He strode ahead on the next stage of his journey with a firmness of
which he would have been incapable in the seventies, and carried a heavy
burden of work forward, with never a long halt and without ever setting
it down, until he had finished the two large volumes of the "Principles
of Psychology" in 1890. The previous decade had counted steadily for
inward clarification, for health and for confidence. He was no longer
harassed by serious illnesses and pursued by the spectre of possible
invalidism. Marriage, parenthood--these immense events in a man's
spiritual journey--had happened for him within the last four years and
had brought him new loves and ambitions. He was no longer perplexed by
misgivings about his aims and abilities, but had arrived at the
conception of his treatise on psychology and had begun to formulate its
chapters. He had become a very successful teacher, and might fairly have
suspected himself of being an inspiring one. His work was beginning to
be well known outside the halls of his own University.
It is not the purpose of this book to trace the origin of his ideas or
their influence on contemporary discussion. But any reader who will
glance at Professor Perry's annotated "List" of his published work may
see that he had written important papers by 1883, and that most of what
was original in his psychology must by then have been present to his
mind. During the visit he had just made to Europe, he had got a personal
impression of the transatlantic colleagues whose writings had interested
him especially, and had spent many hours in the company of certain among
them with whom he found himself to be particularly in sympathy. Thus he
had gained a bracing sense of comradeship with the men who were
collaborating in his field. Last of all, he had brought home with him a
happy conviction that the most propitious place for him to teach and
write his book in was the philosophical department of his own
University.
So far as the "textbook on Psychology" was concerned, however, he still
underestimated the amount of original investigation and thought which
his instinct for "concrete" reality was to exact of him. Perhaps also he
made too little allowance for the inadequacies of current laboratory
methods and of the existing literature of the subject. Helmholtz and
Wundt had already published important reports from their laboratories in
Germany; but psychology was still generally considered to be an
inductive science, which achieved its purposes by introspection and
description, and which had no very broad connection with physiology nor
many laboratory methods of its own. James had still to help make a
modern science of it by his own immense effort. He may perhaps be said
to have set to work when he offered the course on "The Relation between
Physiology and Psychology" to graduate students in 1875, and made the
class take part in experiments which he arranged in a room in the
Lawrence Scientific School building.[68]
Thus with teaching, experimenting, and occasionally writing out his
conclusions as he went along, he ploughed his way through his subject.
The triple process is familiar enough today to most men of science. But
James and the majority of his contemporaries had been trained
differently or not at all; and their generation, following a few great
leaders like Pasteur, Darwin and Helmholtz, had to establish new
standards of criticism and new methods of inquiry in every department of
science. When the "Psychology" was drawing to its completion, James
wrote two sentences about his difficulties to his brother Henry. They
might equally well have been written at any other time during the
eighties. "I have," he said, "to forge every sentence in the teeth of
irreducible and stubborn facts. It is like walking through the densest
brush-wood."
* * * * *
There was one peculiarly stubborn and irreducible class of facts which
he took up and gave much thought to during this period.
As early as 1869 he had recognized the desirability of examining the
class of phenomena that are popularly called psychic[69] in a critical
and modern spirit. This was not because he was in the least impressed by
the lucubrations of the kind of mind which can be well described, in
Macaulay's phrase, as "utterly wanting in the faculty by which a
demonstrated truth is distinguished from a plausible supposition." But
an instinctive "love of sportsmanlike fair play" was stirred in him by
the indifference with which men who professed to be students of
nature,[70] and particularly scientists whose prime concern was with our
mental life, usually declined to examine phenomena which have occurred
in every known human race and generation. He was in cordial sympathy
with the announced intention of the Society for Psychical Research to
investigate the abnormal and "supernormal" occurrences. He referred
aptly to such occurrences as "wild facts," having as yet no scientific
"stall or pigeon-hole."[71] Above all, he was conscious, from the
beginning, of the proximity and possible relevance to his psychological
and philosophical problems of this large body of unanalyzed material.
