that my intellect has been unable to assimilate their theories, so far
as I have heard them given. But their _facts_ are patent and startling;
and anything that interferes with the multiplication of such facts, and
with our freest opportunity of observing and studying them, will, I
believe, be a public calamity. The law now proposed will so interfere,
simply because the mind-curers will not take the examinations....
Nothing would please some of them better than such a taste of
imprisonment as might, by the public outcry it would occasion, bring the
law rattling down about the ears of the mandarins who should have
enacted it.
"And whatever one may think of the narrowness of the mind-curers, their
logical position is impregnable. They are proving by the most brilliant
new results that the therapeutic relation may be what we can at present
describe only as a relation of one person to another person; and they
are consistent in resisting to the uttermost any legislation that would
make 'examinable' information the root of medical virtue, and hamper
the free play of personal force and affinity by mechanically imposed
conditions."
James knew as well as anyone that in the ranks of the healers there were
many who could fairly be described as preying on superstition and
ignorance. "X---- personally is a rapacious humbug" was his privately
expressed opinion of one of them who had a very large following. He had
no reverence for the preposterous theories with which their minds were
befogged; but "every good thing like _science_ in medicine," as he once
said, "has to be imitated and grimaced by a rabble of people who would
be at the required height; and the folly, humbug and mendacity is
pitiful." Furthermore he saw a quackery quite as odious and much more
dangerous than that of the "healers" in the patent-medicine business,
which was allowed to advertise its lies and secret nostrums in the
newspapers and on the bill-boards, and which flourished behind the
counter of every apothecary and village store-keeper at that time. (The
Federal Pure Food and Drug Act was still many years off.)
The spokesmen of the medical profession were ignoring what he believed
to be instructive phenomena. "What the real interests of medicine
require is that mental therapeutics should _not_ be stamped out, but
studied, and its laws ascertained. For that the mind-curers must at
least be suffered to make their experiments. If they cannot interpret
their results aright, why then let the orthodox M.D.'s follow up their
facts, and study and interpret them? But to force the mind-curers to a
State examination is to kill the experiments outright." But instead of
the open-minded attitude which he thus advocated, he saw doctors who
"had no more exact science in them than a fox terrier"[16] invoking the
holy name of Science and blundering ahead with an air of moral
superiority.
"One would suppose," he exclaimed again in the 1898 hearing, "that any
set of sane persons interested in the growth of medical truth would
rejoice if other persons were found willing to push out their
experiences in the mental-healing direction, and provide a mass of
material out of which the conditions and limits of such therapeutic
methods may at last become clear. One would suppose that our orthodox
medical brethren might so rejoice; but instead of rejoicing they adopt
the fiercely partisan attitude of a powerful trades-union, demanding
legislation against the competition of the 'scabs.' ... The mind-curers
and their public return the scorn of the regular profession with an
equal scorn, and will never come up for the examination. Their movement
is a religious or quasi-religious movement; personality is one condition
of success there, and impressions and intuitions seem to accomplish more
than chemical, anatomical or physiological information.... Pray do not
fail, Mr. Chairman, to catch my point. You are not to ask yourselves
whether these mind-curers do really achieve the successes that are
claimed. It is enough for you as legislators to ascertain that a large
number of our citizens, persons as intelligent and well-educated as
yourself, or I, persons whose number seems daily to increase, are
convinced that they do achieve them, are persuaded that a valuable new
department of medical experience is by them opening up. Here is a purely
medical question, regarding which our General Court, not being a
well-spring and source of medical virtue, not having any private test of
therapeutic truth, must remain strictly neutral under penalty of making
the confusion worse.... Above all things, Mr. Chairman, let us not be
infected with the Gallic spirit of regulation and reglementation for
their own abstract sakes. Let us not grow hysterical about law-making.
Let us not fall in love with enactments and penalties because they are
so logical and sound so pretty, and look so nice on paper."[17]
_To James J. Putnam._
Cambridge, _Mar. [3?] 1898_.
DEAR JIM,--Thanks for your noble-hearted letter, which makes me feel
warm again. I am glad to learn that you feel positively _agin_ the
proposed law, and hope that you will express yourself freely towards the
professional brethren to that effect.
