stimulating. Beginning, as the reader has seen, as an instructor in the
Department of Natural History, charged with teaching the comparative
anatomy and physiology of vertebrates, he added a course on
physiological psychology in 1876, and organized the beginnings of the
psychological laboratory.[55] The next year this course was transferred
to the Department of Philosophy and given under the title "Psychology."
He contributed numerous reviews of scientific and philosophic
literature, along with a few anonymous articles, to the columns of the
"Atlantic Monthly" and the "Nation," and in 1878 appeared in the
"Journal of Speculative Philosophy" and the "Critique Philosophique,"
with three important papers entitled "Spencer's Definition of Mind as
Correspondence," "Brute and Human Intellect," and "Quelques
Considérations sur la Méthode Subjective."
Meanwhile his correspondence diminished to its minimum. When his brother
Henry also came home to America in 1874, it ceased almost entirely. It
did not begin to flow freely again, at least so far as letters are now
recoverable, until after 1878.
_To Henry James._
CAMBRIDGE, _June 25, 1874_.
A few days ago came your letter from Florence of June 3, speaking of the
glare on the _piazza_ and the coolness and space of your rooms, of your
late dinners and your solitude, and of the progress of your novel, and,
finally, of your expected departure about the 20th; so that I suppose
you are today percolating the cool arcades of Bologna or the faded
beauties of Verona, or haply [are] at Venice.... As the weeks glide by,
my present life and my last year's life at home seem to glide together
across the five months breach that Italy made in them, and to become
continuous; while those months step out of the line and become a sort of
side-decoration or picture hanging vaguely in my memory. As this happens
more and more, I take the greater pleasure in it. Especially does the
utter friendliness of Florence, Rome, etc., grow dear to me, and get
strangely mixed up with still earlier and more faded impressions,
derived I know not whence, which infused into the places when I first
saw them that strange thread of familiarity. The thought of the
Florentine places you name in your letters like "leiser Nachhall längst
verklungner Lieder, zieht mit Errinnerungsschauer durch die Brust." I
hope you'll pass through Dresden if you sail from Germany. I forgot to
say that the Eagle line from Hamburg has now the largest and finest
ships and the newest....
* * * * *
Miss Theodora Sedgwick, to whom the next letter is addressed, was a
member of the Stockbridge and New York family of that name, and a sister
of Mrs. Charles Eliot Norton and Mrs. William Darwin, to whom reference
has already been made. At this time she was living with two maiden aunts
named Ashburner, friends of James's parents, in a house on Kirkland
Street, Cambridge, not far from Mr. Norton's "Shady Hill." The letter of
November 14, 1866, contained an allusion to this household, and others
will occur as the letters proceed.
_To Miss Theodora Sedgwick._
CAMBRIDGE, _Aug. 8, 1874_.
MISS THEODORA SEDGWICK
to WILLIAM JAMES, Dr.
Aug. 6, to 1 Orchestra Seat in Hippodrome [Barnum's Circus] $1.00
" " " 2 carriage fares at 50c. $1.00
" " " 1 glass vanilla cream sodawater $ .10
" " " 1 plate of soup lost $ .25
" " " 4 hours time at 12-1/2 cents $ .50
" " " Sundries $ .05
-----
Total $2.90
Rec'd on account. $2.00
WM. JAMES
HONORED MISS,--I hope you will find the aforesaid charges moderate. When
you transmit me the 90 cents still due, please send back at the same
time whatever letters of mine you may still have in your possession, and
the diamonds, silks, etc., which you may have at different times been
glad to receive from me. Likewise both pieces of the collar stud I so
recently lavished upon you. We can then remain as strangers.
I come of a race sensitive in the extreme; more accustomed to treat than
to be treated, especially in this manner; and caring for its money as
little as for its life. What wonder then that the mercenary conduct of
One whom I have ever fostered without hope of pecuniary reward should
work like madness in my brain?