Most people cannot approach such matters without emotional bias. The
atmosphere in which the public discussion of them goes on is still
poisoned by superstition and clouded by prejudice. No scientific man
involves himself in such inquiries, even now, without the certitude that
his statements will be misconstrued by some of his professional
brethren, and that his name will be taken in vain by newspapers and
charlatans. James recognized all this, but saw in it no excuse for
avoiding the subject; rather, a reason for examining it in an
unprejudiced spirit and for avowing his conclusions openly.
The English Society for Psychical Research had been founded in 1882. In
1884 James became a corresponding member and concerned himself actively
in organizing an American society of the same name in Boston. He made
contributions to the "Proceedings" of this society during the six years
of its existence; and, when it amalgamated with the English Society in
1890, he became a Vice-President of the latter. With the exception of a
term during which he served as its President (in 1894-95), he continued
to be a Vice-President of the S. P. R. until his death, and occasionally
published through its "Proceedings."
In the eighties he took up his share of the drudgery which was involved
in investigating alleged cases of apparition, thought-transference, and
mediumship. For one entire winter he and Professor G. H. Palmer attended
"cabinet séances" every Saturday without discovering anything that they
could report as other than fraudulent. But in the following year he got
upon the track of the now famous Mrs. Piper, and he made his first
report on her trance-state to the S. P. R. in 1886. After many tests and
trials he was unable to "resist the conviction that knowledge appeared
in her trances which she had never gained by the ordinary waking use of
her eyes, ears and wits." Withholding his acceptance from the
spirit-message hypothesis, he added: "What the source of this knowledge
may be I know not, and have not a glimmer of an explanatory suggestion
to make; but from admitting the fact of such knowledge I can see no
escape."[72] He continued to find time for the investigation of other
cases, and could sometimes console himself by laughing over expeditions
which were quite fruitless of interesting result. A few sentences from
letters addressed to Mrs. James in 1888, reporting an adventure with
Richard Hodgson in New York, will serve as illustration:--
"[Apr. 6.] Hodgson and I started after our baggage arrived, to find Mr.
B----, who, you may have seen by the papers, is making a scandal by
having given himself over (hand and foot) to a medium, 'Madam D----,'
who does most extraordinarily described physical performances. We found
the old girl herself, a type for Alexandre Dumas, obese, wicked, jolly,
intellectual, with no end of go and animal spirits, who entertained us
for an hour, gave us an appointment for a sitting on Monday, and asked
us to come and see Mr. B. tonight. What will come of it all I don't
know. It will be baffling, I suppose, like everything else of that
kind."
"[Apr. 7.] Mr. B. and Mrs. D. were 'too tired' to see us last night! I
suspect that will be the case next Monday. It is the knowing thing to do
under the circumstances. But that woman is one with whom one would fall
_wildly_ in love, if in love at all--she is such a fat, _fat_ old
villain...."
"[Apr. 24th.] In bed at 11.30, after the most hideously inept psychical
night, in Charleston, over a much-praised female medium who fraudulently
played on the guitar. A plague take all white-livered, anæmic, flaccid,
weak-voiced Yankee frauds! Give me a full blooded red-lipped villain
like dear old D.--when shall I look upon her like again?"
In 1889 James undertook the labor of conducting the "Census of
Hallucinations" in America. The census sought to discover, from lists of
people selected at random, how many of them, when in good health and
awake, had ever heard a voice, seen a form, or felt a touch which no
material presence could account for. James received about seven thousand
answers to the inquiries that were sent out in America; and after he had
digested and reported them, the results turned out to be in remarkable
conformity with the returns from other parts of the world. Some of
James's own deductions from the returns will be found in the essay,
"What Psychical Research has Accomplished."[73] Among other things, the
census showed apparitions corresponding with a distant event as
occurring more than four hundred times oftener than could be expected
from a calculation of chances.
