Hegelism in our University. My colleague Palmer, a recent convert and a
man of much ability, has been making an active propaganda among the more
advanced students. It is a strange thing, this resurrection of Hegel in
England and here, after his burial in Germany. I think his philosophy
will probably have an important influence on the development of our
liberal form of Christianity. It gives a quasi-metaphysic backbone which
this theology has always been in need of, but it is too fundamentally
rotten and charlatanish to last long. As a reaction against
materialistic evolutionism it has its use, only this evolutionism is
fertile while Hegelism is absolutely sterile.
I think often of the too-short hours I spent with you and Monsieur
Pillon and wish they might return. Believe me with the warmest thanks
and regards, yours faithfully,
WM. JAMES.
* * * * *
In August of 1882 James arranged with the College for a year's leave of
absence, and sailed for Europe again, this time with the double purpose
of giving himself a vacation and of meeting some of the European
investigators who were working on the problems in which he had become
absorbed.
He landed in England, and paused there just long enough to throw his
brother Henry into the state of half-resentful bewilderment that
invariably resulted from their first European reunions. Henry, to whom
Europe, and England in particular, had already become an absorbing
passion and for whom American reactions upon Europe were still an
unexhausted theme, greeted every arriving American with eager curiosity
and a confident expectation that the stranger would "register"
impressions of the most charming enchantment and pleasure for his
edification. William, on the other hand, was always most under the
European spell when in America; and--whether moved by the constitutional
restlessness that seized him so soon as ever he began to travel, or by
the perversity that was a fascinating trait in his character and was
usually provoked by his younger brother's admiring neighborhood--he was
always most ardently American when on European soil. Thus his first
words of greeting to Henry on stepping out of the steamer-train were:
"My!--how cramped and inferior England seems! After all, it's poor old
Europe, just as it used to be in our dreary boyhood! America may be raw
and shrill, but I could never live with this as you do! I'm going to
hurry down to Switzerland [or wherever] and then home again as soon as
may be. It was a mistake to come over! I thought it would do me good.
Hereafter I'll stay at home. You'll have to come to America if you want
to see the family."
The effect on Henry can better be imagined than described. Time never
accustomed him to these collisions, even though he learned to expect
them. England inferior! A mistake to come abroad! Horror and
consternation are weak terms by which to describe his feelings; and
nothing but a devotion seldom existing between brothers, and a lively
interest in the astonishing phenomenon of such a reaction, ever carried
him through the hour. He usually ended by hurrying William
onward--anywhere--within the day if possible--and remained alone to
ejaculate, to exclaim and to expatiate for weeks on the rude and
exciting cyclone that had burst upon him and passed by.
On this occasion it took only two days for William to start on from
London for the Rhine, Nüremburg, and Vienna; then to Venice, where he
idled for the first half of October. After this short pause he returned
to Prague; and then, working northward, consumed the autumn in visiting
the universities of Dresden, Berlin, Leipzig, Liège and Paris. Intimate
letters to his wife, who had remained in Cambridge with their two little
boys, are almost the only ones that survive. A few passages from these
will therefore be included.
_To Mrs. James._
VIENNA, _Sept. 24, 1882_.
...I wish you could have been with me yesterday to see some French
pictures at the "Internationale Kunst Ausstellung"; they gave an idea of
the vigor of France in that way just now. One, a peasant woman, in all
her brutish loutishness sitting staring before her at noonday on the
grass she's been cutting, while the man lies flat on his back with straw
hat over face. She with such a look of infinite unawakenedness, such
childlike virginity under her shapeless body and in her face, as to make
it a poem.[61] Dear, perhaps the deepest impression I've got since I've
been in Germany is that made on me by the indefatigable beavers of old
wrinkled peasant women, striding like men through the streets, dragging
their carts or lugging their baskets, minding their business, seeming to
notice nothing, in the stream of luxury and vice, but belonging far
away, to something better and purer. Their poor, old, ravaged and
stiffened faces, their poor old bodies dried up with ceaseless toil,
their patient souls make me weep. "They are our conscripts." They are
the venerable ones whom we should reverence. All the mystery of
womanhood seems incarnated in their ugly being--the Mothers! the
Mothers! Ye are all one! Yes, Alice dear, what I love in you is only
what these blessed old creatures have; and I'm glad and proud, when I
think of my own dear Mother with tears running down my face, to know
that she is one with these.[62] Good-night, good-night!...
