hygiene for the Harvard undergraduates, and looked about him for
instructors. He had formed an impression of James ten years before
which, as he said, "was later to become useful to Harvard University,"
and in the interval he had known him as a Cambridge neighbor and had
been aware of the direction his interests had taken. He proposed that
James and Dr. Thomas Dwight--a young anatomist who was also to become an
eminent teacher--should share in the new undertaking. In August, 1872,
the College appointed James "Instructor in Physiology," to conduct three
exercises a week "during half of the ensuing academic year." Thus began
a service in the University which was to be almost continuously active
and engrossing until 1907.
The fact that James began by teaching anatomy and physiology, passed
thence to psychology, and last to philosophy, has been wrongly cited as
if his interest in each successive subject of his college work had been
the fruit of his experience in teaching the preceding subject. This
inference from the mere sequence of events will appear strange to
attentive readers of what has gone before. Indeed, if the fact that
James devoted a good share of his time to physiology in the seventies
calls for remark at all, it should be noted that his subject, from soon
after the beginning, was really physiological psychology, and
that--more interesting than anything else in this connection--one may
discern a patient surrender to limitations imposed by the state of his
health on the one hand, and on the other a sound sense of the value of
physiology to psychological investigations and so to philosophy, as both
underlying the sequence of events in his teaching. Whatever may have
been the succession of his college "courses," psychology and philosophy
were never divorced from each other in his thought or in his writings.
Thus it is interesting to find, that at the very moment of his
engagement to teach physiology,--at a date intermediate between the
appointment and the commencement of the course in fact,--he wrote to his
brother, "If I were well enough, now would be my chance to strike at
Harvard College, for Peterson has just resigned his sub-professorship of
philosophy, and I know of no very formidable opponent. But it's
impossible. I keep up a small daily pegging at my physiology, whose
duties don't begin till January, and which I shall find easy, I think."
He had needed definite duties and responsibilities and more or less
recognized his need; so he undertook to teach a subject which, though
congenial and interesting, lay distinctly off the path of his deepest
inclination.
The first three fragments that follow refer to his preparation for the
plunge into teaching. The course on Comparative Anatomy and Physiology
was given by Dwight and James under the general head of Natural History
and was an "elective" open to Juniors and Seniors. "As the course was
experimental and a part of the new expansion of the Elective System,"
writes President Eliot, "the President and the Faculty were interested
in the fact that the new course under these two young instructors
attracted 28 Juniors and 25 Seniors."
_To Henry James._
SCARBORO, _Aug. 24, 1872_.
...The appointment to teach physiology is a perfect God-send to me just
now, an external motive to work, which yet does not strain me--a dealing
with men instead of my own mind, and a diversion from those
introspective studies which had bred a sort of philosophical
hypochondria in me of late and which it will certainly do me good to
drop for a year....
* * * * *
CAMBRIDGE, _Nov. 24, 1872_.
...I go into the Medical School nearly every morning to hear Bowditch
lecture, or paddle round in his laboratory. It is a noble thing for
one's spirits to have some responsible work to do. I enjoy my revived
physiological reading greatly, and have in a corporeal sense been better
for the past four or five weeks than I have been at all since you
left....
* * * * *
CAMBRIDGE, _Feb. 13, 1873_.
...This morning arose, went to Brewer's to get two partridges to garnish
our cod-fish dinner. Bought at Richardson's an "Appleton's Journal"
containing part of "Bressant," a novel by Julian Hawthorne, to send Bob
Temple. At 10.30 arrived your letter of January 26th, which was a very
pleasant continuation of your _Aufenthalt_ in Rome. At 12.30, after
reading an hour in Flint's "Physiology," I went to town, paid a bill of
Randidge's, looked into the Athenæum reading-room, got one dozen raw
oysters at Higgins's saloon in Court Street, came out again, thermometer
having risen to near thawing point, dozed half an hour before the fire,
and am now writing this to you.
