Mr. Rindge says truly. He is a Cambridge boy, who made a fortune in
California, and then gave a lot of public buildings to his native town.
Unfortunately he insisted on bedecking them with "mottoes" of his own
composition, and over the Manual Training School near my house one
reads: "_Work is one of our greatest blessings. Every man should have an
honest occupation_"--which, if not lapidary in style, is at least what
my father once said. Swedenborg's writings were, viz., "insipid with
veracity," as your case now again demonstrates. Have you read Tolstoy's
"War and Peace"? I am just about finishing it. It is undoubtedly the
greatest novel ever written--also insipid with veracity. The man is
infallible--and the anesthetic revelation[9] plays a part as in no
writer. You have very likely read it. If you haven't, sell all you have
and buy the book, for I know it will speak to your very gizzard. Pray
thank Mrs. Blood for her appreciation of my "booklet" (such things
encourage a writer!), and believe me ever sincerely yours,
Wm. James.
In July, 1896, James delivered, in Buffalo and at the Chautauqua
Assembly, the substance of the lectures that were later published as
"Talks to Teachers." His impressions of Chautauqua were so
characteristic and so lively that they must be included here, even
though they duplicate in some measure a well-known passage in the essay
called "A Certain Blindness in Human Beings."
_To Mrs. James._
CHAUTAUQUA, _July 23, 1896_.
...The audience is some 500, in an open-air auditorium where (strange to
say) everyone seems to hear well; and it is very good-looking--mostly
teachers and women, but they make the best impression of any audience of
that sort that I have seen except the Brooklyn one. So here I go
again!...
_July 24_, 9.30 P.M.
...X---- departed after breakfast--a good inarticulate man, farmer's
boy, four years soldier from private to major, business man in various
States, great reader, editor of a "Handbook of Facts," full of swelling
and bursting _Weltschmerz_ and religious melancholy, yet no more
flexibility or self-power in his mind than in a boot-jack. Altogether,
what with the teachers, him and others whom I've met, I'm put in conceit
of college training. It certainly gives glibness and flexibility, if it
doesn't give earnestness and depth. I've been meeting minds so earnest
and helpless that it takes them half an hour to get from one idea to its
immediately adjacent next neighbor, and that with infinite creaking and
groaning. And when they've got to the next idea, they lie down on it
with their whole weight and can get no farther, like a cow on a
door-mat, so that you can get neither in nor out with them. Still,
glibness is not all. Weight is something, even cow-weight. Tolstoy feels
these things so--I am still in "Anna Karenina," volume I, a book almost
incredible and supernatural for veracity. I wish we were reading it
aloud together. It has rained at intervals all day. Young Vincent, a
powerful fellow, took me over and into the whole vast college side of
the institution this A.M. I have heard 4-1/2 lectures, including the one
I gave myself at 4 o'clock, to about 1200 or more in the vast open
amphitheatre, which seats 6000 and which has very good acoustic
properties. I think my voice sufficed. I can't judge of the effect. Of
course I left out all that gossip about my medical degree, etc. But I
don't want any more sporadic lecturing--I must stick to more inward
things.
_July 26_, 12:30 P.M.
...'T is the sabbath and I am just in from the amphitheatre, where the
Rev.---- has been chanting, calling and bellowing his
hour-and-a-quarter-long sermon to 6000 people at least--a sad audition.
The music was bully, a chorus of some 700, splendidly drilled, with the
audience to help. I have myself been asked to lead, or, if not to lead,
at least to do something prominent--I declined so quick that I didn't
fully gather what it was--in the exercise which I have marked on the
program I enclose. Young Vincent, whom I take to be a splendid young
fellow, told me it was the characteristically "Chautauquan" event of the
day. I would give anything to have you here. I didn't write yesterday
because there is no mail till tomorrow. I went to four lectures, in
whole or in part. All to hundreds of human beings, a large proportion
unable to get seats, who transport themselves from one lecture-room to
another _en masse_. One was on bread-making, with practical
demonstrations. One was on _walking_, by a graceful young Delsartian,
who showed us a lot. One was on telling stories to children, the
psychology and pedagogy of it. The audiences interrupt and ask questions
occasionally in spite of their size. There is hardly a pretty woman's
face in the lot, and they seem to have little or no humor in their
composition. No _epicureanism_ of any sort!
