June, one month before his marriage, he contracted with Messrs. Henry
Holt & Company to write a volume on Psychology for the "American Science
Series" that they were beginning to publish. He was asked by Mr. Holt,
in the course of preliminary correspondence, whether he could deliver
the manuscript in a year's time. James replied (June, 1878): "My other
engagements and my health both forbid the attempt to execute the work
rapidly. Its quality too might then suffer. I don't think I could finish
it inside of two years--say the fall of 1880." Thus he proposed to throw
the book off rapidly. He doubtless conceived of it in the beginning as a
more or less literary survey of the subject as it was then known, and he
certainly did not foresee that he was going to devote twelve years of
critical study and original research to its preparation.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, immediately after their marriage, James took his wife to the
upper end of Keene Valley in the Adirondacks for the rest of the summer.
They both knew and loved the region already. Indeed, although there has
been no occasion to mention it before, Keene Valley had already become
for James the playground toward which he turned most eagerly when summer
came. It never lost its charm for him; he managed to spend a week or two
of almost every year there or nearby; and allusions to the region will
appear in a number of later letters.
At the head of these valleys, in the basin of the Ausable Lakes and on
the surrounding slopes of the most interesting group of mountains in the
Adirondacks, a great tract of forest has been preserved. Giant,
Noonmark, Colvin, and the Gothics raise their splendid ridges and
summits to the enclosing horizon, and Dix, Haystack, and Marcy, the
last the highest mountain of the Adirondack range, are within a day's
walk of the little community that used to be known as "Beede's." Where
the Ausable Club's picturesque golf-course is now laid out, the fields
of Smith Beede's farm then surrounded his primitive, white-painted
hotel. Half a mile to the eastward, in a patch of rocky pasture beside
Giant Brook, stood the original Beede farm-house, and this Henry P.
Bowditch, Charles and James Putnam, and William James had bought for a
few hundred dollars (subject to Beede's cautious proviso in the deed
that "the purchasers are to keep no boarders"). They had adapted the
little story-and-a-half dwelling to their own purposes and converted its
surrounding sheds and pens into habitable shanties of the simplest kind.
So they established a sort of camp, with the mountains for their
climbing, the brook to bathe in, and the primeval forest fragrant about
them.
With a friend or native guide,--or often alone, with a book and lunch in
his light rücksack,--James would go off for a long day's walk on one of
the mountain trails. He liked to start early and to spend several hours
at mid-day stretched out on the sheltered side of an open ridge or
summit. In this way he would combine a day of outdoor exercise with
fifty to eighty pages of professional reading, the daily stint to which
he often held himself in his holidays.
In the summer of seventy-eight he planned to combine this sort of
refreshment with work on the "Psychology." The plan seemed a little
innocent to at least one friend,--Francis J. Child,--who said in a
letter to James Russell Lowell: "William has already begun a Manual of
Psychology--in the honeymoon;--but they are both writing it."
_To Francis J. Child._
[Dictated to Mrs. James]
KEENE VALLEY, _Aug. 16_ [1878].
CARISSIMO,--Daily since the first instant have we trembled with joyous
expectancy of your holiday face arriving at our door. Daily have we
dashed the teardrop of disappointment from our common eye! And now to
get a letter instead of your revered form! It is shameful. We are dying
with the tedium of each other's society and you would make the wheels of
life go round again. Your excursion to Scarborough is simply criminal
under the circumstances. You know we longed to see you. It is not too
late to repair your fault, for although we shall not outstay the 1st of
September, you would find the Putnams and the best thirty-five-year-old
medical society in Boston to keep you company after we go. You had
better come from Scarborough through Portland direct to Burlington by
the White Mt. R.R. From Burlington take boat to Westport, whence stage
to Beede's and our beating heart. But such is the crassitude of your
malignity that after this we hardly dare expect you. Seriously, how
could you be so insane?
As for the remaining matter of your somewhat illegible letter, what is
this mythological and poetical talk about psychology and Psyche and
keeping back a manuscript composed during a honeymoon? The only Psyche
now recognized by science is a decapitated frog whose writhings express
deeper truths than your weakminded poets ever dreamed. _She_ (not Psyche
but the bride) loves all these doctrines which are quite novel to her
mind, hitherto accustomed to all sorts of mysticism and superstitions.