I am enjoying a two weeks' respite from tuition, the boys being
condemned to pass examinations, in which I luckily take no part at
present. I find the work very interesting and stimulating. It presents
two problems, the intellectual one--how best to state your matter to
them; and the practical one--how to govern them, stir them up, not bore
them, yet make them work, etc. I should think it not unpleasant as a
permanent thing. The authority is at first rather flattering to one. So
far, I seem to have succeeded in interesting them, for they are
admirably attentive, and I hear expressions of satisfaction on their
part. Whether it will go on next year can't at this hour, for many
reasons, be decided. I have done almost absolutely no visiting this
winter, and seen hardly anyone or heard anything till last week, when a
sort of frenzy took possession of me and I went to a symphony concert
and thrice to the theatre. A most lovely English actress, young,
innocent, refined, has been playing Juliet, which play I enjoyed most
intensely, though it was at the Boston Theatre and her support almost as
poor as it could have been. Neilson is she hight. I ne'er heard of her
before. A rival American beauty has been playing a stinking thing of
Sardou's ("Agnes") at the Globe, which disgusted me with cleverness. Her
name is Miss Ethel, and she is a ladylike but depressing phenomenon, all
made up of nerves and American insubstantiality. I have read hardly
anything of late, some of the immortal Wordsworth's "Excursion" having
been the best. I have simply shaken hands with Gray since his
engagement, and have only seen Holmes twice this winter. I fear he is at
last feeling the effects of his overwork....
* * * * *
CAMBRIDGE, _Apr. 6, 1873_.
...I have been cut out all this winter from the men with whom I used to
gossip on generalities, Holmes, Putnam, Peirce, Shaler, John Gray and,
last not least, yourself. I rather hanker after it, Bowditch being
almost the only man I have seen anything of this winter, and that at his
laboratory.... Child and I have struck up quite an intimacy.... T. S.
Perry is my only surviving crony. He dines pretty regular once a week
here.... Ever your affectionate
W. J.
* * * * *
The next letter, although not from William James, will help to fill out
the picture.
_Henry James, Senior, to Henry James._
CAMBRIDGE, _Mar. 18, 1873_.
... [William] gets on greatly with his teaching; his
students--fifty-seven of them--are elated with their luck in having him,
and I feel sure he will have next year a still larger number by his
fame. He came in the other afternoon while I was sitting alone, and
after walking the floor in an animated way for a moment, broke out:
"Bless my soul, what a difference between me as I am now and as I was
last spring at this time! Then so hypochondriacal"--he used that word,
though perhaps less in substance than form--"and now with my mind so
cleared up and restored to sanity. It's the difference between death and
life."
He had a great effusion. I was afraid of interfering with it, or
possibly checking it, but I ventured to ask what especially in his
opinion had produced the change. He said several things: the reading of
Renouvier (particularly his vindication of the freedom of the will) and
of Wordsworth, whom he has been feeding on now for a good while; but
more than anything else, his having given up the notion that all mental
disorder requires to have a physical basis. This had become perfectly
untrue to him. He saw that the mind does act irrespectively of material
coercion, and could be dealt with therefore at first hand, and this was
health to his bones. It was a splendid declaration, and though I had
known from unerring signs of the fact of the change, I never had been
more delighted than by hearing of it so unreservedly from his own lips.
He has been shaking off his respect for men of mere science as such, and
is even more universal and impartial in his mental judgments than I have
known him before....
* * * * *
James's first Harvard appointment had been for one year only. In the
spring of 1873 the question of its renewal on somewhat different terms
came up. President Eliot informed him that the College wished some one
man to give the instruction which he and Dr. Dwight had shared between
them, and offered him the whole course, including the anatomy.
It cost him "some perplexity to make the decision." He thought he saw
that such an instructorship "might easily grow into a permanent
biological appointment, to succeed Wyman, perhaps." At first he resolved
"to fight it out on the line of mental science," feeling that "with such
arrears of lost time behind [him] and such curtailed power of work," he
could no longer "afford to make so considerable an expedition into the
field of anatomy." But when he then considered himself as a possible
future teacher of philosophy, he was overwhelmed by a feeling which he
recorded on a page of his diary: "Philosophical activity _as a business_
is not normal for most men, and not for me.... To make the _form_ of all
possible thought the prevailing _matter_ of one's thought breeds
hypochondria. Of course my deepest interest will, as ever, lie with the
most general problems. But ... my strongest moral and intellectual
craving is for some stable reality to lean upon.... That gets reality
for us in which we place our responsibility, and the concrete facts in
which a biologist's responsibilities lie form a fixed basis from which
to aspire as much as he pleases to the mastery of universal questions
when the gallant mood is on him; and a basis too upon which he can
passively float and tide over times of weakness and depression, trusting
all the while blindly in the beneficence of nature's forces, and the
return of higher opportunities." Accordingly he determined to give
himself to biology, reporting to his brother Henry, who was at that time
in Europe, "I am not a strong enough man to choose the other and nobler
lot in life, but I can in a less penetrating way work out a philosophy
in the midst of the other duties...."