Yesterday was a beautiful day, and I sailed an hour and a half down the
Lake again to "Celoron," "America's greatest pleasure resort,"--in other
words popcorn and peep-show place. A sort of Midway-Pleasance in the
wilderness--supported Heaven knows how, so far from any human habitation
except the odd little Jamestown from which a tramway leads to it. Good
monkeys, bears, foxes, etc. Endless peanuts, popcorn, bananas, and soft
drinks; crowds of people, a ferris wheel, a balloon ascension, with a
man dropping by a parachute, a theatre, a vast concert hall, and all
sorts of peep-shows. I feel as if I were in a foreign land; even as far
east as this the accent of everyone is terrific. The "Nation" is no more
known than the London "Times." I see no need of going to Europe when
such wonders are close by. I breakfasted with a Methodist parson with 32
false teeth, at the X's table, and discoursed of demoniacal possession.
The wife said she had my portrait in her bedroom with the words written
under it, "I want to bring a balm to human lives"!!!!! Supposed to be a
quotation from me!!! After breakfast an extremely interesting lady who
has suffered from half-possessional insanity gave me a long account of
her case. Life _is_ heroic indeed, as Harry wrote. I shall stay through
tomorrow, and get to Syracuse on Tuesday....
_July 27._
...It rained hard last night, and today a part of the time. I took a
lesson in roasting, in Delsarte, and I made with my own fair hands a
beautiful loaf of graham bread with some rolls, long, flute-like, and
delicious. I should have sent them to you by express, only it seemed
unnecessary, since I can keep the family in bread easily after my return
home. Please tell this, with amplifications, to Peggy and Tweedy....
BUFFALO, N.Y., _July 29_.
...The Chautauqua week, or rather six and a half days, has been a real
success. I have learned a lot, but I'm glad to get into something less
blameless but more admiration-worthy. The flash of a pistol, a dagger,
or a devilish eye, anything to break the unlovely level of 10,000 good
people--a crime, murder, rape, elopement, anything would do. I don't see
how the younger Vincents stand it, because they are people of such
spirit....
SYRACUSE, N.Y., _July 31_.
...Now for Utica and Lake Placid by rail, with East Hill in prospect for
tomorrow. You bet I rejoice at the outlook--I long to escape from
tepidity. Even an Armenian massacre, whether to be killer or killed,
would seem an agreeable change from the blamelessness of Chautauqua as
she lies soaking year after year in her lakeside sun and showers. Man
wants to be _stretched_ to his utmost, if not in one way then in
another!...
_To Miss Rosina H. Emmet._
BURLINGTON, VT., _Aug. 2, 1896_.
...I have seen more women and less beauty, heard more voices and less
sweetness, perceived more earnestness and less triumph than I ever
supposed possible. Most of the American nation (and probably all
nations) is white-trash,--but Tolstoy has borne me up--and I say unto
_you_: "_Smooth out your voices_ if you want to be saved"!!...
_To Charles Renouvier._
BURLINGTON, VT., _Aug. 4, 1896_.
DEAR MR. RENOUVIER,--My wife announces to me from Cambridge the
reception of two immense volumes from you on the Philosophy of History.
I thank you most heartily for the gift, and am more and more amazed at
your intellectual and moral power--physical power, too, for the nervous
energy required for your work has to be extremely great.
My own nervous energy is a small teacup-full, and is more than consumed
by my duties of teaching, so that almost none is left over for writing.
I sent you a "New World" the other day, however, with an article in it
called "The Will to Believe," in which (if you took the trouble to
glance at it) you probably recognized how completely I am still your
disciple. In this point perhaps more fully than in any other; and this
point is central!
I have to lecture on general "psychology" and "morbid psychology," "the
philosophy of nature" and the "philosophy of Kant," thirteen lectures a
week for half the year and eight for the rest. Our University moreover
inflicts a monstrous amount of routine business on one, faculty meetings
and committees of every sort,[10] so that during term-time one can do no
continuous reading at all--reading of books, I mean. When vacation
comes, my brain is so tired that I can read nothing serious for a month.
During the past month I have only read Tolstoy's two great novels,
which, strange to say, I had never attacked before. I don't like his
fatalism and semi-pessimism, but for infallible veracity concerning
human nature, and absolute simplicity of method, he makes all the other
writers of novels and plays seem like children.
