Harper's Weekly," and must thank

26o LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o6

you from the bottom of my heart. Rem acu tetegistil Ex-
actly that callousness to abstract justice is the sinister fea-
ture and, to me as well as to you, the incomprehensible
feature, of our U. S. civilization. How you hit upon it so
neatly and singled it out so truly (and talked of it so tact-
fully!) God only knows: He evidently created you to do
such things! I never heard of the MacQueen case before,
but I've known of plenty of others. When the ordinary
American hears of them, instead of the idealist within him
beginning to "see red" with the higher indignation, instead
of the spirit of English history growing alive in his breast,
he begins to pooh-pooh and minimize and tone down the
thing, and breed excuses from his general fund of optimism
and respect for expediency. "It's probably right enough";
"Scoundrelly, as you say," but understandable, "from the
point of view of parties interested" — but understandable
in onlooking citizens only as a symptom of the moral flabbi-
ness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess
Success. That — with the squalid cash interpretation put
on the word success — is our national disease. Hit it hard!
Your book must have a great effect. Do you remember
the glorious remarks about success in Chesterton's "Here-
tics"? You will undoubtedly have written the medicinal
book about America. And what good humor! and what
tact! Sincerely yours,

Wm. James.

To Miss Theodora Sedgwick.

Chocorua, Sept. 13, 1906.

Dear Theodora, — Here we are in this sweet delicate
little place, after a pretty agitated summer, and the quiet
seems very nice. Likewise the stillness. I have thought
often of you, and almost written; but there never seemed

Aet.64\ TO MISS THEODORA SEDGWICK 261

exactly to be time or place for it, so I let the sally of the
heart to-you-ward suffice. A week ago, I spent a night
with H. L. Higginson, whom I found all alone at his house
by the Lake, and he told me your improvement had been
continuous and great, which I heartily hope has really been
the case. I don't see why it should not have been the case,
under such delightful conditions. What good things friends
are! And what better thing than lend it, can one do with
one's house? I was struck by Henry Higginson's high level
of mental tension, so to call it, which made him talk inces-
santly and passionately about one subject after another,
never running dry, and reminding me more of myself when
I was twenty years old. It isn't so much a man's eminence
of elementary faculties that pulls him through. They may
be rare, and he do nothing. It is the steam pressure to
the square inch behind that moves the machine. The
amount of that is what makes the great difference between
us. Henry has it high. Previous to seeing him I had spent
ten days in beautiful Keene Valley, dividing them between
the two ends. The St. Hubert's end is, I verily believe,
one of the most beautiful things in this beautiful world —
too dissimilar to anything in Europe to be compared there-
with, and consequently able to stand on its merits all alone.
But the great [forest] fire of four years ago came to the very
edge of wiping it out! And any year it may go.

I also had a delightful week all alone on the Maine Coast,
among the islands.

Back here, one is oppressed by sadness at the amount of
work waiting to be done on the place and no one to be hired
to do it. The entire meaning and essence of "land" is
something to be worked over — even if it be only a wood-
lot, it must be kept trimmed and cleaned. And for one
who can work and who likes work with his arms and hands,

262 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [Igo7

there is nothing so delightful as a piece of land to work
over - - it responds to every hour you give it, and smiles
with the "improvement" year by year. I neither can work
now, nor do I like it, so an irremediable bad conscience
afflicts my ownership of this place. With Cambridge as
headquarters for August, and a little lot of land there, I
think I could almost be ready to give up this place, and trust
to the luck of hotels, and other opportunities of rustication
without responsibility. But perhaps we can get this place
[taken care of?] some day!

I don't know how much you read. I've taken great
pleasure this summer in Bielshowski's "Life of Goethe"
(a wonderful piece of art) and in Birukoff's "Life of Tolstoy."

Alice is very well and happy in the stillness here. Elly
Hunter is coming this evening, tomorrow the Merrimans
for a day, and then Mrs. Hodder till the end of the month.

Faithful love from both of us, dear Theodora. Your
affectionate

W. J.

To his Daughter.

Cambridge, Jan. 20, 1907, 6.15 p.m.

Sweet Peglein, — Just before tea! and your Grandam,
Mar, and I going to hear the Revd. Percy Grant in the
College chapel just after. We are getting to be great
church-goers. 'T will have to be Crothers next. He, sweet
man, is staying with the Brookses. After him, the Chris-
tian Science Church, and after that the deluge!

I have spent all day preparing next Tuesday's lecture,
which is my last before a class in Harvard University, so
help me God amen! I am almost afraid at so much free-
dom. Three quarters of an hour ago Aleck and I went for
a walk in Somerville; warm, young moon, bare trees, clear-
ing in the west, stars out, old-fashioned streets, not sordid

Act. 65\ TO H. JAMES AND W. JAMES, JR. 263

— a beautiful walk. Last night to Bernard Shaw's ex-
quis-\te play of " Ca?sar and Cleopatra" - exquisitely acted
too, by F. Robertson and Maxine Elliot's sister Gert.
Your Mar will have told you that, after these weeks of per-
sistent labor, culminating in New York, I am going to take
sanctuary on Saturday the 2nd of Feb. in your arms at
Bryn Mawr. I do not want, wish, or desire to "talk" to
the crowd, but your mother pushing so, if you and the
philosophy club also pull, I mean pull hard, Jimmy l will
try to articulate something not too technical. But it will
have to be, if ever, on that Saturday night. It will also
have to be very short; and the less of a "reception," the
better, after it.

Your two last letters were tiptop. I never seen such
growl /if

I go to N. Y., to be at the Harvard Club, on Monday
the 28th. Kuhnemann left yesterday. A most dear man.
Your loving

Dad.

To Henry James and William James, Jr.

Cambridge, Feb. 14, 1907.
Dear Brother and Son, — I dare say that you will be
together in Paris when you get this, but I address it to
Lamb Llouse all the same. You twain are more "blessed"
than I, in the way of correspondence this winter, for you
give more than you receive, Bill's letters being as remark-
able for wit and humor as Henry's are for copiousness,
considering that the market value of what he either writes
or types is so many shillings a word. When / write other
things, I find it almost impossible to write letters. I've
been at it stiddy, however, for three days, since my return

1 As to "Jimmy," vide vol. I, p. 301 supra.

264 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [I9o7

from New York, finding, as I did, a great stack of corre-
spondence to attend to. The first impression of New York,
if you stay there not more than 36 hours, which has been
my limit for twenty years past, is one of repulsion at the
clangor, disorder, and permanent earthquake conditions.
But this time, installed as I was at the Harvard Club
(44th St.) in the centre of the cyclone, I caught the pulse
of the machine, took up the rhythm, and vibrated mit, and
found it simply magnificent. I 'm surprised at you, Henry,
not having been more enthusiastic, but perhaps that su-
perbly powerful and beautiful subway was not opened when
you were there. It is an entirely new New York, in soul as
well as in body, from the old one, which looks like a village
in retrospect. The courage, the heaven-scaling audacity
of it all, and the lightness withal, as if there was nothing
that was not easy, and the great pulses and bounds of prog-
ress, so many in directions all simultaneous that the coordi-
nation is indefinitely future, give a kind of drumming back-
ground of life that I never felt before. I 'm sure that once
in that movement, and at home, all other places would
seem insipid. I observe that your book, — "The American
Scene," — dear H., is just out. I must get it and devour
again the chapters relative to New York. On my last
night, I dined with Norman Hapgood, along with men who
were successfully and happily in the vibration. H. and his
most winning-faced young partner, Collier, Jerome, Peter
Dunne, F. M. Colby, and Mark Twain. (The latter, poor
man, is only good for monologue, in his old age, or for dia-
logue at best, but he's a dear little genius all the same.) I
got such an impression of easy efficiency in the midst of their
bewildering conditions of speed and complexity of adjust-
ment. Jerome, particularly, with the world's eyes on his
court-room, in the very crux of the Thaw trial, as if he had

Aet. 65] TO MOORFIELD STOREY 265

nothing serious to do. Balzac ought to come to life again.
His Rastignac imagination sketched the possibility of it long
ago. I lunched, dined, and sometimes breakfasted, out,
every day of my stay, vibrated between 44th St., seldom
going lower, and 149th, with Columbia University at 1 1 6th
as my chief relay station, the magnificent space-devouring
Subway roaring me back and forth, lecturing to a thousand
daily,1 and having four separate dinners at the Columbia
Faculty Club, where colleagues severally compassed me
about, many of them being old students of mine, wagged
their tongues at me and made me explain.2 It was cer-
tainly the high tide of my existence, so far as energizing and
being "recognized" were concerned, but I took it all very
"easy" and am hardly a bit tired. Total abstinence from
every stimulant whatever is the one condition of living at
a rapid pace. I am now going whack at the writing of the
rest of the lectures, which will be more original and (I believe)
important than my previous works. . . .

To Moorfield Storey.

Cambridge, Feb. 21, 1907.

Dear Moorfield, — Your letter of three weeks ago has
inadvertently lain unnoticed — not because it did n't do

1 Cf. pp. 16, 17, and 110 supra.

2 Dr. Miller writes: "These four evenings at the Faculty Club were singularly
interesting occasions. One was a meeting of the Philosophical Club of New York,
whose members, about a dozen in number, were of different institutions. The
others were impromptu meetings arranged either by members of the Depart-
ment of Philosophy at Columbia or a wider group. At one of them Mr. James
sat in a literal circle of chairs, with professors of Biology, Mathematics, etc., as
well as Philosophy, and answered in a particularly friendly and charming way
the frank objections of a group that were by no means all opponents. At the close,
when he was thanked for his patience, he remarked in his humorously disclaim-
ing manner that he was not accustomed to be taken so seriously. Privately he
remarked how pleasantly such an unaffected, easy meeting contrasted with a
certain formal and august dinner club, the exaggerated amusement of the diners
at each other's jokes, etc."

266 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o7

me good, but because I went to New York for a fortnight,
and since coming home have been too druv to pay any
tributes to friendship. I have n't got many letters either
of condolence or congratulation on my retirement, — which,
by the way, does n't take place till the end of the year, —
the papers have railroaded me out too soon.1 But I con-
fess that the thought is sweet to me of being able to hear
the College bell ring without any tendency to "move" in
consequence, and of seeing the last Thursday in September
go by, and remaining in the country careless of what be-
comes of its youth. It's the harness and the hours that are
so galling! I expect to shed truths in dazzling profusion on
the world for many years.

As for you, retire too! Let you, Eliot, Roosevelt and me,
first relax; then take to landscape painting, which has a
very soothing effect; then write out all the truths which a
long life of intimacy with mankind has recommended to
each of us as most useful. I think we can use the ebb tide
of our energies best in that way. I 'm sure that your con-
tributions would be the most useful of all. Affectionately
yours,

Wm. James.

To Theodore Flournoy.

Cambridge, Mar. 26, 1907.

Dear Flournoy, — Your dilectissime letter of the 1 6th
arrived this morning and I must scribble a word of reply.
That's the way to write to a man! Caress him! flatter him!
tell him that all Switzerland is hanging on his lips! You
have made me really happy for at least twenty-four hours!

1 His resignation did not take effect until the end of the Academic year, although
his last meeting with the class to which he was giving a " half-course," occurred at
the mid-year.

Aet. 65} TO THEODORE FLOURNOY 267

My dry and businesslike compatriots never write letters
like that. They write about themselves ; ou write about
me. You know the definition of an egotist: "a person
who insists on talking about himself, when you want to
talk about yourself." Reverdin has told me of the success
of your lectures on pragmatism, and if you have been com-
muning in spirit writh me this winter, so have I with you.
I have grown more and more deeply into pragmatism, and
I rejoice immensely to hear you say, 'je m'y sens tout
gagne." It is absolutely the only philosophy with no hum-
bug in it, and I am certain that it is your philosophy. Have
you read Papini's article in the February 'Leonardo"?
That seems to me really splendid. You say that my ideas
have formed the real centre de ralliment of the pragmatist
tendencies. To me it is the youthful and empanache Papini
who has best put himself at the centre of equilibrium whence
all the motor tendencies start. He (and Schiller) has given
me great confidence and courage. I shall dedicate my book,
however, to the memory of J. S. Mill.

I hope that you are careful to distinguish in my own work
between the pragmatism and the "radical empiricism"
(Conception de Conscience,1 etc.) which to my own mind
have no necessary connexion with each other. My first
proofs came in this morning, along with your letter, and
the little book ought to be out by the first of June. You
shall have a very early copy. It is exceedingly untech-
nical, and I can't help suspecting that it will make a real im-
pression. Miinsterberg, who hitherto has been rather pooh-
poohing my thought, now, after reading the lecture on truth
which I sent you a while ago, says I seem to be igno-
rant that Kant ever wrote, Kant having already said all

'"La Notion de Conscience," Archives de Psychologie, vol. v, No. 17, June,
1905. Later included in Essays in Radical Empiricism.

268 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1907

that I say. I regard this as a very good symptom. The
third stage of opinion about a new idea, already arrived:
1st: absurd! 2nd: trivial! 3rd: we discovered it! I don't
suppose you mean to print these lectures of yours, but I wish
you would. If you would translate my lectures, what could
make me happier? But, as I said apropos of the "Varie-
ties," I hate to think of you doing that drudgery when
you might be formulating your own ideas. But, in one
way or the other, I hope you will join in the great strategic
combination against the forces of rationalism and bad ab-
stractionism! A good coup de collier all round, and I verily
believe that a new philosophic movement will begin. . . .

I thank you for your congratulations on my retirement.
It makes me very happy. A professor has two functions:
(1) to be learned and distribute bibliographical informa-
tion; (2) to communicate truth. The 1st function is the
essential one, officially considered. The 2nd is the only one
I care for. Hitherto I have always felt like a humbug as a
professor, for I am weak in the first requirement. Now I
can live for the second with a free conscience. I envy you
now at the Italian Lakes! But good-bye! I have already
written you a long letter, though I only meant to write a
line! Love to you all from

W.J.

To Charles A. Strong.

Cambridge, Apr. 9, 1907.

Dear Strong, — Your tightly woven little letter reached
me this a.m., just as I was about writing to you to find out
how you are. Your long silence had made me apprehensive
about your condition, and this news cheers me up very
much. Rome is great; and I like to think of you there;
if I spend another winter in Europe, it shall be mainly in

Aet. 65] TO CHARLES A. STRONG 269

Rome. You don't say where you 're staying, however, so
my imagination is at fault. I hope it may be at the Russie,
that most delightful of hotels. I am overwhelmed with
duties, so I must be very brief in re religionis. Your warn-
ings against my superstitious tendencies, for such I suppose
they are,— this is the second heavy one I remember, —
touch me, but not in the prophetic way, for they don't
weaken my trust in the healthiness of my own attitude,
which in part (I fancy) is less remote from your own than
you suppose. For instance, my "God of things as they
are," being part of a pluralistic system, is responsible for
only such of them as he knows enough and has enough power
to have accomplished. For the rest he is identical with your
"ideal" God. The "omniscient" and "omnipotent" God
of theology I regard as a disease of the philosophy-shop.
But, having thrown away so much of the philosophy-shop,
you may ask me why I don't throw away the whole? That
would mean too strong a negative will-to-believe for me.
It would mean a dogmatic disbelief in any extant conscious-
ness higher than that of the "normal" human mind; and
this in the teeth of the extraordinary vivacity of man's
psychological commerce with something ideal that feels as
if it were also actual (I have no such commerce — I wish I
had, but I can't close my eyes to its vitality in others);
and in the teeth of such analogies as Fechner uses to show
that there may be other-consciousness than man's. If
other, then why not higher and bigger? Why may we not
be in the universe as our dogs and cats are in our drawing-
rooms and libraries? It's a will-to-believe on both sides:
I am perfectly willing that others should disbelieve: why
should you not be tolerantly interested in the spectacle of
my belief? What harm does the little residuum or germ of
actuality that I leave in God do? If ideal, why (except on

27o LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o7

epiphenomenist principles) may he not have got himself
at least partly real by this time? I do not believe it to be
healthy-minded to nurse the notion that ideals are self-
sufficient and require no actualization to make us content.
It is a quite unnecessarily heroic form of resignation and
sour grapes. Ideals ought to aim at the transformation of
reality — no less! When you defer to what you suppose a
certain authority in scientists as confirming these negations,
I am surprised. Of all insufficient authorities as to the
total nature of reality, give me the "scientists," from Miin-
sterberg up, or down. Their interests are most incomplete
and their professional conceit and bigotry immense. I
know no narrower sect or club, in spite of their excellent
authority in the lines of fact they have explored, and their
splendid achievement there. Their only authority at large
is for method - - and the pragmatic method completes and
enlarges them there. When you shall have read my whole
set of lectures (now with the printer, to be out by June ist)
I doubt whether you will find any great harm in the God I
patronize — the poor thing is so largely an ideal possibility.
Meanwhile I take delight, or shall take delight, in any
efforts you may make to negate all superhuman conscious-
ness, for only by these counter-attempts can a finally satis-
factory modus vivendi be reached. I don't feel sure that
I know just what you mean by " freedom," — but no matter.
Have you read in Schiller's new Studies in Humanism what
seem to me two excellent chapters, one on "Freedom," and
the other on the "making of reality"? . . .

To F. C. S. Schiller.

Cambridge, Apr. 19, 1907.

Dear Schiller, — Two letters and a card from you within
ten days is pretty good. I have been in New York for a

Aet. 65] TO F. C. S. SCHILLER 271

week, so have n't written as promptly as I should have done.

All right for the Gilbert Murrays! We shall be glad to
see them.

Too late for "humanism" in my book — all in type! I
dislike "pragmatism," but it seems to have the interna-
tional right of way at present. Let 's both go ahead - - God
will know his own !

When your book first came I lent it to my student Kallen
(who was writing a thesis on the subject), thereby losing it
for three weeks. Then the grippe, and my own proofs
followed, along with much other business, so that I 've only
read about a quarter of it even now. The essays on Freedom
and the Making of Reality seem to be written with my own
heart's blood — it 's startling that two people should be
found to think so exactly alike. A great argument for the
truth of what they say, too! I find that my own chapter
on Truth printed in the J. of P. already,1 convinces no one
as yet, not even my most gleichgesinnten cronies. It will
have to be worked in by much future labor, for I knozv that
I see all round the subject and they don't, and I think that
the theory of truth is the key to all the rest of our positions.

You ask what I am going to "reply" to Bradley. But
why need one reply to everything and everybody? B.'s
article is constructive rather than polemic, is evidently
sincere, softens much of his old outline, is difficult to read,
and ought, I should think, to be left to its own destiny.
How sweetly, by the way, he feels towards me as compared
with you! All because you have been too bumptious. I
confess I think that your gaudium certaminis injures your
influence. We 've got a thing big enough to set forth now
affirmatively, and I think that readers generally hate minute
polemics and recriminations. All polemic of ours should,

'"Pragmatism's Conception of Truth." Included in Selected Essays and
Reviews.

272 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o7

I believe, be either very broad statements of contrast, or
fine points treated singly, and as far as possible imper-
sonally. Inborn rationalists and inborn pragmatists will
never convert each other. We shall always look on them
as spectral and they on us as trashy — irredeemably both!
As far as the rising generation goes, why not simply express
ourselves positively, and trust that the truer view quietly
will displace the other. Here again "God will know his
own." False views don't need much direct refutation —
they get superseded, and I feel absolutely certain of the
supersessive power of pragmato-humanism, if persuasively
enough set forth. . . . The world is wide enough to harbor
various ways of thinking, and the present Bradley's units
of mental operation are so diverse from ours that the labor
of reckoning over from one set of terms to the other does n't
bring reward enough to pay for it. Of course his way of
treating "truth" as an entity trying all the while to identify
herself with reality, while reality is equally trying to identify
herself with the more ideal entity truth, is n't false. It 's
one way, very remote and allegorical, of stating the facts,
and it "agrees" with a good deal of reality, but it has so
little pragmatic value that its tottering form can be left for
time to deal with. The good it does him is small, for it
leaves him in this queer, surly, grumbling state about the
best that can be done by it for philosophy. His great vice
seems to me his perversity in logical activities, his bad
reasonings. I vote to go on, from now on, not trying to
keep account of the relations of his with our system. He
can't be influencing disciples, being himself nowadays so
difficult. And once for all, there will be minds who cannot
help regarding our growing universe as sheer trash, meta-
physically considered. Yours ever,

W.J.

Aet.65] TO CLIFFORD W. BEERS 273

The next letter is addressed to an active promoter of re-
form in the treatment of the insane, the author of "A Mind
that Found Itself." The Connecticut Society for Mental
Hygiene and the National Committee for Mental Hygiene
have already performed so great a public service, that any-
one may now see that in 1907 the time had come to employ
such instrumentalities in improving the care of the insane.
But when Mr. Beers, just out of an asylum himself, ap-
peared with the manuscript of his own story in his hands,
it was not so clear that these agencies were needed, nor yet
evident to anyone that he was a person who could bring
about their organization.

James's own opinion as to the treatment of the insane is
not in the least overstated in the following letter. He rec-
ognized the genuineness of Mr. Beers's personal experience
and its value for propaganda, and he immediately helped
to get it published. From his first acquaintance with Mr.
Beers, he gave time, counsel, and money to further the
organization of the Mental Hygiene Committee; and he
even departed, in its interest, from his fixed policy of "keep-
ing out of Committees and Societies." He lived long enough
to know that the movement had begun to gather mo-
mentum; and he drew great satisfaction from the knowledge.

To Clifford W. Beers.

Cambridge, Apr. 21, 1907.

Dear Mr. Beers, — You ask for my opinion as to the
advisability and feasibility of a National Society, such as
you propose, for the improvement of conditions among the
insane.

I have never ceased to believe that such improvement is
one of the most "crying" needs oi civilization; and the
functions of such a Society seem to me to be well drawn up

274 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o7

by you. Your plea for its being founded before your book
appears is well grounded, you being an author who naturally
would like to cast seed upon a ground already prepared for
it to germinate practically without delay.

I have to confess to being myself a very impractical man,
with no experience whatever in the details, difficulties, etc.,
of philanthropic or charity organization, so my opinion as
to the feasibility of your plan is worth nothing, and is un-
decided. Of course the first consideration is to get your
money, the second, your Secretary and Trustees. All that
/ wish to bear witness to is the great need of a National
Society such as you describe, or failing that, of a State
Society somewhere that might serve as a model in other
States.

Nowhere is there massed together as much suffering as in
the asylums. Nowhere is there so much sodden routine,
and fatalistic insensibility in those who have to treat it.
Nowhere is an ideal treatment more costly. The officials
in charge grow resigned to the conditions under which they
have to labor. They cannot plead their cause as an auxil-
iary organization can plead it for them. Public opinion is
too glad to remain ignorant. As mediator between officials,
patients, and the public conscience, a society such as you
sketch is absolutely required, and the sooner it gets under
way the better.1 Sincerely yours,

William James.

At the date of the next letter William James, Jr., was
studying painting in Paris.

1 The story of the Committee for Mental Hygiene is interestingly told in Part
V of the 4th Edition of C. W. Beers's A Mind that Found Itself. Several let-
ters from James are incorporated in the story. Vide pp. 339 and 340; also pp.
320, 352.

Aet.65\ TO HIS SON WILLIAM 275

To his Son William.

Cambridge, Apr. 24, 1907.

Dearest Bill, — I have n't written to you tor ages, yet
you keep showering the most masterly and charming epistles
upon all of us in turn, including the fair Rosamund.1 Be
sure they are appreciated! Your Ma and I dined last
night at Ellen and Loulie Hooper's to meet Rosalind Huide-
koper and her swain. Loulie had heard from Bancel [La
Farge] of your getting a "mention" -if for the model,
I'm not surprised; if for the composition, I'm im-
mensely pleased. Of course you '11 tell us of it! We Ve
had a very raw cold April, and today it 's blowing great
guns from all quarters of the sky, preparatory to clearing
from the N.W., I think. We are rooting up the entire lawn
to a depth of 18 inches to try to regenerate it. Four diggers
and two carts have been at it for a week, with your mother,
bareheaded and cloaked, and ruddy-cheeked, sticking to
them like a burr. She does n't handle pick or shovel, but
she stands there all day long in a way it would do your heart
aood to see; and so democratic and heartv withal that I'm
sure they like it, though working under such a great task-
master's eye deprives them of those intervals of stolen
leisure so dear to "workers" of every description. She
makes it up to them by inviting them to an afternoon tea
daily, with piles of cake and doughnuts. I fancy they like
her well.

We 've let Chocorua to the Goldmarks. Aleck took his
April recess along with his schoolmate Henderson and
Gerald Thayer, partly on the summit, partly around the
base, of Monadnock. The weather was fiercely wintry,
and your mother and I said "poor blind little Aleck - -he 's
got to learn thru experience." [She said "through"!]

1 Mrs. James's niece, Rosamund Gregor, age 6.

2-6 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1907

He came back happier and more exultant than I 've ever
seen him, and six months older morally and intellectually
for the week with Gerald and Abbott Thayer. A great
step forward. They burglarized the Thayer house, and
were tracked and arrested by the posse, and had a paragraph
in the Boston "Globe" about the robbery. As the thing
involved an ascent of Monadnock after dark, with their
packs, in deep snow, a day and a night there in snowstorm,
a 16-mile walk and out of bed till 2 a.m. the night of the
burglary, a "lying low" indoors all the next day at the
Hendersons' empty house, three in a bed and the police
waking them at dawn, I ventured to suggest a doubt as to
whether the Thayer household were the greatest victims of
the illustrious practical joke. "What," cries Aleck, start-
ing to his feet, "nine men with revolvers and guns around
your bed, and a revolver pointed close to your ear as you
wake — don't you call that a success, I should like to know ? "
The Tom Sawyer phase of evolution is immortal! Gerald,
who is staying with us now, is really a splendid fellow. I 'm
so glad he 's taken to Aleck, who now is aflame with plans
for being an artist. I wish he might — it would certainly
suit his temperament better than "business."

There 's the lunch bell.

I have got my "Pragmatism" proofs all corrected. The
most important thing I 've written yet, and bound, I am
sure, to stir up a lot of attention. But I 'm dog-tired; and,
in order to escape the social engagements that at this time
of year grow more frequent than ever, I 'm going off on
Friday (this is Wednesday) to the country somewhere for
ten days. If only there might be warm weather! We 've
just backed out from a dinner to William Leonard Darwin
and his wife, and the Geo. Hodgeses, etc. W. T. Stead
spent three hours here on Sunday and lectured in the Union

Aet. 65] TO HENRY JAMES 277

on Monday — a splendid fellow whom I could get along with
after a fashion. Let no one run him down to you. I 've
been to New York to the Peace Congress. Interesting but
tiresome.

Mary Salter is with us. Margaret and Rosamund just
arrived at 107. No news else! Yours,

W.J.

To Henry James.

Salisbury, Conn., May 4, 1907.

Dearest H. — . . . I've been so overwhelmed with work,
and the mountain of the Unread has piled up so, that only
in these days here have I really been able to settle down to
your "American Scene," which in its peculiar way seems
to me supremely great. You know how opposed your whole
"third manner" of execution is to the literary ideals which
animate my crude and Orson-like breast, mine being to say
a thing in one sentence as straight and explicit as it can be
made, and then to drop it forever; yours being to avoid
naming it straight, but by dint of breathing and sighing all
round and round it, to arouse in the reader who may have
had a similar perception already (Heaven help him if he
has n't!) the illusion of a solid object, made (like the "ghost"
at the Polytechnic) wholly out of impalpable materials, air,
and the prismatic interferences of light, ingeniously focused
by mirrors upon empty space. But you do it, that 's the
queerness! And the complication of innuendo and asso-
ciative reference on the enormous scale to which you give
way to it does so build out the matter for the reader that
the result is to solidify, by the mere bulk of the process,
the like perception from which he has to start. As air, by
dint of its volume, will weigh like a corporeal body; so his
own poor little initial perception, swathed in this gigantic

278 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [I9o7

envelopment of suggestive atmosphere, grows like a germ
into something vastly bigger and more substantial. But
it 's the rummest method for one to employ systematically
as you do nowadays; and you employ it at your peril. In
this crowded and hurried reading age, pages that require
such close attention remain unread and neglected. You
can't skip a word if you are to get the effect, and 19 out of
10 worthy readers grow intolerant. The method seems
perverse: "Say it out, for God's sake," they cry, "and have
done with it." And so I say now, give us o?ie thing in your
older directer manner, just to show that, in spite of your
paradoxical success in this unheard-of method, you can still
write according to accepted canons. Give us that interlude;
and then continue like the "curiosity of literature" which
you have become. For gleams and innuendoes and felicitous
verbal insinuations you are unapproachable, but the core of
literature is solid. Give it to us once again! The bare per-
fume of things will not support existence, and the effect of
solidity you reach is but perfume and simulacrum.

