pleasure _qua_ epistolary manifestation of sympathy, but less _qua_
revelation of depression on your own part. I have been so floundering up
and down, now above and now below the line of bad nervous prostration,
that I have written no letters for three weeks past, hoping thereby the
better to accomplish certain other writing; but the other writing had to
be stopped so letters and post-cards may begin.
I see you take the war still very much to heart, and I myself think that
the blundering way in which the Colonial Office drove the Dutchmen into
it, with no conception whatever of the psychological situation, is only
outdone by our still more anti-psychological blundering in the
Philippines. Both countries have lost their moral prestige--we far more
completely than you, because for our conduct there is literally _no_
excuse to be made except _absolute_ stupidity, whilst you can make out a
very fair case, as such cases go. But we can, and undoubtedly shall,
draw back, whereas that for an Empire like yours seems politically
impossible. Empire anyhow is half crime by necessity of Nature, and to
see a country like the United States, lucky enough to be born outside of
it and its fatal traditions and inheritances, perversely rushing to
wallow in the mire of it, shows how strong these ancient race instincts
be. And that is my consolation! We are no worse than the best of men
have ever been. We are simply not superhuman; and the loud reaction
against the brutal business, in both countries, shows how the _theory_
of the matter has really advanced during the last century.
Yes! H. Sidgwick is a sad loss, with all his remaining philosophic
wisdom unwritten. I feel greatly F. W. H. Myers's loss also. He suffered
terribly with suffocation, but bore it stunningly well. He died in this
very hotel, where he had been not more than a fortnight. I don't know
_how_ tolerant (or intolerant) you are towards his pursuits and
speculations. I regard them as fragmentary and conjectural--of course;
but as most laborious and praiseworthy; and knowing how much
psychologists as a rule have counted him out from their profession, I
have thought it my duty to write a little tribute to his service to
psychology to be read on March 8th, at a memorial meeting of the S. P.
R. in his honor. It will appear, whether read or not, in the
Proceedings, and I hope may not appear to you exaggerated. I seriously
believe that the general problem of the subliminal, as Myers propounds
it, promises to be one of the _great_ problems, possibly even the
greatest problem, of psychology....
We leave Rome in three days, booked for Rye the first of April. I _must_
get into the _country!_ If I do more than just pass through London, I
will arrange for a meeting. My Edinburgh lectures begin early in
May--after that I shall have freedom. Ever truly yours,
Wm. James.
_To Miss Frances R. Morse._
[Post-card]
FLORENCE, _March 18, 1901_.
Thus far towards home, thank Heaven! after a week at Perugia and Assisi.
Glorious air, memorable scenes. Made acquaintance of Sabatier, author of
St. Francis's life--very jolly. Best of all, made acquaintance with
Francis's retreat in the mountain. _Navrant!_--it makes one see medieval
Christianity face to face. The lair of the individual wild animal, and
that animal the saint! I hope you saw it. Thanks for your last letter to
Alice. Lots of love.
W. J.
_To F. C. S. Schiller._
RYE, _April 13, 1901_.
DEAR SCHILLER,--You are showering benedictions on me. I return the bulky
ones, keeping the lighter weights. I think the parody on Bradley
amazingly good--if I had his book here I would probably revive my memory
of his discouraged style and scribble a marginal contribution of my own.
He is, really, an extra humble-minded man, I think, but even more
humble-minded about his reader than about himself, which gives him that
false air of arrogance. How you concocted those epigrams, _à la_ preface
of B., I don't see. In general I don't see how an epigram, being a pure
bolt from the blue, with no introduction or cue, ever gets itself writ.
On the Limericks, as you call them, I set less store, much less. If
everybody is to come in for a share of allusion, I am willing, but I
don't want my name to figure in the ghostly ballet with but few
companions. Royce wrote a _very_ funny thing in pedantic German some
years ago, purporting to be the proof by a distant-future professor that
I was an habitual drunkard, based on passages culled from my writings.
He may have it yet. If I ever get any animal spirits again, I may get
warmed up, by your example, into making jokes, and may then contribute.
But I beg you let this thing mull till you get a _lot_ of matter--and
then _sift_. It's the only way. But Oxford seems a better climate for
epigram than is the rest of the world.