After this task had been completed, he usually avoided spending time in
personal investigations.
_To Charles Renouvier._
KEENE VALLEY, _Aug. 5, 1883_
ADIRONDACKS.
MY DEAR MONSIEUR RENOUVIER,--My silence has been so protracted that I
fear you must have wondered what its reasons could be. Only the old
ones!--much to do, and little power to do it, obliging procrastination.
You will doubtless have heard from the Pillons of my safe return home. I
have spent the interval in the house of my mother-in-law in Cambridge,
trying to do some work in the way of psychologic writing before the
fatal day should arrive when the College bell, summoning _me_ as well
as my colleagues to the lecture-room, should make literary work almost
impossible. Although my bodily condition, thanks to my winter abroad,
has been better than in many years at a corresponding period, what I
succeeded in accomplishing was well-nigh zero. I floundered round in the
morasses of the theory of cognition,--the Object and the Ego,--tore up
almost each day what I had written the day before, and although I am
inwardly, of course, more aware than I was before of where the
difficulties of the subject lie, outwardly I have hardly any manuscript
to show for my pains. Your unparalleled literary fecundity is a perfect
wonder to me. You should return pious thanks to the one or many gods who
had a hand in your production, not only for endowing you with so clear a
head, but for giving you so admirable a working temperament. The most
rapid piece of literary work I ever did was completed ten days ago, and
sent to "Mind," where it will doubtless soon appear. I had promised to
give three lectures at a rather absurd little "Summer School of
Philosophy," which has flourished for four or five years past in the
little town of Concord near Boston, and which has an audience of from
twenty to fifty persons, including the lecturers themselves; and,
finding at the last moment that I could do nothing with my much
meditated subject of the Object and the Ego, I turned round and lectured
"On Some Omissions of Introspective Psychology,"[74] and wrote the
substance of the lectures out immediately after giving them--the whole
occupying six days. I hope you may read the paper some time and approve
it--though it is out of the current of your own favorite topics and
consequently hardly a proper candidate for the honours of translation in
the "Critique."
I understand now why no really good classic manual of psychology exists;
why all that do exist only treat of particular points and chapters with
any thoroughness. It is impossible to write one at present, so
infinitely more numerous are the difficulties of the task than the means
of their solution. Every chapter bristles with obstructions that refer
one to the next ten years of work for their mitigation.
With all this I have done very little consecutive reading. I have not
yet got at your historic survey in the "Critique Religieuse," for which
my brain nevertheless itches. But I have read your articles apropos of
Fouillée, and found them--the latest one especially--admirable for
clearness and completeness of statement. Surely nothing like them has
ever been written--no such stripping of the question down to its naked
essentials. Those who, like Fouillée, have the intuition of the Absolute
Unity, will of course not profit by them or anything else. Why can all
others view their own beliefs as _possibly_ only hypotheses--_they_ only
not? Why does the Absolute Unity make its votaries so much more
_conceited_ at having attained it, than any other supposed truth does?
This inner sense of superiority to all antagonists gives Fouillée his
_fougue_ and adds to his cleverness, and no doubt increases immensely
the effectiveness of his writing over the average reader's mind. But it
also makes him careless and liable to overshoot the mark.
I have just been interrupted by a visit from Noah Porter, D.D.,
President of Yale College, whose bulky work on "The Human Intellect" you
may have in your library, possibly. An American college president is a
very peculiar type of character, partly man of business, partly
diplomatist, partly clergyman, and partly professor of metaphysics,
armed with great authority and influence if his college is an important
one--which Yale is; and Porter is the paragon of the type--_bonhomme et
rusé_, learned and simple, kindhearted and sociable, yet possessed of
great decision and obstinacy. He is over seventy, but comes every summer
here to the woods to refresh himself by long mountain walks and life in
"camp," sleeping on a bed of green boughs before a great fire in the
open air. He looks like a farmer or a fisherman, and there is no sort of
human being who does not immediately feel himself entirely at home in
his company.