For God's sake don't answer these remarks, which (as
Uncle Howard used to say of Father's writings) are but the
peristaltic belchings of my own crabbed organism. For one
thing, your account of America is largely one of its omis-
sions, silences, vacancies. You work them up like solids,
for those readers who already germinally perceive them
(to others you are totally incomprehensible). I said to
myself over and over in reading: "How much greater the
triumph, if instead of dwelling thus only upon America's
vacuities, he could make positive suggestion of what in
'Europe' or Asia may exist to fill them." That would be
nutritious to so many American readers whose souls are
only too ready to leap to suggestion, but who are now too
inexperienced to know what is meant by the contrast-effect

Aet. 65\ TO HENRY JAMES 279

from which alone your book is written. If you could supply
the background which is the foil, in terms more full and
positive! At present it is supplied only by the abstract
geographic term "Europe." But of course anything of
that kind is excessively difficult; and you will probably say
that you are supplying it all along by your novels. Well,
the verve and animal spirits with which you can keep your
method going, first on one place then on another, through
all those tightly printed pages is something marvelous; and
there are pages surely doomed to be immortal, those on the
"drummers," e.g., at the beginning of "Florida." They are
in the best sense Rabelaisian.

But a truce, a truce! I had no idea, when I sat down,
of pouring such a bath of my own subjectivity over you.
Forgive! forgive! and don't reply, don't at any rate in the
sense of defending yourself, but only in that of attacking
me, if you feel so minded. I have just finished the proofs of
a little book called "Pragmatism" which even you may
enjoy reading. It is a very "sincere" and, from the point
of view of ordinary philosophy-professorial manners, a very
unconventional utterance, not particularly original at any
one point, yet, in the midst of the literature of the way of
thinking which it represents, with just that amount of
squeak or shrillness in the voice that enables one book to
tell, when others don't, to supersede its brethren, and be
treated later as "representative." I shouldn't be sur-
prised if ten years hence it should be rated as "epoch-
making," for of the definitive triumph of that general way
of thinking I can entertain no doubt whatever — I believe
it to be something quite like the protestant reformation.

You can't tell how happy I am at having thrown off
the nightmare of my "professorship." As a "professor" I
always felt myself a sham, with its chief duties of being a

28o LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1907

walking encyclopedia of erudition. I am now at liberty
to be a reality ', and the comfort is unspeakable — literally
unspeakable, to be my own man, after 35 years of being
owned by others. I can now live for truth pure and simple,
instead of for truth accommodated to the most unheard-of
requirements set by others. . . . Your affectionate

W.J.

This letter appears never to have been answered, although
Henry James wrote on May 31, 1907: 'You shall have,
after a little more patience, a reply to your so rich and
luminous reflections on my book — a reply almost as in-
teresting as, and far more illuminating than, your letter
itself."

To F. C. S. Schiller.

Cambridge, May 18, 1907.

. . . One word about the said proof [of your article].
It convinces me that you ought to be an academic personage,
a "professor." For thirty-five years I have been suffering
from the exigencies of being one, the pretension and the
duty, namely, of meeting the mental needs and difficulties
of other persons, needs that I could n't possibly imagine and
difficulties that I could n't possibly understand; and now
that I have shuffled off the professorial coil, the sense of
freedom that comes to me is as surprising as it is exquisite.
I wake up every morning with it. What! not to have to
accommodate myself to this mass of alien and recalcitrant
humanity, not to think under resistance, not to have to
square myself with others at every step I make -- hurrah!
it is too good to be true. To be alone with truth and God!
Es ist nicht zu glaubenl What a future! What a vision of
ease! But here you are loving it and courting it unneces-

Aet. 6j] TO F. C. S. SCHILLER 281

sarily. You 're fit to continue a professor in all your suc-
cessive reincarnations, with never a release. It was so
easy to let Bradley with his approximations and grumblings
alone. So few people would find these last statements of
his seductive enough to build them into their own thought.
But you, for the pure pleasure of the operation, chase him
up and down his windings, flog him into and out of his
corners, stop him and cross-reference him and counter on
him, as if required to do so by your office. It makes very
difficult reading, it obliges one to re-read Bradley, and I
don't believe there are three persons living who will take
it in with the pains required to estimate its value. B. him-
self will very likely not read it with any care. It is subtle
and clear, like everything you write, but it is too minute.
And where a few broad comments would have sufficed, it is
too complex, and too much like a criminal conviction in
tone and temper. Leave him in his dunklem Drange - - he is
drifting in the right direction evidently, and when a certain
amount of positive construction on our side has been added,
he will say that that was what he had meant all along - - and
the world will be the better for containing so much difficult
polemic reading the less.

I admit that your remarks are penetrating, and let air
into the joints of the subject; but I respectfully submit that
they are not called for in the interests of the final triumph
of truth. That will come by the way of displacement of
error, quite effortlessly. I can't help suspecting that you
unduly magnify the influence of Bradleyan Absolutism on
the undergraduate mind. Taylor is the only fruit so far —
at least within my purview. One practical point: I don't
quite like your first paragraph, and wonder if it be too late
to have the references to me at least expunged. I can't
recognize the truth of the ten-years' change of opinion about

282 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1907

my "Will to Believe." I don't find anyone — not even my
dearest friends, as Miller and Strong — one whit persuaded.
Taylor's and Hobhouse's attacks are of recent date, etc.
Moreover, the reference to Bradley's relation to me in this
article is too ironical not to seem a little "nasty" to some
readers; therefore out with it, if it be not too late.

See how different our methods are! All that Humanism
needs now is to make applications of itself to special prob-
lems. Get a school of youngsters at work. Refutations
of error should be left to the rationalists alone. They are
a stock function of that school. . . .

I 'm fearfully tired, but expect the summer to get me right
again. Affectionately thine,

W.J.

XVI

1 907- 1 909

The Last Period (III) — Hibbert Lectures in Oxford —

The Hodgson Report

The story of the remaining years is written so fully in the
letters themselves as to require little explanation.

Angina pectoris and such minor ailments as are only too
likely to afflict a man of sixty-five years and impaired con-
stitution interrupted the progress of reading and writing
more and more. Physical exertion, particularly that in-
volved in talking long to many people, now brought on pain
and difficulty in breathing. But James still carried himself
erect, still walked with a light step, and until a few weeks
before his death wore the appearance of a much younger and
stronger man than he really was. None but those near to
him realized how often he was in discomfort or pain, or how
constantly he was using himself to the limit of his endurance.
He bore his ills without complaint and ordinarily without
mention; although he finally made up his mind to try to
discourage the appeals and requests of all sorts that still
harassed him, by proclaiming the fact that he was an invalid.
As his power of work became more and more reduced, frus-
trations became harder to bear, and the sense that they were
unavoidable oppressed him. When an invitation to deliver
a course of lectures on the Hibbert Foundation at Manchester
College, Oxford, arrived, he was torn between an impulse to
clutch at this engagement as a means of hastening the
writing-out of certain material that was in his mind, and

284 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1907^9

the fear, only too reasonable, that the obligation to have the
lectures ready by a certain date would strain him to the
snapping point. After some hesitation he agreed, however,
and the lectures were, ultimately, prepared and delivered
successfully.

In proportion as the number of hours a day that he could
spend on literary work and professional reading decreased,
James's general reading increased again. He began for the
first time to browse in military biographies, and commenced
to collect material for a study which he sometimes spoke
of as a "Psychology of Jingoism," sometimes as a "Varieties
of Military Experience." What such a work would have
been, had he ever completed it, it is impossible to tell. It
was never more than a rather vague project, turned to oc-
casionally as a diversion. But it is safe to reckon that two
remarkable papers — the "Energies of Men" (written in
1906) and the "Moral Equivalent of War" (written in
1909) — would have appeared to be related to this study.
That it would not have been a Utopian flight in the direc-
tion of pacifism need hardly be said. However he might
have described it, James was not disposed to underesti-
mate the "fighting instinct." He saw it as a persistent and
highly irritable force, underlying the society of all the
dominant races; and he advocated international courts,
reduction of armaments, and any other measures that might
prevent appeals to the war-waging passion as commendable
devices for getting along without arousing it.

'The fatalistic view of the war-function is to me non-
sense, for I know that war-making is due to definite motives
and subject to prudential checks and reasonable criticisms,
just like any other form of enterprise. . . . All these beliefs
of mine put me squarely into the anti-militarist party. But
I do not believe that peace either ought to be or will be per-

1907-09] LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES 285

manent on this globe, unless the states pacifically organized
preserve some of the old elements of army-discipline. . . .
In the more or less socialistic future towards which mankind
seems drifting, we must still subject ourselves collectively
to those severities which answer to our real position upon
this only partly hospitable globe. We must make new
energies and hardihoods continue the manliness to which the
military mind so faithfully clings. Martial virtues must
be the enduring cement; intrepidity, contempt of softness,
surrender of private interest, obedience to command, must
still remain the rock upon which states are built — unless,
indeed, we wish for dangerous reactions against common-
wealths fit only for contempt, and liable to invite attack
whenever a centre of crystallization for military-minded
enterprise gets formed anywhere in their neighborhood." J

Any utterances about war, arbitration, and disarmament,
are now likely to have their original meaning distorted by
reason of what may justly be called the present fevered
state of public opinion on such questions. It should be
clear that the foregoing sentences were not directed to any
particular question of domestic or foreign policy. They
were part of a broad picture of the fighting instinct, and
led up to a suggestion for diverting it into non-destructive
channels. As to particular instances, circumstances were
always to be reckoned with. James believed in organizing
and strengthening the machinery of arbitration, but did not
think that the day for universal arbitration had yet come.
He saw a danger in military establishments, went so far —
in the presence of the "jingoism" aroused by Cleveland's
Venezuela message — as to urge opposition to any increase
of the American army and navy, encouraged peace-societies,
and was willing to challenge attention by calling himself a

1 Memories and Studies, pp. 286 et seq.

286 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o7

pacifist.1 "The first thing to learn in intercourse with
others is non-interference with their own peculiar ways of
being happy, provided those ways do not presume to inter-
fere by violence with ours." 2 Tolerance — social, religious,
and political — was fundamental in his scheme of belief;
but he took pains to make a proviso, and drew the line at
tolerating interference or oppression. Where he recognized
a military danger, there he would have had matters so
governed as to meet it, not evade it. Writing of the British
garrison in Halifax in 1897, he said: "By Jove, if England
should ever be licked by a Continental army, it would only
be Divine justice upon her for keeping up the Tommy
Atkins recruiting system when the others have compulsory
service."

In the case of one undertaking, which was much too
troublesome to be reckoned as a diversion, he let himself be
drawn away from his metaphysical work. He had taken
no active part in the work of the Society for Psychical Re-
search since 1896. In December, 1905, Richard Hodgson,
the secretary of the American Branch, had died suddenly,
and almost immediately thereafter Mrs. Piper, the medium
whose trances Hodgson had spent years in studying, had
purported to give communications from Hodgson's departed
spirit. In 1909 James made a report to the S. P. R. on
"Mrs. Piper's Hodgson control." The full report will be
found in its Proceedings for 1909,3 and the concluding pages,
in which James stated, more analytically than elsewhere,
the hypotheses which the phenomena suggested to him,

1 The reader need hardly be reminded that new meanings and associations have
attached themselves to this word in particular.

1 Talks to Teachers, p. 265.

3 Proceedings of (English) S. P. R., vol. xxm, pp. 1-121. Also, Proc. American
S. P. R., vol. in, p. 470.

Aet. 65] TO CHARLES LEWIS SLATTERY 287

have been reprinted in the volume of "Collected Essays and
Reviews." At the same time he wrote out a more popular
statement, in a paper which will be found in "Memories and
Studies." As to his final opinion of the spirit-theory, the
following letter, given somewhat out of its chronological
place, states what was still James's opinion in 19 10.

To Charles Lea is S lattery.

Cambridge, Apr. 21, 1907.

Dear Mr. Slattery, — My state of mind is this: Mrs.
Piper has supernormal knowledge in her trances; but
whether it comes from "tapping the minds" of living people,
or from some common cosmic reservoir of memories, or
from surviving "spirits" of the departed, is a question im-
possible for me to answer just now to my own satisfaction.
The spirit-theory is undoubtedly not only the most natural,
but the simplest, and I have great respect for Hodgson's
and Hyslop's arguments when they adopt it. At the same
time the electric current called belief has not yet closed in
my mind.

Whatever the explanation be, trance-mediumship is an
excessively complex phenomenon, in which many concurrent
factors are engaged. That is why interpretation is so hard.

Make any use, public or private, that you like of this.

In great haste, yours,

Wm. James.

The next letter should be understood as referring to the
abandonment of an excursion to Lake Champlain with
Henry L. Higginson. The celebration alluded to in the
last part of the letter had been arranged by the Cambridge
Historical Society in honor of the hundredth anniversary of
the birth of Louis Agassiz.

288 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1907

To Henry L. Higginson.

Chocorua, N. H., circa, June 1, 1907.

Dear Henry, — On getting your resignation by tele-
phone, I came straight up here instead, without having
time to write you my acceptance as I meant to; and now
comes your note of the fourth, before I have done so.

I am exceedingly sorry, my dear old boy, that it is the
doctor's advice that ha^s made you fear to go. I hope the
liability to relapse will soon fade out and leave you free
again; for say what they will of Alters Schwache and resig-
nation to decay, and entbehren sollst du, sollst entbe/iren, it
means only sour grapes, and the insides of one always want
to be doing the free and active things. However, a river
can still be lively in a shrunken bed, and we must not pay
too much attention to the difference of level. If you should
summon me again this summer, I can probably respond. I
shall be here for a fortnight, then back to Cambridge again
for a short time.

I thought the Agassiz celebration went off very nicely in-
deed, did n't you? — John Gray's part in it being of course

the best. X was heavy, but respectable, and the heavy

respectable ought to be one ingredient in anything of the
kind. But how well Shaler would have done that part of
the job had he been there! Love to both of you!

W.J.

To W. Cameron Forbes.

Chocorua, June 11, 1907.

Dear Cameron Forbes, — Your letter from Baguio of
the 1 8th of April touches me by its genuine friendliness,
and is a tremendous temptation. Why am I not ten years
younger? Even now I hesitate to say no, and the only
reason why I don't say yes, with a roar, is that certain rather

Aet. 65] TO W. CAMERON FORBES 289

serious drawbacks in the way of health of late seem to make
me unfit for the various activities which such a visit ought
to carry in its train. I am afraid my program from now on-
wards ought to be sedentary. I ought to be getting out a
book next winter. Last winter I could hardly do any
walking, owing to a trouble with my heart.

Does your invitation mean to include my wife? And
have you a good crematory so that she might bring home
my ashes in case of need?

I think if you had me on the spot you would find me a
less impractical kind of an anti-imperialist than you have
supposed me to be. I think that the manner in which the
McKinley administration railroaded the country into its
policy of conquest was abominable, and the way the country
pucked up its ancient soul at the first touch of temptation,
and followed, was sickening. But with the establishment
of the civil commission McKinley did what he could to
redeem things and now what the Islands want is conti-
nuity of administration to form new habits that may to
some degree be hoped to last when we, as controllers, are
gone. When? that is the question. And much difference
of opinion may be fair as to the answer. That we can't
stay forever seems to follow from the fact that the educated
Philippinos differ from all previous colonials in having been
inoculated before our occupation with the ideas of the French
Revolution; and that is a virus to which history shows as
yet no anti-toxine. As I am at present influenced, I think
that the U. S. ought to solemnly proclaim a date for our
going (or at least for a plebiscitum as to whether we should
go) and stand by all the risks. Some date, rather than in-
definitely drift. And shape the whole interval towards
securing things in view of the change. As to this, I may
be wrong, and am always willing to be convinced. I wish

29o LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1907

I could go, and see you all at work. Heaven knows I
admire the spirit with which you are animated — a new
thing in colonial work.

It must have been a great pleasure to you to see so many
of the family at once. I have seen none of them since their
return, but hope to do so ere the summer speeds. The
only dark spot was poor F 's death.

Believe me, with affectionate regards, yours truly,

Wm. James.

I am ordering a little book of mine, just out, to be sent
to you. Some one of your circle may find entertainment
in it.

To F. C. S. Schiller.

[Post-card]

Chocorua, June 13, 1907.

Yours of the 27th ult. received and highly appreciated.
I'm glad you relish my book so well. You go on playing
the Boreas and I shedding the sunbeams, and between us
we'll get the cloak off the philosophic traveler! But have
you read Bergson's new book? l It seems to me that noth-
ing is important in comparison with that divine apparition.
All our positions, real time, a growing world, asserted magis-
terially, and the beast intellectualism killed absolutely dead!
The whole flowed round by a style incomparable as it seems
to me. Read it, and digest it if you can. Much of it I
can't yet assimilate. [No signature.]

To Henri Bergs on.

Chocorua, June 13, 1907.

O my Bergson, you are a magician, and your book is a
marvel, a real wonder in the history of philosophy, making,

1 L' Evolution Creatrice.

Aet. 65] TO HENRI BERGSOX 291

if I mistake not, an entirely new era in respect of matter,
but unlike the works of genius of the "transcendentalist"
movement (which are so obscurely and abominably and
inaccessibly written), a pure classic in point of form. You
may be amused at the comparison, but in finishing it I
found the same after-taste remaining as after finishing
"Madame Bovary," such a flavor of persistent euphony,
as of a rich river that never foamed or ran thin, but steadily
and firmly proceeded with its banks full to the brim. Then
the aptness of your illustrations, that never scratch or
stand out at right angles, but invariably simplify the thought
and help to pour it along! Oh, indeed you are a magician!
And if your next book proves to be as great an advance on
this one as this is on its two predecessors, your name will
surely go down as one of the great creative names in
philosophy.

There! have I praised you enough? What every genuine
philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is
praise — although the philosophers generally call it "rec-
ognition"! If you want still more praise, let me know, and
I will send it, for my features have been on a broad smile
from the first page to the last, at the chain of felicities that
never stopped. I feel rejuvenated.

As to the content of it, I am not in a mood at present to
make any definite reaction. There is so much that is ab-
solutely new that it will take a long time for your contem-
poraries to assimilate it, and I imagine that much of the
development of detail will have to be performed by younger
men whom your ideas will stimulate to coruscate in man-
ners unexpected by yourself. To me at present the vital
achievement of the book is that it inflicts an irrecoverable
death-wound upon Intellectualism. It can never resusci-
tate! But it will die hard, for all the inertia of the past is

292 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1907

in it, and the spirit of professionalism and pedantry as
well as the aesthetic-intellectual delight of dealing with
categories logically distinct yet logically connected, will rally
for a desperate defense. The elan vital, all contentless and
vague as you are obliged to leave it, will be an easy substi-
tute to make fun of. But the beast lias its death-wound
now, and the manner in which you have inflicted it (inter-
val versus temps d'arret, etc.) is masterly in the extreme.
I don't know why this later redaction of your critique of the
mathematics of movement has seemed to me so much more
telling than the early statement — I suppose it is because
of the wider use made of the principle in the book. You
will be receiving my own little "pragmatism" book simul-
taneously with this letter. How jejune and inconsiderable
it seems in comparison with your great system! But it is
so congruent with parts of your system, fits so well into
interstices thereof, that you will easily understand why I
am so enthusiastic. I feel that at bottom we are fighting
the same fight, you a commander, I in the ranks. The
position we are rescuing is "Tychism" and a really growing
world. But whereas I have hitherto found no better way
of defending Tychism than by affirming the spontaneous
addition of discrete elements of being (or their subtraction),
thereby playing the game with intellectualist weapons, you
set things straight at a single stroke by your fundamental
conception of the continuously creative nature of reality.
I think that one of your happiest strokes is your reduction
of "finality," as usually taken, to its status alongside of
efficient causality, as the twin-daughters of intellectualism.
But this vaguer and truer finality restored to its rights will
be a difficult thing to give content to. Altogether your
reality lurks so in the background, in this book, that I am
wondering whether you could nt give it any more develop-

Act. 65\ TO HENRI BERGSON 293

ment in concreto here, or whether you perhaps were holding
back developments, already in your possession, for a future
volume. They are sure to come to you later anyhow, and
to make a new volume; and altogether, the clash of these
ideas of yours with the traditional ones will be sure to make
sparks fly that will illuminate all sorts of dark places and
bring innumerable new considerations into view. But the
process may be slow, for the ideas are so revolutionary.
Were it not for your style, your book might last 100 years
unnoticed; but your way of writing is so absolutely com-
manding that your theories have to be attended to im-
mediately. I feel very much in the dark still about the
relations of the progressive to the regressive movement,
and this great precipitate of nature subject to static cate-
gories. With a frank pluralism of beings endowed with
vital impulses you can get oppositions and compromises
easily enough, and a stagnant deposit; but after my one
reading I don't exactly "catch on" to the way in which
the continuum of reality resists itself so as to have to
act, etc., etc.

The only part of the work which I felt like positively
criticising was the discussion of the idea of nonentity, which
seemed to me somewhat overelaborated, and yet did n't
leave me with a sense that the last word had been said on the
subject. But all these things must be very slowly digested
by me. I can see that, when the tide turns in your favor,
many previous tendencies in philosophy will start up, cry-
ing "This is nothing but what we have contended for
all along." Schopenhauer's blind will, Hartmann's uncon-
scious, Fichte's aboriginal freedom (reedited at Harvard in
the most "unreal" possible way by Miinsterberg) will all
be claimants for priority. But no matter — all the better
if you are in some ancient lines of tendency. Mysticism

294 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o7

also must make claims and doubtless just ones. I say
nothing more now — this is just my first reaction; but I
am so enthusiastic as to have said only two days ago, "I
thank heaven that I have lived to this date — that I have
witnessed the Russo-Japanese war, and seen Bergson's
new book appear — the two great modern turning-points of
history and of thought!" Best congratulations and cordial-
est regards!

Wm. James.

To T. S. Perry.

Silver Lake, N.H., June 24, 1907.

Dear Thos., — Yours of the nth is at hand, true phi-
losopher that you are. No one but one bawn & bred in
the philosophic briar-patch could appreciate Bergson as
you do, without in the least understanding him. I am in
an identical predicament. This last of his is the divinest
book that has appeared in my life-time, and (unless I am
the falsest prophet) it is destined to rank with the greatest
works of all time. The style of it is as wonderful as the
matter. By all means send it to Chas. Peirce, but address
him Prescott Hall, Cambridge. I am sending you my
"Pragmatism," which Bergson's work makes seem like
small potatoes enough.

Are you going to Russia to take Stolypin's place? or to
head the Revolution? I would I were at Giverny to talk
metaphysics with you, and enjoy a country where I am not
responsible for the droughts and the garden. Have been
here two weeks at Chocorua, getting our place ready for a
tenant.

Affectionate regards to you all.

W.J.

Aet.65\ TO DICKINSON S. MILLER 295

To Dickinson S. Miller.

Lincoln, Mass., Aug. 5, 1907.

Dear Miller,— - 1 got your letter about "Pragmatism,"
etc., some time ago. I hear that you are booked to review it
for the "Hibbert Journal." Lay on, Macduff! as hard as
you can — I want to have the weak places pointed out. I
sent you a week ago a "Journal of Philosophy" ' with a
word more about Truth in it, written at you mainly; but
I hardly dare hope that I have cleared up my position. A
letter from Strong, two days ago, written after receiving a
proof of that paper, still thinks that I deny the existence of
realities outside of the thinker; and [R. B.] Perry, who seems
to me to have written far and away the most important criti-
cal remarks on Pragmatism (possibly the only important
ones), accused Pragmatists (though he does n't name me) of
ignoring or denying that the real object plays any part in
deciding what ideas are true. I confess that such misunder-
standings seem to me hardly credible, and cast a "lurid
light" on the mutual understandings of philosophers gener-
ally. Apparently it all comes from the word Pragmatism -
and a most unlucky word it may prove to have been. I am
a natural realist. The world per se may be likened to a
cast of beans on a table. By themselves they spell nothing.
An onlooker may group them as he likes. He may simply
count them all and map them. He may select groups and
name these capriciously, or name them to suit certain ex-
trinsic purposes of his. Whatever he does, so long as he
takes account of them, his account is neither false nor irrel-
evant. If neither, why not call it true? It fits the beans-
minus-him, and expresses the total fact, of beans-p/«J-him.
Truth in this total sense is partially ambiguous, then. It

1 "A Word More about Truth," reprinted in Collected Essays and Reviews.

296 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o7

he simply counts or maps, he obeys a subjective interest as
much as if he traces figures. Let that stand for pure "in-
tellectual" treatment of the beans, while grouping them
variously stands for non-intellectual interests. All that
Schiller and I contend for is that there is no "truth" without
some interest, and that non-intellectual interests play a part
as well as intellectual ones. Whereupon we are accused of
denying the beans, or denying being in anyway constrained
by them! It 's too silly! . . .

To Miss Pauline Goldmark.

Putnam Shanty,
Keene Valley, Sept. 14, 1907.

Dear Pauline, — . . . No "camping" for me this side
the grave! A party of fourteen left here yesterday for
Panther Gorge, meaning to return by the Range, as they
call your "summit trail." Apparently it is easier than
when on that to me memorable day we took it, for Charley
Putnam swears he has done it in five and a half hours. I
don't well understand the difference, except that they don't
reach Haystack over Marcy as we did, and there is now a
good trail. Past and future play such a part in the way
one feels the present. To these youngsters, as to me long
ago, and to you today, the rapture of the connexion with
these hills is partly made of the sense of future power over
them and their like. That being removed from me, I can
only mix memories of past power over them with the pres-
ent. But I have always observed a curious fading in what
Tennyson calls the "passion" of the past. Memories
awaken little or no sentiment when they are too old; and
I have taken everything here so prosily this summer that
I find myself wondering whether the time-limit has been
exceeded, and whether for emotional purpose I am a new

Aet. 6S] TO W. JERUSALEM 297

self. We know not what we shall become; and that is
what makes life so interesting. Always a turn of the kalei-
doscope; and when one is utterly maimed for action, then
the glorious time for reading other men's lives! I fairly
revel in that prospect, which in its full richness has to be
postponed, for I'm not sufficiently maimed-for-action yet.
By going slowly and alone, I find I can compass such things
as the Giant's Washbowl, Beaver Meadow Falls, etc., and
they make me feel very good. I have even been dallying
with the temptation to visit Cameron Forbes at Manila;
but I have put it behind me for this year at least. I think
I shall probably give some more lectures (of a much less
"popular" sort) at Columbia next winter — so you see
there's life in the old dog yet. Nevertheless, how different
from the life that courses through your arteries and capil-
laries! Today is the first honestly fine day there has been
since I arrived here on the 2nd. (They must have been heav-
ily rained on at Panther Gorge yesterday evening.) After
writing a couple more letters I will take a book and repair
to "Mosso's Ledge" for the enjoyment of the prospect. . . .

To W . Jerusalem (Vienna).

St. Hubert's, N.Y. Sept. 15, 1907.
Dear Professor Jerusalem, — Your letter of the 1st
of September, forwarded from Cambridge, reaches me here
in the Adirondack Mountains today. I am glad the pub-
lisher is found, and that you are enjoying the drudgery of
translating ["Pragmatism"]. Also that you find the book
more and more in agreement with your own philosophy. I
fear that its untechnicality of style — or rather its delib-
erate ^//-technicality — will make the German Gelchrtes
Publikum? as well as the professors, consider it oberflacli-

1 Learned public.

298 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o7

liches Zeug l — which it assuredly is not, although, being only
a sketch, it ought to be followed by something tighter and
abounding in discriminations. Pragmatism is an unlucky
word in some respects, and the two meanings I give for it
are somewhat heterogeneous. But it was already in vogue
in France and Italy as well as in England and America, and
it was tactically advantageous to use it. . . .

To Henry James.

Stonehurst, Intervale, N.H., Oct. 6, 1907.

Dearest Brother, — I write this at the [James] Bryces',
who have taken the Merrimans' house for the summer, and
whither I came the day before yesterday, after closing our
Chocorua house, and seeing Alice leave for home. We had
been there a fortnight, trying to get some work done, and
having to do most of it with our own hands, or rather with
Alice's heroic hands, for mine are worth almost nothing in
these degenerate days. It is enough to make your heart
break to see the scarcity of "labor," and the whole country
tells the same story. Our future at Chocorua is a some-
what problematic one, though I think we shall manage to
pass next summer there and get it into better shape for good
renting, thereafter, at any cost (not the renting but the shap-
ing). After that what I want is a free foot, and the children
are now not dependent on a family summer any longer. . . .