* * * * *
As the summer went on, he still had misgivings that he would not be
strong enough to prepare and conduct the laboratory demonstrations
necessary for a large class in comparative anatomy and physiology. He
saw that his first year of teaching had been "of great moral service to
him," but thought that in other ways the strain and fatigue had been a
brake upon the rate of his wished-for improvement. He therefore made up
his mind to postpone the instructorship for a year and go abroad once
more.
These hesitations, and a few months in Europe, marked the end of the
period of morbid depression through which the reader has been following
him. He returned to America eager for work.
Meanwhile parts of four letters written while he was abroad may be
given.
_To his Family._
ON BOARD S.S. SPAIN, _Oct. 17, 1873_.
DEAREST FAMILY,--I begin my Queenstown letter now because the first
section of the voyage seems to be closing. The delicious warm stern
wind, cloudy sky and smooth sea which we have had, unlike anything I
remember on the Atlantic, threatens to change into something less
agreeable, for the wind is fresh ahead, and the waves all capped with
white and the vessel begins to roll more and more. Hitherto she has not
rolled an inch, and all our days have been spent on deck, and I have
enjoyed less sickness than ever before; though I must say I loathe the
element. I am confirmed in my preference for big boats, and shall
probably try one of the Inman line when I return, as this, sweet Alice,
is rather Cunardy as to its table and sitting accommodations. Miss K----
and her two friends sit opposite me at meals and seem to ply a good
knife and fork. The other passengers are inoffensive and quiet, with the
exception of my roommate, who is a fine fellow, and a lovely young
missionary going to the Gabun coast to convert the niggers--a fearful
waste of herself, one is tempted to think. There are eleven missionaries
on board, and a young lady who is traveling with a party of them and
confided to me yesterday that she dreaded it was her doom to become one
too. My chum is a graduate of Bowdoin College, going to study two years
in Europe on money which he made during his vacations by peddling quack
medicines of his own concoction, and cutting corns. He has supported
himself four years in this way, and _abgesehen_ from the swindle of his
life in vacation time, is an honor to his native land, without
prejudices and full of animal spirits, wit and intelligence. We wash in
the same basin. He has never tasted spirituous liquor. I am also
intimate with a French commercial traveler, incredibly ignorant, but
extremely good-natured and gentlemanly. I have now determined to stick
to the missionary as close as possible. She is twenty-four years old and
very beautiful. I finished the "Strange Adventures of a Phaeton"
yesterday. A perfectly beautiful book, beside which "Good-bye,
Sweetheart," which I have begun, tastes coarse.
Good-bye. I hope a storm won't arise, but if it does, I'm glad enough to
be in such an extraordinarily steady ship. I pity you at home without
me, and long to pat the rich, creamy throat of little sister.
(Expression derived from "Goodbye, Sweetheart.")
* * * * *
_Friday Morn._
Ach! I thought yesterday was Friday, but found in the evening that it
was only Thursday. No matter, six days are now past. As I predicted, the
sea grew pretty big before sundown and the ship has been skipping about
all night like a lively kitten. But her motion is delightfully easy, and
no one, so far as I can see, has been sick. I never was better in my
life than yesterday made me. Nevertheless, little Sister, in looking at
the black waves with their skin of silver lace I have regretted saying
that safety was a minor consideration with me. I doubt in my heart that
even comfort is to be preferred to danger. The sea looks too
indigestible--the all-digesting sea! I threw away "Goodbye, Sweetheart"
at the 40th page and have begun the "Tour of the World in Eighty Days,"
a much better book. I am sorry that the little beauty's care for her
Bro.'s comfort did not go so far as to provide him with a
needle-and-thread-book, etc. _True_ sympathy divines wants; and a sister
who could not foresee that in three days her bro. should be driven to
borrowing Miss K----'s needle-book to sew on his buttons cannot be said
to be in very close magnetic relations with him. I lurched about the
deck arm in arm with the young missionary yestreen. I told her that, if
I were a missionary, instead of going to the most unhealthy part of
Africa, I would choose, say, Paris for a field. She, all unconscious of
the subtle humor of my remark, said, "Oh, yes! there are fearful numbers
of heathen there!" I have just rolled out of bed and into my clothes,
and write this in my stateroom, but can stand no longer its aromatic air
and hasten to say good-bye and mount to the deck.... Good-bye, good-bye.
