between 1867 and 1872, appears to have been a record of reading; it was
not kept systematically and is incomplete. The following entries were
made between the date "June 21, '69--M.D."--the date of graduation from
the Medical School--and the end of the year 1869. It will be understood
that "R 2 M" signified the _Revue des deux Mondes_. The original entries
stand in a column, without punctuation, and occupy two and a half pages.
Amplifications are added in brackets:--
"A. Dumas, fils; Père prod[igue], 1/2 Monde; Fils naturel, Question
D'Argent. / Jung; Stilling's Leben. [5 vols. 1806]. / J. S. Mill;
Subjection of Women [1869]. / H[orace] Bushnell; Woman suffrage, etc.
[1869]. / Balzac; Le curé de Tours. / Browning; The Ring and the Book. /
Ravaison [Mollien]; Rapport s. l. Philosophie [La philosophie en France
au xixe Siècle. Paris, 1868]. / Goethe; Aus meinem Leben. / Coquerel
fils; [Perhaps Athanase Josué Coquerel, 1820-1875, author of "Libres
études" (1867)]. / Em. Burnouf; [La] Sc[ience] des Relig[ions, vi. Les
orthodoxies, comment elles se forment et déclinent] R2M. July 1, 69. /
Leblais; Matérialisme and Sp[iri]t[ua]l[i]sme. [Paris, 1865]. / Littré;
Paroles de [la] Philos[ophie] pos[itive, 1859]. / Caro; le
Mat[érialis]me and la Science [1868]. / Comte and Littré; principes de
Phil. pos. [Comte, Auguste. Cours de philosophie positive, 6 vols., 2nd
ed. with preface by Littré. Paris, 1864]. / Littré, Bridges; replies to
Mill. [Bridges, John Henry. Unity of Comte's life and doctrine; a reply
to strictures on Comte's later writings, addressed to J. S. Mill.
London, 1866]. / H. Spencer; Reasons for dissenting from Comte. /
Secrétan; Preface to Phil. de la Liberté [1848]. / Schopenhauer; das
Metaph. Bedürfniss. / H[enry] James [sen.]; Moralism and Christianity
[N.Y. 1850]. / Jouffroy; Dist. ent. Psych. and Phys. [Part of the
"Mélanges Philosophiques"?]. / Benedikt; Electrotherap[ie], first 100
pp. / Lecky; History of Morals [2 vols. 1869]. / Froude; Short Studies,
etc. (skimmed). / Duke of Argyle; Primeval Man [1869]. / Turgeneff;
Nouvelles Moscovites. / Lewes: [Biographical] Hist. of Phil.,
Prolegomena, Kant, Comte. / Geo. Sand; Constance Verrier. / Mérimée;
Lokis. R2M. 15 Sept. 69. / J. Grote; Exploratio philosophica, [1865]. /
H[enry] James [Sen.]; Lectures and Miscellanies. [1852]. / [K. J?]
Simrock. / C. Reade; Griffith Gaunt. / G. Droz; Autour d'une Source. /
O. Feuillet. / D. F. Strauss; Chr[istian] Marklin. Mannheim. 1851. / M.
Müller; Chips [from a German workshop] vol. I and vol. II partly. / Lis
[Elisa?] Maier; W. Humboldt's Leben. [1865]. / Lis Maier; Geo. Forster's
[Leben, 1856]. / Schleiermacher; Correspondenz. vol. I. / Réville;
Israelitic monotheism, R2M, 1er Sept. 69. [La religion primitive
d'Israel et le développement du monothéisme]. / Deutsch; Islam.
Quarterly Rev. Oct. '69. / Fichte; Best[immung] des Gelehrten. i and ii
Vorlesungen. / Ste.-Beuve; Art[icle on] Leopardi, [in] Port[raits]
cont[emporains] iii. / Westm[inster]: Rev[iew] Art. on Lecky. Oct. 69. /
[T. G. von] Hippel; Selbstleben. / Vita de Leopardi. / Fichte;
Bestim[mung] des Menschen. / Gwinner; Schopenhauer. /"
Thanks are due to Mr. E. F. Walbridge, Librarian of the New York Harvard
Club, for identifying a number of abbreviated titles.
[45] _Psychology_, vol. I, p. 130, note. The quotation is literal. The
subject of the foot-note in the _Psychology_ is "the author."