I spent the first three weeks of September — warm ones
— in my beloved and exquisite Keene Valley, where I was
able to do a good deal of uphill walking, with good rather
than bad effects, much to my joy. Yesterday I took a three
hours walk here, three quarters of an hour of it uphill. I
have to go alone, and slowly; but it's none the worse for
that and makes one feel like old times. I leave this p.m. for
two more days at Chocorua — at the hotel. The fall is

1 Superficial stuff.

Aet. 65\ TO HENRY JAMES 299

late, but the woods are beginning to redden beautifully.
With the sun behind them, some maples look like stained-
glass windows. But the penury of the human part of this
region is depressing, and I begin to have an appetite for
Europe again. Alice too! To be at Cambridge with no
lecturing and no students to nurse along with their thesis-
work is an almost incredibly delightful prospect. I am
going to settle down to the composition of another small
book, more original and ground-breaking than anything I
have yet put forth (!), which I expect to print by the spring;
after which I can lie back and write at leisure more routine
things for the rest of my days.

The Bryces are wholly unchanged, excellent friends and
hosts, and I like her as much as him. The trouble with
him is that his insatiable love of information makes him
try to pump you all the time instead of letting you pump
him, and I have let my own tongue wag so, that, when
gone, I shall feel like a fool, and remember all kinds of things
that I have forgotten to ask him. I have just been reading
to Mrs. B., with great gusto on her part and renewed gusto
on mine, the first few pages of your chapter on Florida in
"The American Scene." Kbstlich stuff! I had just been
reading to myself almost 50 pages of the New England part
of the book, and fairly melting with delight over the Cho-
corua portion. Evidently that book will last, and bear
reading over and over again — a few pages at a time, which
is the right way for "literature" fitly so called. It all
makes me wish that we had you here again, and you will
doubtless soon come. I must n't forget to thank you for
the gold pencil-case souvenir. I have had a plated silver
one for a year past, now worn through, and experienced
what a "comfort" they are. Good-bye, and Heaven bless
you. Your loving

W. J.

3oo LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o8

To Theodore Flournoy.

Cambridge, Jan. 2, 1908.

... I am just back from the American Philosophical
Association, which had a really delightful meeting at Cor-
nell University in the State of New York. Mostly episte-
mological. We are getting to know each other and under-
stand each other better, and shall do so year by year.
Everyone cursed my doctrine and Schiller's about "truth."
I think it largely is misunderstanding, but it is also due to
our having expressed our meaning very ill. The general
blanket-word pragmatism covers so many different opin-
ions, that it naturally arouses irritation to see it flourished
as a revolutionary flag. I am also partly to blame here; but
it was tactically wise to use it as a title. Far more persons
have had their attention attracted, and the result has been
that everybody has been forced to think. Substantially I
have nothing to alter in what I have said. . . .

I have just read the first half of Fechner's "Zend-Avesta,"
a wonderful book, by a wonderful genius. He had his
vision and he knows how to discuss it, as no one's vision
ever was discussed.

I may tell you in confidence (I don't talk of it here be-
cause my damned arteries may in the end make me give
it up — for a year past I have a sort of angina when I make
efforts) that I have accepted an invitation to give eight
public lectures at Oxford next May. I was ashamed to
refuse; but the work of preparing them will be hard (the
title is "The Present Situation in Philosophy"1) and they
doom me to relapse into the "popular lecture" form just
as I thought I had done with it forever. (What I wished
to write this winter was something ultra dry in form, im-
personal and exact.) I find that my free and easy and per-
sonal way of writing, especially in "Pragmatism," has

1 The lectures were published as A Pluralistic Universe.

Aet. 66) TO HIS DAUGHTER 301

made me an object of loathing to many respectable aca-
demic minds, and I am rather tired of awakening that feel-
ing, which more popular lecturing on my part will probably
destine me to increase.

... I have been with Strong, who goes to Rome this
month. Good, truth-loving man! and a very penetrating
mind. I think he will write a great book. We greatly
enjoyed seeing your friend Schwarz, the teacher. A fine
fellow who will, I hope, succeed.

A happy New Year to you now, dear Flournoy, and
loving regards from us all to you all. Yours as ever

Wm. James.

To Norman Kemp Smith.

[Post-card]

Cambridge, Jan. 31, 1908.

I have only just "got round" to your singularly solid and
compact study of Avenarius in "Mind." I find it clear and
very clarifying, after the innumerable hours I have spent
in trying to dishevel him. I have read the "WeltbegrirY"
three times, and have half expected to have to read both
books over again to assimilate his immortal message to
man, of which I have hitherto been able to make nothing.
You set me free! I shall not re-read him! but leave him to
his spiritual dryness and preposterous pedantry. His only
really original idea seems to be that of the Vitalreihe, and
that, so far as I can see, is quite false, certainly no improve-
ment on the notion of adaptive reflex actions.

Wm. James.

To his Daughter.

Cambridge, Apr. 2, 1908.

Darling Peg, — You must have wondered at my silence
since your dear mother returned. I hoped to write to you

3o2 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o8

each day, but the strict routine of my hours now crowded
it out. I write on my Oxford job till one, then lunch, then
nap, then to my . . . doctor at four daily, and from then
till dinner-time making calls, and keeping "out" as much as
possible. To bed as soon after 8 as possible — all my odd
reading done between 3 and 5 a.m., an hour not favorable
for letter-writing — so that my necessary business notes
have to get in just before dinner (as now) or after dinner,
which I hate and try to avoid. I think I see my way clear
to go [to Oxford] now, if I don't get more fatigued than at
present. Four and a quarter lectures are fully written, and
the rest are down-hill work, much raw material being ready
now. . . .

To Henry James.

Cambridge, April 15, 1908.

Dearest Henry, — Your good letter to Harry has brought
news of your play, of which I had only seen an enigmatic
paragraph in the papers. I 'm right glad it is a success,
and that such good artists as the Robertsons are in it. I
hope it will have a first-rate run in London. Your apologies
for not writing are the most uncalled-for things — your
assiduity and the length of your letters to this family are a
standing marvel — especially considering the market-value
of your "copy"! So waste no more in that direction. 'T is
I who should be prostrating myself — silent as I 've been
for months in spite of the fact that I 'm so soon to descend
upon you. The fact is I 've been trying to compose the
accursed lectures in a state of abominable brain-fatigue — a
race between myself and time. I 've got six now done
out of the eight, so I 'm safe, but sorry that the infernal
nervous condition that with me always accompanies literary
production must continue at Oxford and add itself to the

Aei. 66] TO MISS PAULINE GOLDMARK 303

other fatigues — a fixed habit of wakefulness, etc. I ought
not to have accepted, but they 've panned out good, so far,
and if I get through them successfully, I shall be very glad
that the opportunity came. They will be a good thing to
have done. Previously, in such states of fatigue, I have had
a break and got away, but this time no day without its half
dozen pages — but the thing hangs on so long! . . .

To Henry James.

R. M. S. IVERNIA,

[Arriving at Liverpool], Apr. 29, 1908.

Dear H., — Your letter o{ the 26th, unstamped or post-
marked, has just been wafted into our lap — I suppose
mailed under another cover to the agent's care.

I'm glad you're not hurrying from Paris — I feared you
might be awaiting us in London, and wrote you a letter
yesterday to the Reform Club, which you will doubtless
get ere you get this, telling you of our prosperous though
tedious voyage in good condition.

We cut out London and go straight to Oxford, via Chester.
I have been sleeping like a top, and feel in good fighting trim
again, eager for the scalp of the Absolute. My lectures will
put his wretched clerical defenders fairly on the defensive.
They begin on Monday. Since you '11 have the whole
months of May and June, if you urge it, to see us, I pray
you not to hasten back from "gay Paree" for the pur-
pose. . . . Up since two a.m.

W. J.

To Miss Pauline Goldmark.

Patterdale, England, July 2, 1908.

Your letter, beloved Pauline, greeted me on my arrival
here three hours ago. . . . How I do wish that I could be in

3o4 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1908

Italy alongside of you now, now or any time! You could
do me so much good, and your ardor of enjoyment of the
country, the towns and the folk would warm up my cold
soul. I might even learn to speak Italian by conversing
in that tongue with you. But I fear that you 'd find me
betraying the coldness of my soul by complaining of the
heat of my body — a most unworthy attitude to strike.
Dear Paolina, never, never think of whether your body is
hot or cold; live in the objective world, above such miserable
considerations. I have been up here eight days, Alice
having gone down last Saturday, the 27th, to meet Peggy
and Harry at London, after only two days of it. After all
the social and other fever of the past six and a half weeks
(save for the blessed nine days at Bibury), it looked like the
beginning of a real vacation, and it would be such but for
the extreme heat, and the accident of one of my recent
malignant "colds" beginning. I have been riding about
on stage-coaches for five days past, but the hills are so tree-
less that one gets little shade, and the sun's glare is tre-
mendous. It is a lovely country, however, for pedestrian-
izing in cooler weather. Mountains and valleys compressed
together as in the Adirondacks, great reaches of pink and
green hillside and lovely lakes, the higher parts quite fully
alpine in character but for the fact that no snow mountains
form the distant background. A strong and noble region,
well worthy of one's life-long devotion, if one were a Briton.
And on the whole, what a magnificent land and race is this
Britain! Every thing about them is of better quality than
the corresponding thing in the U.S. — with but few excep-
tions, I imagine. And the equilibrium is so well achieved,
and the human tone so cheery, blithe and manly! and the
manners so delightfully good. Not one unwholesome-looking
man or woman does one meet here for 250 that one meets

Aet. 66] TO MISS PAULINE GOLDMARK 305

in America. Yet I believe (or suspect) that ours is event-
ually the bigger destiny, if we can only succeed in living
up to it, and thou in 22nd St. and I in Irving St. must do
our respective strokes, which after 1000 years will help to
have made the glorious collective resultant. Meanwhile, as
my brother Henry once wrote, thank God for a world that
holds so rich an England, so rare an Italy! Alice is entirely
aujgegangen in her idealization of it. And truly enough,
the gardens, the manners, the manliness are an excuse.

But profound as is my own moral respect and admiration,
for a vacation give me the Continent! The civilization here
is too heavy, too stodgy, if one could use so unamiable a
word. The very stability and good-nature of all things
(of course we are leaving out the slum-life!) rest on the
basis of the national stupidity, or rather unintellectuality,
on which as on a safe foundation of non-explosible material,
the magnificent minds of the elite of the race can coruscate
as they will, safely. Not until those weeks at Oxford, and
these days at Durham, have I had any sense of what a
part the Church plays in the national life. So massive and
all-pervasive, so authoritative, and on the whole so decent,
in spite of the iniquity and farcicality of the whole thing.
Never were incompatibles so happily yoked together. Talk
about the genius of Romanism! It's nothing to the genius
of Anglicanism, for Catholicism still contains some haggard
elements, that ally it with the Palestinian desert, whereas
Anglicanism remains obese and round and comfortable and
decent with this world's decencies, without an acute note in
its whole life or history, in spite of the shrill Jewish words
on which its ears are fed, and the nitro-glycerine of the
Gospels and Epistles which has been injected into its veins.
Strange feat to have achieved! Yet the success is great —
the whole Church-machine makes for all sorts of graces and

3o6 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1908

decencies, and is not incompatible with a high type of
Churchman, high, that is, on the side of moral and worldly
virtue. . . .

How I wish you were beside me at this moment! A
breeze has arisen on the Lake which is spread out before the
"smoking-room" window at which I write, and is very
grateful. The lake much resembles Lake George. Your
ever grateful and loving

W.J.

To Charles Eliot Norton.

Patterdale, England, July 6, 1908.

Dear Charles, — Going to Coniston Lake the other day
and seeing the moving little Ruskin Museum at Coniston
(admission a penny) made me think rather vividly of you,
and make a resolution to write to you on the earliest op-
portunity. It was truly moving to see such a collection of
R.'s busy handiwork, exquisite and loving, in the way of
drawing, sketching, engraving and note-taking, and also
such a varied lot of photographs of him, especially in his
old age. Glorious old Don Quixote that he was! At
Durham, where Alice and I spent three and a half delightful
days at the house of F. B. Jevons, Principal of one of the
two colleges of which the University is composed, I had a
good deal of talk with the very remarkable octogenarian
Dean of the Cathedral and Lord of the University, a
thorough liberal, or rather radical, in his mind, with a voice
like a bell, and an alertness to match, who had been a
college friend of Ruskin's and known him intimately all his
life, and loved him. He knew not of his correspondence with
you, of which I have been happy to be able to order Kent of
Harvard Square to send him a copy. His name is Kitchin.

The whole scene at Durham was tremendously impres-

Aet. 66] TO CHARLES ELIOT NORTON 307

sive (though York Cathedral made the stronger impression
on me). It was so unlike Oxford, so much more American
in its personnel, in a way, yet nestling in the very bosom
of those mediaeval stage-properties and ecclesiastical-prin-
cipality suggestions. Oxford is all spread out in length and
breadth, Durham concentrated in depth and thickness.
There is a great deal of flummery about Oxford, but I think
if I were an Oxonian, in spite of my radicalism generally, I
might vote against all change there. It is an absolutely
unique fruit of human endeavor, and like the cathedrals,
can never to the end of time be reproduced, when the
conditions that once made it are changed. Let other places
of learning go in for all the improvements! The world can
afford to keep her one Oxford unreformed. I know that
this is a superficial judgment in both ways, for Oxford does
manage to keep pace with the utilitarian spirit, and at the
same time preserve lots of her flummery unchanged. On
the whole it is a thoroughly democratic place, so far as
aristocracy in the strict sense goes. But I'm out of it, and
doubt whether I want ever to put foot into it again. . . .

England has changed in many respects. The West End
of London, which used at this season to be so impressive
from its splendor, is now a mixed and mongrel horde of
straw hats and cads of every description. Motor-buses
of the most brutal sort have replaced the old carriages,
Bond and Regent Streets are cheap-jack shows, everything
is tumultuous and confused and has run down in quality.
I have been "motoring" a good deal through this "Lake
District," owing to the kindness of some excellent people
in the hotel, dissenters who rejoice in the name of Squance
and inhabit the neighborhood of Durham. It is wondrous
fine, but especially adapted to trampers, which I no longer
am. Altogether England seems to have got itself into a

3o8 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o8

magnificently fine state of civilization, especially in regard
to the cheery and wholesome tone of manners of the people,
improved as it is getting to be by the greater infusion of the
democratic temper. Everything here seems about twice
as good as the corresponding thing with us. But I suspect
we have the bigger eventual destiny after all; and give us
a thousand years and we may catch up in many details.
I think of you as still at Cambridge, and I do hope that
physical ills are bearing on more gently. Lily, too, I hope
is her well self again. You must n't think of answering this,
which is only an ejaculation of friendship — I shall be home
almost before you can get an answer over. Love to all your
circle, including Theodora, whom I miss greatly. Affec-
tionately yours,

Wm. James.

To Henri Bergs on.

Lamb House, July 28, 1908.

Dear Bergson,— (can't we cease " Professor "-ing each
other? — that title establishes a "disjunctive relation"
between man and man, and our relation should be "endos-
motic" socially as well as intellectually, I think), —

Jacta est alea, I am not to go to Switzerland! I find, after
a week or more here, that the monotony and simplification is
doing my nervous centres so much good, that my wife has
decided to go off with our daughter to Geneva, and to leave
me alone with my brother here, for repairs. It is a great
disappointment in other ways than in not seeing you, but
I know that it is best. Perhaps later in the season the
Zusammenkunjt may take place, for nothing is decided
beyond the next three weeks.

Meanwhile let me say how rarely delighted your letter
made me. There are many points in your philosophy which

Aet. 66} LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES 309

I don't yet grasp, but I have seemed to myself to under-
stand your anti-intellectualistic campaign very clearly, and
that I have really done it so well in your opinion makes me
proud. I am sending your letter to Strong, partly out of
vanity, partly because of your reference to him. It does
seem to me that philosophy is turning towards a new orien-
tation. Are you a reader of Fechner? I wish that you
would read his "Zend-Avesta," which in the second edition
(1904, I think) is better printed and much easier to read
than it looks at the first glance. He seems to me of the real
race of prophets, and I cannot help thinking that you, in
particular, if not already acquainted with this book, would
find it very stimulating and suggestive. His day, I fancy,
is yet to come. I will write no more now, but merely ex-
press my regret (and hope) and sign myself, yours most
warmly and sincerely,

Wm. James.

The subject of the next letter was a volume of "Essays
Philosophical and Psychological, in Honor of William
James," ' by nineteen contributors, which had been issued
by Columbia University in the spring of 1908. A note at
the beginning of the book said: "This volume is intended
to mark in some degree its authors' sense of Professor James's
memorable services in philosophy and psychology, the vital-
ity he has added to those studies, and the encouragement
that has flowed from him to colleagues without number.
Early in 1907, at the invitation of Columbia University, he
delivered a course of lectures there, and met the members of
the Philosophical and Psychological Departments on several
occasions for social discussion. They have an added motive
for the present work in the recollections of this visit."

1 New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1908.

310 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [I9o8

To John Dewey.

Rye, Sussex, Aug. 4, 1908.

Dear Dewey, — I don't know whether this will find you
in the Adirondacks or elsewhere, but I hope 't will be on
East Hill. My own copy of the Essays in my "honor,"
which took me by complete surprise on the eve of my de-
parture, was too handsome to take along, so I have but
just got round to reading the book, which I find at my
brother Henry's, where I have recently come. It is a
masterly set of essays of which we may all be proud, dis-
tinguished by good style, direct dealing with the facts, and
hot running on the trail of truth, regardless of previous con-
ventions and categories. I am sure it hitches the subject
of epistemology a good day's journey ahead, and proud
indeed am I that it should be dedicated to my memory.

Your own contribution is to my mind the most weighty —
unless perhaps Strong's should prove to be so. I rejoice
exceedingly that you should have got it out. No one yet
has succeeded, it seems to me, in jumping into the centre
of your vision. Once there, all the perspectives are clear
and open; and when you or some one else of us shall have
spoken the exact word that opens the centre to everyone,
mediating between it and the old categories and prejudices,
people will wonder that there ever could have been any
other philosophy. That it is the philosophy of the future,
I '11 bet my life. Admiringly and affectionately yours,

Wm. James.

To Theodore Flournoy.

Lamb House, Rye, Aug. 9, 1908.
Dear Flournoy, — I can't make out from my wife's
letters whether she has seen you face to face, or only heard
accounts of you from Madame Flournoy. She reports you

Jet. 66} TO THEODORE FLOURNOY 311

very tired from the "Congress" -but I don't know what
Congress has been meeting at Geneva just now. I don't
suppose that you will go to the philosophical congress at
Heidelberg — I certainly shall not. I doubt whether philos-
ophers will gain so much by talking with each other as
other classes of Gelehrten do. One needs to frequenter a
colleague daily for a month before one can begin to under-
stand him. It seems to me that the collective life of philos-
ophers is little more than an organization of misunder-
standings. I gave eight lectures at Oxford, but besides
Schiller and one other tutor, only two persons ever men-
tioned them to me, and those were the two heads of Man-
chester College by whom I had been invited. Philosophical
work it seems to me must go on in silence and in print
exclusively.

You will have heard (either directly or indirectly) from
my wife of my reasons for not accompanying them to Gen-
eva. I have been for more than three weeks now at my
brother's, and am much better for the simplification. I am
very sorry not to have met with vou, but I think I took the
prudent course in staying away.

I have just read Miss Johnson's report in the last S. P. R.
"Proceedings," and a good bit of the proofs of Piddington's
on cross-correspondences between Mrs. Piper, Mrs. Verrall,
and Mrs. Holland, which is to appear in the next number.
You will be much interested, if you can gather the philo-
sophical energy, to go through such an amount of tiresome
detail. It seems to me that these reports open a new chap-
ter in the history of automatism; and Piddington's and
Johnson's ability is of the highest order. Evidently " autom-
atism" is a word that covers an extraordinary variety of
fact. I suppose that you have on the whole been gratified
by the "vindication" of Eusapia [Paladino] at the hands of

312 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o8

Morselli et al. in Italy. Physical phenomena also seem to
be entering upon a new phase in their history.

Well, I will stop, this is only a word of greeting and regret
at not seeing you. I got your letter of many weeks ago when
we were at Oxford. Don't take the trouble to write now —
my wife will bring me all the news of you and your family,
and will have given you all mine. Love to Madame F. and
all the young ones, too, please. Your ever affectionate

W.J.

To Shadworth H. Hodgson.

Paignton, S. Devon, Oct. 3, 1908.

Dear Hodgson, — I have been five months in England
(you have doubtless heard of my lecturing at Oxford) yet
never given you a sign of life. The reason is that I have
sedulously kept away from London, which I admire, but at
my present time of life abhor, and only touched it two or
three times for thirty-six hours to help my wife do her
"shopping" (strange use for an elderly philosopher to be
put to). The last time I was in London, about a month ago,
I called at your affectionately remembered No. 45, only to
find you gone to Yorkshire, as I feared I should. I go back
in an hour, en route for Liverpool, whence, with wife and
daughter, I sail for Boston in the Saxonia. I am literally
enchanted with rural England, yet I doubt whether I ever
return. I never had a fair chance of getting acquainted
with the country here, and if I were a stout pedestrian, which
I no longer am, I think I should frequent this land every
summer. But in my decrepitude I must make the best of
the more effortless relations which I enjoy with nature in
my own country. I have seen many philosophers, at
Oxford, especially, and James Ward at Cambridge; but,
apart from very few conversations, did n't get at close

Aet.66\ TO THEODORE FLOURNOY 313

quarters with any of them, and they probably gained as
little from me as I from them. "We are columns left alone,
of a temple once complete." The power of mutual mis-
understanding in philosophy seems infinite, and grows dis-
couraging. Schiller of course, and his pragmatic friend Cap-
tain Knox, James Ward, and McDougall, stand out as the
most satisfactory talkers. But there is too much fencing and
scoring of "points" at Oxford to make construction active.
Good-bye! dear Hodgson, and pray think of me with a
little of the affection and intellectual interest with which I
always think of you. My Oxford lectures won't appear till
next April. Don't read the extracts which the "Hibbert
Journal" is publishing. They are torn out of their natural
setting. I have, as you probably know, ceased teaching and
am enjoying a Carnegie pension. Yours ever fondly,

Wm. James.

To Theodore Flournoy.

London, Oct. 4, 1908.

Dear Flournoy, — I got your delightful letter duly two
weeks ago, or more. I always have a bad conscience on
receiving a letter from you, because I feel as if I forced you
to write it, and I know too well by your own confessions (as
well as by my own far less extreme experience of reluctance
to write) what a nuisance and an effort letters are apt to
be. But no matter! this letter of yours was a good one
indeed. . . .

We sail from Liverpool the day after tomorrow, and to-
morrow will be a busy day winding up our affairs and mak-
ing some last purchases of small things. Alice has an in-
satiable desire (as Mrs. Flournoy may have noticed at
Geneva) to increase her possessions, whilst I, like an Amer-
ican Tolstoy, wish to diminish them. The most convenient

3i4 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o8

arrangement for a Tolstoy is to have an anti-Tolstoyan
wife to "run the house" for him. We have been for three
days in Devonshire, and for four days at Oxford previous
to that. Extraordinary warm summer weather, with ex-
quisite atmospheric effects. I am extremely glad to leave
England with my last optical images so beautiful. In any
case the harmony and softness of the landscape of rural
England probably excels everything in the world in that
line.

At Oxford I saw McDougall and Schiller quite intimately,
also Schiller's friend, Capt. Knox, who, retired from the
army, lives at Griindelwald, and is an extremely acute
mind, and fine character, I should think. He is a militant
"Pragmatist." Before that I spent three days at Cam-
bridge, where again I saw James Ward intimately. I
prophesy that if he gets his health again ... he will become
also a militant pluralist of some sort. I think he has worked
out his original monistic-theistic vein and is steering straight
towards a "critical point" where the umbrella will turn
inside out, and not go back. I hope so! I made the ac-
quaintance of Boutroux here last week. He came to the
"Moral Education Congress" where he made a very fine
address. I find him very simpatico.

But the best of all these meetings has been one of three
hours this very morning with Bergson, who is here visit-
ing his relatives. So modest and unpretending a man, but
such a genius intellectually! We talked very easily to-
gether, or rather he talked easily, for he talked much more
than I did, and although I can't say that I follow the folds
of his system much more clearly than I did before, he
has made some points much plainer. I have the strong-
est suspicions that the tendency which he has brought to
a focus will end by prevailing, and that the present epoch

William James and Henry Clement, at the "Putnam Shanty,"
in the Adirondacks (1907?).

Aet.66] TO HENRI BERGSON 315

will be a sort of turning-point in the history of philoso-
phy. So many things converge towards an anti-rational-
istic crystallization.

Qui vivra verra!

I am very glad indeed to go on board ship. For two
months I have been more than ready to get back to my own
habits, my own library and writing-table and bed. ... 1
wish you, and all of you, a prosperous and healthy and
resultful winter, and am, with old-time affection, your ever
faithful friend,

Wm. James.

If the duty of writing weighs so heavily on you, why
obey it? Why, for example, write any more reviews? I
absolutely refuse to, and find that one great alleviation.

To Henri Bergs on.

London, Oct. 4, 1908.

Dear Bergson, — My brother was sorry that you
could n't come. He wishes me to say that he is returning
to Rye the day after tomorrow and is so engaged tomorrow
that he will postpone the pleasure of meeting you to some
future opportunity.

I need hardly repeat how much I enjoyed our talk today.
You must take care of yourself and economize all your
energies for your own creative work. I want very much
to see what you will have to say on the Substanzbegrifl
Why should life be so short? I wish that you and I and
Strong and Flournoy and McDougall and Ward could live
on some mountain-top for a month, together, and whenever
we got tired of philosophizing, calm our minds by taking
refuge in the scenery.

Always truly yours,

Wm. James.

3i6 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1908

To H. G. Wells.

Cambridge, Nov. 28, 1908.

Dear Wells, — "First and Last Things" is a great
achievement. The first two "books" should be entitled
"philosophy without humbug" and used as a textbook in
all the colleges of the world. You have put your finger
accurately on the true emphases, and — in the main — on
what seem to me the true solutions (you are more monis-
tic in your faith than I should be, but as long as you only
call it "faith," that 's your right and privilege), and the sim-
plicity of your statements ought to make us "professionals"
blush. I have been 35 years on the way to similar conclu-
sions — simply because I started as a professional and
had to debrouiller them from all the traditional school rub-
bish.

The other two books exhibit you in the character of
the Tolstoy of the English world. A sunny and healthy-
minded Tolstoy, as he is a pessimistic and morbid-minded
Wells. Where the "higher synthesis" will be born, who
shall combine the pair of you, Heaven only knows. But
you are carrying on the same function, not only in that
neither of your minds is boxed and boarded up like the
mind of an ordinary human being, but all the contents down
to the very bottom come out freely and unreservedly and
simply, but in that you both have the power of contagious
speech, and set the similar mood vibrating in the reader.
Be happy in that such power has been put into your hands!
This book is worth any 100 volumes on Metaphysics and
any 200 of Ethics, of the ordinary sort.

Yours, with friendliest regards to Mrs. Wells, most sin-
cerely,

Wm. James.

Aet.66] TO HENRY JAMES 317

To Henry James.

Cambridge, Dec. 19, 1908.

Dearest H., — ... I write this at 6.30 [a.m.], in the
library, which the blessed hard-coal fire has kept warm all
night. The night has been still, thermometer 200, and the
dawn is breaking in a pure red line behind Grace Norton's
house, into a sky empty save for a big morning star and
the crescent of the waning moon. Not a cloud - - a true
American winter effect. But somehow "le grand puits de
1'aurore" doesn't appeal to my sense of life, or challenge
my spirits as formerly. It suggests no more enterprises to
the decrepitude of age, which vegetates along, drawing
interest merely on the investment of its earlier enterprises.
The accursed "thoracic symptom" is a killer of enterprise
with me, and I dare say that it is little better with you.
But the less said of it the better — it does n't diminish!

My time has been consumed by interruptions almost
totally, until a week ago, when I finally got down seriously
to work upon my Hodgson report. It means much more
labor than one would suppose, and very little result. I
wish that I had never undertaken it. I am sending off a
preliminary installment of it to be read at the S. P. R.
meeting in January. That done, the rest will run off easily,
and in a month I expect to actually begin the "Introduc-
tion to Philosophy," which has been postponed so long,
and which I hope will add to income for a number of years
to come. Your Volumes XIII and XIV arrived the other
day — many thanks. We 're subscribing to two copies of
the work, sending them as wedding presents. I hope it
will sell. Very enticing-looking, but I can't settle down
to the prefaces as yet, the only thing I have been able to
read lately being Lowes Dickinson's last book, "Justice and
Liberty," which seems to me a decidedly big achievement

3i8 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o9

from every point of view, and probably destined to have a
considerable influence in moulding the opinion of the edu-
cated. Stroke upon stroke, from pens of genius, the compet-
itive regime, so idolized 75 years ago, seems to be getting
wounded to death. What will follow will be something
better, but I never saw so clearly the slow effect of [the]
accumulation of the influence of successive individuals in
changing prevalent ideals. Wells and Dickinson will un-
doubtedly make the biggest steps of change. . . .