Ever your loving
W. J.
* * * * *
On landing, James proceeded to Florence, to join his brother Henry for a
winter in Italy.
_To his Sister._
FLORENCE, _Oct. 29_ [1873].
12 midnight.
BELOVED SWEETLINGTON,--At this solemn hour I can't go to sleep without
remembering thee and thy beauty. I have just arrived from an
eleven-hours ride from Turin, pouring rain all the way. Ditto yesterday
during my twenty-two-hours ride from Paris. The Angel sleeps in number
39 hard by, all unwitting that I, the Demon (or perhaps you have already
begun in your talks to distinguish me from him as the Archangel), am
here at last. I wouldn't for worlds disturb this his last independent
slumber.
Not having seen the sun but for three days (on board ship) since the
eleventh, the natural gloom of my disposition and circumstances has been
much aggravated. And I had in London and Paris a pretty melancholy time.
I stayed but two days and one night in the latter place, which,
according to the law of opposition that rules your opinions and mine,
seemed to me a very tedious place. Its Haussmanization has produced a
terribly monotonous-looking city--no expression of having _grown_, in
any of the quarters I visited, and I did not have time to bring to the
surface what power I may possess of sympathizing with the French way of
being and doing. The awful thin and slow dinner in the tremendously
imperial dining-room of the Hôtel du Louvre, the exaggerated neatness
and order and reglementation of everything visible, contrasted with the
volcanic situation of things at the present moment, all a-kinder turned
my plain Yankee stomach, which has not yet recovered from the simpler
lessons of joy it learnt at Scarboro and Magnolia last summer. I went to
the Théâtre Français and heard a play in verse of Ponsard, thin stuff
splendidly represented. Altogether I don't care if I never go to Paris
again. London "impressed" me twelve times as much. Today in Italy my
spirits have riz. The draggle-tailed physiognomy of the railway stations
on the way here, the beautifully good-natured easy-going expression on
the faces of the railway officials, the charming dialogue I have just
had with the aged but angelic chambermaid whose phrases I managed to
understand the sense of as a whole without recognizing any particular
words--together with the consciousness of having for a time come to my
journey's end and of the certainty of breakfasting tomorrow with the
Angel, all let me go to bed with a light heart; hoping that yours is as
much so, beloved Alice and all....
_To his Sister._
FLORENCE, _Nov. 23, 1873_.
BELOVED SISTERKIN,--Your "nice long letter," as you call it, of Oct. 26
reached me five days ago, Mother's of November 4th yesterday, and with
it one from Father to Harry. Though you will probably disbelieve me, I
cannot help stating how agreeable it is to me to be once more in
regular communication with that which, in spite of all shortcomings, is
all that has ever been vouchsafed to me in the way of a "home" (and a
mother). The hotel in which we live here is anything but home-like. In
fact, when the heart aches for cosiness, etc., all it can do is to turn
out into the street.
I begin to feel, too, strongly that at my time of life, with such a set
of desultory years behind, what a man most wants is to be settled and
concentrated, to cultivate a patch of ground which may be humble but
still is his own. Here all this dead civilization crowding in upon one's
consciousness forces the mind open again even as the knife the unwilling
oyster--and what my mind wants most now is practical tasks, not the
theoretical digestion of additional masses of what to me are raw and
disconnected empirical materials. I feel like one still obliged to eat
more and more grapes and pears and pineapples, when the state of the
system imperiously demands a fat Irish stew, or something of that sort.