[46] See, for example, the use made of Touchstone's question, in the
_Nation_ in 1876 (quoted on page 190 _infra_). James was certainly
unconscious of the repetition when he wrote page 7 of _Some Problems of
Philosophy_. Consider also, a few sentences from a notice of Morley's
_Voltaire_ (_Atlantic Monthly_, 1872, vol. XXX, p. 624). "As the
opinions of average men are swayed more by examples and types than by
mere reasons, so a personality so accomplished as Mr. Morley's cannot
fail by its mere attractiveness to influence all who come within its
reach and inspire them with a certain friendliness toward the faith that
animates it. The standard example, Goethe, is ever at hand. But to be
thus widely effective, a man must not be a specialist. Mr. John Mill,
weighty and many-sided as he is by nature and culture, is yet deficient
in the æsthetic direction; and the same is true of M. Littré in France.
Their lances lack that final tipping with light that made Voltaire's so
irresistible. What Henry IV's soldiers followed was his white plume; and
that imponderable superfluity, grace, in some shape, seems one factor
without which no awakening of men's sympathies on a large scale can take
place."
[47] _William James_, by Theodore Flournoy (Geneva, 1911), p. 149 note.
[48] Grubbing among subtleties.
[49] Regardings, or contemplative views.
[50] MS. doubtful.
[51] "I made a discovery in sending in my credentials to the Dean which
gratified me. It was that, adding in conscientiously every week in which
I have had anything to do with medicine, I can't sum up more than three
years and two or three months. Three years is the minimum with which one
can go up for examination; but as I began away back in '63, I have been
considering myself as having studied about five years, and have felt
much humiliated by the greater readiness of so many younger men to
answer questions and understand cases." To Henry James, June 12, 1869.
[52] Ephraim W. Gurney and T. S. Perry.
[53] It ought perhaps to be noted, even if only to dismiss the subject
and prevent misapprehension, that at about this time a man whose
philosophic ability was great and whose thought was vigorously
materialistic was often at the house in Quincy Street. This was Chauncey
Wright. He was twelve years James's senior; a man whose best work was
done in conversation--who wrote little, and whose talents are now to be
measured chiefly by the strong impression that he made on some of his
contemporaries. "Of the two motives to which philosophic systems owe
their being, the craving for consistency or unity in thought, and the
desire for a solid outward warrant for our emotional ends, his mind was
dominated only by the former. Never in a human head was contemplation
more separated from desire." (_Vide_ James's obituary notice of Wright,
contributed to the _Nation_ for Sept. 23, 1875.) It has been suggested
that Wright influenced James's thinking. If so, his influence was not
lasting and, in the opinion of the editor, can easily be overstated.
James was not limited to any one philosophic companionship even at this
time; and if he felt Wright's influence, it is remarkable that there
should be no mention of him in any of the letters or memoranda that have
survived and that there was never any acknowledgment in James's
subsequent writings. He was ever inclined to make acknowledgment, even
to his opponents.
[54] _Cf._ the description of Henry James, Senior's, home-comings in _A
Small Boy and Others_, p. 72.
[55] The early history of experimental psychology in America once
occasioned discussion. But the discussion seems to have arisen from its
being assumed that some particular formality or event should be
recognized as marking the coming into being, or the coming of age, of a
"Department" or a "Laboratory." James has stated the facts as to the
history of the Harvard Laboratory in his own words: "I, myself,
'founded' the instruction in experimental psychology at Harvard in
1874-5, or 1876, I forget which. For a long series of years the
laboratory was in two rooms of the Scientific School building, which at
last became choked with apparatus, so that a change was necessary. I
then, in 1890, resolved on an altogether new departure, raised several
thousand dollars, fitted up Dane Hall, and introduced laboratory
exercises as a regular part of the undergraduate psychology
course."--_Vide Science_, (N. S.) vol. II, pp. 626, 735. Also, p. 301
_infra_.
[56] The name of a rocky promontory near Newport.
[57] Being and Non-Being.
[58] _Harvard Graduates' Magazine_, vol. XVIII, p. 631 (June, 1910).
[59] "The only decent thing I have ever written" appeared in _Mind_
under the title "The Sentiment of Rationality." A footnote (p. 346) ran
as follows: "This article is the first chapter of a psychological work
on the motives which lead men to philosophize. It deals with the purely
theoretic or logical impulse. Other chapters treat of practical and
emotional motives, and in the conclusion an attempt is made to use the
motives as tests of the soundness of different philosophies."
[60] "The Spatial Quale," _Journal of Speculative Philosophy_, 1879,
vol. XIII, p. 64.
[61] Bastien-Lepage's Les Foins (The Hay-Makers).
[62] _Vide_ Introduction, p. 9 _supra_.
[63] That I was intimate with their writings and did not wish to leave
Prague without exchanging a few words with them.