W7ell dear brother! a merry Christmas to you — to you
both, I trust, for I fancy x^.leck will be with you when this
arrives — and a happy New Year at its tail! Your loving

W.J.

To T. S. Perry.

Cambridge, Jan. 29, 1909.

Beloved Thomas, cher maitre et confrere, — Your de-
lightful letter about my Fechner article and about your
having become a professional philosopher yourself came to
hand duly, four days ago, and filled the heart of self and
wife with joy. I always knew you was one, for to be a real
philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's
type of thinking, and if that some one else be a represent-
ative of the "classic" type of thought, then one is a prag-
matist and owns the fulness of the truth. Fechner is in-
deed a dear, and I am glad to have introduced, so to speak,
his speculations to the English world, although the Revd.
Elwood Worcester has done so in a somewhat more limited
manner in a recent book of his called "The Living Word"
— (Worcester of Emmanuel Church, I mean, whom every-
one has now begun to fall foul of for trying to reanimate
the Church's healing virtue). Another case of newspaper
crime! The reporters all got hold of it with their mega-

Aet.67\ TOT. S PERRY 319

phones, and made the nation sick of the sound of its name.
Whereas in former ages men strove hard for fame, obscurity
is now the one thing to be striven for. For fame, all one need
do is to exist; and the reporter will do the rest — especially
if you give them the address of your fotographer. I hope
you 're a spelling reformer — I send you the last publication
from that quarter. I'm sure that simple spelling will make
a page look better, just as a crowd looks better if everyone's
clothes fit.

Apropos of pragmatism, a learned Theban named

has written a circus-performance of which he is the clown,
called "Anti-pragmatisme." It has so much verve and
good spirit that I feel like patting him on the back, and
"sicking him on," but Lord! what a fool! I think I shall
leave it unnoticed. I 'm tired of reexplaining what is already
explained to satiety. Let them say, now, for it is their turn,
what the relation called truth consists in, what it is known as!

I have had you on my mind ever since Jan. 1st, when
we had our Friday evening Club-dinner, and I was deputed
to cable you a happy New Year. The next day I could n't
get to the telegraph office; the day after I said to myself,
"I'll save the money, and save him the money, for if he
gets a cable, he '11 be sure to cable back; so I '11 write"; the
following day, I forgot to; the next day I postponed the
act; so from postponement to postponement, here I am.
Forgive, forgive! Most affectionate remarks were made
about you at the dinner, which generally does n't err by wast-
ing words on absentees, even on those gone to eternity. . . .

I have just got off my report on the Hodgson control,
which has stuck to my fingers all this time. It is a hedging
sort of an affair, and I don't know what the Perry family
will think of it. The truth is that the "case" is a particu-
larly poor one for testing Mrs. Piper's claim to bring back

32o LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o9

spirits. It is leakier than any other case, and intrinsically,
I think, no stronger than many of her other good cases,
certainly weaker than the G. P. case. I am also now en-
gaged in writing a popular article, " the avowals of a psychi-
cal researcher," for the "American Magazine," in which
I simply state without argument my own convictions, and
put myself on record. I think that public opinion is just
now taking a step forward in these matters — vide the
Eusapian boom ! and possibly both these Schriften of mine
will add their influence. Thank you for the Charmes re-
ception and for the earthquake correspondence! I envy
you in clean and intelligent Paris, though our winter is
treating us very mildly. A lovely sunny day today! Love
to all of you! Yours fondly,

W. J.

The "Charmes reception" was a report of the speeches
at the French Academy's reception of Francis Charmes.
The "Eusapian boom" will have been understood to refer
to current discussions of the medium Eusapia Paladino.

The next letter refers to a paper in which both James
and Miinsterberg had been "attacked" in such a manner
that Miinsterberg proposed to send a protest to the Ameri-
can Psychological Association.

To Hugo Miinsterberg.

Cambridge, Mar. 16, 1909.

Dear Munsterberg, — Witmer has sent me the corpus
delicti^ and I find myself curiously unmoved. In fact he
takes so much trouble over me, and goes at the job with
such zest that I feel like "sicking him on," as they say to
dogs. Perhaps the honor of so many pages devoted to one

Aet. 67] TO JOHN JAY CHAPMAN 321

makes up for the dishonor of their content. It is really a
great compliment to have anyone* take so much trouble
about one. Think of copying all Wundt's notes!

But, dear Miinsterberg, I hope you'll withdraw a second
time your protest. I think it undignified to take such an
attack seriously. Its excessive dimensions (in my case at
any rate), and the smallness and remoteness of the provo-
cation, stamp it as simply eccentric, and to show sensitive-
ness only gives it importance in the eyes of readers who
otherwise would only smile at its extravagance. Besides,
since these temperamental antipathies exist — why isn't it
healthy that they should express themselves? For my
part, I feel rather glad than otherwise that psychology is
so live a subject that psychologists should "go for" each
other in this way, and I think it all ought to happen inside
of our Association. We ought to cultivate tough hides
there, so I hope that you will withdraw the protest. I have
mentioned it only to Royce, and will mention it to no one
else. I don't like the notion of Harvard people seeming
"touchy"! Your fellow victim,

W. J.

To John Jay Chapman.

Cambridge, Apr. 30, 1909.

Dear Jack C, — I 'm not expecting you to read my
book, but only to "give me a thought" when you look at
the cover. A certain witness at a poisoning case was asked
how the corpse looked. "Pleasant-like and foaming at the
mouth," was the reply. A good description of you, describ-
ing philosophy, in your letter. All that you say is true,
and yet the conspiracy has to be carried on by us professors.
Reality has to be returned to, after this long circumbendibus,
though Gavroche has it already. There are concepts, any-

322 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o9

how. I am glad you lost the volume. It makes one less
in existence and ought to send up the price of the remainder.
Blessed spring! blessed spring! Love to you both from
yours,

Wm. James.

The next post-card was written in acknowledgment of
Professor Palmer's comments on "A Pluralistic Universe."

To G. H. Palmer.

[Post-card]

Cambridge, May 13, 1909.

"The finest critical mind of our time!" No one can mix
the honey and the gall as you do! My conceit appropriates
the honey — for the gall it makes indulgent allowance, as the
inevitable watering of a pair of aged rationalist eyes at the
effulgent sunrise of a new philosophic day ! Thanks ! thanks !
for the honey.

W.J.

To Theodore Flo urn oy.

Chocorua, June 18, 1909.

My dear Flournoy, — You must have been wondering
during all these weeks what has been the explanation of my
silence. It has had two simple causes: 1st, laziness; and
2nd, uncertainty, until within a couple of days, about
whether or not I was myself going to Geneva for the Uni-
versity Jubilee. I have been strongly tempted, not only
by the "doctorate of theology," which you confidentially
told me of (and which would have been a fertile subject of
triumph over my dear friend Royce on my part, and of
sarcasm on his part about academic distinctions, as well as
a diverting episode generally among my friends, — I being

Aet. 67] TO THEODORE FLOURNOY 323

so essentially profane a character), but by the hope of seeing
you, and by the prospect of a few weeks in dear old Switzer-
land again. But the economical, hygienic and domestic
reasons were all against the journey; so a few days ago I
ceased coquetting with the idea of it, and have finally given
it up. This postpones any possible meeting with you till
next summer, when I think it pretty certain that Alice and
I and Peggy will go to Europe again, and probably stay
there for two years. . . .

What with the Jubilee and the Congress, dear Flournoy,
I fear that your own summer will not yield much healing
repose. "Go through it like an automaton" is the best
advice I can give you. I find that it is possible, on occa-
sions of great strain, to get relief by ceasing all voluntary
control. Do nothing, and I find that something will do
itself! and not so stupidly in the eyes of outsiders as in one's
own. Claparede will, I suppose, be the chief executive
officer at the Congress. It is a pleasure to see how he is
rising to the top among psychologists, how large a field he
covers, and with both originality and "humanity" (in the
sense of the omission of the superfluous and technical, and
preference for the probable). When will the Germans learn
that part? I have just been reading Driesch's GifTord lec-
tures, Volume II. Very exact and careful, and the work of a
most powerful intellect. But why lug in, as he does, all
that Kantian apparatus, when the questions he treats of are
real enough and important enough to be handled directly
and not smothered in that opaque and artificial veil? I
find the book extremely suggestive, and should like to be-
lieve in its thesis, but I can't help suspecting that Driesch
is unjust to the possibilities of purely mechanical action.
Candle-flames, waterfalls, eddies in streams, to say nothing
of "vortex atoms," seem to perpetuate themselves and

324 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9o9

repair their injuries. You ought to receive very soon my
report on Mrs. Piper's Hodgson control. Some theoretic
remarks I make at the end may interest you. I rejoice in
the triumph of Eusapia all along the line — also in Ochoro-
wicz's young Polish medium, whom you have seen. It looks
at last as if something definitive and positive were in sight.
I am correcting the proofs of a collection of what I have
written on the subject of "truth" — it will appear in Sep-
tember under the title of "The Meaning of Truth, a Sequel
to Pragmatism." It is already evident from the letters I
am getting about the "Pluralistic Universe" that that book
will ist, be read; 2nd, be rejected almost unanimously at
first, and for very diverse reasons; but, 3rd, will continue
to be bought and referred to, and will end by strongly
influencing English philosophy. And now, dear Flournoy,
good-bye! and believe me with sincerest affection for Mrs.
Flournoy and the young people as well as for yourself,
yours faithfully,

Wm. James.

To Miss Theodora Sedgwick.

Chocorua, July 12, 1909.

Dear Theodora, — We got your letter a week ago, and
were very glad to hear of your prosperous installation, and
good impressions of the place. I am sorry that Harry
could n't go to see you the first Sunday, but hope, if he
did n't go for yesterday, that he will do so yet. When your
social circle gets established, and routine life set up, I am
sure that you will like Newport very much. As for ourselves,
the place is only just beginning to smooth out. The instru-
ments of labor had well-nigh all disappeared, and had to
come piecemeal, each forty-eight hours after being ordered,
so we have been using the cow as a lawn-mower, silver knives

Aet. 67] TO F. C. S. SCHILLER 325

to carve with, and finger-nails for technical purposes gen-
erally. There is no labor known to man in which Alice
has not indulged, and I have sought safety among the
mosquitoes in the woods rather than remain to shirk my
responsibilities in full view of them. We have hired a little
mare, fearless of automobiles, we get our mail daily, we had
company to dinner yesterday, relatives of Alice, the children
will be here by the middle of the week, the woods are deli-
ciously fragrant, and the weather, so far, cool - - in fact we
are launched and the regular summer equilibrium will soon
set in. The place is both pathetic and irresistible; I want
to sell it, Alice wants to enlarge it — we shall end by doing
neither, but discuss it to the end of our days.

I have just read Shaler's autobiography, and it has fairly
haunted me with the overflowing impression of his myriad-
minded character. Full of excesses as he was, due to his
intense vivacity, impulsiveness, and imaginativeness, his
centre of gravity was absolutely steady, and I knew no man
whose sense of the larger relation of things was always so
true and right. Of all the minds I have known, his leaves the
largest impression, and I miss him more than I have missed
anyone before. You ought to read the book, especially the
autobiographic half. Good-bye, dear Theodora. Alice joins
her love to mine, and I am, as ever, yours affectionately,

Wm. James.

To F. C. S. Schiller.

Chocorua, Aug. 1 4, 1909.

Dear Schiller, — ... I got the other day a very candid
letter from A. S. Pringle-Pattison, about my "Pluralistic
Universe," in which he said: "It is supremely difficult to
accept the conclusion of an actually growing universe, an
actual addition to the sum of being or (if that expression

326 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1909

be objectionable) to the intensity and scope of existence,
to a growing God, in fact." — This seems to me very signif-
icant. On such minute little snags and hooks, do all the
"difficulties" of philosophy hang. Call them categories,
and sacred laws, principles of reason, etc., and you have the
actual state of metaphysics, calling all the analogies of
phenomenal life impossibilities.

No more lecturing from W. J., thank you! either at Ox-
ford or elsewhere. Affectionately thine,

W.J.

To Theodore Flournoy.

Chocorua, Sept. 28, 1909.

Dear Flournoy, — We had fondly hoped that before
now you might both, accepting my half-invitation, half-
suggestion, be with us in this uncared-for-nature, so different
from Switzerland, and you getting strengthened and re-
freshed by the change. Dieu dispose, indeed! The fact
that is never entered into our imagination! I give up all
hope of you this year, unless it be for Cambridge, where,
however, the conditions of repose will be less favorable for
you. ... I am myself going down to Cambridge on the
fifth of October for two days of "inauguration" ceremonies
of our new president, Lawrence Lowell. . . . There are so
many rival universities in our country that advantage has
to be taken of such changes to make the newspaper talk,
and keep the name of Llarvard in the public ear, so the
occasion is to be almost as elaborate as a "Jubilee"; but I
shall keep as much out of it as is officially possible, and
come back to Chocorua on the 8th, to stay as late into
October as we can, though probably not later than the 20th,
after which the Cambridge winter will begin. It has n't
gone well with my health this summer, and beyond a little

Aet.67\ TO THEODORE FLOURNOY 327

reading, I have done no work at all. I have, however,
succeeded during the past year in preparing a volume on
the "Meaning of Truth" -already printed papers for the
most part — which you will receive in a few days after
getting this letter, and which 1 think may help you to set
the "pragmatic" account of Knowledge in a clearer light.
I will also send you a magazine article on the mediums,
which has just appeared, and which may divert you.1 Eu-
sapia Paladino, I understand, has just signed a contract to
come to New York to be at the disposition of Hereward
Carrington, an expert in medium's tricks, and author of a
book on the same, who, together with Fielding and Bagally,
also experts, formed the Committee of the London S. P. R.,
who saw her at Naples. . . . After Courtier's report on
Eusapia, I don't think any "investigation" here will be
worth much "scientifically" -the only advantage of her
coming may possibly be to get some scientific men to believe
that there is really a problem. Two other cases have been
reported to me lately, which are worth looking up, and I
shall hope to do so.

How much your interests and mine keep step with each
other, dear Flournoy. "Functional psychology," and the
twilight region that surrounds the clearly lighted centre of
experience! Speaking of "functional" psychology, Clark
University, of which Stanley Hall is president, had a little
international congress the other day in honor of the twentieth
year of its existence. I went there for one day in order to
see what Freud was like, and met also Yung of Zurich, who
professed great esteem for you, and made a very pleasant
impression. I hope that Freud and his pupils will push their
ideas to their utmost limits, so that we may learn what they

1 "The Confidences of a Psychical Researcher," reprinted in Memories and
Studies under the title "Final Impressions of a Psychical Researcher."

328 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1910

are. They can't fail to throw light on human nature; but
I confess that he made on me personally the impression of
a man obsessed with fixed ideas. I can make nothing in
my own case with his dream theories, and obviously "sym-
bolism" is a most dangerous method. A newspaper report
of the congress said that Freud had condemned the Amer-
ican religious therapy (which has such extensive results) as
very "dangerous" because so "unscientific." Bah!

Well, it is pouring rain and so dark that I must close.
Alice joins me, dear Flournoy, in sending you our united
love, in which all your children have a share. Ever yours,

W.J.

To Shadworth H. Hodgson.

Cambridge, Jan. i, 1910.

A happy New Year to you, dear Hodgson, and may it
bring a state of mind more recognizant of truth when you
see it! Your jocose salutation of my account of truth is
an epigrammatic commentary on the cross-purposes of
philosophers, considering that on the very day (yesterday)
of its reaching me, I had replied to a Belgian student writing
a thesis on pragmatism, who had asked me to name my
sources of inspiration, that I could only recognize two,
Peirce, as quoted, and " S. H. H." with his method of attack-
ing problems, by asking what their terms are "Known-as."
Unhappy world, where grandfathers can't recognize their
own grandchildren! Let us love each other all the same,
dear Hodgson, though the grandchild be in your eyes a
"prodigal." Affectionately yours,

Wm. James.

The news of James's election as Associe Stranger of the
Academie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, which had

Aet. 6S] TO JOHN JAY CHAPMAN 329

appeared in the Boston "Journal" a day or two before the
next letter, had, of course, reached the American news-
papers directly from Paris. The unread book by Bergson
of which Mr. Chapman was to forward his manuscript-
review was obviously "Le Rire," and Mr. Chapman's review
may be found, not where the next letter but one might lead
one to seek it, but in the files of the "Hibbert Journal."

To John Jay Chapman.

Cambridge, Jan. 30, 1910.

Dear Jack, — Invincible epistolary laziness and a con-
science humbled to the dust have conspired to retard this
letter. God sent me straight to you with my story about
Bergson's cablegram — the only other person to whom I
have told it was Henry Higginson. One of you must have
put it into the Boston "Journal" of the next day, — you of
course, to humiliate me still the more, — so now I lie in the
dust, spurning all the decorations and honors under which
the powers and principalities are trying to bury me, and
seeking to manifest the naked truth in my uncomely form.
Never again, never again! Naked came I into life, and this
world's vanities are not for me! You, dear Jack, are the
only reincarnation of Isaiah and Job, and I praise God that
he has let me live in your day. Real values are known only
to you!

As for Bergson, I think your change of the word "comic"
into the word "tragic" throughout his book is unpayable,
and I have no doubt it is true. I have only read half of
him, so don't know how he is coming out. Meanwhile
send me your own foolishness on the same subject, com-
mend me to your liege lady, and believe me, shamefully
yours,

W.J.

330 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9IO

To John Jay Chapman.

Cambridge, Feb. 8, 1910.
Dear Jack,— Wonderful! wonderful! Shallow, inco-
herent, obnoxious to its own criticism of Chesterton and
Shaw, off its balance, accidental, whimsical, false; but with
central fires of truth "blazing fuliginous mid murkiest con-
fusion," telling the reader nothing of the Comic except that
it 's smaller than the Tragic, but readable and splendid,
showing that the man who wrote it is more than anything he
can write!

Pray patch some kind of a finale to it and send it to the
"Atlantic"! Yours ever fondly,

W. J.
(Membre de l'lnstitut!)

The "specimen" which was enclosed with the following
note has been lost. It was perhaps a bit of adulatory verse.
What is said about "Harris and Shakespeare," as also in a
later letter to Mr. T. S. Perry on the same subject, was
written apropos of a book entitled "The Man Shakespeare,
His Tragic Life-Story. " l

To John Jay Chapman.

Cambridge, Feb. 15, 1910.
Dear Jack, — Just a word to say that it pleases me to
hear you write this about Harris and Shakespeare. H. is
surely false in much that he claims; yet 'tis the only way
in which Shakespeare ought to be handled, so his is the best
book. The trouble with S. was his intolerable fluency.
He improvised so easily that it kept down his level. It is
hard to see how the man that wrote his best things could
possibly have let himself do ranting bombast and compli-

1 By Frank Harris; New York: 1909.

Aet. 68]

TO DICKINSON S. MILLER

3Ji

cation on such a large scale elsewhere. T is mighty fun
to read him through in order.

I send you a specimen of the kind of thing that tends to
hang upon me as the ivy on the oak. When will the day
come? Never till, like me, you give yourself out as a
poetry-hater. Thine ever,

/7cew P

To Dickinson S. Miller.

Cambridge, Mar. 26, 1910.

Dear Miller,- — Your study of me arrives! and I have
pantingly turned the pages to find the eulogistic adjectives,
and find them in such abundance that my head swims.
Glory to God that I have lived to see this day! to have so
much said about me, and to be embalmed in literature like
the great ones of the past! I did n't know I was so much,
was all these things, and yet, as I read, I see that I was
(or am?), and shall boldly assert myself when I go abroad.

To speak in all dull soberness, dear Miller, it touches me
to the quick that you should have hatched out this elabo-
rate description of me with such patient and loving incuba-
tion. I have only spent five minutes over it so far, meaning
to take it on the steamer, but I get the impression that it
is^almost unexampled in our literature as a piece of pro-
found analysis of an individual mind. I 'm sorry you stick

332 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9io

so much to my psychological phase, which I care little for,
now, and never cared much. This epistemological and
metaphysical phase seems to me more original and impor-
tant, and I have n't lost hopes of converting you entirely
yet. Meanwhile, thanks! thanks! [Emile] Boutroux, who
is a regular angel, has just left our house. I've written an
account of his lectures which the "Nation" will print on
the 31st. I should like you to look it over, hasty as it is.

... I hope that all these lectures on contemporaries
(What a live place Columbia is!) will appear together in a
volume. I can't easily believe that any will compare with
yours as a thorough piece of interpretative work.

We sail on Tuesday next. My thorax has been going
the wrong way badly this winter, and I hope that Nauheim
may patch it up.

Strength to your elbow! Affectionately and gratefully
yours,

Wm. James.

XVII

1910

Final Months — The End

Several reasons combined to take James to Europe in
the early spring of 1910. His heart had been giving him
more discomfort. He wished to consult a specialist in
Paris from whom an acquaintance of his, similarly afflicted,
had received great benefit. He believed that another
course of Nauheim baths would be helpful. Last, and not
least, he wished to be within reach of his brother Henry,
who was ill and concerning whose condition he was much
distressed. In reality it was he, not his brother, who al-
ready stood in the shadow of Death's door.

Accordingly he sailed for England with Mrs. James, and
went first to Lamb House. Thence he crossed alone to
Paris, and thence went on to Nauheim, leaving Mrs. James
to bring his brother to Nauheim to join him. The Pari-
sian specialist could do nothing but confirm previous diag-
noses.

Too much "sitting up and talking" with friends in Paris
exhausted him seriously, and, after leaving Paris, he failed
for the first time to shake off his fatigue. The immediate
effect of the Nauheim baths proved to be very debilitating,
and, again, he failed to rally and improve when he had
finished them. By July, after trying the air of Lucerne
and Geneva, only to find that the altitude caused him un-
bearable distress, he despaired of any relief beyond what
now looked like the incomparable consolations of being at
rest in his own home. So he turned his face westward.

334 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1910

The next letters bid good-bye for the summer to two
tried friends. Five months later it seemed as if James had
been at more pains to make his adieus than he usually put
himself to on account of a summer's absence. When Mrs.
James returned to the Cambridge house in the autumn,
after he had died, and had occasion to open his desk copy
of the Harvard Catalogue, she found these words jotted
at the head of the Faculty List: "A thousand regrets
cover every beloved name." It grieved him that life was
too short and too full for him to see many of them as often
as he wanted to. One day before he sailed, his eye had
been caught by the familiar names and, as a throng of
comradely intentions filled his heart, he had had a moment
of foreboding, and he had let his hand trace the words that
cried this needless "Forgive me!" and recorded an incom-
municable Farewell.

To Henry L. Higginson.

Cambridge, Mar. 28, 1910.

Beloved Henry, — I had most positive hopes of driving
in to see you ere the deep engulfs us, but the press is too great
here, and it remains impossible. This is just a word to say
that you are not forgotten, or ever to be forgotten, and that
(after what Mrs. Higginson said) I am hoping you may sail
yourself pretty soon, and have a refreshing time, and cross
our path. We go straight to Rye, expecting to be in Paris
for the beginning of April for a week, and then to Nauheim,
whence Alice, after seeing me safely settled, will probably
return to Rye for the heft of the summer. It would pay
you to turn up both there and at Nauheim and see the mode
of life.

Hoping you '11 have a good [Club] dinner Friday night,
and never need any surgery again, I am ever thine,

W.J.

Aet. 6S] TO T. S. PERRY 335

To Miss Frances R. Morse.

Cambridge, March 29, 1910.

Dearest Fanny, — Your beautiful roses and your card
arrived duly— the roses were not deserved, not at least by
W. J. I have about given up all visits to Boston this winter,
and the racket has been so incessant in the house, owing to
foreigners of late, that we have n't had the strength to send
for you. I sail on the 29th in the Megantic, first to see
Henry, who has been ill, not dangerously, but very miser-
ably. Our Harry is with him now. I shall then go to
Paris for a certain medical experiment, and after that
report at Nauheim, where they probably will keep me for
some weeks. I hope that I may get home again next fall
with my organism in better shape, and be able to see more
of my friends.

After Thursday, when the good Boutrouxs go, I shall try
to arrange a meeting with you, dear Fanny. At present
we are "contemporaries," that is all, and the one of us who
becomes survivor will have regrets that we were no more!

What a lugubrious ending! With love to your mother,
and love from Alice, believe me, dearest Fanny, most af-
fectionately yours,

W. J.

To T. S. Perry.

Bad-Nauheim, May 22, 1910.

Beloved Thos., — I have two letters from you - - one
about . . . Harris on Shakespeare. Re Harris, I did think
you were a bit supercilious a priori, but I thought of your
youth and excused you. Harris himself is horrid, young and
crude. Much of his talk seems to me absurd, but never-
theless that 's the way to write about Shakespeare, and I am
sure that, if Shakespeare were a Piper-control, he would

336 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9I0

say that he relished Harris far more than the pack of rev-
erent commentators who treat him as a classic moralist.
He seems to me to have been a professional amuser, in the
first instance, with a productivity like that of a Dumas,
or a Scribe; but possessing what no other amuser has pos-
sessed, a lyric splendor added to his rhetorical fluency,
which has made people take him for a more essentially serious
human being than he was. Neurotically and erotically, he
was hyperaesthetic, with a playful graciousness of character
never surpassed. He could be profoundly melancholy;
but even then was controlled by the audience's needs. A
cork in the rapids, with no ballast of his own, without re-
ligious or ethical ideals, accepting uncritically every theat-
rical and social convention, he was simply an aeolian harp
passively resounding to the stage's call. Was there ever
an author of such emotional importance whose reaction
against false conventions of life was such an absolute zero
as his? I know nothing of the other Elizabethans, but
could they have been as soulless in this respect? — But
halte-la! or I shall become a Harris myself! . . . With
love to you all, believe me ever thine,

W.J.
Read Daniel Halevy's exquisitely discreet "Vie de
Nietzsche," if you have n't already done so. Do you know
G. Courtelines' "Les Marionettes de la Vie" (Flammarion) ?
It beats Labiche.

To Francois Pillon.

Bad-Nauheim, May 25, 1910.

My dear Pillon,— I have been here a week, taking the

baths for my unfortunate cardiac complications, and shall

probably stay six weeks longer. I passed through Paris,

where I spent a week, partly with my friend the philosopher

Aet. 68} TO FRANgOTS PILLON 337

Strong, partly at the Fondation Thiers with the Boutrouxs,
who had been our guests in America when he lectured a
few months ago at Harvard. Every day I said: ' I will get
to the Pillons this afternoon"; but every day I found it im-
possible to attempt your four flights of stairs, and finally had
to run away from the Boutrouxs' to save my life from the
fatigue and pectoral pain which resulted from my seeing so
many people. I have a dilatation of the aorta, which causes
anginoid pain of a bad kind whenever I make any exer-
tion, muscular, intellectual, or social, and I should not have
thought at all of going through Paris were it not that I
wished to consult a certain Dr. Moutier there, who is strong
on arteries, but who told me that he could do nothing for my
case. I hope that these baths may arrest the disagreeable
tendency to pejoration from which I have suffered in the
past year. This is why I didn't come to see the dear Pillons;
a loss for which I felt, and shall always feel, deep regret.

The sight of the new "Annee Philosophique" at Bou-
troux's showed me how valiant and solid you still are for
literary work. I read a number of the book reviews, but
none of the articles, which seemed uncommonly varied and
interesting. Your short notice of Schinz's really boujfon
book showed me to my regret that even you have not yet
caught the true inwardness of my notion of Truth. You
speak as if I allowed no valeur de connaissance proprement
dite, which is a quite false accusation. When an idea
"works" successfully among all the other ideas which relate
to the object of which it is our mental substitute, associat-
ing and comparing itself with them harmoniously, the work-
ings are wholly inside of the intellectual world, and the
idea's value purely intellectual, for the time, at least. This
is my doctrine and Schiller's, but it seems very hard to
express it so as to get it understood!

338 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9i0

I hope that, in spite of the devouring years, dear Madame
Pillon's state of health may be less deplorable than it has
been so long. In particular I wish that the neuritis may have
ceased. I wish! I wish! but what's the use of wishing,
against the universal law that "youth's a stuff will not
endure," and that we must simply make the best of it?
Boutroux gave some beautiful lectures at Harvard, and is
the gentlest and most lovable of characters. Believe me,
dear Pillon, and dear Madame Pillon, your ever affectionate
old friend,

Wm. James.

To Theodore Flournoy.

Bad-Nauheim, May 29, 1910.

. . . Paris was splendid, but fatiguing. Among other
things I was introduced to the Academie des Sciences
Morales, of which you may likely have heard that I am now
an associe etranger (!!). Boutroux says that Renan, when
he took his seat after being received at the Academie Fran-
chise, said: "Qu'on est bien dans ce fauteuil" (it is nothing
but a cushioned bench with no back!). ' Peut-etre n'y a-t-il
que cela de vrai!" Delicious Renanesque remark! . . .