_To Mrs. James._
AUSSIG, BOHEMIA, _Nov. 2, 1882_.
...As for Prague, _veni, vidi, vici_. I went there with much trepidation
to do my social-scientific duty. The mighty Hering in especial
intimidated me beforehand; but having taken the plunge, the cutaneous
glow and "euphoria" (_vide_ dictionary) succeeded, and I have rarely
enjoyed a forty-eight hours better, in spite of the fact that the good
and sharp-nosed Stumpf (whose book "Über die Raumvorstellungen" I verily
believe thou art capable of never having noticed the cover of!) insisted
on trotting me about, day and night, over the whole length and breadth
of Prague, and that [Ernst] Mach (Professor of Physics), genius of all
trades, simply took Stumpf's place to do the same. I heard [Ewald]
Hering give a very poor physiology lecture and Mach a beautiful physical
one. I presented them with my visiting card, saying that I was with
their "Schriften sehr vertraut und wollte nicht eher Prague verlassen
als bis ich wenigstens ein Paar Worte mit ihnen umtauschte," etc.[63]
They received me with open arms. I had an hour and a half's talk with
Hering, which cleared up some things for me. He asked me to come to his
house that evening, but I gave an evasive reply, being fearful of boring
him. Meanwhile Mach came to my hotel and I spent four hours walking and
supping with him at his club, an unforgettable conversation. I don't
think anyone ever gave me so strong an impression of pure intellectual
genius. He apparently has read everything and thought about everything,
and has an absolute simplicity of manner and winningness of smile when
his face lights up, that are charming.
With Stumpf I spent five hours on Monday evening (this is Thursday),
three on Wednesday morning and four in the afternoon; so I feel rather
intimate. A clear-headed and just-minded, though pale and
anxious-looking man in poor health. He had another philosopher named
Marty [?] to dine with me yesterday--jolly young fellow. My native
_Geschwätzigkeit_[64] triumphed over even the difficulties of the German
tongue; I careered over the field, taking the pitfalls and breastworks
at full run, and was fairly astounded myself at coming in alive. I
learned a good many things from them, both in the way of theory and
fact, and shall probably keep up a correspondence with Stumpf. They are
not so different from us as we think. Their greater thoroughness is
largely the result of circumstances. I found that I had a more
_cosmopolitan_ knowledge of modern philosophic literature than any of
them, and shall on the whole feel much less intimidated by the thought
of their like than hitherto.
My letters will hereafter, I feel sure, have a more jocund tone. Damn
Italy! It isn't a good thing to stay with one's inferiors. With the
nourishing breath of the German air, and the sort of smoky and leathery
German smell, vigor and good spirits have set in. I have walked well and
slept well and eaten well and read well, and in short begin to feel as I
expected I should when I decided upon this arduous pilgrimage. Prague is
a ---- city--the adjective is hard to find; not magnificent, but
everything is too honest and homely,--we have in fact no English word
for the peculiar quality that good German things have, of depth,
solidity, picturesqueness, magnitude and homely goodness combined. They
have worked out a really great civilization. "Dienst ist Dienst"![65]
said the gateman of a certain garden yesterday afternoon whom Stumpf was
trying to persuade to let me in, as an American, to see the view five
minutes after the closing hour had struck. _Dienst ist Dienst._ That is
really the German motto everywhere--and I should like to know what
American would ever think of justifying himself by just that formula. I
say German of Prague, for it seems to me, in spite of the feverish
nationalism of the natives, to be outwardly a pure German city....
* * * * *
BERLIN, _Nov. 9, 1882_.