All this proves that I shall be slow in attaining to the reading of your
book. I have not yet read Pillon's last _Année_ except some of the book
notices and Danriac's article. How admirably clear P. is in style, and
what a power of reading he possesses.
I hope, dear Mr. Renouvier, that the years are not weighing heavily upon
you, and that this letter will find you well in body and in mind. Yours
gratefully and faithfully,
Wm. James.
_To Theodore Flournoy._
LAKE GENEVA, WISCONSIN, _Aug. 30, 1896_.
MY DEAR FLOURNOY,--You see the electric current of sympathy that binds
the world together--I turn towards you, and the place I write from
repeats the name of your Lake Leman. I was informed yesterday, however,
that the lake here was named after Lake Geneva _in the State of New
York_! and _that_ Lake only has Leman for its Godmother. Still you see
how dependent, whether immediately or remotely, America is on Europe. I
was at Niagara some three weeks ago, and bought a photograph as souvenir
and addressed it to you after getting back to Cambridge. Possibly Madame
Flournoy will deign to accept it. I have thought of you a great deal
without writing, for truly, my dear Flournoy, there is hardly a human
being with whom I feel as much sympathy of aims and character, or feel
as much "at home," as I do with you. It is as if we were of the same
stock, and I often mentally turn and make a remark to you, which the
pressure of life's occupations prevents from ever finding its way to
paper.
I am hoping that you may have figured, or at any rate _been_, at the
Munich "Congress"--that apparently stupendous affair. If they keep
growing at this rate, the next Paris one will be altogether too heavy. I
have heard no details of the meeting as yet. But whether you have been
at Munich or not, I trust that you have been having a salubrious and
happy vacation so far, and that Mrs. Flournoy and the young people are
all well. I will venture to suppose that your illness of last year has
left no bad effects whatever behind. I myself have had a rather busy and
instructive, though possibly not very hygienic summer, making money (in
moderate amounts) by lecturing on psychology to teachers at different
"summer schools" in this land. There is a great fermentation in
"pædagogy" at present in the U.S., and my wares come in for their share
of patronage. But although I learn a good deal and become a better
American for having all the travel and social experience, it has ended
by being too tiresome; and when I give the lectures at Chicago, which I
begin tomorrow, I shall have them stenographed and very likely published
in a very small volume, and so remove from myself the temptation ever to
give them again.
Last year was a year of hard work, and before the end of the term came,
I was in a state of bad neurasthenic fatigue, but I got through
outwardly all right. I have definitely given up the laboratory, for
which I am more and more unfit, and shall probably devote what little
ability I may hereafter have to purely "speculative" work. My inability
to read troubles me a good deal: I am in arrears of several years with
psychological literature, which, to tell the truth, does grow now at a
pace too rapid for anyone to follow. I was engaged to review Stout's new
book (which I fancy is very good) for "Mind," and after keeping it two
months had to back out, from sheer inability to read it, and to ask
permission to hand it over to my colleague Royce. Have you seen the
colossal Renouvier's two vast volumes on the philosophy of
history?--that will be another thing worth reading no doubt, yet very
difficult to read. I give a course in Kant for the first time in my life
(!) next year, and at present and for many months to come shall have to
put most of my reading to the service of that overgrown subject....
Of course you have read Tolstoy's "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina." I
never had that exquisite felicity before this summer, and now I feel as
if I knew _perfection_ in the representation of human life. Life indeed
seems less real than his tale of it. Such infallible veracity! The
impression haunts me as nothing literary ever haunted me before.
I imagine you lounging on some steep mountainside, with those
demoiselles all grown too tall and beautiful and proud to think
otherwise than with disdain of their elderly _commensal_ who spoke such
difficult French when he took walks with them at Vers-chez-les-Blanc.
But I hope that they are happy as they were then. Cannot we all pass
some summer near each other again, and can't it next time be in Tyrol
rather than in Switzerland, for the purpose of increasing in all of us
that "knowledge of the world" which is so desirable? I think it would be
a splendid plan. At any rate, wherever you are, take my most
affectionate regards for yourself and Madame Flournoy and all of yours,
and believe me ever sincerely your friend,
Wm. James.