I shall stay here--I find myself much more comfortable thoracically
already than when I came--until my Edinburgh lectures begin on May 16th,
though I shall have to run up to London towards the end of the month to
get some clothes made, and to meet my son who arrives from home. I much
regret that it will be quite impossible for me to go either to Oxford or
Cambridge--though, if things took an unexpectedly good turn, I might
indeed do so after June 18th, when my lecture course ends. Do you
meanwhile keep hearty and "funny"! I stopped at Gersau half a day and
found it a sweet little place. Fondly yours,
W. J.
_To Miss Frances R. Morse._
ROXBURGHE HOTEL,
EDINBURGH, _May 15, 1901_.
DEAREST FANNY,--You see where we are! I give _you_ the first news of
life's journey being so far advanced! It is a deadly enterprise, I'm
afraid, with the social entanglements that lie ahead, and I feel a cake
of ice in my epigastrium at the prospect, but _le vin est versé, il faut
le boire_, and from the other point of view, that it is real life
beginning once more, it is perfectly glorious, and I feel as if
yesterday in leaving London I had said good-bye to a rather dreadful
and death-bound segment of life. As regards the sociability, it is
fortunately a time of year in which only the medical part of the
University is present. The professors of the other faculties are already
in large part scattered, I think,--at least the two Seths (who are the
only ones I directly know) are away, and I have written to the Secretary
of the Academic Senate, Sir Ludovic Grant of the Law Faculty, that I am
unable to "dine out" or attend afternoon receptions, so we may be pretty
well left alone. I always hated lecturing except as regular instruction
to students, of whom there will probably be none now in the audience.
But to compensate, there begins next week a big convocation here of all
ministers in Scotland, and there will doubtless be a number of them
present, which, considering the matter to be offered, is probably
better.
We had a splendid journey yesterday in an American (almost!) train,
first-class, and had the pleasure of some talk with our Cambridge
neighbor, Mrs. Ole Bull, on her way to Norway to the unveiling of a
monument to her husband. She was accompanied by an extraordinarily fine
character and mind--odd way of expressing myself!--a young Englishwoman
named Noble, who has Hinduized herself (converted by Vivekananda to his
philosophy) and lives now for the Hindu people. These free individuals
who live their own life, no matter what domestic prejudices have to be
snapped, are on the whole a refreshing sight to me, who can do nothing
of the kind myself. And Miss Noble[34] is a most deliberate and balanced
person--no frothy enthusiast in point of character, though I believe her
philosophy to be more or less false. Perhaps no more so than anyone
else's!
We are in one of those deadly respectable hotels where you have to ring
the front-door-bell. Give me a cheerful, blackguardly place like the
Charing Cross, where we were in London. The London tailor and
shirtmaker, it being in the height of the Season, didn't fulfill their
promises; and as I sloughed my ancient cocoon at Rye, trusting to pick
up my iridescent wings the day before yesterday in passing through the
metropolis, I am here with but two _chemises_ at present (one of them
now in the wash) and fear that tomorrow, in spite of tailors' promises
to send, I may have to lecture in my pyjamas--that would give a cachet
of American originality. The weather is fine--we have just finished
breakfast.
Our son Harry ... and his mother will soon sally out to explore the
town, whilst I lie low till about noon, when I shall report my presence
and receive instructions from my boss, Grant, and prepare to meet the
storm. It is astonishing how pusillanimous two years of invalidism can
make one. Alice and Harry both send love, and so do I in heaps and
steamer-loads, dear Fanny, begging your mother to take of it as much as
she requires for her share. I will write again--doubtless--tomorrow.
_May 17._
It proved quite impossible to write to you yesterday, so I do it the
first thing this morning. I have made my plunge and the foregoing chill
has given place to the warm "reaction." The audience was more numerous
than had been expected, some 250, and exceedingly sympathetic, laughing
at everything, even whenever I used a polysyllabic word. I send you the
"Scotsman," with a skeleton report which might have been much worse
made. I am all right this morning again, so have no doubts of putting
the job through, if only I don't have too much sociability. I have got
a week free of invitations so far, and all things considered, fancy
that we shan't be persecuted.
Edinburgh is surely the noblest city ever built by man. The weather has
been splendid so far, and cold and bracing as the top of Mount
Washington in early April. Everyone here speaks of it however as "hot."
One needs fires at night and an overcoat out of the sun. The full-bodied
air, half misty and half smoky, holds the sunshine in that way which one
sees only in these islands, making the shadowy side of everything quite
black, so that all perspectives and vistas appear with objects cut
blackly against each other according to their nearness, and plane rising
behind plane of flat dark relieved against flat light in ever-receding
gradation. It is magnificent.