[64] Loquacity.
[65] Service is service.
[66] The true names of three compatriots, who may be living, are not
given.
[67] "My tour in Germany was pleasant, and from the pedagogic point of
view instructive; although its chief result was to make me more
satisfied than ever with our Harvard College methods of teaching, and to
make me feel that in America we have perhaps a more cosmopolitan post of
observation than is elsewhere to be found." To Renouvier, Dec. 18, 1882.
[68] See p. 179 _supra_, and note.
[69] See an unsigned review of Epes Sargent's "Planchette," in the
Boston _Advertiser_ of March 10, 1869. "The present attitude of society
on this whole question is as extraordinary and anomalous as it is
discreditable to the pretension of an age which prides itself on
enlightenment and the diffusion of knowledge.... The phenomena seem, in
their present state, to pertain more to the sphere of the disinterested
student of nature than to that of the ordinary layman." The review was
reprinted in _Collected Essays and Reviews_.
[70] As an example of this James once quoted Huxley: "I take no interest
in the subject. The only case of 'Spiritualism' I have had the
opportunity of examining into for myself was as gross an imposture as
ever came under my notice. But supposing the phenomena to be
genuine--they do not interest me. If anybody would endow me with the
faculty of listening to the chatter of old women and curates in the
nearest cathedral town, I should decline the privilege, having better
things to do. And if the folk in the spiritual world do not talk more
wisely and sensibly than their friends report them to do, I put them in
the same category. The only good that I can see in the demonstration of
the truth of 'Spiritualism' is to furnish an additional argument against
suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper, than die and be made to talk
twaddle by a 'medium' hired at a guinea a séance." _Life and Letters_,
vol. I, p. 452 (New York, 1900).
James's comment should be added: "Obviously the mind of the excellent
Huxley has here but two whole-souled categories, namely, revelation or
imposture, to apperceive the case by. Sentimental reasons bar revelation
out, for the messages, he thinks, are not romantic enough for that;
fraud exists anyhow; therefore the whole thing is nothing but imposture.
The odd point is that so few of those who talk in this way realize that
they and the spiritists are using the same major premise and differing
only in the minor. The major premise is: 'Any spirit-revelation must be
romantic.' The minor of the spiritist is: 'This _is_ romantic'; that of
the Huxleyan is: 'This is dingy twaddle'--whence their opposite
conclusions!" (_Memories and Studies_, pp. 185, 186.)
[71] _The Will to Believe_, etc., p. 302.
[72] _Cf._ _The Will to Believe_, etc., p. 319.
[73] It is not the province of this book to estimate the importance of
the work done by James and the other men--Sidgwick, Myers, Gurney,
Richard Hodgson, Sir Oliver Lodge, and Richet, to go no further--who
supported and guided the S. P. R. It must be traced in the literature of
automatisms, hypnosis, divided personality, and the "subliminal." In
James's own writings the reader may be referred to the above named
chapter of _The Will to Believe_, etc., two papers included in _Memories
and Studies_, and a review of Myers's _Human Personality_ in Proc. of
the (Eng.) S. P. R., vol. XVIII, p. 22 (1903). See also p. 306 _infra_,
and note.
[74] _Mind_, 1884, vol. IX, pp. 1-26.
[75] _Unitarian Review_, Dec., 1883; vol. XX, p. 481.
[76] "The Dilemma of Determinism." _Unitarian Review_, Sept., 1884.
Republished in _The Will to Believe and Other Essays_.
[77] Professor Howison had accepted an appointment at the University of
California (Berkeley).
[78]
"Why so heartlessly deceive your sons?"
LEOPARDI, _To Sylvia_.
[79] From 15 Appian Way to 18 Garden Street.