She swears entirely by reflex action now, and believes in universal
_Nothwendigkeit_. Hope not with your ballad-mongering ever to gain an
influence.
We have spent, however, a ballad-like summer in this delicious cot among
the hills. We only needed crooks and a flock of sheep. I need not say
that our psychic reaction has been one of content--perhaps as great as
ever enjoyed by man.
So farewell, false friend, till such near time as your ehrwürdig person
decorate our hearth at Mrs. Hanks's in Harvard St.
Communicate our hearty love to Mrs. Child and believe us your always
doting
(W. and A.) J.
And for Heaven's sake _come_ while yet there is time!
WM.
* * * * *
When the College opened in the autumn of seventy-eight James and his
wife returned to Cambridge and lived for a few months in lodgings at 387
Harvard Street. The next letter begins a series from which a number of
later letters will be given. One of the warmest of James's lifelong
friendships was with Miss Frances R. Morse of Boston. The "exquisite
Mary" referred to near the end is her sister, later Mrs. John W. Elliot.
_To Miss Frances R. Morse._
[Dictated to Mrs. James]
CAMBRIDGE, _Dec. 26, 1878_.
_Our_ DEAR FANNY,--I (W.) shield myself under my wife's handwriting to
drop that formal style of address which has so long cast its cold shadow
over our intercourse, and for which, now that I have become an old fogy
whilst you still remain a blooming child, there seems no further good
reason. Are you willing that henceforward we should call each other by
our first names? If so, respond in kind. I have got into the habit of
dictating to _her_ all that I write, in order to save my eyes. This
letter is from both of us.
Your letter from Brighton of Oct. 15th was duly and gladly received. You
have since then seen a great many things, and we have heard of you
occasionally, latest of your ascent of the Nile with the Longfellows.
They will be pleasant companions and I hope the long rest, delicious
climate and beautiful outlook of that voyage will do ---- a world of
good. It is too pitiful to think of her breaking down just at a time
when one's active faculties have so much incitement to exert themselves.
I am glad your mother is so much better. And how you will enjoy the
sights of the winter! Don't you wish you had taken history instead of
English literature!
We are very happily "boarding" on the corner of Harvard and Ware Street,
next door to old Mrs. Cary's, where the Tappans used to live. We have
absolutely no housekeeping trouble; we live surrounded by our wedding
presents, and can devote all our energies to studying our lessons,
dining with our respective mothers-in-law, receiving and repaying our
"calls," which average one a day, and anxiously keeping our accounts in
a little book so as to see where the trouble is if both ends don't meet.
We meant to have sent you this letter on Christmas day, but it was
crowded out by many interruptions. We had, considering the age of the
world and the hard times, quite a show of Xmas gifts and mild
festivities.
...I suppose you get your "Nation" regularly on the Nile, so I make no
comments on public affairs. We all feel sorry for poor old England just
now. It really seems as if with us things were settling down upon a
solid and orderly basis of general frugality. Keen cold weather, bare
ground, and clear sky, west wind filling the air with clouds of frozen
dust, and an engagement at the dentist's in an hour from this will seem
to you on the Nile like tales told by an idiot. Still they are true for
me. Pray write again and let us hear that you are all well, especially
the exquisite Mary, to whom give lots of love, and with plenty to your
parents and self, believe me, yours faithfully,
WM. JAMES.
* * * * *
The passage which follows is taken from a letter to Mrs. James, of about
this time. It is so unusual a bit of self-analysis that it is included
here. James himself never failed to recognize that every man's thought
is biased by his temperament as well as guided by purely rational
considerations.
_To Mrs. James._
...I have often thought that the best way to define a man's character
would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which,
when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active
and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and
says: "_This_ is the real me!" And afterwards, considering the
circumstances in which the man is placed, and noting how some of them
are fitted to evoke this attitude, whilst others do not call for it, an
outside observer may be able to prophesy where the man may fail, where
succeed, where be happy and where miserable. Now as well as I can
describe it, this characteristic attitude in me always involves an
element of active tension, of holding my own, as it were, and trusting
outward things to perform their part so as to make it a full harmony,
but without any _guaranty_ that they will. Make it a guaranty--and the
attitude immediately becomes to my consciousness stagnant and stingless.