_To Dickinson S. Miller._
LAKE GENEVA, WISCONSIN, _Aug. 30, 1896_.
DEAR MILLER,--Your letter from Halle of June 22nd came duly, but
treating of things eternal as it did, I thought it called for no reply
till I should have caught up with more temporal matters, of which there
has been no lack to press on my attention. To tell the truth, regarding
you as my most penetrating critic and intimate enemy, I was greatly
relieved to find that you had nothing worse to say about "The Will to
Believe." You say you are no "rationalist," and yet you speak of the
"sharp" distinction between beliefs based on "inner evidence" and
beliefs based on "craving." I can find _nothing_ sharp (or susceptible
of schoolmaster's codification) in the different degrees of "liveliness"
in hypotheses concerning the universe, or distinguish _a priori_ between
legitimate and illegitimate cravings. And when an hypothesis _is_ once a
live one, one _risks_ something in one's practical relations towards
truth and error, _whichever_ of the three positions (affirmation, doubt,
or negation) one may take up towards it. _The individual himself is the
only rightful chooser of his risk._ Hence respectful toleration, as the
only law that logic can lay down.
You don't say a word against my _logic_, which seems to me to cover your
cases entirely in its compartments. I class you as one to whom the
religious hypothesis is _von vornherein_ so dead, that the risk of error
in espousing it now far outweighs for you the chance of truth, so you
simply stake your money on the field as against it. If you _say_ this,
of course I can, as logician, have no quarrel with you, even though my
own choice of risk (determined by the irrational impressions,
suspicions, cravings, senses of direction in nature, or what not, that
make religion for me a more live hypothesis than for you) leads me to an
opposite methodical decision.
Of course if any one comes along and says that men at large don't need
to have facility of faith in their inner convictions preached to them,
[that] they have only too much readiness in that way already, and the
one thing needful to preach is that they should hesitate with their
convictions, and take their faiths out for an airing into the howling
wilderness of nature, I should also agree. But my paper wasn't addressed
to mankind at large but to a limited set of studious persons, badly
under the ban just now of certain authorities whose simple-minded faith
in "naturalism" also is sorely in need of an airing--and an airing, as
it seems to me, of the sort I tried to give.
But all this is unimportant; and I still await criticism of my
_Auseinandersetzung_ of the _logical situation_ of man's mind
_gegenüber_ the Universe, in respect to the risks it runs.
I wish I could have been with you at Munich and heard the deep-lunged
Germans roar at each other. I care not for the matters uttered, if I
only could hear the voice. I hope you met [Henry] Sidgwick there. I sent
him the American Hallucination-Census results, after considerable toil
over them, but S. never acknowledges or answers anything, so I'll have
to wait to hear from someone else whether he "got them off." I have had
a somewhat unwholesome summer. Much lecturing to teachers and sitting up
to talk with strangers. But it is instructive and makes one patriotic,
and in six days I shall have finished the Chicago lectures, which begin
tomorrow, and get straight to Keene Valley for the rest of September. My
conditions just now are materially splendid, as I am the guest of a
charming elderly lady, Mrs. Wilmarth, here at her country house, and in
town at the finest hotel of the place. The political campaign is a bully
one. Everyone outdoing himself in sweet reasonableness and persuasive
argument--hardly an undignified note anywhere. It shows the deepening
and elevating influence of a big topic of debate. It is difficult to
doubt of a people part of whose life such an experience is. But imagine
the country being saved by a McKinley! If only Reed had been the
candidate! There have been some really splendid speeches and
documents....
Ever thine,
W. J.
_To Henry James._
BURLINGTON, VT., _Sept. 28, 1896_.
DEAR HENRY,--The summer is over! alas! alas! I left Keene Valley this
A.M. where I have had three life-and-health-giving weeks in the forest
and the mountain air, crossed Lake Champlain in the steamer, not a cloud
in the sky, and sleep here tonight, meaning to take the train for Boston
in the A.M. and read Kant's Life all day, so as to be able to lecture on
it when I first meet my class. School begins on Thursday--this being
Monday night. It has been a rather cultivating summer for me, and an
active one, of which the best impression (after that of the Adirondack
woods, or even before it) was that of the greatness of Chicago. It needs
a Victor Hugo to celebrate it. But as you won't appreciate it without
demonstration, and I can't give the demonstration (at least not now and
on paper), I will say no more on that score! Alice came up for a week,
but went down and through last night. She brought me up your letter of I
don't remember now what date (after your return to London, about Wendell
Holmes, Baldwin and Royalty, etc.) which was very delightful and for
which I thank. But don't take your epistolary duties hard!