Dr. Russell Sturgis has written me a similar letter.
Once more, thanks!
W. J.
P.S. _March 3._ The "Transcript" report, I am sorry to say, was a good
deal cut. I send you another copy, to keep and use where it will do most
good. The rhetorical problem with me was to say things to the Committee
that might neutralize the influence of their medical advisers, who, I
supposed, had the inside track, and all the _prestige_. I being banded
with the spiritists, faith-curers, magnetic healers, etc., etc. Strange
affinities![18]
W. J.
_To François Pillon._
Cambridge, _June 15, 1898_.
MY DEAR PILLON,--I have just received your pleasant letter and the
_Année_, volume 8, and shall immediately proceed to read the latter,
having finished reading my examinations yesterday, and being now free to
enjoy the vacation, but excessively tired. I grieve to learn of poor
Mrs. Pillon's continued ill health. How much patience both of you
require. I think of you also as spending most of the summer in Paris,
when the country contains so many more elements that are good for body
and soul.
How much has happened since I last heard from you! To say nothing of the
Zola trial, we now have the Cuban War! A curious episode of history,
showing how a nation's ideals can be changed in the twinkling of an eye,
by a succession of outward events partly accidental. It is quite
possible that, without the explosion of the Maine, we should still be at
peace, though, since the _basis_ of the whole American attitude is the
persuasion on the part of the people that the cruelty and misrule of
Spain in Cuba call for her expulsion (so that in that sense our war is
just what a war of "the powers" against Turkey for the Armenian
atrocities would have been), it is hardly possible that peace could have
been maintained indefinitely longer, unless Spain had gone out--a
consummation hardly to be expected by peaceful means. The actual
declaration of war by Congress, however, was a case of _psychologie des
foules_, a genuine hysteric stampede at the last moment, which shows
how unfortunate that provision of our written constitution is which
takes the power of declaring war from the Executive and places it in
Congress. Our Executive has behaved very well. The European nations of
the Continent cannot believe that our pretense of humanity, and our
disclaiming of all ideas of conquest, is sincere. It has been
_absolutely_ sincere! The self-conscious feeling of our people has been
entirely based in a sense of philanthropic duty, without which not a
step would have been taken. And when, in its ultimatum to Spain,
Congress denied any project of conquest in Cuba, it genuinely meant
every word it said. But here comes in the psychologic factor: once the
excitement of action gets loose, the taxes levied, the victories
achieved, etc., the old human instincts will get into play with all
their old strength, and the ambition and sense of mastery which our
nation has will set up new demands. We shall never take Cuba; I imagine
that to be very certain--unless indeed after years of unsuccessful
police duty there, for that is what we have made ourselves responsible
for. But Porto Rico, and even the Philippines, are not so sure. We had
supposed ourselves (with all our crudity and barbarity in certain ways)
a better nation morally than the rest, safe at home, and without the old
savage ambition, destined to exert great international influence by
throwing in our "moral weight," etc. Dreams! Human Nature is everywhere
the same; and at the least temptation all the old military passions
rise, and sweep everything before them. It will be interesting to see
how it will end.
But enough of this!--It all shows by what short steps progress is made,
and it confirms the "criticist" views of the philosophy of history. I am
going to a great popular meeting in Boston today where a lot of my
friends are to protest against the new "Imperialism."
In August I go for two months to California to do some lecturing. As I
have never crossed the continent or seen the Pacific Ocean or those
beautiful _parages_, I am very glad of the opportunity. The year after
next (_i.e._ one year from now) begins a new year of absence from my
college duties. I _may_ spend it in Europe again. In any case I shall
hope to see you, for I am appointed to give the "Gifford Lectures" at
Edinburgh during 1899-1901--two courses of 10 each on the philosophy of
religion. A great honor.--I have also received the honor of an election
as "Correspondent" of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques.
Have I _your_ influence to thank for this? Believe me, with most
sympathetic regards to Mrs. Pillon and affectionate greetings to
yourself, yours most truly
Wm. James.
Before starting for California, James went to the Adirondack Lodge to
snatch a brief holiday. One episode in this holiday can best be
described by an extract from a letter to Mrs. James.