On the point of closing I see with rapture that a way of accommodation
is still open! O joy! The salmon, blackberries, etc., I consumed, had a
market value. By charging me for the tea 90 cents, you will make the
thing reciprocal, and I will call the account square. Perhaps even then
the dreadful feeling of wounded pride and Barnum-born resentment may
with time fade away. Amen. Respectfully yours,
W. J.
_To Henry James._
CAMBRIDGE, _Jan._ [2], 1876.
...Your letter No. 2 speaking of your visit to Turguenieff was received
by me duly and greatly enjoyed. I never heard you speak so
enthusiastically of any human being. It is too bad he is to leave Paris;
but if he gives you the "run" of Flaubert and eke George Sand, it will
be so much gained. I don't think you know Miss A----, but if you did,
you would thank me for pointing out to you the parallelism between her
and George Sand which overwhelmed me the other day when I was calling on
her, and she (who has just lost her sister B---- and had her father go
through an attack of insanity) was snuggling down so hyper-comfortably
into garrulity about B----, and her poor dead T---- and her dead mother,
that I was fairly suffocated, just as I am by the _comfort_ George Sand
takes in telling you of the loves of servant men for ladies, and other
things _contra naturam_.
Christmas passed off here in a rather wan and sallow manner. I got a
gold scarf-ring from Mother and a gold watch-chain from Aunt Kate. Let
me, by the way, advise you to get a scarf-ring; 't is one of the
greatest inventions of modern times, in saving labor, silk and shirt
fronts. Alice got a desk, and from me a Scotch terrier pup only seven
weeks old, whom we call Bunch, who has almost doubled his size in a
week, who is a perfect lion in determination and courage, and who don't
seem to care a jot for any human society but that of Jane in the
kitchen, whose person is, I suppose, pervaded by a greasy and smoky
smell agreeable to his nostrils. He has a perfect passion for the
dining-room; whenever he is left to himself, he travels thither and lies
down under the table and takes no notice of you when you go to call him.
He does not sleep half as much as Dido, never utters a sound when shut
up for the night in the kitchen, and altogether fills us with a sort of
awe for the Roman firmness and independence of his character. He is
"animated" by a colliquative diarrhoea or cholera, which keeps us all
sponging over his tracks, but which don't affect his strength or spirits
a bit. He is in short a very queer substitute for poor, dear Dido....
_To Henry James._
NEWPORT, _June 3, 1876_.
MY DEAR H.,--I write you after [a] considerable interval filled with too
much work and weariness to make letter-writing convenient.... I ran away
three days ago, the recitations being over for the year, in order to
break from the studious associations of home. I have been staying at the
Tweedies with Mrs. Chapman, and James Sturgis and his wife, and enjoying
extremely, not the conversation indoors, but the lonely lying on the
grass on the cliffs at Lyly Pond, and four or five hours yesterday at
the Dumplings, feeling the moving air and the gentle living sea. There
is a purity and mildness about the elements here which purges the soul
of one. And I have been as if I had taken opium, not wanting to do
anything else than the particular thing I happened to be doing at the
moment, and feeling equally good whether I stood or walked or lay, or
spoke or was silent. It's a splendid relief from the overstrain and
stimulus of the past few scholastic months. I go the day after tomorrow
(Monday) with the Tweedies to New York, assist at Henrietta Temple's
wedding on Tuesday, and then pass on to the Centennial for a couple of
days. I suppose it will be pretty tiresome, but I want to see the
English pictures, which they say are a good show.... I fancy my
vacationizing will be confined to visits of a week at a time to
different points, perhaps the pleasantest way after all of spending it.
Newport as to its villas, and all that, is most repulsive to me. I
really didn't know how little charm and how much shabbiness there was
about the place. There are not more than three or four houses out of the
whole lot that are not offensive, in some way, externally. But the mild
nature grows on one every day. This afternoon, God willing, I shall
spend on Paradise.[56]
The Tweedies keep no horses, which makes one walk more or pay more than
one would wish. The younger Seabury told me yesterday that he was just
reading your "Roderick Hudson," but offered no [comment]. Colonel
Waring said of your "American" to me: "I'm not a blind admirer of H.
James, Jr., but I said to my wife after reading that first number, 'By
Jove, I think he's hit it this time!'" I think myself the thing opens
very well indeed, you have a first-rate datum to work up, and I hope
you'll do it well.