I have been here myself just a week. The virgin forest comes close to
our house, and the diversity of walks through it, the brooks and the
ascensions of hilltops are infinite. I doubt if there be anything like
it in Europe. Your mountains are grander, but you have nowhere this
carpet of absolutely primitive forest, with its indescribably sweet
exhalations, spreading in every direction unbroken. I shall stay here
doing hardly any work till late in September. I need to lead a purely
animal life for at least two months to carry me through the teaching
year. My wife and two children are here, all well. I would send you her
photograph and mine, save that hers--the only one I have--is too bad to
send to anyone, and my own are for the moment exhausted. I find myself
counting the years till my next visit to Europe becomes possible. Then
it shall occur under more cheerful circumstances, if possible; and I
shall stay the full fifteen months instead of only six. As I look back
now upon the winter, I find the strongest impression I received was that
of the singularly artificial, yet deeply vital and soundly healthy,
character of the English social and political system as it now exists.
It is one of the most _bizarre_ outbirths of time, one of the most
abnormal, in certain ways, and yet one of the most successful. I know
nothing that so much confirms your philosophy as this spectacle of an
accumulation of individual initiatives _all preserved_. I hope both you
and the Pillons are well. I shall never forget their friendliness, nor
the spirit of human kindness that filled their household. I am ashamed
to ask for letters from you, when after so long a silence I can myself
give you so little that is of philosophic interest. But we must take
long views; and, if life be granted, I shall do something yet, both in
the way of reading and writing. Ever truly yours,
WM. JAMES.
* * * * *
At about this time Major Henry L. Higginson, then the junior partner in
the banking house of Lee, Higginson & Company and soon to be widely
known as the founder of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, undertook to look
after the small patrimony which James had inherited. He tactfully
assumed the initiative respecting whatever had to be done, and continued
to render this friendly service as long as James lived. On his side
James, who knew nothing about investments and was incapable of
considering them without involving himself in excessive and unprofitable
worry, was delighted to leave decisions to his friend's wiser judgment.
Occasional jocose communications like the following came to be almost
his only incursions into his own "affairs."
_To Henry L. Higginson._
_Oct. 14_ [1883?].
MY DEAR HENRY,--I receive today from your office two documents, one
containing some unintelligible hieroglyphics, "C. B.& Q., 138" etc.,
etc.; the other winding up with a statement that I owe you $12,674.97!!
The latter explains your mysterious interest in my affairs. I feared as
much! Go on, Shylock, go on! you have me in your power. The peculiar
combination of ignorance and poverty which I present makes me an easy
victim. And I confess that as a psychologist I am curious to see how far
your instincts of cupidity will carry you. I await eagerly the ulterior
developments. Yours, etc.,
WM. JAMES.
[_Enclosed with the foregoing_]
Extract from a biographic sketch of W. J. soon to be published in the
"Harvard Register":--
"He now fancied himself possessed of immense wealth, and gave without
stint his imaginary riches. He has ever since been under gentle
restraint, and leads a life not merely of happiness, but of bliss;
converses rationally, reads the newspapers, where every talk of distress
attracts his notice, and being furnished with an abundant supply of
blank checks, he fills up one of them with a munificent sum, sends it
off to the sufferer, and sits down to his dinner with a happy conviction
that he has earned the right to a little indulgence in the pleasures of
the table; and yet, on a serious conversation with one of his old
friends, he is quite conscious of his real position; but the conviction
is so exquisitely painful that he will not let himself believe it."
_To H. P. Bowditch._
[Post-card]
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., _Jan. 31_ [1884].
Heute den 31ten Januar wurde mir vor 2 Stunden in rascher
Aufeinander-folge _ein_ (1) wunderschöner jüdischaussehender, kräftiger
und munterer Knabe geboren. Alles geht nach Wunsch, und bittet um
stiller Theilnahme der glückliche Vater.