...Yesterday I went to the veterinary school to see H. Munk, the great
brain vivisector. He was very cordial and poured out a torrent of talk
for one and a half hours, though he could show me no animals. He gave
me one of his new publications and introduced me to Dr. Baginsky
(Professor Samuel Porter's favorite authority on the semicircular
canals, whose work I treated superciliously in my article). So we opened
on the semicircular canals, and Baginsky's torrent of words was even
more overwhelming than Munk's. I never felt quite so helpless and
small-boyish before, and am to this hour dizzy from the onslaught. In
the evening at the house of Gizycki (a Docent on Ethics), to a
"privatissimum" with a supper after it. Good, square, deep-chested talk
again, which I couldn't help contrasting with the whining tones of our
students and of some of the members of the Hegel Club--I hate to leave
the wholesome, tonic atmosphere, the land where one talks best when he
talks manliest--slowest, distinctest, with most deliberate emphasis and
strong voice....
* * * * *
LEIPZIG, _Nov. 11, 1882_.
...Jones spoilt my incipient nap this afternoon and I adjourned to his
room to meet Smith and Brown[66] again, with another American wild-cat
reformer. Jones is too many for me--I'm glad I'm to get far off.
Religion is well, moral regeneration is well, so is improvement of
society, so are the courage, disinterestedness, ideality of all sorts,
these men show in their lives; but I verily believe that the condition
of being a man of the world, a gentleman, etc., carries something with
it, an atmosphere, an outlook, a play, that all these things together
fail to carry, and that is worth them all. I got so suffocated with
their everlasting spiritual gossip! The falsest views and tastes somehow
in a man of fashion are truer than the truest in a plebeian cad. And
when I told the new man there that a "materialist" would have no
difficulty in keeping his place in Harvard College provided he was
well-bred, I said what was really the highest test of the College
excellence. I suppose he thought it sounded cynical. _Their_ sphere is
with the masses struggling into light, not with us at Harvard; though
I'm glad I can meet them cordially for a while now and then. Thou
see'est I have some "spleen" on me today....
* * * * *
LEIPZIG, _Nov. 13, 1882_.
...Yesterday was a splendid day within and without.... The old town
delightful in its blackness and plainness. I heard several lecturers.
Old Ludwig's lecture in the afternoon was memorable for the
extraordinary impression of character he made on me. The traditional
German professor in its highest sense. A rusty brown wig and
broad-skirted brown coat, a voluminous black neckcloth, an absolute
unexcitability of manner, a clean-shaven face so plebeian and at the
same time so grandly carved, with its hooked nose and gentle kindly
mouth and inexhaustible patience of expression, that I never saw the
like. Then to Wundt, who has a more refined elocution than any one I've
yet heard in Germany. He received me very kindly after the lecture in
his laboratory, dimly trying to remember my writings, and I stay over
today, against my intention, to go to his _psychologische Gesellschaft_
tonight. Have been writing psychology most all day....
* * * * *
In train for LIÈGE, _Nov. 18, 1882_.
...I believe I didn't tell you, in the bustle of traveling, much about
Wundt. He made a very pleasant and personal impression on me, with his
agreeable voice and ready, tooth-showing smile. His lecture also was
very able, and my opinion of him is higher than before seeing him. But
he seemed very busy and showed no desire to see more of me than the
present interview either time. The _psychologische Gesellschaft_ I
stayed over to see was postponed, but he did not propose to me to do
anything else--to the gain of my ease, but to the loss of my vanity.
Dear old Stumpf has been the friendliest of these fellows. With him I
shall correspond....
* * * * *
LIÈGE, _Nov. 20, 1882_.
...I am still at Delboeuf's, aching in every joint and muscle, weary
in every nerve-cell, but unable to get away till tomorrow noon. I was to
have started today.... The total lesson of what I have done in the past
month is to make me quieter with my home-lot and readier to believe that
it is one of the chosen places of the Earth. Certainly the instruction
and facilities at our university are on the whole superior to anything I
have seen; the rawnesses we mention with such affliction at home belong
rather to the century than to us (witness the houses here); we are not a
whit more isolated than they are here. In all Belgium there seem to be
but two genuine philosophers; in Berlin they have little to do with each
other, and I really believe that in my way I have a wider view of the
field than anyone I've seen (I count out, of course, my ignorance of
ancient authors). We are a sound country and my opinion of our essential
worth has risen and not fallen. We only lack abdominal depth of
temperament and the power to sit for an hour over a single pot of beer
without being able to tell at the end of it what we've been thinking
about. Also to reform our altogether abominable, infamous and
infra-human voices and way of talking. (What _further_ fatal defects
hang together with that I don't know--it seems as if it must carry
something very bad with it.) The first thing to do is to establish in
Cambridge a genuine German plebeian Kneipe club, to which all
instructors and picked students shall be admitted. If that succeeds, we
shall be perfect, especially if we talk therein with deeper voices....