Your last few letters home have breathed a tone of contentment and
domestication in Paris which was very agreeable to get.... Your accounts
of Ivan Sergeitch are delightful, and I envy you the possession of the
young painter's intimacy. Give my best love to Ivan. I read his book
which you sent home (foreign books sent by mail pay duty now, though; so
send none but good ones), and although the vein of "morbidness" was so
pronounced in the stories, yet the mysterious depths which his plummet
sounds atone for all. It is the amount of life which a man feels that
makes you value his mind, and Turguenieff has a sense of worlds within
worlds whose existence is unsuspected by the vulgar. It amuses me to
recommend his books to people who mention them as they would the novels
of Wilkie Collins. You say we don't notice "Daniel Deronda." I find it
extremely interesting. Gwendolen and her spouse are masterpieces of
conception and delineation. Her ideal figures are much vaguer and
thinner. But her "sapience," as you excellently call it, passes all
decent bounds. There is something essentially womanish in the
irrepressible garrulity of her moral reflections. Why is it that it
makes women feel so good to moralize? Man philosophizes as a matter of
business, because he must,--he does it to a purpose and then lets it
rest; but women don't seem to get over being tickled at the discovery
that they have the faculty; hence the tedious iteration and restlessness
of George Eliot's commentary on life. The La Farges are absent. Yours
always,
W. J.
* * * * *
Under the title "Bain and Renouvier," James contributed a review
containing a brief discussion of free will and determinism to the
"Nation" of June 8, 1876. He of course sent a copy to Renouvier. The
following letter begins with a reference to Renouvier's acknowledgment.
James had been acquainted with Renouvier's work since 1868, when, as the
reader will recall, he read a number of the "Année Philosophique,"
Renouvier's annual survey of contemporary philosophy, for the first
time. The diary entry already quoted from the year 1870 has shown what
effect Renouvier's essays then had on his mind. His admiration for the
elder philosopher was great and he cherished it loyally for the rest of
his life. Indeed, in the unfinished manuscript, which was published
posthumously as "Some Problems of Philosophy," James looked back at the
formative period of his own philosophical thinking and wrote: "Renouvier
was one of the greatest of philosophic characters, and but for the
decisive impression made on me in the seventies by his masterly advocacy
of pluralism I might never have got free from the monistic superstition
under which I had grown up." In time he made Renouvier's acquaintance in
France and wrote to him often. He examined and discussed his writings
with college classes. Occasionally he reported these discussions and
read Renouvier's answers to the students. On the other side, Renouvier
paid James the compliment of printing or translating several of his
papers in the "Critique Philosophique," and thus brought him early to
the notice of French readers.
_To Charles Renouvier._
CAMBRIDGE, _July 29, 1876_.
MY DEAR SIR,--I am quite overcome by your appreciation of my poor little
article in the "Nation." It gratifies me extremely to hear from your
own lips that my apprehension of your thoughts is accurate. In so
despicably brief a space as that which a newspaper affords, I could
hardly hope to attain any other quality than that, and perhaps
clearness. I had written another paragraph of pure eulogy of your
powers, which the editor suppressed, to my great regret, for want of
room. I need not repeat to you again how grateful I feel to you for all
I have learned from your admirable writings. I do what lies in my feeble
power to assist the propagation of your works here, but _students_ of
philosophy are rare here as everywhere. It astonishes me, nevertheless,
that you have had to wait so long for general recognition. Only a few
months ago I had the pleasure of introducing to your "Essais" two
_professors_ of philosophy, able and learned men, who hardly knew your
name!! But I am perfectly convinced that it is a mere affair of time,
and that you will take your place in the general History of Speculation
as the classical and finished representative of the tendency which was
begun by Hume, and to which writers before you had made only fragmentary
contributions, whilst you have fused the whole matter into a solid,
elegant and definitive system, perfectly consistent, and capable, by
reason of its moral vitality, of becoming popular, so far as that is
permitted to philosophic systems. After your Essays, it seems to me that
the only important question is the deepest one of all, the one between
the principle of contradiction, and the _Sein und Nichts_.[57] You have
brought it to that clear issue; and extremely as I value your logical
attitude, it would be uncandid of me (after what I have said) not to
confess that there are certain psychological and moral facts, which make
me, as I stand today, unable wholly to commit myself to your position,
to burn my ships behind me, and proclaim the belief in the _one_ and the
many to be the Original Sin of the mind. I long for leisure to study up
these questions. I have been teaching anatomy and physiology in Harvard
College here. Next year, I add a course of physiological psychology,
using, for certain practical reasons, Spencer's "Psychology" as a
textbook. My health is not strong; I find that laboratory work and
study, too, are more than I can attend to. It is therefore not
impossible that I may in 1877-8 be transferred to the philosophical
department, in which there is likely to be a vacancy. If so, you may
depend upon it that the name of Renouvier will be as familiar as that of
Descartes to the Bachelors of Arts who leave these walls. Believe me
with the greatest respect and gratitude, faithfully yours,
WM. JAMES.