I knew it all before I came, however; and I hope in a fortnight to be
able comparatively to disregard what lies about me and get interested in
the physiological books I brought. So far I find the pictures, etc.,
drive my thoughts far away. I have just been reading a big German
octavo, Burkhardt's "Renaissance in Italy," with the title of which you
may enrich your historical consciousness, though I hardly think you need
read the book. This is the place for history. I don't see how, if one
lived here, historical problems could help being the most urgent ones
for the mind. It would suit you admirably. Even art comes before one
here much more as a problem--how to account for its development and
decline--than as a refreshment and an edification. I really think that
end is better served by the stray photographs which enter our houses at
home, finding us in the midst of our work and surprising us.
But here I am pouring out this one-sided splenetic humor upon you
without having the least intended it when I sat down. Your pen
accidentally slips into a certain vein and you must go on till you get
it out clearly. If you had heard me telling Harry two or three times
lately that I feared the fatal fascination of this place,--that I began
to feel it taking little stitches in my soul,--you would have a
different impression of my state than my above written words have left
upon you.... I went out intending to stroll in the Boboli Garden, a
wonderful old piece of last-century stateliness, but found it shut till
twelve. So I returned to Harry's room, where I sit by the pungent wood
fire writing this letter which I did not expect to begin till the
afternoon, while he, just at this moment rising from the table where his
quill has been busily scratching away at the last pages of his
Turguenieff article, comes to warm his legs and puts on another log....
Good-bye beloved Sister, and Father and Mother.... Write repeatedly such
nice long letters, and make glad the heart of both the Angel and the
other brother,
W. J.
_To his Sister._
ROME, _Dec. 17, 1873_.
BELOVED BEAUTLINGTON,--I cannot retire to rest on this eve of a
well-filled day without imparting to thy noble nature a tithe of the
enjoyment and happiness with which I am filled, and wishing you was here
to take your share in it.... The barbarian mind stretches little by
little to take in Rome, but I doubt if I shall ever call it the "city of
my soul," or "my country." Strange to say, my very enjoyment of what
here belongs to hoary eld has done more to reconcile me to what belongs
to the present hour, business, factories, etc., etc., than anything I
ever experienced. Every day I sally out into the sunshine and plod my
way o'er steps of broken thrones and temples until one o'clock, when I
repair to a certain café in the Corso, begin to eat and read "Galignani"
and the "Débats," until Harry comes in with the flush of successful
literary effort fading off his cheek. (It may interest the sympathetic
soul of Mother to know that my diet until that hour consists of a roll,
which a waiter in wedding costume brings up to my room when I rise, and
three sous' worth of big roasted chestnuts, which I buy, on going out,
from an old crone a few doors from the hotel. In this respect I am
economical. Likewise in my total abstinence from spirituous liquors, to
which Harry, I regret to say, has become an utter slave, spending a
large part of his earnings in Bass's Ale and wine, and trembling with
anger if there is any delay in their being brought to him.) After
feeding, the Angel in his old and rather shabby striped overcoat, and I
in my usual neat attire, proceed to walk together either to the big
Pincian terrace which overhangs the city, and where on certain days
everyone resorts, or to different churches and spots of note. I always
dine at the table-d'hôte here; Harry sometimes, his indisposition lately
(better the past two days) having made him prefer a solitary gorge at
the restaurant.
The people in the house are hardly instructive or exciting, but at
dinner and for an hour after in the dining-room they very pleasantly
kill time. I am become so far Anglicized that I find myself quite
fearful of speaking too much to a family of three "cads" who sit
opposite me at the table-d'hôte, and of whom the young lady (though
rather greasy about the face) is very handsome and intelligent. In the
evening I usually light my fire and read some local book....
I got a note from Hillebrand saying Schiff would gladly let me work in
his laboratory if I liked. I suppose I ought if I can, but I hanker
after home even at the price of a February voyage, and I hate to spend
so much money here on my mere gizzard and cheeks.--There, my sweet
sister, I hope that is a sufficiently spirited epistle for 10.30 P.M.
When, oh, when, will you write me another like the solitary one I got
from you in Florence? Seven weeks and one letter! C'est très
caractéristique de vous! I wrote two days ago to Annie Ashburner. Tell
the adorable Sara Sedgwick [Mrs. W. E. Darwin] that I can't possibly
refrain much longer--in spite of my just resentment--from writing to
her. Love to all.... Your
W. J.
* * * * *