Take away the guaranty, and I feel (provided I am _überhaupt_ in
vigorous condition) a sort of deep enthusiastic bliss, of bitter
willingness to do and suffer anything, which translates itself
physically by a kind of stinging pain inside my breast-bone (don't smile
at this--it is to me an essential element of the whole thing!), and
which, although it is a mere mood or emotion to which I can give no form
in words, authenticates itself to me as the deepest principle of all
active and theoretic determination which I possess....
W. J.
* * * * *
The next letter contains the first reference to work on the
"Psychology." It also introduces into this volume the name and
personality of a colleague-to-be with whom James's relations were
destined to be close and permanent.
Josiah Royce was then a young man "from the intellectual barrens of
California" whose brilliant work was still to be done, and whose
philosophic genius had not yet been disclosed to the public, although it
may fairly be said to have been announced by every line of his
engagingly Socrates-like face and figure. He had been born and brought
up among the most primitive surroundings in Grass Valley, California,
and won his way to a brief period of study in Germany and to a degree at
Johns Hopkins in 1878. While yet a student there, he paid a visit to
Cambridge, and he has left his own quotable record of the meeting which
resulted, and of what followed.
"My real acquaintance with [James] began one summer-day in 1877, when I
first visited him in [his father's] house on Quincy Street, and was
permitted to pour out my soul to somebody who really seemed to believe
that a young man might rightfully devote his life to philosophy if he
chose. I was then a student at the Johns Hopkins University. The
opportunities for a life-work in philosophy in this country were few.
Most of my friends and advisers had long been telling me to let the
subject alone. Perhaps, so far as I was concerned, their advice was
sound; but in any case I was, so far, incapable of accepting that
advice. Yet if somebody had not been ready to tell me that I had a right
to work for truth in my own way, I should ere long have been quite
discouraged. I do not know what I then could have done. James found me
at once--made out what my essential interests were at our first
interview, accepted me with all my imperfections, as one of those many
souls who ought to be able to find themselves in their own way, gave a
patient and willing ear to just my variety of philosophical experience,
and used his influence from that time on, not to win me as a follower,
but to give me my chance. It was upon his responsibility that I was
later led to get my first opportunities here at Harvard."[58]
The opportunities did not ripen until 1882-83, however; and in the
meanwhile Royce returned to the young University of California as an
instructor in logic and rhetoric. Letters written to him there will show
how cordially James continued to sympathize with the aspirations of his
young friend, and how eagerly he fostered the possibility of an
appointment to the Harvard philosophical department. When the
opportunity arose, James seized it. Thereafter he and Royce saw each
other so constantly in Cambridge that there were not many occasions for
either to write letters to the other. Instead, allusions to Royce appear
frequently in the letters to other people.
The philosophical club which is alluded to at the end of the letter was
presided over by Dr. W. T. Harris and held informal meetings in Boston
during this one winter. Its purpose was to read and discuss Hegel. Dr.
C. C. Everett, Prof. G. H. Palmer, and Thomas Davidson were among the
members.
_To Josiah Royce._
CAMBRIDGE, _Feb. 16_ [1879].
MY DEAR ROYCE,--Your letter was most welcome. I had often found myself
wondering how you were getting on, and your wail as the solitary
philosopher between Behrings' Strait and Tierra del Fuego has a grand,
lonesome picturesqueness about it. I am sorry your surroundings are not
more mentally congenial. But recollect your extreme youth and the fact
that you are making a living and practising yourself in the pedagogic
art, _überhaupt_. You might be forced to do something much farther away
from your chosen line, and even then not make a living. I think you are
a lucky youth even as matters stand. Unexpected chances are always
turning up. A fortnight ago President Eliot was asked to recommend some
one for a $5000 professorship of philosophy in the New York City
College. One Griffin of Amherst was finally appointed. I imagine that
Gilman [of Johns Hopkins] is keeping his eye on you and only waiting for
the disgrace of youth to fade from your person.