_To Mrs. James._
ST. HUBERT'S INN,
KEENE VALLEY, _July 9, 1898_.
...I have had an eventful 24 hours, and my hands are so stiff after it
that my fingers can hardly hold the pen. I left, as I informed you by
post-card, the Lodge at seven, and five hours of walking brought us to
the top of Marcy--I carrying 18 lbs. of weight in my pack. As usual, I
met two Cambridge acquaintances on the mountain top--"Appalachians" from
Beede's. At four, hearing an axe below, I went down (an hour's walk) to
Panther Lodge Camp, and there found Charles and Pauline Goldmark, Waldo
Adler and another schoolboy, and two Bryn Mawr girls--the girls all
dressed in boys' breeches, and cutaneously desecrated in the extreme
from seven of them having been camping without a male on Loon Lake to
the north of this. My guide had to serve for the party, and quite
unexpectedly to me the night turned out one of the most memorable of all
my memorable experiences. I was in a wakeful mood before starting,
having been awake since three, and I may have slept a little during this
night; but I was not aware of sleeping at all. My companions, except
Waldo Adler, were all motionless. The guide had got a magnificent
provision of firewood, the sky swept itself clear of every trace of
cloud or vapor, the wind entirely ceased, so that the fire-smoke rose
straight up to heaven. The temperature was perfect either inside or
outside the cabin, the moon rose and hung above the scene before
midnight, leaving only a few of the larger stars visible, and I got into
a state of spiritual alertness of the most vital description. The
influences of Nature, the wholesomeness of the people round me,
especially the good Pauline, the thought of you and the children, dear
Harry on the wave, the problem of the Edinburgh lectures, all fermented
within me till it became a regular Walpurgis Nacht. I spent a good deal
of it in the woods, where the streaming moonlight lit up things in a
magical checkered play, and it seemed as if the Gods of all the
nature-mythologies were holding an indescribable meeting in my breast
with the moral Gods of the inner life. The two kinds of Gods have
nothing in common--the Edinburgh lectures made quite a hitch ahead. The
intense significance of some sort, of the whole scene, if one could only
_tell_ the significance; the intense inhuman remoteness of its inner
life, and yet the intense _appeal_ of it; its everlasting freshness and
its immemorial antiquity and decay; its utter Americanism, and every
sort of patriotic suggestiveness, and you, and my relation to you part
and parcel of it all, and beaten up with it, so that memory and
sensation all whirled inexplicably together; it was indeed worth coming
for, and worth repeating year by year, if repetition could only procure
what in its nature I suppose must be all unplanned for and unexpected.
It was one of the happiest lonesome nights of my existence, and I
understand now what a poet is. He is a person who can feel the immense
complexity of influences that I felt, and make some partial tracks in
them for verbal statement. In point of fact, I can't find a single word
for all that significance, and don't know what it was significant of, so
there it remains, a mere boulder of _impression_. Doubtless in more ways
than one, though, things in the Edinburgh lectures will be traceable to
it.
In the morning at six, I shouldered my undiminished pack and went up
Marcy, ahead of the party, who arrived half an hour later, and we got in
here at eight [P.M.] after 10-1/2 hours of the solidest walking I ever
made, and I, I think, more fatigued than I have been after any walk. We
plunged down Marcy, and up Bason Mountain, led by C. Goldmark, who had,
with Mr. White, blazed a trail the year before;[19] then down again,
away down, and up the Gothics, not counting a third down-and-up over an
intermediate spur. It was the steepest sort of work, and, as one looked
from the summits, seemed sheer impossible, but the girls kept up
splendidly, and were all fresher than I. It was true that they had slept
like logs all night, whereas I was "on my nerves." I lost my Norfolk
jacket at the last third of the course--high time to say good-bye to
that possession--and staggered up to the Putnams to find Hatty Shaw[20]
taking me for a tramp. Not a soul was there, but everything spotless and
ready for the arrival today. I got a bath at Bowditch's bath-house,
slept in my old room, and slept soundly and well, and save for the
unwashable staining of my hands and a certain stiffness in my thighs, am
entirely rested and well. But I don't believe in keeping it up too long,
and at the Willey House will lead a comparatively sedentary life, and
cultivate sleep, if I can....