W.J.

The arrangement by which Mrs. James and Henry James
were to have arrived at Nauheim had been upset. The
two, who were to come from England together, were delayed
by Henry's condition; and for a while James was at Nauheim
alone.

To his Daughter.

Bad-Nauheim, May 29, 1910.
Beloved Peguy, — The very fust thing I want you to
do is to look in the drawer marked " Blood" in my tali filing

Act. 68] TO HIS DAUGHTER

339

case in the library closet, and find the date of a number of
the "Journal of Speculative Philosophy" there that con-
tains an article called "Philosophic Reveries." Send this
date (not the article) to the Revd. Prof. L. P. Jacks, 28
Holywell, Oxford, if you find it, immediately. He will
understand what to do with it. If you don't find the article,
do nothing! Jacks is notified. I have just corrected the
proofs of an article on Blood for the "Hibbert Journal,"
which, I think, will make people sit up and rub their eyes
at the apparition of a new great writer of English. I want
Blood himself to get it as a surprise.

/ got as a surprise your finely typed copy of the rest of
my MS., the other day. I thank you for it; also for your
delightful letters. The type-writing seems to set free both
your and Aleck's genius more than the pen. (If you need
a new ribbon it must be got from the agency in Milk St.
just above Devonshire — but you '11 find it hard work to get
it into its place.) You seem to be leading a very handsome
and domestic life, avoiding social excitements, and hearing
of them only from the brethren. It is good sometimes to
face the naked ribs of reality as it reveals itself in homes. I
face them here, with no one but the blackbirds and the trees
for my companions, save some rather odd Americans at the
Mittagstisch and Abendessen, and the good smiling Dienst-
madchen who brings me my breakfast in the morning. . . .
I went to my bath at 6 o'clock this morning, and had
the Park all to the blackbirds and myself. This was
because I am expecting a certain Prof. Goldstein from
Darmstadt to come to see me this morning, and I had to
get the bath out of the way. He is a powerful young writer,
and is translating my "Pluralistic Universe." But the
weather has grown so threatening that I hope now that he
won't come till next Sunday. It is a shame to converse
here and not be in the open air. I would to Heaven thou

34o LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1910

wert mit — I think thou wouldst enjoy it very much for a
week or more. The German civilization is good! Only
this place would give a very false impression of our wicked
earth to a M.a.vs-Bewohner who should descend and leave
and see nothing else. Not a dark spot (save what the pa-
tients' hearts individually conceal), no poverty, no vice, noth-
ing but prettiness and simplicity of life. I snip out a con-
cert-program (the afternoon one unusually good) which I
find lying on my table. The like is given free in the open
air every day. The baths weaken one so that I have little
brain for reading, and must write letters to all kinds of people
every day. A big quarrel is on in Paris between my would-
be translators and publishers. I wish translators would
let my books alone — they are written for my own people
exclusively! You will have received Hewlett's delightful
"Halfway House," sent to our steamer by Pauline Gold-
mark, I think. I have been reading a charmingly discreet
life of Nietzsche by D. Halevy, and have invested in a
couple more of his (N.'s) books, but have n't yet begun to
read them. I am half through " Waffen-nieder!" a first-rate
anti-war novel by Baroness von Suttner. It has been
translated, and I recommend it as in many ways instruc-
tive. How are Rebecca and Maggie [the cook and house-
maid]? You don't say how you enjoy ordering the bill of
fare every day. You can't vary it properly unless you
make a list and keep it. A good sweet dish is rothe Griitze^
a form of fine sago consolidated by currant-jelly juice, and
sauced with custard, or, I suppose, cream.

Well! no more today! Give no end of love to the good
boys, and to your Grandam, and believe me, ever thy
affectionate,

W.J.

Aet. 68] TO HENRY P. BOWDITCH 341

To Henry P. Bowditch.

Bad-Nauheim, June 4, 1910.
Dearest Heinrich, — The envelope in which this letter
goes was addrest in Cambridge, Mass., and expected to
go towards you with a letter in it, long before now. But
better late than never, so here goes! I came over, as you
may remember, for the double purpose of seeing my brother
Henry, who had been having a sort of nervous breakdown,
and of getting my heart, if possible, tuned up by foreign
experts. I stayed upwards of a month with Henry, and then
came hither iiber Paris, where I stayed ten days. I have
been here two and a half weeks, taking the baths, and en-
joying the feeling of the strong, calm, successful, new Ger-
man civilization all about me. Germany is great, and no
mistake! But what a contrast, in the well-set-up, well-
groomed, smart-looking German man of today, and his
rather clumsily drest, dingy, and unworldly-looking father
of forty years ago! But something of the old Gemitthlichkeit
remains, the friendly manners, and the disposition to talk
with you and take you seriously and to respect the serious
side of whatever comes along. But I can write you more
interestingly of physiology than I can of sociology. . . .
The baths may or may not arrest for a while the downward
tendency which has been so marked in the past year - - but
at any rate it is a comfort to know that my sufferings have
a respectable organic basis, and are not, as so many of my
friends tell me, due to pure "nervousness." Dear Henry,
you see that you are not the only pebble on the beach, or
toad in the puddle, of senile degeneration! I admit that
the form of your tragedy beats that of that of most of us;
but youth 's a stuff that won't endure, in any one, and to
have had it, as you and I have had it, is a good deal gained
anyhow, while to see the daylight still under any conditions

342 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9io

is perhaps also better than nothing, and meanwhile the
good months are sure to bring the final relief after which,
"when you and I behind the veil are passed, Oh, but the
long, long time the world shall last!" etc., etc. Rather
gloomy moralizing, this, to end an affectionate family letter
with; but the circumstances seem to justify it, and I know
that you won't take it amiss.

Alice is staying with Henry, but they will both be here in
a fortnight or less. I find it pretty lonely all by myself,
and the German language does n't run as trippingly off" the
tongue as it did forty years ago. Passage back is taken for
August 1 2th. . . .

Well, I must stop! Pray give my love to Selma, the
faithful one. Also to Fanny, Harold, and Friedel. With
Harold's engagement you are more and more of a patriarch.
Heaven keep you, dear Henry.

Believe me, ever your affectionately sympathetic old
friend,

Wm. James.

To Frangois Pi/Ion.

Bad-Nauheim, June 8, 1910.

My dear Pillon, — I have your good letter of the 4th —
which I finally had to take a magnifying-glass to read (!) —
and remained full of admiration for the nervous centres
which, after 80 years of work, could still guide the fingers
to execute, without slipping or trembling, that masterpiece
of microscopic calligraphy! Truly your nervous centres are
"well preserved" — the optical ones also, in spite of the
cataracts and loss of accommodation ! How proud I should
be if now, at the comparatively youthful age of 68, I could
flatter myself with the hope of doing what you have done,
and living down victoriously twelve more devouring ene-

Aet. 6S\ TO FRANgOIS PILLON 343

mies of years! With a fresh volume produced, to mark each
year by! I give you leave, as a garland and reward, to
misinterpret my doctrine of truth ad libitum and to your
heart's content, in all your future writings. I will never
think the worse of you for it.

What you say of dear Madame Pillon awakens in me
very different feelings. She has led, indeed, a life of suf-
fering for many years, and it seems to me a real tragedy
that she should now be confined to the house so absolutely.
If only you might inhabit the country, where, on fine days,
with no stairs to mount or descend, she could sit with
flowers and trees around her! The city is not good when
one is confined to one's apartment. Pray give Madame
Pillon my sincerest love — I never think of her without
affection. — I am almost ashamed to accept year after year
your "Annee Philosophique," and to give you so little in
return for it. I am expecting my wife and brother to ar-
rive here from England this afternoon, and we shall prob-
ably all return together through Paris, by the middle of
July. I will then come and see you, with the wife, so please
keep the "Annee" till then, and put it into my hands. I
can read nothing serious here — the baths destroy one's
strength so. Whether they will do any good to my circula-
tory organs remains to be seen — there is no good effect
perceptible so far. Believe me, dear old friend, with every
message of affection to you both, yours ever faithfully,

Wm. James.

The letters which follow concern Henry Adams's "Letter
to American Teachers," originally printed for private circula-
tion, but recently published, with a preface by Mr. Brooks
Adams, under the title: 'The Degradation of Democratic
Dogma."

344 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [I9IO

To Henry Adams.

Bad-Nauheim, June 17, 1910.

Dear Henry Adams, — I have been so "slim" since see-
ing you, and the baths here have so weakened my brain,
that I have been unable to do any reading except trash,
and have only just got round to finishing your "letter,"
which I had but half-read when I was with you at Paris.
To tell the truth, it does n't impress me at all, save by its
wit and erudition; and I ask you whether an old man soon
about to meet his Maker can hope to save himself from the
consequences of his life by pointing to the wit and learning
he has shown in treating a tragic subject. No, sir, you
can't do it, can't impress God in that way. So far as our
scientific conceptions go, it may be admitted that your
Creator (and mine) started the universe with a certain
amount of "energy" latent in it, and decreed that every-
thing that should happen thereafter should be a result of
parts of that energy falling to lower levels; raising other
parts higher, to be sure, in so doing, but never in equiva-
lent amount, owing to the constant radiation of unrecov-
erable warmth incidental to the process. It is customary
for gentlemen to pretend to believe one another, and until
some one hits upon a newer revolutionary concept (which
may be tomorrow) all physicists must play the game by
holding religiously to the above doctrine. It involves of
course the ultimate cessation of all perceptible happening,
and the end of human history. With this general concep-
tion as surrounding everything you say in your "letter,"
no one can find any fault — in the present stage of scien-
tific conventions and fashions. But I protest against your
interpretation of some of the specifications of the great
statistical drift downwards of the original high-level energy.
If, instead of criticizing what you seem to me to say, I

Aet. 68} TO HENRY ADAMS 345

express my own interpretation dogmatically, and leave you
to make the comparison, it will doubtless conduce to brevity
and economize recrimination.

To begin with, the amount of cosmic energy it costs to buy
a certain distribution of fact which humanly we regard as
precious, seems to me to be an altogether secondary matter
as regards the question of history and progress. Certain
arrangements of matter on the same energy-level are, from
the point of view of man's appreciation, superior, while
others are inferior. Physically a dinosaur's brain may show
as much intensity of energy-exchange as a man's, but it can
do infinitely fewer things, because as a force of detent it can
only unlock the dinosaur's muscles, while the man's brain,
by unlocking far feebler muscles, indirectly can by their
means issue proclamations, write books, describe Chartres
Cathedral, etc., and guide the energies of the shrinking sun
into channels which never would have been entered other-
wise — in short, make history. Therefore the man's brain
and muscles are, from the point of view of the historian, the
more important place of energy-exchange, small as this may
be when measured in absolute physical units..

The "second law" is wholly irrelevant to "history"
save that it sets a terminus — for history is the course of
things before that terminus, and all that the second law
says is that, whatever the history, it must invest itself be-
tween that initial maximum and that terminal minimum of
difference in energy-level. As the great irrigation-reservoir
empties itself, the whole question for us is that of the dis-
tribution of its effects, of which rills to guide it into; and
the size of the rills has nothing to do with their significance.
Human cerebration is the most important rill we know ot,
and both the "capacity" and the "intensity" factor thereof
may be treated as infinitesimal. Yet the filling of such rills

346 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9io

would be cheaply bought by the waste of whole sums spent
in getting a little of the down-flowing torrent to enter them.
Just so of human institutions — their value has in strict
theory nothing whatever to do with their energy-budget —
being wholly a question of the form the energy flows through.
Though the ultimate state of the universe may be its vital
and psychical extinction, there is nothing in physics to
interfere with the hypothesis that the penultimate state
might be the millennium — in other words a state in which
a minimum of difference of energy-level might have its
exchanges so skillfully canalises that a maximum of happy
and virtuous consciousness would be the only result. In
short, the last expiring pulsation of the universe's life might
be, "I am so happy and perfect that I can stand it no
longer." You don't believe this and I don't say I do. But
I can find nothing in "Energetik" to conflict with its possi-
bility. You seem to me not to discriminate, but to treat
quantity and distribution of energy as if they formed one
question.

There! that's pretty good for a brain after 18 Nauheim
baths — so I won't write another line, nor ask you to reply
to me. In case you can't help doing so, however, I will
gratify you now by saying that I probably won't jaw back.
— It was pleasant at Paris to hear your identically un-
changed and "undegraded" voice after so many years of
loss of solar energy. Yours ever truly,

Wm. James.

[Post-card]

Nauheim, June 19, 1910.

P. S. Another illustration of my meaning: The clock of
the universe is running down, and by so doing makes the
hands move. The energy absorbed by the hands and the

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Act. 6S] TO BENJAMIN PAUL BLOOD 347

mechanical work they do is the same day after day, no
matter how far the weights have descended from the posi-
tion they were originally wound up to. The history which
the hands perpetrate has nothing to do with the quantity
of this work, but follows the significance of the figures which
they cover on the dial. If they move from O to XII, there
is "progress," if from XII to O, there is "decay," etc. etc.

\Y. J.

To Henry Adams.

[Post-card]

Constance, June 16, [1910].

Yours of the 20th, just arriving, pleases me by its docility
of spirit and passive subjection to philosophic opinion.
Never, never pretend to an opinion of your own! that way
lies every annoyance and madness! You tempt me to offer
you another illustration — that of the hydraulic ram (thrown
back to me in an exam, as a "hydraulic goat" by an in-
sufficiently intelligent student). Let this arrangement of
metal, placed in the course of a brook, symbolize the machine
of human life. It works, clap, clap, clap, day and night, so
long as the brook runs at all, and no matter how full the
brook (which symbolizes the descending cosmic energy) may
be, it works always to the same effect, of raising so many
kilogrammeters of water. What the value of this work as
history may be, depends on the uses to which the water is
put in the house which the ram serves.

W.J.

To Benjamin Paul Blood.

Constance, June 25, 1910.

My dear Blood, — About the time you will receive this,
you will also be surprised by receiving the " Hibbert Journal "

348 LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [i9io

for July, with an article signed by me, but written mainly by
yourself.1 Tired of waiting for your final synthetic pro-
nunciamento, and fearing I might be cut off ere it came, I
took time by the forelock, and at the risk of making ducks
and drakes of your thoughts, I resolved to save at any rate
some of your rhetoric, and the result is what you see. For-
give! forgive! forgive! It will at any rate have made
you famous, for the circulation of the H. J. is choice, as well
as large (12,000 or more, I 'm told), and the print and paper
the best ever yet. I seem to have lost the editor's letter,
or I would send it to you. He wrote, in accepting the
article in May, "I have already 40 articles accepted, and
some of the writers threaten lawsuits for non-publication,
yet such was the exquisite refreshment Blood's writing
gave me, under the cataract of sawdust in which editorially
I live, that I have this day sent the article to the printer.
Actions speak louder than words! Blood is simply great,
and you are to be thanked for having dug him out. L. P.
Jacks." Of course I 've used you for my own purposes,
and probably misused you; but I 'm sure you will feel more
pleasure than pain, and perhaps write again in the "Hibbert"
to set yourself right. You 're sure of being printed, what-
ever you may send. How I wish that I too could write
poetry, for pluralism is in its Sturm und Drang period, and
verse is the only way to express certain things. I 've just
been taking the "cure" at Nauheim for my unlucky heart —
no results so far!

Sail for home again on August 12th. Address always
Cambridge, Mass.; things are forwarded- Warm regards,
fellow pluralist. Yours ever,

Wm. James.

1 See the footnote on p. 39 supra.

Act. 6S\ TO THEODORE FLOURNOY 349

To Theodore Flournoy.

Geneva, July 9, 1910.

Dearest Flournoy, — Your two letters, of yesterday,
and of July 4th sent to Nauheim, came this morning. I am
sorry that the Nauheim one was not written earlier, since
you had the trouble of writing it at all. I thank you for all
the considerateness you show -- you understand entirely
my situation. My dyspnoea gets worse at an accelerated
rate, and all I care for now is to get home - - doing nothing
on the way. It is partly a spasmodic phenomenon I am
sure, for the aeration of my tissues, judging by the color ot
my lips, seems to be sufficient. I will leave Geneva now
without seeing you again — better not come, unless just to
shake hands with my wife! Through all these years I have
wished I might live nearer to you and see more of you and
exchange more ideas, for we seem two men particularly well
fails pour nous comprendre. Particularly, now, as my own
intellectual house-keeping has seemed on the point of work-
ing out some good results, would it have been good to work
out the less unworthy parts of it in your company. But
that is impossible! — I doubt if I ever do any more writing
of a serious sort; and as I am able to look upon my lite
rather lightly, I can truly say that "I don't care" -don't
care in the least pathetically or tragically, at any rate. — I
hope that Ragacz will be a success, or at any rate a whole-
some way of passing the month, and that little by little you
will reach your new equilibrium. Those dear daughters,
at any rate, are something to live for-- to show them Italy
should be rejuvenating. I can write no more, my very
dear old friend, but only ask you to think of me as ever
lovingly yours,

W. J.

35o LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES [1910

After leaving Geneva James rested at Lamb House for a
few days before going to Liverpool to embark. Walking,
talking and writing had all become impossible or painful.
The short northern route to Quebec was chosen for the home
voyage. When he and Mrs. James and his brother Henry
landed there, they went straight to Chocorua. The after-
noon light was fading from the familiar hills on August 19th,
when the motor brought them to the little house, and James
sank into a chair beside the fire, and sobbed, "It 's so good
to get home!"

A change for the worse occurred within forty-eight hours
and the true situation became apparent. The effort by
which he had kept up a certain interest in what was going
on about him during the last weeks of his journey, and a
certain semblance of strength, had spent itself. He had
been clinging to life only in order to get home.

Death occurred without pain in the early afternoon of
August 26th.

His body was taken to Cambridge, where there was a
funeral service in the College Chapel. After cremation, his
ashes were placed beside the graves of his parents in the
Cambridge Cemetery.

THE END

APPENDIXES

APPENDIX T

Three Criticisms for Studexts

In his smaller classes, made up of advanced students, James
found it possible to comment in detail on the work of individuals.
Three letters have come into the hands of the editor, from which
extracts may be taken to illustrate such comments. They were
written for persons with whom he could communicate only by
letter, and are extended enough to suggest the viva voce comments
which many a student recalls, but of which there is no record.
The first is from a letter to a former pupil and refers to work of
Bertrand Russell and others which the pupil was studying at the
time. The second and third comment on manuscripts that had
been prepared as "theses" and had been submitted to James for
unofficial criticism. They exhibit him, characteristically, as en-
couraging the student to formulate something more positive.

Jan. id, 1908.

Those propositions or supposals which [Russell, Moore and
Meinong] make the exclusive vehicles of truth are mongrel curs
that have no real place between realities on the one hand and
beliefs on the other. The negative, disjunctive and hypothetic
truths which they so conveniently express can all, perfectly well
(so far as I see), be translated into relations between beliefs
and positive realities. "Propositions" are expressly devised for
quibbling between realities and beliefs. They seem to have the
objectivity of the one and the subjectivity of the other, and he
who uses them can straddle as he likes, owing to the ambiguity
of the word that, which is essential to them. ' That Caesar existed"
is "true," sometimes means the fact that he existed is real, some-
times the belief that he existed is true. You can get no honest
discussion out of such terms. . . .

Jug. 15, 1908.

Dear K , ... [I have] read your thesis once through. I

only finished it yesterday. It is a big effort, hard to grasp at a

354 APPENDIX

single reading, and I 'm too lazy to go over it a second time in its
present physically inconvenient shape. It is obvious that parts
of it have been written rapidly and not boiled down; and my im-
pression is that you have left over in it too much of the compli-
cation of form in which our ideas, our critical ideas especially,
first come to us, and which has, with much rewriting, to be
straightened out. You were dealing with dialecticians and logic-
choppers, and you have met them on their own ground with a
logic-chopping even more diseased than theirs. So far as I can
see, you have met them, though your own expressions are often
far from lucid ( — result of haste?); but in some cases I doubt
whether they themselves would think that they were met at all.
I fear a little that both Bradley and Royce will think that your
reductiones ad absurdwn are too fine spun and ingenious to have
real force. Too complicated, too complicated! is the verdict of
my horse-like mind on much of this thesis. Your defense will be,
of course, that it is a thesis, and as such, expected to be barbaric.
But then I point to the careless, hasty writing of much of it. You
must simplify yourself, if you hope to have any influence in print.
The writing becomes more careful and the style clearer, the
moment you tackle Russell in the 6th part. And when you come
to your own dogmatic statement of your vision of things in the
last 30 pages or so, I think the thesis splendid, prophetic in tone
and very felicitous, often, in expression. This is indeed the philo-
sophic de I'avenir, and a dogmatic expression of it will be far more
effective than critical demolition of its alternatives. It will
render that unnecessary if able enough. One will simply feel
them to be diseased. My total impression is that the critter
K has a really magnificent vision of the lay of the land in philos-
ophy,— of the land of bondage, as well as of that of promise, —
but that he has a tremendous lot of work to do yet in the way of
getting himself into straight and effective literary shape. He has
elements of extraordinary literary power, but they are buried in
much sand and shingle. . . .

May. 26, 1900.

Dear Miss S , I am a caitiff! I have left your essay on my

poor self unanswered. ... It is a great compliment to me to be
taken so philologically and importantly; and I must say that

APPENDIX 355

from the technical point of view you may be proud of your pro-
duction. I like greatly the objective and dispassionate key in
which you keep everything, and the number of subdivisions and
articulations which you make gives me vertiginous admiration.
Nevertheless, the tragic fact remains that I don't feel wounded
at all by all that output of ability, and for reasons which I think
I can set down briefly enough. It all comes, in my eyes, from too
much philological method — as a Ph.D. thesis your essay is su-
preme, but why don't you go farther? You take utterances of
mine written at different dates, for different audiences belonging
to different universes of discourse, and string them together as the
abstract elements of a total philosophy which you then show to
be inwardly incoherent. This is splendid philology, but is it live
criticism of anyone's Weltanschauung? Your use of the method
only strengthens the impression I have got from reading criti-
cisms of my "pragmatic" account of "truth," that the whole
Ph.D. industry of building up an author's meaning out of separate
texts leads nowhere, unless you have first grasped his centre of
vision, by an act of imagination. That, it seems to me, you lack
in my case.

For instance: [Seven examples are next dealt with in two and
a half pages of type-writing. These pages are omitted. 1

... I have been unpardonably long; and if you were a man, 1
should assuredly not expect to influence you a jot by what 1
write. Being a woman, there may be yet a gleam of hope! —
which may serve as the excuse for my prolixity. (It is not for
the likes of you, however, to hurl accusations of prolixity!) Now
if I may presume to give a word of advice to one so much more
accomplished than myself in dialectic technique, may I urge,
since you have shown what a superb mistress you are in that
difficult art of discriminating abstractions and opposing them to
each other one by one, since in short there is no university extant
that would n't give you its summa cum laude, — / should cer-
tainly so reward your thesis at Harvard, — may I urge, I say,
that you should now turn your back upon that academic sort of
artificiality altogether, and devote your great talents to the
study of reality in its concreteness? In other words, do some
positive work at the problem of what truth signifies, substitute a
definitive alternative for the humanism which I present, as the

356 APPENDIX

latter's substitute. Not by proving their inward incoherence
does one refute philosophies — every human being is incoherent —
but only by superseding them by other philosophies more satis-
factory. Your wonderful technical skill ought to serve you in
good stead if you would exchange the philological kind of criticism
for constructive work. I fear however that you won't — the iron
may have bitten too deeply into your soul!!

Have you seen Knox's paper on pragmatism in the "Quarterly
Review" for April — perhaps the deepest-cutting thing yet written
on the pragmatist side? On the other side read Bertrand Russell's
paper in the "Edinburgh Review" just out. A thing after your
own heart, but ruined in my eyes by the same kind of vicious ab-
stractionism which your thesis shows. It is amusing to see the
critics of the will to believe furnish such exquisite instances of it in
their own persons. E.g., Russell's own splendid atheistic-titanic
confession of faith in that volume of essays on "Ideals of Science

and of Faith" edited by one Hand. X , whom you quote,

has recently worked himself up to the pass of being ordained in
the Episcopal church. ... I justify them both; for only by such
experiments on the part of individuals will social man gain the
evidence required. They meanwhile seem to think that the only
"true" position to hold is that everything not imposed upon a
will-less and non-cooperant intellect must count as false — a
preposterous principle which no human being follows in real life.

Well! There! that is all! But, dear Madam, I should like to
know where you come from, who you are, what your present
"situation" is, etc., etc.— It is natural to have some personal
curiosity about a lady who has taken such an extraordinary amount
of pains for me!

Believe me, dear Miss S , with renewed apologies for the

extreme tardiness of this acknowledgment, yours with mingled ad-
miration and abhorrence,

Wm. James.

APPENDIX II

Books by William James

The following chronological list includes books only, but it
gives the essays and chapters contained in each.

Professor R. B. Perry's "Bibliography" (see below) lists a great
number of contributions to periodicals, which have never been re-
printed, and includes notes indicative of the matter of each.

(No attempt has been made to compile a list of references to
literature about William James, but the following may be men-
tioned as easily obtainable: William James, by Emile Bou-
troux. Paris, 191 1. Translation: Longmans, Green & Co., New
York and London, 191 2. La Philosophic de William James, by
Theodore Flournoy. St. Blaise, 191 i. Translation: The Philos-
ophy oj William James. Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1917.)

Literary Remains oj Henry James, Sr., with an Introduction by
William James. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin ev Co., 1884.

The Principles of Psychology. New York: Henry Holt & Co.;
London: Macmillan & Co., 1890.
Volume I. Scope of Psychology — Functions of the Brain —
Conditions of Brain Activity — Habit — The Automaton
Theory - — The Mind-Stuff Theory — Methods and Snares
of Psychology — Relations of Minds to Other Things —
The Stream of Thought — The Consciousness of Self —
Attention — Conception — Discrimination and Compari-
son — Association — The Perception of Time - - Memory.
Volume II. Sensation — Imagination — Perception of Things

— The Perception of Space — The Perception of Reality

— Reasoning — The Production of Movement - - Instinct

— The Emotions — Will — Hypnotism — Necessary Truth
and the Effects of Experience.

A Text-Book of Psychology. Briefer Course. New York: Henry
Holt & Co.; London: Macmillan & Co., 1892.

358 APPENDIX

Introductory — Sensation — Sight — Hearing — Touch —
Sensations of Motion — Structure of the Brain — Func-
tions of the Brain — Some General Conditions of Neural
Activity — Habit — Stream of Consciousness — The Self

— Attention — Conception — Discrimination — Associa-
tion — Sense of Time — Memory — Imagination — Per-
ception — The Perception of Space — Reasoning — Con-
sciousness and Movement — Emotion — Instinct — Will

— Psychology and Philosophy.

The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. New
York and London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1897.
The Will to Believe — Is Life Worth Living? — The Senti-
ment of Rationality — Reflex Action and Theism — The
Dilemma of Determinism — The Moral Philosopher and
the Moral Life — Great Men and their Environment —
The Importance of Individuals — On Some Hegelisms —
What Psychical Research has Accomplished.

Human Immortality, Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine.
London: Constable & Co., also Dent & Sons; Boston:
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1898.

The Same. A New Edition with Preface in Reply to His Critics.
Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1899.

Talks to Teachers on Psychology, and to Students on Some of Life's
Ideals. New York: Henry Holt & Co.; London: Long-
mans, Green & Co., 1899.
Psychology and the Teaching Art — The Stream of Con-
sciousness— The Child as a Behaving Organism — Educa-
tion and Behavior — The Necessity of Reactions — Native
and Acquired Reactions — What the Native Reactions Are
— The Laws of Habit — Association of Ideas — Interest —
Attention — Memory — Acquisition of Ideas — Appercep-
tion — The Will.
Talks to Students: The Gospel of Relaxation — On a Cer-
tain Blindness in Human Beings — What Makes Life Sig-
nificant?

The Varieties of Religious Experience. A Study in Human Nature.
The Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion, Edinburgh,
1 901-1902. New York and London: Longmans, Green &
Co., 1902.

APPENDIX 359

Religion and Neurology — Circumscription of the Topic -
The Reality of the Unseen — The Religion of Healthy-
Mindedness — The Sick Soul — The Divided Self, and the
Process of its Unification — Conversion -- Saintliness -
The Value of Saintliness — Mysticism — Philosophy —
Other Characteristics — Conclusions — Postscript.

Pragmatism. A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. New
York and London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1907.
The Present Dilemma in Philosophy — What Pragmatism
Means — Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Con-
sidered — The One and the Many — Pragmatism and
Common Sense — Pragmatism's Conception of Truth —
Pragmatism and Humanism — Pragmatism and Religion.