I liked your article on Schiller very much, and hope you will send more
to Harris. That most villainous of editors, as I am told, has himself
been to Baltimore lately as an office-seeker. But the rumor may be
false. In some respects he might be a useful man for the Johns Hopkins
University, but I would give no more for his judgment than for that of a
Digger Indian. I hope you will write something about Hodgson. He is
quite as worthy as Kant of supporting any number of parasites and
partial assimilators of his substance. My sentence, I perceive, has a
rather uncomplimentary sound. I meant only to say that you should not be
deterred from treating him in your own way from fear of inadequacy. All
his commentators must undoubtedly be inadequate for some time to come;
but they will all help each other out. He seems to me the wealthiest
mine of thought I ever met with.
With me, save for my eyes, things are jogging along smoothly. I am
writing (very slowly) what may become a text-book of psychology. A
proposal from Gilman to teach in Baltimore three months yearly for the
next three years had to be declined as incompatible with work here. I
will send you a corrected copy of Harris's journal with my article on
Space, which was printed without my seeing the proof.
I suppose you subscribe to "Mind." The only decent thing I have ever
written will, I hope, appear in the July number of that sheet.[59] The
delays of publication are fearful. Most of this was written in 1877. If
it ever sees the light, I hope you will let me know what you think of
it, and how it tallies with your own theory of the Concept, which latter
I would fain swallow and digest. I wish you belonged to our philosophic
club here. It is very helpful to the uprooting of weeds from one's own
mind as well as the detection of beams in one's neighbor's eyes. Write
often and believe me faithfully yours,
WM. JAMES.
_To Josiah Royce._
CAMBRIDGE, _Feb. 3, 1880_.
BELOVED ROYCE!--So far was I from having forgotten you that I had been
revolving in my mind, on the very day when your letter came, the
rhetorical formulas of objurgation with which I was to begin a page of
inquiries of you: whether you were dead and buried or had become an
idiot or were sick or blind or what, that you sent no word of yourself.
_I_ am blind as ever, which may excuse my silence.
First of all _Glückwünsche_ as to your _Verlobung_! which, like the true
philosopher that you are, you mention parenthetically and without names,
dates, numbers of dollars, etc., etc. I think it shows great sense in
her, and no small amount of it in you, whoe'er she be. I have found in
marriage a calm and repose I never knew before, and only wish I had done
the thing ten years earlier. I think the lateness of our usual marriages
is a bad thing, and hope your engagement will not last very long.
It is refreshing to hear your account of philosophic work.... I'm sorry
you've given up your article on Hodgson. He _is_ obscure enough, and
makes me sometimes wonder whether the _ignotum_ does not pass itself off
for the _magnifico_ in his pages. I enclose his photograph as a loan,
trusting you will return it soon. I will never write again for Harris's
journal. He refused an article of mine a year ago "for lack of room,"
and has postponed the printing of two admirable original articles by T.
Davidson and Elliot Cabot for the last ten months or more, in order to
accommodate Mrs. Channing's verses and Miss----'s drivel about the
school of Athens, etc., etc. It is too loathsome. Harris has resigned
his school position in St. Louis and will, I am told, come East to live.
I know not whether he means to lay siege to the Johns Hopkins
professorship. My ignorant prejudice against all Hegelians, except
Hegel himself, grows wusser and wusser. Their sacerdotal airs! and their
sterility! Contemplating their navels and the syllable _oum_! My dear
friend Palmer, assistant professor of philosophy here, is already one of
the white-winged band, having been made captive by Caird in two summers
of vacation in Scotland.... The ineffectiveness and impotence of the
ending of [Caird's] work on Kant seem to me simply scandalous, after its
pretentious (and able) beginning. What do you think of Carveth [Reid]'s
Essay on Shadworth [Hodgson]? I haven't read it. Our Philosophic Club
here is given up this year--I think we're all rather sick of each
other's voices. My teaching is small in numbers, though my men are good.