W. J.
The intense experience which James thus described had consequences that
were not foreseen at the time. He had gone to the Adirondacks at the
close of the college term in a much fatigued condition. He had been
sleeping badly for some weeks, and when he started up Mount Marcy he had
neuralgia in one foot; but he had characteristically determined to
ignore and "bully" this ailment. Under such conditions the prolonged
physical exertion of the two days' climb, aggravated by the fact that he
carried a pack all the second day, was too much for a man of his years
and sedentary occupations. As the summer wore on, pain or discomfort in
the region of his heart became constant. He tried to persuade himself
that it signified nothing and would pass away, and concealed it from his
wife until mid-winter. To Howison--who was himself a confessed heart
case--he wrote, "My heart has been kicking about terribly of late,
stopping, and hurrying and aching and so forth, but I do not propose to
give up to it too much." The fact was that the strain of the two days'
climb had caused a valvular lesion that was irreparable, although not
great enough seriously to curtail his activities if he had given heed
to his general condition and avoided straining himself again.
In August James went to California to give the lectures which have
already been mentioned in a letter to Pillon. Again, these lectures were
in substance the "Talks to Teachers." The next letter, written just
before he left Cambridge, answers a request to him to address the
Philosophical Club at the University of California.
_To G. H. Howison._
Cambridge, _July 24, 1898_.
DEAR HOWISON,--Your kind letter greeted me on my arrival here three days
ago--but I have waited to answer it in order to determine just what my
lecture's title should be. I wanted to make something entirely popular,
and as it were emotional, for technicality seems to me to spell
"failure" in philosophy. But the subject in the margin of my
consciousness failed to make connexion with the centre, and I have
fallen back on something less vital, but still, I think, sufficiently
popular and practical, which you can advertise under the rather
ill-chosen title of "Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results,"
if you wish.
I am just back from a month of practical idleness in the Adirondacks,
but such is the infirmity of my complexion that I am not yet in proper
working trim. You ask me, like an angel, in what form I like to take my
sociability. The spirit is willing to take it in any form, but the flesh
is weak, and it runs to destruction of nerve-tissue and madness in me to
go to big stand-up receptions where the people scream and breathe in
each other's faces. But I know my duties; and one such reception I will
gladly face. For the rest, I should infinitely prefer a chosen few at
dinner. But this enterprise is going, my friend, to give you and Mrs.
Howison a heap of trouble. My purpose is to arrive on the eve of the
26th. I will telegraph you the hour and train. When the lectures to the
teachers are over, I will make for the Yosemite Valley, where I want to
spend a fortnight if I can, and come home.... Yours ever truly,
Wm. James.
_To Henry James._
OCCIDENTAL HOTEL,
SAN FRANCISCO, _Aug. 11, 1898_.
DEAR OLD HENRY,--You see I have worked my way across the Continent, and,
full of the impressions of this queer place, I must overflow for a page
or two to you. I saw some really grand and ferocious scenery on the
Canadian Pacific, and wish I could go right back to see it again. But it
doesn't mean much, on the whole, for human habitation, and the British
Empire's investment in Canada is in so far forth but _scenic_. It is
grand, though, in its vastness and simplicity. In Washington and Oregon
the whole foreground consisted of desolation by fire. The magnificent
coniferous forests burnt and burning, as they have been for years and
years back. Northern California one pulverous earth-colored mass of
hills and heat, with green spots produced by irrigation hardly showing
on the background. I drove through a wheatfield at Harry's Uncle
Christopher's on a machine, drawn by 26 mules, which cut a swathe 18
feet wide through the wheat and threw it out in bags to be taken home,
as fast as the leisurely mules could walk. It is like Egypt. Down here,
splendid air, and a city so indescribably odd and unique in its
suggestions that I have been saying to myself all day that _you_ ought
to have taken it in when you were under 30 and added it to your
portraits of places. So remote and terminal, so full of the sea-port
nakedness, yet so new and American, with its queer suggestions of a
history based on the fifties and the sixties. But at my age those
impressions are curiously weak to what they once were, and the time to
travel is between one's 20th and 30th year. This hotel--an old house
cleaned into newness--is redolent of '59 or '60, when it must have been
built. Hideous vast stuccoed thing, with long undulating balustrades and
wells and lace curtains. The fare is very good, but the servants all
Irish, who seem cowed in the dining-room, and go about as if they had
corns on their feet and for that reason had given up the pick and
shovel.... Tomorrow, in spite of drouth and dust, I leave for the
Yosemite Valley, with a young Californian philosopher, named [Charles
M.] Bakewell, as companion. On the whole I prefer the works of God to
those of man, and the alternative, a trip down the coast, beauties as it
would doubtless show, would include too much humanity....