_To Henry James._
PARIS, _Nov. 22, 1882_.
DEAR H.,--Found at Hottinguer's this A.M. your letter with all the
enclosures--and a wail you had sent to Berlin. Also six letters from my
wife and seven or eight others, not counting papers and magazines. I
will mail back yours and father's letter to me. Alice [Mrs. W. J.]
speaks of father's indubitable improvement in strength, but our sister
Alice apparently is somewhat run down.--Paris looks delicious--I shall
try to get settled as soon as possible and meanwhile feel as if the
confusion of life was recommencing. I saw in Germany all the men I cared
to see and talked with most of them. With three or four I had a really
nutritious time. The trip has amply paid for itself. I found third-class
_Nichtraucher_ almost always empty and perfectly comfortable. The great
use of such experiences is less the definite information you gain from
anyone, than a sort of solidification of your own foothold on life.
Nowhere did I see a university which seems to do for _all_ its students
anything like what Harvard does. Our methods throughout are better. It
is only in the select "Seminaria" (private classes) that a few German
students making researches with the professor gain something from him
personally which his genius alone can give. I certainly got a most
distinct impression of my own _information_ in regard to _modern_
philosophic matters being broader than that of any one I met, and our
Harvard post of observation being more cosmopolitan. Delboeuf in Liège
was an angel and much the best teacher I've seen....[67] "The Century,"
with your very good portrait, etc., was at Hottinguer's this A.M., sent
by my wife. I shall read it presently. I'm off now to see if I can get
your leather trunk, sent from London, arrested by inundations, and
ordered to be returned to Paris. I never needed its contents a second.
And in your little American valise and my flabby black hand-bag and
shawl-straps and a small satchel, I carried not only everything I used,
but collected a whole library of books in Leipsig, some pieces of
Venetian glass in their balky bolsters of seaweed, a quart bottle of eau
de Cologne, and a lot of other acquisitions. I feel remarkably tough
now, and fairly ravenous for my psychologic work. Address Hottinguer's.
W. J.
* * * * *
James's mother had died during the preceding winter. Now, just after his
arrival in Paris, he received news that his father was dangerously ill.
He went to London immediately, with the intention of getting home as
soon as possible. On arriving at his brother Henry's lodgings, he found
that Henry had already sailed. He also received a despatch advising him
that the danger was not immediate and that he should wait. He remained,
but with misgivings which the next news intensified.
_To his Father._
BOLTON ST., LONDON, _Dec. 14, 1882_.
DARLING OLD FATHER,--Two letters, one from my Alice last night, and one
from Aunt Kate to Harry just now, have somewhat dispelled the mystery
in which the telegrams left your condition; and although their news is
several days earlier than the telegrams, I am free to suppose that the
latter report only an aggravation of the symptoms the letters describe.
It is far more agreeable to think of this than of some dreadful unknown
and sudden malady.
We have been so long accustomed to the hypothesis of your being taken
away from us, especially during the past ten months, that the thought
that this may be your last illness conveys no very sudden shock. You are
old enough, you've given your message to the world in many ways and will
not be forgotten; you are here left alone, and on the other side, let us
hope and pray, dear, dear old Mother is waiting for you to join her. If
you go, it will not be an inharmonious thing. Only, if you are still in
possession of your normal consciousness, I should like to see you once
again before we part. I stayed here only in obedience to the last
telegram, and am waiting now for Harry--who knows the exact state of my
mind, and who will know yours--to telegraph again what I shall do.