A Pluralistic Universe. Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College.
New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1909.
The Types of Philosophic Thinking — Monistic Idealism —
Hegel and his Method -- Concerning Fechner-- Com-
pounding of Consciousness-- Bergson and his Critique of
Intellectualism — The Continuity of Experience — Con-
clusions Appendixes: A. The Thing and its Relations.

B. The Experience of Activity. C. On the Notion of
Reality as Changing.

The Meaning of Truth. A Sequel to Pragmatism. New York and
London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1909.
The Function of Cognition — The Tigers in India — Human-
ism and Truth — The Relation between Knower and
Known — The Essence of Humanism — A Word More
about Truth — Professor Pratt on Truth — The Pragma-
tist Account of Truth and its Misunderstanders — The
Meaning of the Word Truth — The Existence of Julius
Caesar — The Absolute and the Strenuous Life — Hebert
on Pragmatism — Abstractionism and "Relativismus" —
Two English Critics — A Dialogue.

Some Problems of Philosophy. A Beginning of an Introduction to
Philosophy. New York and London: Longmans, Green ec
Co., 1911.
Philosophy and its Critics — The Problems of Metaphysics —
The Problem of Being — Percept and Concept — The One
and the Many — The Problem of Novelty — Novelty and

36o APPENDIX

the Infinite — Novelty and Causation Appendix: Faith

and the Right to Believe.

Memories and Studies. New York and London : Longmans, Green
& Co., 1911.
Louis Agassiz — Address at the Emerson Centenary in Con-
cord — Robert Gould Shaw — Francis Boott — Thomas
Davidson — Herbert Spencer's Autobiography — Frederick
Myers's Services to Psychology — Final Impressions of a
Psychical Researcher — On Some Mental Effects of the
Earthquake — The Energies of Men — The Moral Equiva-
lent of War — Remarks at the Peace Banquet — The Social
Value of the College-bred — The Ph.D. Octopus — The
True Harvard — Stanford's Ideal Destiny — A Pluralistic
Mystic (B. P. Blood).

Essays in Radical Empiricism. Edited by Ralph Barton Perry.
New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co., 191 2.
Introduction — Does Consciousness Exist? — A World of Pure
Experience — The Thing and its Relations — How Two
Minds can Know One Thing — The Place of Affectional
Facts in a World of Pure Experience — The Experience of
Activity — The Essence of Humanism — La Notion de Con-
science— Is Radical Empiricism Solipsistic? — Mr. Pitkin's
Refutation of Radical Empiricism — Humanism and Truth
Once More — Absolutism and Empiricism.

Collected Essays and Reviews. Edited by Ralph Barton Perry.
New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1920.
Review of E. Sargent's Planchctte (1869) — Review of G. H.
Lewes's Problems of Life and Mind (187 5) — Review entitled
"German Pessimism" (1875) — Chauncey Wright (1875)
— Review of "Bain and Renouvier" (1876) — Review of
Renan's Dialogues (1876) — Review of G. H. Lewes's
Physical Basis of Mind (1877) — Remarks on Spencer's
Definition of Mind as Correspondence (1878) — Quelques
Considerations sur la Methode Subjective (1878) — The
Sentiment of Rationality (1 879) — -Review (unsigned) of
W. K. Clifford's Lectures and Essays (1879) — Review
of Herbert Spencer's Data of Ethics (1879) — The Feeling
of Effort (1880) — The Sense of Dizziness in Deaf Mutes
(1882) — What is an Emotion? (1884) — Review of

APPENDIX 361

Royce's The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885) — The
Consciousness of Lost Limbs (1887) — Reponse de W.
James aux Remarques de M. Renouvier sur sa theorie de la
volonte (1888) — The Psychological Theory of Extension
(1889) — A Plea for Psychology as a Natural Science
(1892) — The Original Datum of Space Consciousness
(1893) — ^r- Bradley on Immediate Resemblance (1893)

— Immediate Resemblance — Review of G. T. Ladd's
Psychology (1894) — The Physical Basis of Emotion (1894)

— The Knowing of Things Together (1895) -- Review of
W. Hirsch's Genie und Entartung (1895) — Philosophical
Conceptions and Practical Results (1898) — Review of
R. Hodgson's A Further Record of Observations of Certain
Phenomena of Trance (1898) — Review of Sturt's Personal
Idealism (1903) — The Chicago School (1904) -- Review
of F. C. S. Schiller's Humanism (1904) — Laura Bridg-
man (1904) — G. Papini and the Pragmatist Movement in
Italy (1906) — The Mad Absolute (1906) — Controversy
about Truth with John E. Russell (1907) — Report on
Mrs. Piper's Hodgson Control; Conclusion (1909) —
Bradley or Bergson? (1910) — A Suggestion about Mysti-
cism (1910).

A List of the Published Writings of William James, with notes, and
an index; by Ralph Bartox Perry. New York and
London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1920.

INDEX

Throughout the index the initial J. stands for William James.
In the list of references to his own writings, arranged alphabeti-
cally at the end of the entries under his name, the titles of separate
papers are set in roman and quoted, those of volumes in italics.

The words "See Contents" under a name indicate that letters
addressed to the person in question are to be sought in the Table
of Contents, where all letters are listed.

Abauzit, F., 1, 145, 2, 185.

Abbot, P. E., Scientific Theism, 1, 247.

Absolute, Philosophy of the, 1, 238.

Absolute Unity, 1, 231.

Academie Franchise, 2, 338.

Academie des Sciences Morales, et
Politiques, J. a corresponding mem-
ber of, 2, 75; J. an associe etranger
of, 328, 329, 338.

Adams, Brooks, 2, 343.

Adams, Henry, Letter to American
Teachers, 2, 343 Jf.; mentioned, 10.
See Contents.

Adirondack range, 1, 194, 195.

Adirondacks. See Keene Valley.

Adler, Waldo, 2, 75, 76, 163.

/Esthetics, Study of, and Art, 2, 87.

Agassiz, Alexander, 1, 31.

Agassiz, Louis, J. joins his Brazilian
expedition, 1, 54 ff., J. quoted on,
55; quoted, on J., 56; on the
Brazilian expedition, 56, 57, 59, 61,
67, 68, 69; described by J., 65, 66;
centenary of, 2, 287, 288; mentioned,

1. 34, 35, 37, 42, 47, 48, 72, 2, 2.
Agassiz, Mrs. Louis, her 80th birthday,

2, 180 and n., 181; mentioned, 1, 60,
65, 67. See Contents.

Aguinaldo, Emilio, 2, 148.

Alcott, A. Bronson, 1, 18 n.

Allen, John A., 1, 74.

Amalfi, Sorrento to, 2, 221, 222.

Amazon, the, Agassiz's expedition to.

See Brazil.
America, general aspect of the country,

1, 346, 347 and n. And see United

States.
American Philosophical Association, 2,

163, 164,300.
Americans, in Germany, 1, 87.
Angell, James R., 1, 345, 2, 14.

Anglican Church, 2, 305.

Anglicanism and Romanism, 2, 305.

Anglophobia in U. S. revealed by Ven-
ezuela incident, 2, 27, 31, 32.

Annunzio, Gabriele d', 2, 63.

"Anti-pragmatisme," 2, 319.

Aristotle, 1, 283.

Aristotelian Society Proceedings, 2, 207.

Arnim, Gisela von. See Grimm, Mrs.
Herman.

Adiburner, Anne, 1, 179, 181, 315.

Ashburner, Grace, 1, 181, 315. See
Contents.

Ashheld, annual dinner at, 2, [99.

Athens, 2, 224, 225. And see Parthe-
non, the.

Atkinson, Charles, 1, 35.

Ausable Lakes, 1, 194.

Austria, political conditions in (1867),

1, 95;

Avenarius, 2, 301.

Baginsky, Dr., 1, 214.
Bain, Alexander, 1, I43, 164.
Bakewell, Charles M., 2, 14, 81, 85,

120, 248.
Baldwin, James M., 2, 20.
Baldwin, William, 1, 337.
Balfour, A. J., Foundations of Belief,

2, 20.

Balzac, Honore de, 1, 106, 2, 265.

Bancroft, George, 1, 107, 109.

Bancroft, Mrs. George, 1, 135.

Bancroft, John C, 1, 70.

Baring Bros., 1, 73.

Barber, Catherine, marries William

James I, 1, 4; her ancestry, 4 and n.

And see James, Mrs. Catherine

(Barber).
Barber, Francis, 1, 5.
Barber, Junnet, 1, 4 ;;.

366

INDEX

Barber, John, J.'s great-grandfather,
in the Revolutionary army, 1, 4 and
n.; H. James, Senior, on, 5.

Barber, Mrs. John, 1, 5.

Barber, Patrick, 1, 4 n.

Barber family, the, 1, 4, 5.

Bashkirtseff, Marie, Diary of, 1, 307,

2, 148.

Bastien-Lepage, Jules, 1, 210 and n.

"Bay." See Emmet, Ellen.

Bayard, Thomas F., 2, 27 n.

Beers, Clifford W., A Mind that Found
Itself, 2, 273, 274 and n. See Con-
tents.

Beethoven, Ludwig von, Fidelio, 1, 112.

Belgium, philosophers in, 1, 216.

Benn, A. W., 1, 333, 334-

Berenson, Bernhard, 2, 138.

Bergson, Henri, Matiere et Memoire, 2,
178, 179; his system, 179; J.'s
enthusiasm for, 179, 180 n.; L' Evo-
lution Creatrice, 290 ff.; Le Rire, 329;
mentioned, 172, 226, 257, 314, 315.
See Contents.

Berkeley, Sir W., Principles, 2, 179.

Berlin, t, 100, 105, 106, 112, 122.

Berlin, University of, 1, 118, 120, 121.

Bernard, Claude, 1, 72, 156.

Bhagavat-Gita, the, 2, 238.

Bible, the, and orthodox theology, 2,
196.

Bielshowski, A., Life of Goethe, 2, 262.

Bigebw, Henry J., 1, 72.

Bigelow, W. Sturgis, 2, 10.

Birukoff, Life of Tolstoy, 2, 262.

Black, W, Strange Adventures of a
Phaeton, 1, 173.

Blood, Benjamin Paul, The Flaw in
Supremacy, 2, 39; J.'s article on, in
Hibbert Journal, 39 «•, 347,. 348;
his Anesthetic Revolution reviewed
by J., 40 and «.; his strictures on
J.'s English, 59; mentioned, 22, 338,
339. See Contents.

Bocher, Ferdinand, 1, 337.

Boer War, the, 2, 118, 140.

Bonn-am-Rhein, 1, 20.

Boott, Elizabeth (Mrs. Frank Duve-
neck), 1, 153, 155.

Boott, Francis, J.'s commemorative
address on, 1, 153; mentioned, 155,
341 n., 2, 191. See Contents.

Bornemann, Fraiilein, 1, 116, 135.

Bosanquet, B., quoted, 2, 126.

Boston Journal, 2, 329.

Boston Transcript, J.'s letter to, on
Medical License bill, 2, 68-70; 72
and «., 124, 125.

Boulogne, College de, 1, 20.

Bourget, Paul, Idylle Tragique, 2, 37;
and Tolstoy, 37, 38; mentioned, 1,
348.

Bourget, Mme. Paul, 1, 348.

Bourkhardt, James, 1, 64, 70.

Bourne, Ansel, 1, 294.

Boutroux, Emile, 2, 314, 332, 335. 337,
338.

Bowditch, Henry I., 1, 124.

Bowditch, Henry P., 1, 71, 102, 138,
139, 147, 167, 169, 195. See Contents.

Bowen, Francis, 1, 53.

Boyd, Harriet A. (Mrs. C. H. Havves),
2, 223, 224.

Bradley, Francis H., Logic, 1, 258;
mentioned, 2, 142, 208, 216, 271,
272, 281, 282.

Brazil, Agassiz's expedition to, 1, 54 ff.;
letters written by J., 56-70; re-
called, on Mrs. Agassiz's 80th birth-
day, 2, 181.

Brazilians, the, 1, 59, 66.

Brighton (England) Aquarium, 1, 287.

British Guiana, 2,. 26.

British intellectuality, 1, 270.

Brown-Sequard, Charles E., 1, 71.

Browning, Robert, "A Grammarian's
Funeral," 1, 129, 130; mentioned,

2' I23- .
Bruno, Giordano, inscription on statue

of, 2, 139.
Bryce, James, 1, 303, 345, 2, 6$, 298,

299.
Bryce, Mrs. James, 2, 298, 299.
Bryn Mawr College, 2, 120, 121.
Bull, Mrs. Ole, 2, 144.
Bunch, a dog, 1, 183.
Burkhardt, Jacob, Renaissance in Italy,

1, 176.

Busse, Leib und Seele, Ge:st und Korper,

2, 237 and n.

Butler, Joseph, Analogy, 1, 189.
Butler, Samuel, 1, 283.

Cabot, J. Elliot, 1, 204.
Caird, Edward, 1, 205, 305.
California, impressions of, 2, 82.
California, Northern, 2, 80.
California, University of, 2, 5.
California Champagne, Gift of, 1, 291.
Canadian Pacific Ry., 2, 80.
Carlyle, "Jenny," 2, 192.
Carlyle, Thomas, and H. James, Senior,

compared, 1, 241; mentioned, 220.
Carnegie, Andrew, 2, 18.
Carpenter, William B., 1, 143.
Carqueiranne, Chateau de, 2, 114.

INDEX

367

Carringron, Hereward, 2, 327.

Cams, Karl G., 1, 96.

Casey, Silas, 1, 155.

Castle Malwood, 2, 160.

Catholic Church, J.'s attitude toward,

1, 296, 297.

Catholics, "concrete," differentiated
from their church, 1, 29-.

Cattell, J. M., quoted, 1, 300; men-
tioned, 2, 32.

Census of Hallucinations in America,
conducted by J., 1, 228, 229, 2, 50.

Chamberlain, Joseph, 1, 303.

Chambers, Dr., Clinical Lectures, 1, 150.

Chanzy, Antoine E. A., 1, 160.

Chapman, John J., Practical Agitation,

2, 124; Political Nursery, 128; men-
tioned, 125, 329. See Contents.

Chapman, Mrs. John J., 2, 256.

Charmes, Francis, 2, 320.

Chatrian, L. G. C. A. See Erckmann-
Chatrian.

Chautauqua, J.'s lectures at, and im-
pressions of, 2, 40 ff.

Chesterton, Gilbert K., Heretics,!, 241,
260; mentioned, 257 and «., 330.

Chicago, anarchist riot in, and English
newspapers, 1, 252.

Chicago University, School of Thought,

2, 20I, 202.

Child, Francis J., death of, 2, 52; men-
tioned, 1, 51, 169, 195, 291, 315 and
n., 317. See Contents.

Child, iMrs. F. J., 1, 51, 197, 2, 52.

Chocorua, J.'s summer home at, 1, 267,
268; life at, 271, 272; J.'s life ends
at, 2, 350; 1, 261,323.

Christian Scientists, and the Medical
License bill, 2, 68, 69.

Christian Theology, position with refer-
ence to, 2, 213, 2 1 4.

Clairvoyance. See Psychic phenomena.

Claparede, Edward, 2, 226, 22-7, 323.

Clark University, 2, 327.

Clarke, Joseph Thatcher, 2, 130.

Clemens, Samuel L. See Twain, Mark.

Cleveland, Grover, his Venezuela Mes-
sage, and its reaction on J., 2, 26 ff.,
3h 32, 33, 2, 285.

Clifford, W. K., 2, 218.

Club, the, 2, 9, 10.

Colby, F. M., 2, 264.

Collier, Robert J. F., 2, 264.

Colorado Springs, summer school at, 2,

24-
Columbia Faculty Club, J.'s talks at,

2, 265 and n.
Columbia University, 2, 332.

Columbus, Christopher, and Dr. Bow-
ditch, 1, 124.

Common sense, 2, 198.

Concord, Mass., Emerson centenary at,
2, 194.

Concord Summer School of Philosophv,
1, 230, 255.

Congress ot the U. S., and the Spanish
War, 2, 73, 74.

Coniston, Ruskin Museum at, 2, 306.

Continent, the, and England, contrasts
between, 2, 152, 305.

Conversion, 2, 57.

Correggio, Antonio de, his Shepherds'
\ 'ration, 1, 90; and Rafael, 90.

Corruption, in Europe and America, 2,

131.

Courtelines, G., Les Marionettes de la

Vie, 2, 3 j6.
Courtier, M., 2, 327.
Cousin, Victor, 1, 117.
Crafts, James W., 2, 10.
Cranch, Christopher P., 1, 131.
Critique Philosophique, 1, 1 :, 207.
Crothers, Samuel M., 2, 262.
Cuba, and the Spanish War, 2, 73, 74.

Danriac, Lionel, 2, 45, 203.

Dante Alighieri, 1, 331.

Darwin, Charles R., 1, 225.

Darwin, Mrs. W. E. (Sara Sedgwick),
1, 76, 179,2, 152.

Darwin, William E., 2, 152.

Darwin, William Leonard, 2, 2_'>.

Daudet, Alphonse, 2, 168.

Davidson, Thomas, J.'s essay on, 2, 107
n.; J. lectures at his summer school,
J97> J99; mentioned, 1, 192, 202,
204, 249, 255, 2, 156. See Contents.

Davis, Jefferson, 1, 66, 67.

Death, reflections concerning, 2, 154.

Delbaeuf, J., 1, 216, 217.

Demoniacal possession, 2, 56, 57.

Derby, Richard, 1, 122.

Descartes, Rene C, 1, 188, 2, 13.

Determinism, 1, 245, 246.

Dewey, John, Beliefs and Realities, 2,
245, 246; mentioned, 202, 257. See
Contents.

Dexter, Newton, 1, 68, 73.

Dibblee, Anita, 2, 82, 84.

Dibblee, B. H., 2, 82.

Dibblee, Mrs., 2, 82, 84.

Dickinson, G. Lowes, Justice and Lib-
erty, 2, 317, 318.

Diderot, Denis, GEuvres Choisis, 1, 106,
107; mentioned, 142.

Dilthey, W., 1, 109, 110, in.

368

INDEX

Divonne, 1, 137, 138.

Dixwell, Epes S., 1, 124.

Dixwell, Fanny, 1, 76 and n. And see

Holmes, Mrs. Fanny Dixwell.
Dooley, Mr. See Dunne, Finley P.
Dorr, George B., 2, 255.
Dorrs, the, 2, 63.
Dresden, 1, 86, 92, 93, 104.
Dresden Gallery, 1, 90.
Dreyfus Case, the, 2, 89, 97 ff., 102.
Driesch, Hans, Gifford Lectures, 2, 323.
Driver, Dr., 2, 118.
Du Bois, W. E. B., The Souls of Black

Folk, 2, 196 and n.
Du Bois-Raymond, Emil, 1, 121.
Dudevant, Mme. Aurore. See Sand,

George.
Du Maurier, George, Peter Ibbetson, 1,

318.
Dunne, Finley P., 2, 94, 264.
Durham, 2, 306, 307.
Duveneck, Frank, 1, 153, 337 and «.,

341.
Duveneck, Mrs. Frank. See Boott,

Elizabeth.
Dvvight, Thomas, 1, 97, 98, 122, 124,
165, 166, 170.

Edinburgh, praise of, 2, 146, 147, 150;
social amenities in, 147, 148.

Education, importance of, 1, 119.

Eliot, Charles W., quoted, on J. in
Scientific School, 1, 31, 32 and »•»'
on J. Wyman, 47, 48; on courses
given by J., 2, 4 n.; mentioned, 1,
3S, 165, 166, 202, 262, 2, 3, 15, 86,
137, 266.

Eliot, George, Daniel Deronda, 1, 185.

Elliot, Gertrude, 2, 263.

Elliot, John W., 2, 129.

Elliot, Mrs. John W. (Mary Morse),

1, 197, !99, 2- I29-
Ellis, Rufus, 1, 192.

Emerson, Edward W., on H. James,
Senior, 1, 17, 18 and n.; mentioned,

33-
Emerson, Mary Moody, and H. James,

Senior, 1, 18 n.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, letters of H.
James, Senior, to, quoted, 1, 11; cen-
tenary of, 2, 187, 190, 193, 194 (J-'s
address at); "the divine," 190, 191;
his devotion to truth, 190; Represen-
tative Men, 192, 193; and Santayana,
234, 235; mentioned, 1, 9, 18 n., 125,

2, 23, 196, 197.

Emmet, Ellen, 1, 316, 2, 61, 82, 83, 84.
See Contents.

Emmet, Mrs. Temple (Ellen Temple),
2, 64.

Emmet, Rosina H., 2, 38, 61, 62, 64.
See Contents.

Emmet, Temple, 2, 61.

Empiricism, 1, 152. And see Radical
Empiricism.

England, in 1871, 1, 161; gardens in,
288; impressions of, in 1901, 2, 152;
contrasted with Continental coun-
tries, 152, 305; and the U. S., 304,
305; changes in, 307; high state of
civilization in, 307, 308.

English, in Germany, 1, 87.

English language, the teaching of the,

1.341-

English newspapers, and the anarchist
riot in Chicago, 1, 252; attitude of,
on Venezuela Message, 2, 23; men-
tioned, 125, 126.

English people, one aspect of the great-
ness of, 1, 288.

English social and political system, 1,

-3-> 233-

Erb, Dr., 2, 128.

Erckmann (Emile)-Chatrian (L. G. C.
A.), L' Ami Fritz, 1, 101; Les Confes-
sions d'un Joueur de Clarinette, 101;
Histoire d'un Sous-Maitre, 162; men-
tioned, 106, 136.

Erdmann, Johann E., 1, 345.

Erie Canal, the, 1, 3.

Essays Philosophical and Philological
in Honor of William James, 2, 309,
310.

Esterhazy M. (Dreyfus case), 2, 98, 100.

Evans, Mrs. GlenJower. See Contents,

Evans, Mary Anne. See Eliot, George.

Everett, Charles Carroll, 1, 202, 2, 156.

Everett, William, 1, 51.

Experience, The philosophy of, 2, 184,
185, 187.

Faidherbe, Louis L. C, 1, 160.

Fairchild, Sally, 2, 205.

Faith-curers, and th^ Medical License

bill, 2, 68, 69, 70, 71.
Farlow, William G., 1, 71.
Fechner, Gustav T., Zend-Avesta, 2,

300, 309; mentioned, 1, 160, 2, 269,

318.
Fichte, Johann G., 1, 141, 2, 293.
Field, Kate, Washington, 1, 308.
Figaro, 2, 97, 99. _ >

Fischer, Kuno, Essay on Lessing s

Nathan der Weise, 1, 94; Hegel's

Leben, Werke und Lehre, 2, 134, 135,

I3«.

1NDI X

369

Fiske, John, death of, 2, 156, [57;
Cosmic Philosophy, 2, 233; men-
tioned, 1, 347, 2, 10.

Fitz, Reginald H., 1, [62.

Flaubert, Gustave, Madame Bovary,
2, 291; mentioned, 1, 182.

Fletcher, Horace, 2, 254.

Flint, Austin, 1, 167.

Florence, Boboli Garden, 1, 177; I
181,328/., 340, 342.

Flournoy, Theodore, JVilliam James,

1, 145 and n.; beginnings of J.'s
friendship with, 320; Metaphysique
et Psychologic, 2, 25; on religious
psychology, 185; reviews Myers's
Human Personality, 185; lectures on
pragmatism, 267; mentioned, 129,
172, 180 n., 227, 228; 315. His chil-
dren referred to: Alice, 2, 129, 24 1,
242; Ariane-Dorothee, 129; Henri,
186,187; Marguerite, 129. See Con-
tents.

Flournoy, Mme. Theodore, 1, 325, 32^,

2, 23,' 25, 46, 48, S3, 55, I29, '87,
310, 313.

Foote, Henry W., 1, m, 112, 113,

153-
Forbes, W. Cameron, 2, 297. i>ee

Contents.

Forbes-Robertson, J., 2, 263.

Fouillee, Alfred, Renouvier's articles
on, 1, 231; mentioned, 324.

France, and Prussia (1867), 1,95; relig-
ious and revolutionary parties in, 161 ,
162; influence of Catholic education
in, 162; and the Dreyfus case, 2, 89;
decadence of, 105, ic6.

France, Anatole, 2, 63.

Francis of Assisi, St., 2, 142.

Francis Joseph, Emperor, 1, 88.

Franco-Prussian War, J.'s views on, 1,
159, i6d, 161.

Frazer, J. G., 2, 139.

Free will, influence on J. of Renou-
vier's writings on, 1, 14", 164, 165,
169; and determinism, 1S6; S. H.
Hodgson's paper on, 244, 245.

French language, 1, 341.

Freud, Sigmund, 2, 327, 328.

Galileo, 2, 1 n.

Galileo anniversary at Padua, 1, ^33-
Gardiner, H. N., 2, 163. See Contents.
Gardner, Mrs. John L., 2, 205.
Garibaldi, statue of, 2, 139.
Gautier, Theophile, 1, 106.
Geneva, "Academy" of, 1, 20, 2, 187;
Museum at, 21.

1 i man art, 1, 105.

German character, 1, 126.

German education, 1, 1 21.

German ■ , discussed, 1, 94, 95.

German genius, its massiveness, 2,

German langi . J.'s progress in
learning, 1, 87, 101, 108, 116, 121;
mentioned, 87, ,2, 341.

1 i in motto, the, 1, 213.

German universities, and Harvard, 1,
21-, 218 and >;.

Germans, J.'s opinion of, 1, 100, loi,
121,1 22, 2, 104.

Germany, J.'s impressions of, 1,
105; peasant-women in, 211; phi-
losophers in, 216, 217; in 1910, 2, 341.

Gibbens, Alice H., early life, 1,
marries J., 192. And see James,
Mrs. William.

Gibbens, Mrs. E. P., 1, 192, 222, 247,
248, 2')D, 339, 2, 1 1 s. See Contents.

Gibbens, Margaret, 1, 24S, 260, 279,
281, 318. And see Gregor, Mrs.
Leigh R. See Contents.

Gibbens, Marv, marries W. M. Salter,
1, 248.

Gifford Lectures. See this title under
James, William, Works of.

Gilman, Daniel Coit, 1, 2c2, 203.

Gizycki, Herr von, 1, 214,

Gladstone, William E., 2, 31.

Glenmore, Davidson's summer school
of philosophy at, 2, 19- ;;., [99.

God,conceptionsof,2, 211,213, 269,270.

Goddard, George A., 1, 2-4.

Godkin, E. L., Lite of, quoted, 1, i~,
115 n.; J.'s opinion of, 2S4, 285;
Comments and Reflections, 2, 30; ill-
ness of, 160, 161; his death, 1 81;
proposed memorial to, im, is 2; his
home life and his "lite against the
world," 182; mentioned, 1, 1 1 8,
239,2, [67. See Contents.

Godkin, Mrs. E. L., 1, 240, 241, 2, 30,
167.

Godkin, Lawrence, 2, 30.

Goethe, Johann W. von, quoted, 1, 54;
Italienische Reise, 91; Vischer on
Faust, 94; Gedichte, 2, 176; men-
tioned, 1, 104, 107.

Goldmark, Charles, 2, 75, 77.

Goldmark, Josephine, 2, 215.

Goldmark, Pauline, 2, 75, 76, 94. See
Contents.

Goldmarks, the, 2, 275.

I i' [stein, Julius, 2, 339.

Goodwin, William W, 1, 51.

Gordon, George A., 1, 2 .

37°

INDEX

Grand Canyon of Arizona, 2, 238, 239.

Grandfather Mountain, 1, 316, 317.

Grant, Sir Ludovic, 2, 144.

Grant, Percy, 2, 262.

Grant, Ulysses S., 1, 155.

Gray, John C, Jr., 1, 102, 127, 154, 155,
168, 169, 2, 9, 10, 288. See Contents.

Gray, Roland, 2, 109.

Great Britain, and Venezuela, 2, 26,
27; and the Boer War, 140, 141.
And see England.

Greeks, the, 2, 225.

Green, St. John, 2, 233.

Greene, T. H., 2, 237.

Gregor, Mrs. Leigh R. (Margaret Gib-
bens), 1, 338, 2, 106. And see Gib-
bens, Margaret.

Gregor, Rosamund, 2, 275 and n.

Grimm, Herman, his Uniiberwindliche
Mdchte, reviewed by J., 1, 103, 104
and n.; his arrant moralism, 104;
"suckled by Goethe," 104; J. dines
with, 109 jf.; his costume, no; on
Homer, III; mentioned, 107, 108,
125.

Grimm, Mrs. Herman (Gisela von
Arnim), 1, in, 116.

Grimm Brothers, 1, 107, no.

Grinnell, Charles E., 2, 10.

Gryon, Switzerland, 1, 321, 322.