W. J.
[_Translation._]
Today the 31st of January, two hours since, there was born to me in
rapid succession _one_ (I) wonderfully beautiful, Jewish-looking,
sturdy and lively boy. Everything is going as one would wish, and the
happy father craves your hushed sympathy.
W. J.
_To Thomas Davidson._
CAMBRIDGE, _Mar. 30, 1884_.
MY DEAR DAVIDSON,--I am in receipt of two letters from you since my
last, the latest one of them from Capri. I am very sorry to hear of your
continued bad physical condition. You have a queer constitution,--with
such an unusual amount of strength in most ways,--to be a constant prey
to ailment. I have long ago come to think that the right measure of a
man's health is not how much comfort or discomfort he feels in the year,
but how much work, through thick and thin, he manages to get through.
Judged by that standard, you doubtless score an unusually high number.
But when I hear you talking about Texas, I confess I really begin to
feel alarmed. From Rome to Austin! How can you think of such a thing?
Are you sure M---- is not playing the part of the tailless fox in the
fable? I know not a living soul in Texas, and if I did I should have
moral scruples about becoming an accomplice in any plot for transporting
you there. Why is it that everything in this world is offered us on no
medium terms between either having too much of it or too little? You
pine for a professorship. I pine for your leisure to write and study.
Teaching duties have really devoured the whole of my time this winter,
and with hardly any intellectual profit whatever. I have read nothing,
and written nothing save one lecture on the freedom of the will. How it
is going to end, I don't well see. The four months of non-lecturing
study I had at home last year, when I slept well and led a really
intellectual life, seem like a sort of lost paradise. However, vacations
make amends. This summer I am to edit my poor father's literary remains,
"with a sketch of his writings" which will largely consist of extracts
and no doubt help to the making him better known.
You ask why I don't write oftener. If you could see the arrears of work
under which my table groans, and the number of semi-business letters and
notes I now have to write with my infernal eyesight, you would ask no
longer. In fact I am beginning to ask whether it be not my bounden duty
to stop corresponding with my friends altogether. Only at that price
does there seem to be any prospect of doing any reading at all.
I had neither seen your article in the Unitarian Review[75] nor heard of
it, but ran for it as soon as I got your announcement of its existence.
I know not what to think of it practically; though I confess the idea of
engrafting the bloodless pallor of Boston Unitarianism on the Roman
temperament strikes one at first sight as rather queer. Unitarianism
seems to have a sort of moribund vitality here, because it is a branch
of protestantism and the tree keeps the branch sticking out. But whether
it could be grafted on a catholic trunk seems to me problematic. I
confess I rather despair of any popular religion of a philosophic
character; and I sometimes find myself wondering whether there can be
any popular religion raised on the ruins of the old Christianity without
the presence of that element which in the past has presided over the
origin of all religions, namely, a belief in new _physical_ facts and
possibilities. Abstract considerations about the soul and the reality of
a moral order will not do in a year what the glimpse into a world of new
phenomenal possibilities enveloping those of the present life, afforded
by an extension of our insight into the order of nature, would do in an
instant. Are the much despised "Spiritualism" and the "Society for
Psychical Research" to be the chosen instruments for a new era of faith?
It would surely be strange if they were; but if they are not, I see no
other agency that can do the work.
I like your formula that in consciousness there must be two
irreducibles, "being and feeling," and nothing else. But I can't put
philosophy into letters. When is our long-postponed talk to take place?
_Aufgeschoben_ for another summer, and I fear another winter too, from
what you write. It is too bad!
We have a week's recess in a couple of days and I start to look up
summer lodgings. Alice and the two-month-old baby are very well and send
you love. Always truly yours,
WM. JAMES.
_To G. H. Howison._
CAMBRIDGE, _Feb. 5, 1885_.