Letter-writing becomes to me more and more of an affliction, I get so
many business letters now. At Chicago, I tried a stenographer and
type-writer with an alleviation that seemed almost miraculous. I think
that I shall have to go in for one some hours a week in Cambridge. It
just goes "whiff" and six or eight long letters are _done_, so far as
you're concerned. I hear great reports of your "old things," and await
the book. My great literary impression this summer has been Tolstoy. On
the whole his atmosphere absorbs me into it as no one's else has ever
done, and even his religious and melancholy stuff, his insanity, is
probably more significant than the sanity of men who haven't been
through that phase at all.
But I am forgetting to tell you (strange to say, since it has hung over
me like a cloud ever since it happened) of dear old Professor Child's
death. We shall never see his curly head and thickset figure more. He
had aged greatly in the past three years, since being thrown out of a
carriage, and went to the hospital in July to be treated surgically. He
never recovered and died in three weeks, after much suffering, his
family not being called down from the country till the last days. He had
a moral delicacy and a richness of heart that I never saw and never
expect to see equaled.[1] The children bear it well, but I fear it will
be a bad blow for dear Mrs. Child. She and Alice, I am glad to say, are
great friends.... Good-night. _Leb' wohl!_
W. J.
XII
1893-1899 (CONTINUED)
_The Will to Believe--Talks to Teachers--Defense of Mental
Healers--Excessive Climbing in the Adirondacks_
_To Theodore Flournoy._
[Dictated]
Cambridge, _Dec. 7, 1896_.
MY DEAR FLOURNOY,--Your altogether precious and delightful letter
reached me duly, and you see I am making a not altogether too dilatory
reply. In the first place, we congratulate you upon the new-comer, and
think if she only proves as satisfactory a damsel as her charming elder
sisters, you will never have any occasion to regret that she is not a
boy. I hope that Madame Flournoy is by this time thoroughly strong and
well, and that everything is perfect with the baby. I should like to
have been at Munich with you; I have heard a good many accounts of the
jollity of the proceedings there, but on the whole I did a more
wholesome thing to stay in my own country, of which the dangers and dark
sides are singularly exaggerated in Europe.
Your lamentations on your cerebral state make me smile, knowing, as I
do, under all your subjective feelings, how great your vigor is. Of
course I sympathize with you about the laboratory, and advise you, since
it seems to me you are in a position to make conditions rather than have
them imposed on you, simply to drop it and teach what you prefer.
Whatever the latter may be, it will be as good for the students as if
they had something else from you in its place, and I see no need in this
world, when there is someone provided somewhere to do everything, for
anyone of us to do what he does least willingly and well.
_I_ have got rid of the laboratory forever, and should resign my place
immediately if they reimposed its duties upon me. The results that come
from all this laboratory work seem to me to grow more and more
disappointing and trivial. What is most needed is new ideas. For every
man who has one of them one may find a hundred who are willing to drudge
patiently at some unimportant experiment. The atmosphere of your mind is
in an extraordinary degree sane and balanced on philosophical matters.
That is where your forte lies, and where your University ought to see
that its best interests lie in having you employed. Don't consider this
advice impertinent. Your temperament is such that I think you need to be
strengthened from without in asserting your right to carry out your true
vocation.
Everything goes well with us here. The boys are developing finely; both
of them taller than I am, and Peggy healthy and well. I have just been
giving a course of public lectures of which I enclose you a ticket to
amuse you.[11] The audience, a thousand in number, kept its numbers to
the last. I was careful not to tread upon the domains of psychical
research, although many of my hearers were eager that I should do so. _I
am teaching Kant for the first time in my life_, and it gives me much
satisfaction. I am also sending a collection of old essays through the
press, of which I will send you a copy as soon as they appear; I am sure
of your sympathy in advance for much of their contents. But I am afraid
that what you never will appreciate is their wonderful English style!
Shakespeare is a little street-boy in comparison!