I've tried Renouvier as a text-book--for the last time! His exposition
offers too many difficulties. I enjoyed your Rhapsody on Space, and
hereby pledge myself to buy two copies of your work ten years hence, and
to devote the rest of my life to the propagation of its doctrines. I
despise my own article,[60] which was dashed off for a momentary purpose
and published for another. But I don't see why its main doctrine, from a
psychologic and sublunary point of view, is not sound; and I think I
can, if my psychology ever gets writ, set it down in decently clear and
orderly form. All _deducers_ of space are, I am sure, mythologists. You
are, after all, not so very much isolated in California. We are all
isolated--"columns left alone of a temple once complete," etc. Books are
our companions more than men. But I wish nevertheless, and firmly
expect, that somehow or other you will get a call East, and within my
humble sphere of power I will do what I can to further that end. My
accursed eye-sight balks me always about study and production. _Ora pro
me!_ With most respectful and devout regards to the fair Object, believe
me always your
WM. JAMES.
_To Charles Renouvier._
CAMBRIDGE, _June 1, 1880_.
MY DEAR MONSIEUR RENOUVIER,--My last lesson in the course on your
"Essais" took place today. The final examination occurs this week. The
students have been profoundly interested, though their reactions on your
teaching seem as diverse as their personalities; one (the maturest of
all) being yours body and soul, another turning out a strongly
materialistic fatalist! and the rest occupying positions of mixed doubt
and assent; all however (but one) being convinced by your treatment of
freedom and certitude.
As for myself, I must frankly confess to you that I am more unsettled
than I have been for years. I have read several times over your reply to
Lotze, and your reply to my letter. The latter was fully discussed in
the class. The former seems to me a perfectly masterly expression of a
certain intellectual position, and with the latter, I think it makes it
perfectly clear to me where our divergence lies. I can formulate all
your reasonings for myself, but--dare I say it?--they fail to awaken
conviction. It seems as if, the simpler the point, the more hopeless the
disagreement in philosophy. But I will enter into no further discussion
now. I think it will be profitable for me, for some time to come,
inwardly to digest the matters in question and your utterances before
trying to articulate any more opinions.
I am overwhelmed with duties at present, and shall very shortly sail for
England to pass part of the vacation; maybe I shall get to the Continent
and see you. If we meet, I hope you will treat my heresies on the
question of the Infinite with the indulgence and magnanimity which your
doctrine of freedom in theoretic affirmations exacts!! I will send you
in a day or two an essay which develops your psychology of the voluntary
process, and which I hope will give you pleasure.
Pray excuse the haste and superficiality of this note, which is only
meant to explain why I do not write at greater length and to announce my
hope of soon grasping you by the hand and assuring you in person of my
devotion and indebtedness. Always yours,
WM. JAMES.
* * * * *
James sailed in June a good deal fagged by his year's work, and got back
by the first week of September, having spent most of the interval
seeking solitude and refreshment in the Alps and Northern Italy. On his
way home he paid his respects to Renouvier at Avignon, but otherwise
made no effort to meet his European colleagues.
_To Charles Renouvier._
CAMBRIDGE, _Dec. 27, 1880_.
MY DEAR MONSIEUR RENOUVIER,--Your note and the conclusion of my article
in the "Critique" came together this morning. It gives me almost a
feeling of pain that you, at your age and with your achievements, should
be spending your time in translating my feeble words, when by every
principle of right I should be engaged in turning your invaluable
writings into English. The state of my eyes is, as you know, my excuse
for this as for all other shortcomings. I have not even read the whole
of your translation of [my] "Feeling of Effort," though the passages I
have perused have seemed to me excellently well done. My exposition
strikes me as rather complicated now. It was written in great haste
and, were I to rewrite it, it should be simpler. The omissions of which
you speak are of no importance whatever.
I have read your discussion with Lotze in the "Revue Philosophique" and
agree with Hodgson that you carry off there the honors of the battle.
_Quant au fond de la question_, however, I am still in doubt and wait
for the light of further reflexion to settle my opinion. The matter in
my mind complicates itself with the question of a universal ego. If time
and space are not _in se_, do we not need an enveloping ego to make
continuous the times and spaces, not necessarily coincident, of the
partial egos? On this question, as I told you, I will not fail to write
again when I get new light, which I trust may decide me in your favor.