_To his Son Alexander._
BERKELEY, CAL., _Aug. 28, 1898_.
DARLING OLD CHERUBINI,--See how brave this girl and boy are in the
Yosemite Valley![21] I saw a moving sight the other morning before
breakfast in a little hotel where I slept in the dusty fields. The young
man of the house had shot a little wolf called a coyote in the early
morning. The heroic little animal lay on the ground, with his big furry
ears, and his clean white teeth, and his jolly cheerful little body, but
his brave little life was gone. It made me think how brave all these
living things are. Here little coyote was, without any clothes or house
or books or anything, with nothing but his own naked self to pay his
way with, and risking his life so cheerfully--and losing it--just to
see if he could pick up a meal near the hotel. He was doing his
coyote-business like a hero, and you must do your boy-business, and I my
man-business bravely too, or else we won't be worth as much as that
little coyote. Your mother can find a picture of him in those green
books of animals, and I want you to copy it. Your loving
DAD.
_To Miss Rosina H. Emmet._
MONTEREY, _Sept. 9, 1898_.
DEAR OLD ROSINA,--I have seen your native state and even been driven by
dear, good, sweet Hal Dibblee (who is turning into a perfectly ideal
fellow) through the charming and utterly lovable place in which you all
passed your childhood. (How your mother must sometimes long for it
again!) Of California and its greatness, the half can never be told. I
have been on a ranch in the white, bare dryness of Siskiyou County, and
reaped wheat with a swathe of 18 feet wide on a machine drawn by a
procession of 26 mules. I've been to Yosemite, and camped for five days
in the high Sierras; I've lectured at the two universities of the state,
and seen the youths and maidens lounge together at Stanford in cloisters
whose architecture is purer and more lovely than aught that Italy can
show. I've heard Mrs. Dibblee read letter after letter from Anita
concerning your life together; and even one letter to Anita from Bay,
which the former enclosed. (Dear Bay!) All this, dear old Rosina, is a
"summation of stimuli" which at last carries me over the dam that has so
long obstructed all my epistolary efforts in your direction.
Over and over again I have been on the point of writing to you, more
than once I have actually written a page or two, but something has
always checked the flow, and arrested the current of the soul. What is
it? I think it is this: I naturally tend, when "familiar" with what the
authors of the beginning of the century used to call "a refined female,"
to indulge in chaffing personalities in writing to her. There is
something in you that doubtfully enjoys the chaffing; and subtly feeling
that, I stop. But some day, when experience shall have winnowed you with
her wing; when the illusions and the hopes of youth alike are faded;
when eternal principles of order are more to you than sensations that
pass in a day, however exciting; when friends that know you and your
roots and derivations are more satisfactory, however humdrum and hoary
they be, than the handsome recent acquaintances that know nothing of you
but the hour; when, in short, your being is mellowed, dulled and
harmonized by time so as to be a grave, wise, deep, and discerning moral
and intellectual unity (as mine is already from the height of my 40
centuries!), then, Rosina, we two shall be the most perfect of
combinations, and I shall write to you every week of my life and you
will be utterly unable to resist replying. That will not be, however,
before you are forty years old. You are sure to come to it! For you see
the truth, irrespective of persons, as few people see it; and after all,
you care for that more than for anything else--and that means a rare and
unusual destiny, and ultimate salvation.--But here I am, chaffing, quite
against my intentions and altogether in spite of myself. The ruling
passion is irresistible. Let me stop!