...I must add a _vivat_ to your "Critique Philosophique," which keeps up
so ably and bravely! And although it is probably an entirely superfluous
recommendation, I cannot refrain from calling your attention to the most
robust of English philosophic writers, [Shadworth] Hodgson, whose "Time
and Space" was published in 1865 by Longmans, and whose "Theory of
Practice," in two volumes, followed it in 1870.
* * * * *
In connection with the allusion to two professors of philosophy who
hardly knew Renouvier's name, it would be fair to say that James was
acutely conscious of the prevailing academic conditions. He was, in
fact, one among a few younger men who were already rejuvenating the
teaching of philosophy in American colleges. They began their work under
difficult conditions.
Dr. G. Stanley Hall wrote an open letter to the "Nation" in 1876, in
which he said:--
"I have often wished that the 'Nation' would devote some space to the
condition of philosophy in American colleges. Within the last few years
I have visited the class-rooms of many of our best institutions, and
believe that there are few if any branches which are so inadequately
taught as those generally roughly classed as philosophy. Deductive
logic, or the syllogism, is the most thoroughly dwelt upon, while
induction, æsthetic and psychological and ethical studies, and
especially the history of the leading systems of philosophy, ancient and
modern, and the marvellous new developments in England and Germany, are
almost entirely ignored. The persistent use of Hamilton, Butler's
'Analogy' and a score of treatises on 'moral science,' which deduce all
the ground of obligation from theological considerations, as text-books,
is largely responsible for the supposed unpopularity of the studies....
I think the success which has attended the recent lecture courses at
Cambridge on modern systems of philosophy, and on æsthetic studies of
literature and the fine arts, shows plainly how much might be
accomplished in this direction by the proper method of instruction."
James's comment on this, printed anonymously in the "Nation" for
September 21, 1876, expressed his view of the situation more fully:--
"The philosophical teaching, as a rule, in our higher seminaries is in
the hands of the president, who is usually a minister of the Gospel,
and, as he more often owes his position to general excellence of
character and administrative faculty than to any speculative gifts or
propensities, it usually follows that 'safeness' becomes the main
characteristic of his tuition; that his classes are edified rather than
awakened, and leave college with the generous youthful impulse, to
reflect on the world and our position in it, rather dampened and
discouraged than stimulated by the lifeless discussions and flabby
formulas they have had to commit to memory....
"Let it not be supposed that we are prejudging the question whether the
final results of speculation will be friendly or hostile to the formulas
of Christian thought. All we contend for is that we, like the Greeks and
the Germans, should now attack things as if there were no official
answer preoccupying the field. At present we are bribed beforehand by
our reverence or dislike for the official answer; and the free-thinking
tendency which the 'Popular Science Monthly,' for example, represents,
is condemned to an even more dismal shallowness than the spiritualistic
systems of our text-books of 'Mental Science.' We work with one eye on
our problem, and with the other on the consequences to our enemy or to
our lawgiver, as the case may be; the result in both cases is
mediocrity.