Meanwhile, my blessed old Father, I scribble this line (which may reach
you though I should come too late), just to tell you how full of the
tenderest memories and feelings about you my heart has for the last few
days been filled. In that mysterious gulf of the past into which the
present soon will fall and go back and back, yours is still for me the
central figure. All my intellectual life I derive from you; and though
we have often seemed at odds in the expression thereof, I'm sure there's
a harmony somewhere, and that our strivings will combine. What my debt
to you is goes beyond all my power of estimating,--so early, so
penetrating and so constant has been the influence. You need be in no
anxiety about your literary remains. I will see them well taken care
of, and that your words shall not suffer for being concealed. At Paris I
heard that Milsand, whose name you may remember in the "Revue des Deux
Mondes" and elsewhere, was an admirer of the "Secret of Swedenborg," and
Hodgson told me your last book had deeply impressed him. So will it be;
especially, I think, if a collection of _extracts_ from your various
writings were published, after the manner of the extracts from Carlyle,
Ruskin, & Co. I have long thought such a volume would be the best
monument to you.--As for us; we shall live on each in his way,--feeling
somewhat unprotected, old as we are, for the absence of the parental
bosoms as a refuge, but holding fast together in that common sacred
memory. We will stand by each other and by Alice, try to transmit the
torch in our offspring as you did in us, and when the time comes for
being gathered in, I pray we may, if not all, some at least, be as ripe
as you. As for myself, I know what trouble I've given you at various
times through my peculiarities; and as my own boys grow up, I shall
learn more and more of the kind of trial you had to overcome in
superintending the development of a creature different from yourself,
for whom you felt responsible. I say this merely to show how my
_sympathy_ with you is likely to grow much livelier, rather than to
fade--and not for the sake of regrets.--As for the other side, and
Mother, and our all possibly meeting, I _can't_ say anything. More than
ever at this moment do I feel that if that _were_ true, all would be
solved and justified. And it comes strangely over me in bidding you
good-bye how a life is but a day and expresses mainly but a single note.
It is so much like the act of bidding an ordinary good-night.
Good-night, my sacred old Father! If I don't see you again--Farewell! a
blessed farewell! Your
WILLIAM.
* * * * *
The elder Henry James died on the nineteenth of December. A cablegram
was sent to London; and on learning of his father's death, James wrote a
letter to his wife from which the following extract is taken.
_To Mrs. James._
...Father's boyhood up in Albany, Grandmother's house, the father and
brothers and sister, with their passions and turbulent histories, his
burning, amputation and sickness, his college days and ramblings, his
theological throes, his engagement and marriage and fatherhood, his
finding more and more of the truths he finally settled down in, his
travels in Europe, the days of the old house in New York and all the men
I used to see there, at last his quieter motion down the later years of
life in Newport, Boston and Cambridge, with his friends and
correspondents about him, and his books more and more easily brought
forth--how long, how long all these things were in the living, but how
short their memory now is! What remains is a few printed pages, us and
our children and some incalculable modifications of other people's
lives, influenced this day or that by what he said or did. For me, the
humor, the good spirits, the humanity, the faith in the divine, and the
sense of his right to have a say about the deepest reasons of the
universe, are what will stay by me. I wish I could believe I should
transmit some of them to our babes. We all of us have some of his
virtues and some of his shortcomings. Unlike the cool, dry thin-edged
men who now abound, he was full of the fumes of the _ur-sprünglich_
human nature; things turbid, more than he could formulate, wrought
within him and made his judgments of rejection of so much of what was
brought [before him] seem like revelations as well as knock-down
blows.... I hope that rich soil of human nature will not become more
rare!...
* * * * *
Two months later James said in a letter to Mrs. Gibbens: "It is singular
how I'm learning every day now how the thought of his comment on my
experiences has hitherto formed an integral part of my daily
consciousness, without my having realized it at all. I interrupt myself
incessantly now in the old habit of imagining what he will say when I
tell him this or that thing I have seen or heard."
* * * * *
James remained in London until mid-February of 1883, and took advantage
of the opportunity to see more of certain men there--among them
Shadworth Hodgson, Edmund Gurney, Croom Robertson, Frederick Pollock,
Leslie Stephen, Carveth Reid, and Francis Galton. His eyes were
troubling him again, but he did some writing on psychology. After paying
another short visit to Paris, he sailed for home in March.
IX
1883-1890
_Writing the "Principles of Psychology"--Psychical Research--The
Place at Chocorua--The Irving Street House--The Paris Psychological
Congress of 1889_