Gurney, Edmund, Phantas?ns of the
Living, 1, 267; his death, 279; J.'s
regard for, 280 and «.; mentioned,
222, 229 n., 242, 251, 255, 2, 30.

Gurney, Mrs. Edmund, 1, 279, 287.

Gurney, Ephraim W., 1, 76 «., 151.

Gurney, Mrs. Ephraim W. (Ellen
Hooper), 1, 76 n.

Habit, Chapter on, in the Psychology,

1, 297.

Halevy, Daniel, Vie de Nietzsche, 2, 336,

340.
Hall, G. Stanley, quoted, 1, 188, 189,

307; his new Journal, 2, 210, 217;

mentioned, 1, 255, 269, 2, 327.
Hallucinations, Census of. See Census.
Hamilton, Alexander, 1, 5.
Hamilton, Sir W., 1, 189.
Hampton Court, 1, 287.
Kapgood, Norman, 2, 264.
Harris, Frank, The Man Shakespeare,

2, 330, 335, 33(>:

Harris, William T., 1, 201, 202, 204.
Hartmann, Karl R. E. von, 1, 191, 2,

293- .

Harvard Medical School, in the sixties,

1, 71 Jf.; and the Medical License

Bill, 2, 67.

Harvard Psychological Laboratory,
beginning of, 1, 179 n.; Miinsterberg
in charge of, 301, 302.

Harvard Summer School, 2, 4.

Harvard University, beginning of J.'s
service in, 1, 165; courses in philos-
ophy offered by, 191; Hegelism at,
208; contrasted with German uni-
versities, 217, 218 and n.; Depart-
ment of Philosophy, J. on the future
of, 317, 318; J.'s new courses at, 2,
3, 4; routine business of professors,
45 and n.; a possible genuine philo-
sophic universe at, 122; confers
LL.D. on J., 173 and n.; J. resigns
professorship at, 220, 266 and n.;
Roosevelt as possible President of,
232 and n.

Havens, Kate, 1, 85 n.

Hawthorne Julian, Bressant, 1, 167.

Hav, John, 1, 251.

Hegel, Georg W. F., Aesthctik, 1, 87;
mentioned, 202, 205, 208, 305.

Hegelianism (Hegelism), at Harvard, 1,
208; in the Psychology, 304 and «.,
305; mentioned, 2, 237.

Hegelians, 1, 205.

Heidelberg, 1, 137.

Helmholtz, H. L. F. von, Optics, 1,
266; mentioned, 72, 119, 123, 137,
224, 225, 347.

Helmholtz, Frau von, 1, 347.

Henderson, Gerard C, 2, 275.

Henry, Joseph, 1, 7.

Henry, Colonel (Dreyfus case), 2, 98.

Herder, Johann G. von, 1, 141.

Hering, Ewald, 1, 212.

Hewlett, Maurice, Halfway House, 2,

34°-

Hey mans, G., Einfiihrung in die Meta-
physial*., 2, 237 and n.

Hibbert Foundation lectures (Man-
chester College), 2, 283, 284.

Hibbert Journal, 2, 313, 348.

Higginson, Henry L., takes charge of
J.'s patrimony, 1, 233; and the Har-
vard Union, 2, 108 and n.; men-
tioned, 9, 10, 181, 191, 261, 287, 329.
See Contents.

Higginson, James J., 1, 102, 127.

Higginson, Storrow, 1, 35.

Higginson, T. W., 2, 191.

Hildreth, J. L., 1, 27?, 277.

Hildreth, Mrs. J. L., 1, 276.

Hoar, George F., 2, 191.

Hobhouse, L. T., and "The Will to
Believe," 2, 207, 209; mentioned,
282. See Contents.

Hodder, Alfred, 2, 14.

INDEX

37i

Hodges, George, 2, 276.

Hodgson, Richard, death of, 2, 242,
258; his work and character, 242; and
Mrs. Piper, 242; J. investigates Mrs.
Piper's claim to give communica-
tions from his spirit, 286, 287; J.'s
report thereon, 317, 319, 324; men-
tioned, 1, 228, 229 n., 254, 281.

Hodgson, Shadworth H., "Time and
Space," 1, 1 88; "Theory of Prac-
tice," 188; "Philosophy and Ex-
perience," and "Dialogue on the
Will," 243-245; mentioned, 143, 191,
202, 203, 204, 205, 208, 222. See
Contents.

Hoffding, Harold, 2, 216.

Holland, Mrs. See Mediums.

Holmes, O. W., 1, 71.

Holmes, O. \V., Jr., 1, 60, 73, 76, 80,
154, 155, 2, 10, 51. See Contents.

Holmes, Mrs. O. \V Jr. (Fanny Dix-
well), her "panel" and its inscri]
tion, 2, 156 and n., 157.

Holt, Edwin B., 2, 234.

Holt, Henry, 2, 18. See Contents.

Holt, Henry, & Co., J. contracts to
write volume on Psychology tor, 1,
194.

Homer, 1, ill.

Hooper, Edward W., 2, 156.

Hooper, Ellen, 1, 76 and n.

Hooper, Ellen (Mrs. John Potter), 2,
275.

Hooper, Louisa, 2, 275.

Hopkins, Woolsey R., describes acci-
dent to H. James, Senior, 1, 7, 8.

Horace Mann Auditorium, 2, 17.

Horse-swanping, 1, 271.

House of Commons, 1, 345, 346.

Howells, W. D., Indian Summer, 1, 253;
Shadow of a Dream, 298; Hazard of
New Fortieses, 298, 299; Rise of Silas
Lapham, 337; Minister's Charge, 307,
308; Lemuel Barker, 308; Criticism
and Fiction, 308; mentioned, 1, 158,
2, io. See Contents.

Howells, Mrs. W. D., 1, 253, 298, 2 , 1.

Howison, George H, 1, 239 «., 334, 2,
78. See Contents.

Hugo, Victor, Les Miserable*, 1, 263;
La Legende des Siecles, 2, 63; men-
tioned, 1, 90, 2, 51.

Huidekoper, Rosamund, 2, 275.

Humanism, 2, 245, 282.

Humboldt, H. A. von, Travels, 1, 62.

Humbol It, W., letters of, 1, 141.

Hume, David, 1, 187, 2, 18, 123, 165.

Hunnewell, Walter, 1, 68.

Hunt, William M., 1, 24.

Hunter, Ellen (Temple), 2, 258, 262.
Huxley, Thomas H., J. quoted on, 1,

22 i v.; his I Letters, 226 «., 2,

248; mentioned, 2, 2
Hyatt, Alpheus, 1, 31.
Hyslop, James 11., 2, 24:, ;

Ideal, the, 1, 238.

Idealism, Absolute, Royce's argument

for, 1, 242.
Immortality, 1, 310,2, 214, :■ ■.
Imperialism, 2, "4.
Indians, in Brazil, 1, 66, 6 ,
Indifferentism, I, .
Insane, pro :1 society f->

improve condition of, 2, 273, 274.
Intellectualism, 2, 291, 292.
Italian language, 1, 341, 2, 222.
Italy, 1, 175, 180, 1 8k

Jacks, L. P., 2, 339, 348.

Jackson, Henry, 1, 2-4, 275.

Jacobi, Friedrich H., 1, 141.

James, Alexander R. (J.'s son), 2, 37,
43, 92. See Contents.

James, Alice (J.'s sister), her diary
quoted, 1, 16, in England with H.
James, Jr., from 1885 on, 258; her
illness, 258, 259, 284; her diary
quoted, 259 ».; quoted, on J.'
European trip in 1889, 289, 290; her
death, 319; mentioned, 18, 47, 60,
69, 9i> 103, 142, 172, 183, 217, 220,
281, 2-^, 286, 2, 127. See Contents.

James, Mrs. Catherine (Barber), third
wife of W. James I, (J.'s paternal
grandmother), "a dear gentle lady,"
1, 6; her house in Albany, 105; men-
tioned, 4, 5 n., 7.

James, Garth Wilkinson (J.'s brother),
wounded at Fort Wagner, 1, 43, 44,
49; mentioned, 1, 17, 33, 35, 36, 40,
41, 42, 51, 52, 63, 69, 70, ^S, 135 n.,
136, 192.

James, Henry, Senior (J.'s father),
quoted, on his father, 1, 4, his grand-
father, 5, and his m >ther, 5 and n.; his
habit of th mght expressed in his de-
scription of his mother, 5 n.; sketch oi
his life and character, 7-19; maimed
for life by accident, 7, 8; his discon-
tent with orthodox dispensation, 8;
marries Mary Walsh, 8; J.'s strik-
ing resemblance to, 10; relations with
his chil Iren, 10, 18, 19; J.'s introduc-
tion to his Literary Remai is, 10, [3;
letters of, to Emerson, 11; effect of
Swedenborg's works on, 12; the only
business of his later life, 12, 13; J.'s

37^

INDEX

estimate of, 13; Henry James quoted
on, 14; letter of, to editor of New
Jerusalem Messenger, 14-16; his di-
rections regarding his funeral service,
16; Godkin quoted on, 17; E. W.
Emerson quoted on, 17, 18 and «.;
and Miss Emerson, 18 n.; influence
of his "full and homely idiom" on
the conversation of his sons, 18;
his philosophy, discussed by J., 96,
97; his essay on Swedenborg, 117;
letter of, to Henry James, 169;
dangerously ill, 218; J.'s last let-
ter to, 218-220; his Secret of Swe-
denborg., 220; his death, 221; J.'s
memories of, 221, 222; his mentality
described, 241, 242; compared with
Carlyle, 241; mentioned, 2, 6, 7, 27,
36> 53, 68, 80, 92, 103, 104, 115 and
n., 118, 135 n., 153, 157, 158 and ».,
175, 217, 260, 289, 290, 316, 2, 39,
278. See Contents.

Literary Remains of, edited by J.,
1, 4 and »., 5 «., 10, 13, 236, 239, 240,
241.
James, Mrs. Henry, Senior (Mary
Walsh), (J.'s mother), her character,
1, 9; her death, 218; mentioned, 8,
69, 80, 103, 117, 156, 175, 183, 219,
220. See Contents.
James, Henry, Jr. (J.'s brother), im-
pressions of an elder generation re-
flected in The JVings of the Dove, 1,
7; and his mother, 9; his birth, 9;
quoted, on his father, 14; influence
of his father's "idiom" on his speech,
18; at the College de Boulogne, 20;
early secret passion for authorship,
21; his "meteorological blunder," 21;
quoted, on J., as "he sits drawing,"
22, 23; letter of his father to, 169;
his feeling for Europe, 209; its reac-
tion on him and on J., contrasted,
209, 210; described by J., 288; his
"third manner" of writing criticized
by J., 2, 240, 277-279; his paper on
Boston, 252; mentioned, 1, 17, 25,
33, 36, 40, 41, 45, 51, 53, 68, 70, 76,
80, 90, 94, 95, 99, 100, 115, 117, 118,
136, 138, 141, 148 «., 174, 175, 177,
178, 180, 218, 219, 240, 258, 260, 262,
269, 283, 284, 286, 287, 289, 290, 319,
2> 10, 35, 61, 62, 84, 105, 106, no,
161, 167, 168, 169, 170, 192, 193, 215,
224, 250, 280, 315, 333, 335, 338, 341,
350. See Contents.,

Works of: The American, 1, 185;
The American Scene, 2, 264, 277, 299;

The Bostonians, 1, 250, 251, 252, 253;
The Golden Bowl, 2, 240; Notes of a
Son and Brother, 1, 10, 11 n., 24, 32,
36, 135 n.; Partial Portraits, 280; The
Portrait of a Lady, 36; Princess Cas-
samassima, 251; The Reverberator,
280; Roderick Hudson, 184; W. W.
Story, Life of, 27 ;;.; The Tragic Muse,
299; A Small Boy and Others, 4 n.,
8 n., 9, 10, 14, 20, 21, 22, 23; The
JVings of the Dove, 7, 36, 2, 240.
James, Henry, 3d (J.'s son), 1, 275, 278,
279, 282, 329, 330, 336, 343, 2, 30, 31 ,

84, 129, 143, 1 45, 147, 159, 324- See
Contents.

James, Hermann (J.'s son), birth of, 1,
234, 235; death of, 247.

James, Margaret M. (J.'s daughter),
birth of, 1, 267; mentioned, 27 c, 276,
279, 281, 322, 332, 336, 2, 43, 54, 98,
102, no, 130, 191. See Contents.

James, Robertson (J.'s brother), in
Union army, 1, 43, 44; mentioned,
J7> 33, 4i, 43, 52, 60, 69, 70, 81, 136.

James, William, J.'s grandfather, his
career, from penury to great wealth,
1, 2, 3; a leading citizen of Albany,
3; personal appearance, 3; anec-
dotes of, 3, 4; H. James, Senior,
quoted on, 4; his stiff Presbyterian-
ism and its results, 4; his will disal-
lowed by court, 4, 6; marries Cath-
erine Barber, 4.

James, William, J.'s uncle, 1, 6.

James, William.

His ancestors in America, 1, 1;
recurrence of his father's habit of
thought in, 5 n.; and his mother, 9;
resemblance of, to his father, 10;
quoted, on his father, 13; influence
of his father's "idiom," 18 and n.;
frequent changes of schools and
tutors, 19; in Europe, 1855 to 1858,
19; at the College de Boulogne, and
the "Academy" of Geneva, 20;
quoted, on his education, 20; in-
terest in exact knowledge, 20; be-
gins study of anatomy at Geneva,
21; his cosmopolitanism of con-
sciousness, 22; widely read in three
languages, 22; effect of his early
training, 22; takes up painting, 22-
24; portrait of Katharine Temple,
24; physique, personal appear-
ance and dress, 24, 25; temperament
and conversation, 26; "smiting"
quality of his best talk, 27; keen
about new things, 28; disadvantage

INDEX

373

of being too encouraging to "little
geniuses," 28, 29; freer criticism of
those who had arrived, 29; influ-
ence as a teacher at Harvard, 29, 30;
in Lawrence Scientific School, 31
and n.; physical condition keeps him
out of army in Civil War, 47; trans-
fers from Chemistry to Comparative
Anatomy, 47; and Jeffries Wyman,
48, 49; begins course at Medical
School, 53; philosophy begins to
beckon, 53; joins Agassiz's expedi-
tion to the Amazon, 54; his nine
months with Agassiz not wasted,
55, 56; has small-pox at Rio, 60, 61,
63 and n.; interne at Mass. General
Hospital, 71; again in Medical
School, 71-84.

Impaired health causes his visit
to Germany, 84, 85; in Dresden,
Berlin and Teplitz, 85, 86; describes
his condition in letter to his father,
95, 96; returns to U. S., 139; takes
degree of M.D. (1869), 140; eye-
weakness, 140, 141; scope of his
reading, 141, 142 and «., 143; his
note-books, 143, 144; relation be-
tween earlier and later writings, 144
and n.; morbid depression, 145;
chapter on the "sick soul" the story
of his own case, 145-147; return of
resolution and self-conrklence, 147,
148; Instructor in Physiology, 165;
his real subject, physiological psy-
chology, 165, 166; his deepest incli-
nation always toward philosophy, 166;
H. James, Senior's, letter on the
change in J.'s mental tone and out-
look, 169, 170; decides to devote him-
self to biology, 171; Europe again,
171; end of the period of morbid de-
pression, 171; gives course in Psy-
chology and organizes Psychological
Laboratory, 179 and «.; contribu-
tions to periodicals, 180; on teaching
of philosophy in American colleges,

Marries Alice H. Gibbens, 192;
effect of his new domesticity, 193;
importance of his wife's companion-
ship and understanding, 193; con-
tracts to write a volume on Psy-
chology^ 194; vacations in Keene
Valley, 195; his mode of life there,
195; a bit of self-analysis, 199, 200;
first work on Psychology, 203, 223;
declines invitation to teach at Johns
Hopkins, 203; in Europe, 1880-83,

208 ff.; and Henry James, 209, 210;
"reaction" on Europe, 2 9, 210;
death of his mother, 21 8, ami of his
father, 2:1; his memories of them,
221, 222; corresponding membei
English Society for Psychical Re-
search, 227; an organizer and officer
of the American Society, 22~; inves-
tigates psychic phenomena, 227 ff.;
conducts American G u I Hallu-
cinations, 22^, 229; edits his father's
Literary Remains, 236, 239 ff.; his life
at Chocorua, 2-1 , 272, 2 - ;.

Abroad in 1 1, - .;t Inter-

national Congress of Physiological
Psychology, 288, 2S9, 290; his new
house in Cambridge, 2, , 291; his
inclination toward the under-
292, 293, 2, 17S; completion of the
Psychology, 1, 293 ff.; effect of its
publication on his reputation, 300;
prepares an abridgment {Briefer
Coarse), 300, 301; turns his attention
more fully toward philosophy, 301;
raises money for Harvard Labora-
tory, 301, and recommen.is Miinster-
berg as its head, 301 ; his sabbatical
year abroad, 302, 320 ff.; beginning
of his friendship with Flournoy, 320;
receives honorary degree at Padua,

•333-

How his mind was moving during
the nineties, 2, 2 ff.; his opinion of
psychology, 2; new courses at Har-
vard, 3, 4; outside lecturing, 4;
would devote his thought and work
to metaphysical and religious ques-
tions, 5; frustrations, ,-, t*; personal
appearance, 6, 7; his daily muni,
7-9; the Club, 9, 10; nervous break-
down, 10; D. S. Miller quoted on,
11-17; attitude toward spelling re-
form, 18, 19; and Cleveland's Ven-
ezuela Message, 26 ff.; experiments
with mescal, 3;, 37; Chautauqua
lectures, 40 ff.; work on college com-
mittees, 45 «., at Faculty meetings,
45 n., lectures at Lowell Institute, 54
and n., 55; invited to deliver Giffor i
Lectures at Edinburgh, 55; Bl<
strictures on hi> English, 59; on a
proposed Medical License bill, 66 ff.;
on the Spanish War, 73, -4; corre-
sponding member oi V.i [emie des
Sciences Morales et Politiques, 75; a
memorable night in the Adirondacks,

75-77-
Effect on his health ot misadven-

374

INDEX

tures in the Adirondacks, 78, 79, 90,
91; two years of exile and illness, 92
ff.; an individualist and a liberal,
93; opposed to Philippine policy of
McKinley administration, 93, 94;
his teaching limited to a half-course a
year, 171; lectures and contributions
to philosophic journals, 171 ; strain on
his strength, 171; the spirit in which
he did his work, 172, 173; receives
LL.D. from Harvard, 173 and n.; re-
plies to Prof. Pratt's Questionnaire,
212-215; at Philosophical Congress
at Rome, 219, 220, 225 ff.; lectures
at Stanford University, 220, 235, 240,
244 and n.; and the San Francisco
earthquake, 220, 246 ff.; Pragmatism,
220; resigns his professorship, 220,
266 and n.; the last meeting of his
class, 220, 221, 262.

Declining health, 283, 233\ lect-
ures on Hibbert Foundation at Ox-
ford, 283, 284; uncompleted projects,
284; his attitude toward war, 284,
285, and universal arbitration, 285;
tolerance fundamental in his scheme
of belief, 286; his report on "Mrs.
Piper's Hodgson control," 286, 287;
last months in Europe, ^^2 ff-> fare-
well to Harvard Faculty, 334; re-
turns to Chocorua, 350; the end, 350.

Letters containing mora! counsel,
or touching upon problems of Belie/,
2, 57, 65, 76, 77, 149, 150, 196, 197,
210, 211, 212-215, 269, 326, 344-346;
Conduct, 1, "-79, 100, 128 ff., 14s,
199, 2co, 2, 131, 132; Life and Death,
1, 218-220, 309-3", 2, 130, 154.

Works of:—
"Address of the President before the

Society for Psychical Research," 2,

30 and n.
"Bain and Renouvier," 1, 186.
Briefer Course (abridgment of the

Principles of Psychology), 1, 300,

( 301,304,314-

"Brute and Human Intellect," 1, 180.

"Certain Blindness in Human Beings,
A," 2, 5.

Collected Essays and Reviews, 1, 225
n., 2, 20 »., 287, 295 n.

"Confidences of a Psychical Re-
searcher," 2, 327 and n.

"Dilemma of Determinism, The," 1,
_ 237 and «., 238.

"Does Consciousness Exist?" See

- — ""Notion de Conscience, La."

"Energies of Men, The," 2, 252, 284.
TeeTIng of Effort, The," 1, 207.

"Frederick Myers's Service to Psy-
chology," 2, 151 and n.

"German-American Novel, A." 1,
104 n.

GirFord Lectures on Natural Religion,
J. invited to deliver, 2, 55; prepar-
ing for, 85, 92, 93; delivered, 144/.;
success of, 147, 149, 150, 151; out-
line of, 150; published as Varieties
of Religious Experience, 169; men-
tioned, 75, 96, 97, 105, 108, in,
115, 127, 134, 2, 162, 164, 165.
Ani see Varieties of Religious Ex-
perience, infra.

"How Two Minds c.:n Know One
Thing," 2, 217 and n.

Human Immortality, 2, 1S0 and n.

"Introspective Psychology, On Some
Omissions of," 1, 230.

"Knight-Errant of the Intellectual
Life, A," 2, 107 n.

Lowell Institute Lectures, 2, 54 and

»; 55-
Meaning of Truth, The, 2, 20 n., 327.
Memories and Studies, 1, 153, 226 n.,

229 n., 2, 39 n., 59 n., 107 n., 151 n.,
<( 193, 247, 285 n., 287,327 n.
"Moral Equivalent of War, The," 2,

"Notion de Conscience, La," 2, 226
and n., 267 and n.

"Perception of Space, The," 1, 266 n.

"Perception of Time, The," 1, 266.

" Philosophic Reveries," 2, 339.

"Philosophical Conceptions and Prac-
tical Results," 2, 5.'

Philosophy, Some Problems of, 1, 144,
n., 1 85.

Pluralistic Mystic, A (lectures on
Hibbert Foundation), 2, 39 n.,
300,311, 313, 322, 324,325, 326,

339-
Pragmatism, 2, 17, 276, 279, 292, 294,

295, 300; translated by W. Jerusa-
lem, 297.

"Pragmatism's Conception of

Truth," 2, 271 and n.
"Proposed Shortening of the College

Course," 2, 45 n.
Psychology, Principles of, 1, 194, 203,

223, 224, 249, 268, 269, 283, 293/.,

296, 297, 300, 301, 304 and »., 305,
<( 307,320,2, 12, 13.

"Quelques Considerations sur la
Methode Subjective," 1, 180.

Radical Empiricism, Essays in, 2,
267 n.

"Radical Empiricism, Is it Solipsis-
tic?" 2, 218.

INDEX

375

"Radical Empiricism as a Philos-
ophy," 2, 197 n.

Selected Essays and Relieves, 2, 271.

"Sentiment of Rationality, The," 1,
203 and n.

"Shaw Monument, Oration on Un-
veiling of," 2, 59, 60.

"Spatial Quale, '1 he," 1, 205 and n.

"Spencer's Definition of Mind as
Correspondence," 1, 180.

Talks to Teachers and Students on
Some of Life's Problems, 2, 4, 5, 40,
79, 286.

"Tigers in India, 1 he," 2, 20 n.

Varieties of Religious Experience.
(Giribrd Lectures), 1, 145-147, 293,
2, 169, 170, 209, 210, 268.

"What Psychical Research has Ac-
complished," 1, 229 and n., 306.

"Will to Believe, The," 2, 44,48, 85,
87, SS, 207, 208, 209, 282.

Will to Believe, The, and Other Essays
in Popular Philosophy, 1, 229 7:.,
237 n., 280 »., 2, 4, 5, 34, 58 »., 64.

"Word More about Truth, A," 2, 295.
See also list of Dates at the begin-
ning of Volume I, and the partial
bibliography (Appendix II, infra).

James, Mrs. William (Alice Gibbens), 1,
192, 193, 195, 196, 217, 218, 232,
237, 247, 269, 276, 2—, 278, 279,

28l, 286, 288, 294, 2.;-, 298, 316,
3I9, 321, 325, 328, 337, 338, 339,

340, 341, 346, 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 20, 24, 34,
35. 36, 37, 38, 52, 59, 60, 63, 92, 93,
96, 97, no, in, 112, 113, 129, 134,
145, 147, 158, 159, 161, 165, 175,
176, 182, 187, 188, 193, 215, 223,
233, 247, 250, 256, 258, 259, 275,

312, 3*3, 333, 334, 33$, 35°- See
Contents.

James, William (J.'s son), birth cf, !,
234; mentioned, 237, 260, 275, 276,
277, 282, 329, 330, 336, 346, 2, 92, 98,
129, 159, 174, 175, 185, 186, 187, 250,
258, 259, 274, 275, 276. See Contents.

Jameson Raid, 2, 27.

Janet, Pierre, 2, 216, 217, 226, 254.

Janet, Mme. Pierre, 2, 216.

Jap, a dog, 1, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279.

Jefferies, Richard, The Life of the Fields,
2, 258, 259.

Jeffries, B. Joy, 1, 163.

Jerome, W. T., 2, 264.

Jerusalem, W. See Contents.

Jevons, F. B., 2, 306.

"Jimmy," students' name for the
Briefer Course, 1, 301.

Johns Hopkins University, J. declines
invitation to teach at, 1, : ;.

Johnson, Alice, 2, 311.

Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 1,
266,2, 139.

Jung v Johann K., Autobiog-

m y, L 155-

I i, Horace M., 2, 271.

Kant, Immanuel, Kritik derreinen
nunft, 1, 138, 2, I--,; J. lectui
on, 4;, 4-, 51, 54; mentioned, 1, 1 17,
_ 14;. 1 >i, - -- -5,2, 3.

Kaulbach, W. von, 1, 90.

Keane, Bi hop, 1,

Keene Valley, A.iirondacks, J.'s sum-
mer holi lays in, 1, i<,4, 195, 196;
eventful 24 hours, and its effect, 2,
75-79, 95; his further misadventure,
90, 91; mentioned, 1, 232, 2, 51, 2;',,
161, 1

Kipling, Rudyar 1, :t Failed,

1, 307; mentioned, 2, 21, 2;, 231.

Kitchin, George W., 2, 306.

Knox, H. V., 2, 313, 314.

Kruger, Paul, 2, 27.

Kolliker, R. A. von, 1, 123.

Kosmos, the startling discoveries con-
cerning, 1, 101.

Kuhnemann, Eugen, 2, 263.

La Farge, Bancel, 2, 275.

La Farge, John, 1, 24, 91,2, 173.

Lamar, Lucuis Q. C, 1, 251.

Lamb, Charles, 2, 239.

Lamb House, Rye, Henry Jai

English home, 2, io~, 1 1 1.
Lawrence Scientific School, Chemical

laboratory in, 1, 31; C. VV. Eliot

quoted on J.'s course in, 31, 32 and n.
Leibnitz, Baron G. W. von, 2, 13.
Lemaitre, Jules, 2, 63.
Leonardo, 2, 227, 228, 245.
Leopardi, Giacomo, "To Sylvia," 1,

246 and n.
Lesley, Susan I., Recollections of my

Mother, 2, 135 and n.
Lessing, Gotthold E., Emilia C; tti

1, 91; Fischer's Essay on Xathan der

Weise, 94.
Leuba, James H., 2, 210,211,218. See

Contents.
Lincoln, Abraham, effect of his death,

1, 66, 67; characterized by J., 67.
Linville, N. C, 1, 316, 31-.
Lister, Sir Joseph, 1, 72.
Lloyd, Henry D., 2, 166.
Locke, John, 1, 191, 2, 165, 257.
Lodge, Henry Cabot, 2, 30.

376

INDEX

Lodge, Sir Oliver, 1, 229 n.

Loeser, Charles A., 1, 337, 339.

Lombroso, Cesar, 2, 15.

London, 1, 175, 2, 307.

London, Times, 2, 43, 65, 118.

Long, George, 1, 78.

Loring, Katharine P., 1, 259, 262, 311,
316.

Lotze, Rudolf H., 1, 206, 208.

Loubet, Emile, President of France, 2,
89, 98.

Lowell, A. Lawrence, 2, 326.

Lowell, James Russell, death of, 1,
314, 315 n.; J.'s memory of, 315;
mentioned, 195.

Lucerne, 2, 133.

Ludwig, Karl F. W., 1, 72, 160, 215.

Lutoslawski, W., 2, 103, 171. See Con-
tents.

McDougall, William, 2, 313, 314, 315.

McKinley, William, and the Spanish
War, 2, 74; Philippine Policy of
his administration disapproved by
J., 93, 94, 289; and Roosevelt, J.'s
description of, 94; mentioned, 50,
101, 102, 109.

MacMonnies, F. W., Bacchante, 2,
62 and »., 63.

Macaulay, Thomas B., Lord, 1, 225.

Mach, Ernst, 1, 211, 212.