[80] "It's amusing to see how, even upon my microscopic field, minute
events are perpetually taking place illustrative of the broadest facts
of human nature. Yesterday Nurse and I had a good laugh, but I must
allow that decidedly she 'had' me. I was thinking of something that
interested me very much, and my mind was suddenly flooded by one of
those luminous waves that sweep out of consciousness all but the living
sense, and overpower one with joy in the rich, throbbing complexity of
life, when suddenly I looked up at Nurse, who was dressing me, and saw
her primitive, rudimentary expression (so common here), as of no
inherited quarrel with her destiny of putting petticoats over my head;
the poverty and deadness of it, contrasted to the tide of speculation
that was coursing through my brain, made me exclaim, 'Oh, Nurse, don't
you wish you were inside of _me_?' Her look of dismay, and vehement
disclaimer--'Inside of you, Miss, when you have just had a sick-headache
for five days!'--gave a greater blow to my vanity than that
much-battered article has ever received. The headache had gone off in
the night and I had clean forgotten it when the little wretch confronted
me with it, at this sublime moment, when I was feeling within me the
potency of a Bismarck, and left me powerless before the immutable law
that, however great we may seem to our own consciousness, no human being
would exchange his for ours, and before the fact that _my_ glorious rôle
was to stand for _sick-headache_ to mankind! What a grotesque being I
am, to be sure, lying in this room, with the resistance of a
thistle-down, having illusory moments of throbbing with the pulse of the
race, the mystery to be solved at the next breath, and the fountain of
all happiness within me--the sense of vitality, in short, simply
proportionate to the excess of weakness. To sit by and watch these
absurdities is amusing in its way, and reminds me of how I used to
_listen_ to my 'company manners' in the days when I had 'em, and how
ridiculous they sounded.
"Ah! Those strange people who have the courage to be unhappy! _Are_ they
unhappy, by the way?" [From a diary of Alice James's.]
[81] Whose picture used to adorn the numerous advertisements of a patent
medicine called "Mrs. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound."
[82] The state of self-reproachful irritation described by
_Kater-Gefühl_ cannot be justly rendered by any English word.
[83] Outbursts.
[84] Mediatory attitude (view).
[85] "The Perception of Space." _Mind_, 1887; vol. XII, pp. 1-30,
183-211, 321-353, 516-548.
[86] _Journal of Speculative Philosophy_, 1886, vol. XX, p. 374.
[87] Epochmaking manifestation.
[88] I send her heartiest greetings.
[89] From pure.
[90] If it was printed, this notice has escaped identification.
[91] "How I shall miss that man's presence in the world!... Our problems
were the same and for the most part our solutions."
"He is a terrible loss to me. I didn't know till the news came how much
I mentally referred to him as a critic and sympathizer, or how much I
counted on seeing more of him hereafter." (From letters to G. Croom
Robertson.)
_Vide_, also, _The Will to Believe_, etc., pp. 306-7.
[92] _Vide_, pp. 290-91 _infra_.
[93] "I write every morning at one of the card tables in the parlor, all
alone in a room 120 feet long--just about the right size for one man."
(Letter from the Hotel Del Monte, Sept. 8, 1898.)
[94] J. M. Cattell. Address upon the 25th Anniversary of the American
Psychological Association, Dec. 1916. _Science_ (N.S.), vol. XLV, p.
276.
[95] To Hugo Münsterberg, Aug. 22, 1890.
[96] _E.g._, _Principles of Psychology_, vol. I, p. 369. "One is almost
tempted to believe that the pantomime state of mind and that of the
Hegelian dialectics are, emotionally considered, one and the same thing.
In the pantomime all common things are represented to happen in
impossible ways, people jump down each other's throats, houses turn
inside out, old women become young men, everything 'passes into its
opposite' with inconceivable celerity and skill; and this, so far from
producing perplexity, brings rapture to the beholder's mind. And so, in
the Hegelian logic, relations elsewhere recognized under the insipid
name of distinctions (such as that between knower and object, many and
one) must first be translated into impossibilities and contradictions,
then 'transcended' and identified by miracles, ere the proper temper is
induced for thoroughly enjoying the spectacle they show."
[97] "What Psychical Research has Accomplished," was first published in
_The Forum_, 1892, vol. XIII, p. 727.
[98] It will be recalled that Mrs. Whitman had been a Baltimorean before
she came to live in Boston.
[99] _Aug. 14._ "Lowell's funeral at mid-day.... Went to Child's to say
good-bye, and found Walcott, Howells, Cranch, etc. Poor dear old Child!
We drank a glass standing to the hope of seeing Lowell again."
[100] Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Sedgwick. Mr. Sedgwick was Miss Ashburner's
nephew.
[101] See vol. II, p. 39 _infra_.
[102] See "The Galileo Festival at Padua": _Nation_ (New York), Jan. 5,
1893; a four-column account of the Festival.
[103] _Philosophical Review_ (1893), vol. II, p. 213
[104] Mr. Frank Duveneck, painter and sculptor, now of Cincinnati.
[105] Mr. Duveneck was Mr. Boott's son-in-law. _Vide_ page 153 _supra_.
[106] Jan. 24, '94. To Carl Stumpf. "One should not be a cosmopolitan,
one's soul becomes 'disintegrated,' as Janet would say. Parts of it
remain in different places, and the whole of it is nowhere. One's native
land seems foreign. It is not wholly a good thing, and I think I suffer
from it."