"If the best use of our colleges is to give young men a wider openness
of mind and a more flexible way of thinking than special technical
training can generate, then we hold that philosophy (taken in the broad
sense in which our correspondent uses the word) is the most important of
all college studies. However skeptical one may be of the attainment of
universal truths (and to make our position more emphatic, we are willing
here to concede the extreme Positivistic position), one can never deny
that philosophic study means the habit of always seeing an alternative,
of not taking the usual for granted, of making conventionalities fluid
again, of imagining foreign states of mind. In a word, it means the
possession of mental perspective. Touchstone's question, 'Hast any
philosophy in thee, shepherd?' will never cease to be one of the tests
of a wellborn nature. It says, Is there space and air in your mind, or
must your companions gasp for breath whenever they talk with you? And
if our colleges are to make men, and not machines, they should look,
above all things, to this aspect of their influence....
"As for philosophy, technically so called, or the reflection of man on
his relations with the universe, its educational essence lies in the
quickening of the spirit to its _problems_. What doctrines students take
from their teachers are of little consequence provided they catch from
them the living, philosophic attitude of mind, the independent, personal
look at all the data of life, and the eagerness to harmonize them....
"In short, philosophy, like Molière, claims her own where she finds it.
She finds much of it today in physics and natural history, and must and
will educate herself accordingly.... Meanwhile, when we find announced
that the students in Harvard College next year may study any or all of
the following works under the guidance of different professors,--Locke's
'Essay,' Kant's 'Kritik,' Schopenhauer and Hartmann, Hodgson's 'Theory
of Practice,' and Spencer's 'Psychology,'--we need not complain of
universal academic stagnation, even today."
VIII
1878-1883
_Marriage--Contract for the Psychology--European Colleagues--Death of
his Parents_
EARLY in 1876 James had been introduced by their common friend Thomas
Davidson (that ardent and lovable man whom he sketched with incomparable
strokes in "A Knight Errant of the Intellectual Life") to Miss Alice H.
Gibbens, and the next day he wrote to his brother Wilky that he had met
"the future Mrs. W. J." Miss Gibbens had grown up in Weymouth, a
pleasant little Massachusetts town in which several generations of her
ancestors had lived comfortably and which was then still untouched by
the "development" that later converted it and its neighbour, Quincy,
into unseemly stone-quarriers' suburbs. In 1876 she had just returned,
with her widowed mother and two younger sisters, from a five-years'
residence in Europe and was teaching in a school for girls in Boston. On
July 10, 1878, after a short engagement, he and Miss Gibbens were
married by the Reverend Rufus Ellis at the house of the bride's
grandmother in Boston.
It must be left to a later day and a less intimate and partial hand to
do adequate justice to a marriage which was happy in the rarest and
fullest sense, and which was soon to work an abiding transformation in
James's health and spirits. No mere devotion could have achieved the
skill and care with which his wife understood and helped him. Family
duties and responsibilities, often grave and worrisome enough, weighed
lightly in the balance against the tranquillity and confidence that his
new domesticity soon brought him. During the twenty-one years that
immediately followed his marriage he accomplished an amount of teaching,
college committee-service and administration, friendly and helpful
personal intercourse with his students, reading and book-writing,
original research, not to speak of his initial excursions into the field
of psychical research, and a good deal of popular lecturing to eke out
his income, that would have astonished anyone who had known him only
during the early seventies, and that would have honored the capacity and
endurance of any man. The serener tone of his letters soon contrasts
itself with much that has gone before. The occasional references to
fatigue, insomnia, and eye-strain, which still occur in his
correspondence are explained by the amount of work he imposed upon
himself rather than by the lack of strength with which he met his tasks.
Meanwhile his wife, who entered into all his plans and undertakings with
unfailing understanding and high spirit, stood guard over his library
door, protected him from interruptions and distractions, managed the
household and the children and the family business, helped him to order
his day and to see and entertain his friends at convenient times, sped
him off on occasional much-needed vacations, and encouraged him to all
his major undertakings, with a sustaining skill and cheer which need not
be described to anyone who knew his household. To the importance of her
companionship it is still, happily, impossible to do justice. If
consulted, she would not tolerate even this allusion; yet to gloss over
her sustaining influence entirely would be to do injustice to James
himself.
* * * * *