Maine, U. S. S., explosion of, 2, 73.

Manchester College. See Hibbert
Foundation.

Marcus Aurelius, 1, 78, 79.

Marshall, Henry Rutgers, Instinct and
Reason, 1, 87. See Contents.

Martin, L. J., 2, 246, 249.

Martineau, James, 1, 283.

Mascagni, Pietro, / Rantzau, 1, 334,

335-
Massachusetts General Hospital, 1,

71,72.
Materialism, 1, 82, 83.
Maudsley, Henry, 1, 143.
Maupassant, Guy de, 1, 282.
Medical License bill (proposed), in

Mass., 2, 66 /.
Mediums, I, 2:8, 2, 287, 311. And see

Paladino, Eusapia, and Piper, Mrs.
Mental Hygiene, Connecticut Society

for, 2, 273; National Committee for,

273-
Merriman, Daniel. See Contents.

Merriman, Mrs. Daniel, 2, 118.

Merriman, R. B., 2, 63, 66, 132, 175.

Mescal, J.'s experiment with, 2, 35, 37.

Metaphysical problems, J.'s mind

haunted by, 2, 2,

Metaphysics, outline of course offered
by J. in, 2, 3, 4; J.'s proposed sys-
tem of, 179, 180.

Meysenbug, Malvida von, Memoiren
einer Idealistin, 2, 135 and n.

Mezes, Sidney E., 2, 14.

Mill, John Stuart, 1, 164, 2, 267.

Miller, Dickinson S., quoted, on J.
as a teacher and lecturer, 2, 11-17;
"Truth and Error," 18; quoted, on
J.'s talks with Columbia Faculty
Club, 265 n.; his "study" of J.,
331, 332; mentioned, 87, 88, 137,
163, 232 «., 282. See Contents.

Mind, 1, 254, 255.

Mind-curers. See Faith-curers.

Miracles, 2, 57, 58.

Mitchell, S. Weir, 2, 37.

Monism, 1, 238, 244, 245.

Montgomery, Edmund, 1, 254, 255.

Morgan, C. Lloyd, 2, 216.

Moritz, C. P., 1, 141.

Morley, John, Voltaire, 1, 144 n.

Morse, Frances R., 1, 197, 2, 106, 113,
232. See Contents.

Morse, Mary. See Elliot, Mrs. John W.

Morse, John T., 2, 10.

Motterone, Monte, 1, 324.

Muller, G. E., 1, 312,313.

Munich Congress, 2, 46, 50.

Munk, H., 1, 213, 214.

Miinsterberg, Hugo, recommended by
J. as head of Harvard Psychological
Laboratory, 1, 301, 302; "the Rud-
yard Kipling of philosophy," 318;
"an immense success," 332; criti-
cizes J., 2, 267, 268; mentioned, 1,
312, 2, 2, 18, 121, 229, 270, 293, 320.
See Contents.

Murray, Gilbert, 2, 271.

Musset, Alfred de, 2, 63.

Myers, F. W. H., Hitman Personality,
1, 229 n.,2, 151, 185 and n.; death
of, 141; J.'s tribute to, 141, 151, 157;
mentioned, 1, 287, 290, 2, 57, 114,
118, 156, 157, 161. See Contents.

Myers, Mrs. F. W. H., 1, 290, 345, 2,
I51, 157-

Naples, 2, 222.

Nation, The, review of Literary Remains
of Henry James in, 1, 240, 24 1; J.'s
comments on, 284; and Cleveland's
Venezuela Message, 2, 28; men-
tioned, 1, 70, 92, 104 and «., 117,
118, 161, 186, 188, 189, 2, 42, 182,

331-
Nauheim (Bad), 2, 92, 93, 95, 104, 107,

134, 135,157, 158, 160,333,338.

INDEX

377

Neilson, Adelaide, 1, 168.

Nevins, John C, Demon Possession and
Allied Themes, 2, 56 and n. j

New Forest, The, 2, 160, 161.

New Jerusalem Messenger, H. James,
Senior's, letter to editor of, 1, 14-16.

New World, The, 1, 334, 2, 44.

New York City, 2, 264, 265.

Newcomb, Simon, 1, 250.

Newport, R. I., 2, 202, 203.

Newton, Sir Isaac, 2, 1 n.

Nichols, Herbert, 1, 335, 2, 14.

Nietzsche, Friedrich W, 2, 233.

Nivedita, Sister, 2, 144.

Nonentity, Idea of, 2, 293.

Nordau, Max S., Entartung, 2, 19; men-
tioned, 17.

Norton, Charles Eliot, Ruskin's letters
to, 2, 206; mentioned, 1, 181, 291,
331, 33%, 347, 2, 191, 199. See Con-
tents.

Norton, Grace, 1, 284, 2, 191. See
Contents.

Norton, Mrs. Charles E. (Susan Sedg-
wick), 1, 181.

Norton Woods, the, 2, 201.

Olney, Richard, and the Venezuela

Message, 2, 27, 29.
Optimism, 1, 83, 238.
Oregon, forest fires in, 2, 80.
Ostensacken, Baron, 1, 337, 339.
Ostwald, W., 2, 229.
Oxford, 2, 307.

Padua, Galileo anniversary at, 1, 333
and n.; University of, confers degree
on J., 333.

Paedagogy, 2, 47.

Paladino, Eusapia, 2, 186 and «., 311,

32°> 327-

Paley, William, 1, 283.

Pallanza, Italy, 1, 329.

Palmer, George H., a Hegelian, 1,
205, 208; investigates psychic phe-
nomena with J., 227; mentioned,
202, 292,335, 2, 2, 18. See Contents.

Palmer, Mrs. Alice Freeman, 2, 124.

Papini, Giovanni, Crepuscolo dei Filo-
sofi, 2, 245, 246; mentioned, 172,
227, 228, 229, 257, 267.

Paris, 1, I74> !75> 2I7-

Paris Commune (1871), 1, 161.

Parkman, Francis, 2, 10.

Parkman, Mrs. Henry, 2, 205.

Parthenon, the, 2, 224, 22;.

Party spirit, the only permanent force

of corruption in the U. S., 2, 100.
Pasteur, Louis, 1, 72, 225.

Paty du Clam, Colonel du, 2, 98.

Paulsen, Friederich, Einleitung, 1, 346;
2, 244.

Peabody, Elizabeth, 1, 112.

Peabody, Frances G., 2, 229.

Peace Congress 2, 277.

Peillaube, M., 2, 228, 229.

Peirce, Benjamin, 1, ;:-

Peirce, Charle, S., j J, 34, 80, 149, 169,
2, 191, 233, 294, 528.

Peirce, James M., 2, 258.

Perry, Ralph Barton, his List 0/ Pub-
lished I 'Frit 'in gs of J., 1, 144, 223, 224;
mentioned, 2, 121, 163, 234, 295-

Perry, Thomas S., with J. in Berlin,

1, 107, 109, in, 113, 114, 117, 124;
mentioned, 40 n., 60, 91, 94, 102, 106,
134, 151, 157, [69,2, io. See Con-
tents.

Pertz, Mrs. Emma (Wilkinson), 1, 135
and n.

Pessimism, 1, 238.

Peterson, Ellis, 1, 166.

Pfiuger, Dr., 1, 156.

Phelps, Edward J., 2, 27 n.

Philippine question, the, 2, 167, 168.

Philippines, policy of McKinley ad-
ministration concerning, 2, 93, 94;
duty of U. S. with regard to, .

Philosophical Club, University of Cali-
fornia, J.'s lectures to, 2, 79.

Philosophical Review, 2, 228.

Philosophical Societv, J. refuses to join,

2, 164.

Philosophy, J. begins to feel the pull

of, 1, S3, 54! difficulties attending

teaching of, in American colleg .

188, 189, 190.
Physiological Psychology, 1, 165, 166,

179.
Physiological Psychology, International

Congress of, 1, 288, 2 >, : , .
Physiology, J. attends lectures on, :

Berlin, 1, 118, 120, 121; J.'s fir

teaching subject, 165.
Picquart, M. G. (Drevt'u, case), 2, 67,

98.
Piddington, J. G, 2, 31 1.
Pierce, George W., 2, 14.
Pillon, Francois, 1, 208, 229, 233, 343,

2, 45, 79. See Coitents.
Pillon, Mine. Francois, 2, 73, 204, 338,

343- .

Pinkham, Lydia E., "the \ onus ot

Medicine," 1, 261 and w.
Piper, Mrs. William, J. quoted on, 1,

22-, 228, mentioned, 2, 242, 311,3] ,.

320. And see Hodgson, R.
Plato, 1, 283.

378

INDEX

Pluralism, 1, 1 86, 2, 155.

Pluralistic idealism, 2, 22.

Pollock, Sir Frederick, 1, 222, 2, 199.

Pomfret, Conn., 1, 153, 154.

Popular Science Monthly, 1, 190.

Porter, Noah, 1, 231, 232.

Porter, Samuel, 1, 214.

Porto Rico, 2, 74.

Potter, Horatio, 1, 59.

Powderly, Terence V., 1, 284.

Pragmatism, and radical empiricism,
distinction between, 2, 267; dis-
advantages of the word as a title,
271, 295, 298.

Prague, 1, 211, 212, 213.

Pratt, James B., J.'s replies to his
questionnaire on religious belief, 2,
212-215.

Pratt, M., 2, 204.

Prince, William H., 1, 37, 39, 42, 44.

Prince, Mrs. William H. (Katharine
James), 1, 42. See Contents.

Princeton Theological Seminary, H.
James, Senior, at, 1, 8.

Pringle-Pattison, A. S., 2, 325, 326.
And see Seth, Andrew.

Profession, choice of, 1, 75, 79, 123.

Prussia, political conditions in (1867),

1, 95; and France, 95.
Prussians, 1, 122.

Psychic phenomena, investigated by
J. and Palmer, 1, 225 ff.; mentioned
243, 250, 305, 306, 2, 56, 287, 320.

Psychical Research, American Society
for, J. active in organizing, 1, 227;
amalgamated with English Society,
227; J. on its function, 249, 250;
242, 286, 306.

Psychical Research, English Society for,
founded, 227; J. a corresponding
member, vice-president, and presi-
dent of, 227; 229 »., 248.

Psychologists, American Association of^

2, 20.

Psychology, J. begins to read on, 1,
118, 119; J. gives course in, 179; J.
helps to make it a modern science, 224,
225; "a nasty little subject," 2, 2.

Psychology, Experimental, in U. S.,
History of, 1, 179 n.

Psychology, Physiological. See Phy-
siological Psychology.

Putnam, Charles P., 1, 71, 195, 196,
327, 2, 296.

Putnam, Frederick W., 1, 31.

Putnam, George, 2, 224, 225.

Putnam, James J., letter to J. on

. Medical License bill, 2, 72 ».,• men-

tioned, 1, 71, 168, 195, 196, 2, 112,
128, 147, 249. See Contents.
Putnam, Marian (Mrs. James J.), 2,

249.

Quincy, Henry P., 1, 77, 122.

RadclifFe College, 2, 4, 24, 180 n., 181.

Radcliffe College, J.'s class at. See
Contents.

Radical Empiricism and pragmatism,
distinction between, 2, 267; men-
tioned, 203, 204.

Rafael Sanzio, the Sistine Madonna, 1,
90.

Raffaello, Florentine cook, 1, 339, 341.

Rankin, Henry W., 2, 55. See Contents.

Reed, Thomas B., 2, 50.

Reid, Carveth, 1, 205, 222.

Religion, J.'s views on, 2, 64, 65, 127,
149, 150, 21 1 ff., 269.

Renan, Ernest, death of, 1, 326; men-
tioned, no, 2, 123, 338.

Renouvier, Charles, the Annie i86j
Philosopkique, 1, 138, 186; influence
on J. of his writings on free will, 147,
169; J.'s first acquaintance with his
work, 186; J.'s correspondence with,
186; translates some of J.'s papers,
186; his articles on Fouillee, 231;
Principes de la Nature, 334; his Phi-
losophy of History, 2, 44, 47; his
death, 204; Monadologie and Person-
alisme, 204; mentioned, 1, 138, 205.
See Contents.

Republican Party, the, in 1899, 2, 94.

Reverdin, M., 2, 267.

Rhea, Jannet, 1, 4 n.

Rhea, Matthew, 1, 4 n.

Rhodes, James F., History of the U. S.,
2, 27 n. ; mentioned, 10.

Richet, Charles, 1, 229 «., 2, 114, 225.

Richter, Jean Paul, 1, 141.

Rindge, Frederick H., 1, 330, 2, 39.

Rio de Janeiro, 1, 58 ff.

Risks, choice of, 2, 49, 50.

Ritfer, Charles, 1, 23, 2, 25, 55.

Robertson, Alexander, ?., 8, 9.

Robertson, G. Croom, editor of Mind,

1, 222, 254. See Contents.
Robeson, Andrew R., 1, 23-
Romanism and Anglicanism, 2, 305.
Romanticism, 1, 256.

Rome, Philosophical Congress at, 2,
225 ff., 228; mentioned, 1, 178, 180,

2, 138, 139, 269.

Roosevelt, Theodore, as possible Presi-
dent of Harvard, 2, 232 and n.; men-
tioned, 94, 266.

INDEX

379

Ropes, John C, death of, 2, 108, 109;
mentioned, 1,35,2, 10, 156.

Rosmini-Serbati, Antonio, 1, 295.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1, 142.

Royce, Josiah, early lite, 1, 200, 201;
quoted, on his first acquaintance with
J., 200, 201; brought to Harvard
through J.'s influence, 201; his Re-
ligious Aspect of Philosophy, 239, 242,
265; "a perfect little Socrates," 249;
made professor, 332; and J., as
teachers, compared by Miller, 2, 16;
" the Rubens of philosophy," 86; The
li \ rid and the Individual, 1 13 and «.,
114, 116, 121 and n.; his system,
114; a sketcher in philosophy, 114,
no; mentioned, 1, 238, 239, 255,
262, 2 So, 291, 318, 347, 2, 18, 122,
143,216, 234,321,322. See Contents.

Ruskin, John, his letters to C. E. Nor-
ton, 2, 206, 207; characterized by
J., 206; Modem Painters, 206; men-
tioned, 1, 220, 2, 306.

Rye (England), 2, 104. And see Lamb
House.

Sabatier, Paul, 2, 142.

St. Gaudens, Augustus, his monument

to R. G. Shaw unveiled, 2, 59-61.
St. Louis, hurricane at, 2, 35, 36.
St. Louis Exposition (1904), 2, 216.
Sainte-Beuve, C. A., 1, 142.
Salisbury, Robert Cecil, Marquis of, 2,

27-
Salter, C. C, 1, 51.
Salter, W. M., 1, 248, 346, 2, 97. See

Contents.
Salter, Mrs. W. M. (Mary Gibbens)

1, 248.
San Francisco, earthquake at, 2, 246

jf., 251, 256; mentioned, 80, 81.
Sanctis, Professor di, 2, 225.
Sand, George, and A. de Musset, 2, 63;

mentioned, 1, 106, 182, 183.
Santayana, George, Interpretations of

Poetry and Religion, 2, 122-124; Life

of Reason, 234, 235; mentioned, 1,

335, 2, 14, 121, 225. See Contents.
Sardou, Victorien, Agnes, 1, 168.
Sargent, Epes, Planchette, reviewed by

J., 1, 225 n.
Sargent, John S., 1, 303.
Saturday Club, Early Years of the. See

Emerson, Edward W.
Saxons, the, 1, 86.
Scenery, part played by, in J.'s spiritual

experience, 2, 174, 175.
Schelling, Friedrich W. J. von, 1, 14.

Schiller, F. C. S., his article on J. in
Mind, 2, 65, 66; Studies in Human-
ism, 270; mentioned, i~2, [86 n.,
208, 230,257, 267, 296, 3C0, 311,313,
314,337. See Contents.

Schiller, J. C. Friedrich von, 1, 91, 141,
202.

Schinz, Herr, 2, 337.

Schlegel, August \Y. von, 1, 141.

Schlegel, Karl W. F. von, 1, 141.

Schmidt, Heinrich J., History of German
Literature, 1 , 1 4 1 .

Schopenhauer, Arthur, 1, 191, 2, 293.

Schott, Dr. (Nauheim), 2, 124, 1. ,

134, 157-
Schurman, Jacob G., 1, 334, 2, 166.
Scotland, J. strongly attracted bv, 1,

286.
Scott, Sir Walter, his Journal, 1, 309.
Scripture, Edward W., 1, 334.
Scudder, Samuel IL, 1, 31.
Sea, J.'s views of traveling by, 1, 58.
Seals, trained, 1, 278.
Secretan, Charles, 1, 324.
Sedgwick, Arthur G., 1, 320 and «.,

2, 10.
Sedgwick Lucy (Mrs. Arthur G.}, 1,

320 and n.
Sedgwick, Sara, 1, 76 and n. And see

Darwin, Mrs. W. E.
Sedgwick, Theodora, 1, 181, 291, 315,

317, 328, 331, 2, 151, 152, 191, 200,

207, 308. See Contents.
Selberg, "a swell young Jew," 1, 112,

114, 115.
Semler, Dr., 1, 87.
Seth, Andrew, 2, 96, 116, 144. And

see Pringle-Pattison, A. S.
Seth, James, 2, 144.
Shakespeare: H. Grimm on Hamlet; 1,

in; As You Like It, 144 n., 190; at

Stratford, 2, 166; mentioned, 330,

335, 33&-
Shaler, Nathaniel S., quoted, on J.

Wyman, 1, 48; The Individual, 2,

153 and n., 154; Autobiography, 325;

mentioned, 1, 31, 2, 258, 288. See

Contents.
Shaw, G. Bernard, Ca-sar and Cleopatra,

2,263; mentioned, 330.
Shaw, Robert G., unveiling of St.

Gaudens's monument to, 2, 59—61;

mentioned, 1, 43.
Sherman, William T., 1, 56, 57.
Sidgwick, Henry, "Lecture against

Lecturing," 2, 12; death of, 141;

mentioned, 1, 229 «., 287, 290, 345,

2, 50, I56-

38o

INDEX

Slattery, Charles L. See Contents.

Smith, Adam, 1, 283.

Smith, Norman K. See Contents.

Smith, Paulina C, 2, 106.

Smith, Pearsall, 1, 287.

Snow, William F., quoted, on J. and

the San Francisco earthquake, 2,

247 n.
Snow, Mrs. W. F., 2, 246.
Society for Psychical Research. See

Psychical Research, Society for.
Solomons, Leon M., death of, 2, 119;

his character and work, 119, 120.
Sorbonne, the, J. declines appointment

as exchange professor at, 2, 236 and

;;.
Sorrento, to Amalfi, 2, 221, 222.
Spain, misrule of, in Cuba, 2, 73.
Spanish War, the, 2, 73, 74.
Spannenberg, Frau, 1, 85.
Spectator, The, 2, 1 26.
Spelling reform, J.'s attitude toward,

2, 18, 19.
Spencer, Herbert, Psychology, 1, 188;

Data of Ethics, 264; mentioned, 143,

164, 191, 254.
Spinoza, Baruch, 1, 283, 2, 13.
Spirit-theory, the. See Psychic phe-
nomena.
Spiritualism. See Psychic phenomena.
Spiritualists, and the Medical License

bill, 2, 68.
Springfield Republican, 2, 125.
Stanford, Leland, 2, 242, 244.
Stanford, Mrs. Leland, 2, 242, 244.
Stanford, Leland, Jr., 243.
Stanford University, J.'s lectures at,

235, 240, 244 and n.; a miracle, 241;

its history, 242, 243; what it might

be made, 243, 244.
Stanley, Sir Henry M., 1, 303.
Stanley, Lady, 1, 303.
Starbuck, E. D., Psychology of Religion,

2, 217. See Contents.
Stead, W. T., 2, 276, 277.
Steffens, Heinrich, 1, 141.
Stephen, Sir James Fitz-James, "Essay

on Spirit-Rapping," 1, 34 n.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, Utilitarians, 2,

152; his letters, 176.
Steuben, Baron von, 1, 5.
Storey, Moorfield, 1, 109, 2, 10. See

Contents.
Stout, G. F., 2, 47, 65.
Strasburg, 1, 86, 87.
Stratford-on-Avon, and the Baconian

theory, 2, 166.
Strong, Charles A., 2, 198, 225, 229, 230,

282,295,301,309,310,315,337. See

Contents.
Stumpf, Carl, Tonpsychologie, 1, 266,

267; mentioned, 21 1, 212, 213, 216,

289. See Contents.
Sturgis, James, 1, 184.
Style in philosophic writing, 2, 217,

228, 229, 237, 244, 245, 257, 272, 281,

3?°- .
Subjectivism, tendency to, 1, 249.

Subliminal, Problem of the, 2, 141, 149,

150, 212.
Success, worship of, 2, 260.
Sully, James, 2, 1 «., 225, 226, 228. See

Contents.
"Supernatural" matters. See Psychic

phenomena.
Suttner, Baroness von, Waffennieder,

2, 34°-

Swedenborg, Emmanuel, influence of
his works on H. James, Senior, 1, 12,
13, 14; Society of the Redeemed Form
of Man, quoted, 12 and n.; H. James,
Senior's, essay on, 117; mentioned,
2, 40.

Switzerland, 1, 322, 323, 327, 328, 336.

Sylvain, Mile., 2, 224.

Sylvain, M., 2, 224.

Tappan, Mary, 2, 200. See Contents.
Tappan, Mrs., 1, 118.
Taylor, A. E., 2, 208, 216, 281, 282.
Temple, Ellen, 1, 38, 39, 51, 2, 61, 81.

And see Emmet, Mrs. Temple.
Temple, Henrietta, 1, 39.
Temple, Katharine, J.'s portrait of,

1,24; mentioned, 36, 51, 74, 75. See

Contents.
Temple, "Minny," the original of two

of Henry James's heroines, 1, 2^'^

J. quoted on, 36, 37; her " madness,"

38; mentioned, 43, 51, 74, 75, 98.
Temple, Mrs. Robert (J.'s aunt), 1, 36.
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 2, 276.
Teplitz, 1, 133, 134, 137.
Thames, the, 1, 287.
Thatness. See Whatness.
Thaw, Henry, trial of, 2, 264.
Thayer, Abbott, 2, 276.
Thayer, Gerald, 2, 275, 276.
Thayer, Joseph Henry, 1, 323.
Thayer, Miriam, 1, 323.
Thayer Expedition. See Brazil, Agas-

siz's expedition to.
Thies, Louis, 1, 107, 112, 157.
Thies, Miss, 1, 116.
Thompson, Daniel G., 1, 295.
Tieck, Ludwig, 1, 141.

INDEX

38i

Tolstoy, Leo, IJ'ar and Peace, 2, 37, 40,
4S; and 1'. Bourgetj 37, 38; Anna
Karenina, 41, 48; and H. G. Wells,
316; mentioned, 44, 45, 51, 52, 63.

Torquay, 2, 167.

Townsend, Henry E., 1, 122.

Truth, the, obscured by American phi-
losophers, 2, 237; 272, 337.

Tuck, Henry, 1, 122, 124.

Tuckerman, Emily, 2, 168.

Turgenieff, Ivan, 1, 177, 182, 185.

Twain, Mark, 1, 333, 341, 342, 2, 264.

Tweedie, Mrs. Edmund, 1, 36.

Tweedies, the, 1, 117, 184.

Tychism, 2, 204, 2</2.

Tychistic and pluralistic philosophy ol
pure experience, 2, 187.

Union College, H. James, Senior, grad-
uates at, 1, 8.

Unitarian Review, Davidson's article in,
1, 236.

Unitarianism (Boston), the "bloodless
pallor" of, 1, 236.

United States, J.'s remarks on, 1, 216,
217; and the Philippines, 2, 140, 1 4 1 ;
rushing to wallow in the mire of em-
pire, 141; manner of eating boiled
eggs in, 188; vocalization of people
of, 189; and England, 304, 305.

Upham, Miss, 1, 34, 50.

Uphues, 1, 345, 346.

Van Buren, "Elly," 1, 70, 74, 75.
Van Rensselaer, Stephen, 1, 3.
Venezuela Message, Cleveland's, 2, 26 Jf.
Venus de Milo, 1, 113.
Verne, Jules, Tour of the World in

Eighty Days, 1, 173.
Veronese, Paul, 1, 90.
Verrall, Mrs. A. W. See Mediums.
Vers-chez-les-Blanc, 1, 320, 345, 2, 48.
Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy, 2,

227.
Victoria, Queen, her Jubilee, 1, 270.
Vienna, exhibition of French paintings

at, 1, 210.
Villari, Pasquale, 1, 338, 339, 342.
Villan, Mrs., 1, 338, 339, 342.
Vincent, George E., 2, 41, 42.
Virchow, Rudolf, 1, 72.
Vischer, F. T., Essays, 1, 94; Aesthetik,

.94-

Viti, Signor da, 2, 227.

Vivekananda, 2, 144.
Voltaire, 1, 144 n.
Vulpian, A., 1, 156.

Walcott, Henry P., 1, 347, 2, 10.

Waldstein, Charles, 1, 274, 2, 224. See
Contents.

Walsh, Catherine (J.'s 'Aunt Kate'),
1, 4 1, 51, 60, 61, 70, 80, 81, 1 1 4, 118,
183, 218, 259, 280, 282, 285.

Walsh, Hugh, 1, 8.

Walsh, Rev. Hugh, 1, 8 n.

Walsh, James (J.'s maternal grand-
father), 1, 8.

Walsh, Mary, marries H. James, Sen-
ior, 1, 8; her ancestry, 8, 9. And
see James, Mrs. William.

Walsh, Mrs. Mary (Robertson), 1, 8.

Walston, Sir Charles. See Waldstein,
Charles.

Wambaugh, Eugene, 2, 132.

Ward, James, 2, 312, 313, 314, 315.

Ward, Samuel, 1, 73.

Ward, Thomas W., on the Brazilian
expedition, 1, 59, 60, 65; mentioned,
33. See Contents.

Ward, Dorothy, 2, 166.

Ware, William R., 1, 124, 153.

Waring, Daisy, 2, 202.

Waring, George E., quoted, on Henry
James, 1, 184, 185.

Warner, Joseph B., 2, 160, : 53.

Warren, W. R., 2, 233.

Washington, Booker T., Up from Slav-
ery, 2, 148; mentioned, 60, 61.

Washington, Mrs. Booker T., at Ash-
field, 2, 199.

Washington, George, 1, 5, 277.

Washington, State of, forest fires in, 2,
80.

Wells, H. G., Utopia, 2, 230, 231; An-
ticipations, 23 1; Mankind in the
Making, 231; J.'s appreciation of,
231; Kipps, 241; "Two Studies 'in
Disappointment," 259, 260; First
and Last Things, 316; the Tolstoy of
the English World, 316; mentioned,
246, 257, 318. See Contents.

Werner, G., 2, 242.

Whatness and thatness, 1, 244, 245.

"White man's burden," cant about the,
2, 88.

Whitman, Henry, death of, 2, 156;
mentioned, 1, 298, 302.

Whitman, Sarah (Mrs. Henry), her
character and accomplishments, 1,
302, 2, 205, 206; last illness and
death, 204, 205, 207; mentioned, 1,
309 «., 348, 2, 156, 256. See Con-
tents.

Whitman, Walt, 2, 123.

Whole, Idolatry of the, 1, 246, 247.

382

INDEX

Wilkinson, Emma. See Pertz, Mrs.

Emma.
Wilkinson, J. J. Garth, 1, 135 n.
William II of Germany, his message to

Kruger, 2, 27, 28.
Wilmarth, Mrs., 2, 50.
Witmer, Lightner, 2, 320.
Wolff, Christian, 1, 264.
Woodberry, George E., The Heart 0/

Man, 2, 89, 90.
Woodbridge, F. J. E., Journal, 2, 244.

See Contents.
Worcester, Elwood, The Living World,

2,318.
Wordsworth, W., The Excursion, 1, 168,

169.
Wright, Chauncy, and J., 1, 152 n.;

mentioned, 2, 233.
Wundt, Wilhelm M., as a type of the

German professor, 1, 263; his Sys-

tem, 233', mentioned, 119, 215, 216,
224, 264, 295, 2, 321.
Wyman, Jeffries, influence as a teacher,
1, 47; C. W. Eliot and N. S. Shaler
quoted on, 47, 48; J. quoted on, 48,
49; mentioned, 35, 37, 50, 71, 72,
I5°> x55> l6o> l63> I7°-

Yale University, 1, 231.
Yankees, a German lady's idea of, 1,
89, 90.

Yoga practices, 2, 252 ff.
Yosemite Valley, 2, 81.

Zennig's restaurant (Berlin), 1, 112, 113.
Zion's Herald, Emerson number of, 2,

I97v
Zola, Emile, Germinal, 1, 287; men-
tioned, 2, 67, 73.

1930

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