But I mustn't become a Ruskin!--the purpose of this letter being merely
to acquaint you with our well-being and success so far. We have found
bully lodgings, spacious to one's heart's content, upon a cheerful
square, and actually with a book-shelf fully two feet wide and two
stories high, upon the wall, the first we have seen for two years!
(There were of course book-cases enough at Lamb House, but all tight
packed already.) We now go out to take the air. I feel as if a decidedly
bad interlude in the journey of my life were closed, and the real honest
thing gradually beginning again. Love to you all! Your ever affectionate
W. J.
_To Miss Frances R. Morse._
EDINBURGH, _May 30, 1901_.
DEAREST FANNY,-- ...Beautiful as the spring is here, the words you so
often let drop about American weather make me homesick for that article.
It is blasphemous, however, to pine for anything when one is in
Edinburgh in May, and takes an open drive every afternoon in the
surrounding country by way of a constitutional. The green is of the
vividest, splendid trees and acres, and the air itself an _object_,
holding watery vapor, tenuous smoke, and ancient sunshine in solution,
so as to yield the most exquisite minglings and gradations of silvery
brown and blue and pearly gray. As for the city, its vistas are
magnificent.
We are _comblés_ with civilities, which Harry and Alice are to a certain
extent enjoying, though I have to hang back and spend much of the time
between my lectures in bed, to rest off the aortic distress which that
operation gives. I call it aortic because it feels like that, but I can
get no information from the Drs., so I won't swear I'm right. My heart,
under the influence of that magical juice, tincture of digitalis,--only
6 drops daily,--is performing _beautifully_ and gives no trouble at all.
The audiences grow instead of dwindling, and in spite of rain, being
about 300 and just crowding the room. They sit as still as death and
then applaud magnificently, so I am sure the lectures are a success.
Previous Gifford lectures have had audiences beginning with 60 and
dwindling to 15. In an hour and a half (I write this in bed) I shall be
beginning the fifth lecture, which will, when finished, put me half way
through the arduous job. I know you will relish these details, which
please pass on to Jim P. I would send you the reports in the "Scotsman,"
but they distort so much by their sham continuity with vast omission
(the reporters get my MS.), that the result is caricature. Edinburgh is
_spiritually_ much like Boston, only stronger and with more temperament
in the people. But we're all growing into much of a sameness everywhere.
I have dined out once--an almost fatal experiment! I was introduced to
Lord Somebody: "How often do you lecture?"--"Twice a week."--"What do
you do between?--play golf?" Another invitation: "Come at 6--the dinner
at 7.30--and we can walk or play bowls till dinner so as not to fatigue
you"--I having pleaded my delicacy of constitution.
I rejoice in the prospect of Booker W.'s[35] book, and thank your mother
heartily. My mouth had been watering for just that volume.
Autobiographies take the cake. I mean to read nothing else. Strange to
say, I am now for the first time reading Marie Bashkirtseff. It takes
hold of me tremenjus. I feel as if I had lived inside of her, and in
spite of her hatefulness, esteem and even like her for her incorruptible
way of telling the truth. I have not seen Huxley's life yet. It must be
delightful, only I can't agree to what seems to be becoming the
conventionally accepted view of him, that he possessed the exclusive
specialty of living for the truth. A good deal of humbug about that!--at
least when it becomes a professional and heroic attitude.
Your base remark about Aguinaldo is clean forgotten, if ever heard. I
know you wouldn't harm the poor man, who, unless Malay human nature is
weaker than human nature elsewhere, has pretty surely some surprises up
his sleeve for us yet. Best love to you all. Your affectionate
Wm. James.
_To Henry W. Rankin._
EDINBURGH, _June 16, 1901_.
DEAR MR. RANKIN,--I have received all your letters and missives,
inclusive of the letter which you think I must have lost, some months
back. I professor-ed you because I had read your name printed with that
title in a newspaper letter from East Northfield, and supposed that, by
courtesy at any rate, that title was conferred on you by a public
opinion to which I liked to conform.
I have given nine of my lectures and am to give the tenth tomorrow. They
have been a success, to judge by the numbers of the audience (300-odd)
and their non-diminution towards the end. No previous "Giffords" have
drawn near so many. It will please you to know that I am stronger and
tougher than when I began, too; so a great load is off my mind. You have
been so extraordinarily brotherly to me in writing of your convictions
and in furnishing me ideas, that I feel ashamed of my churlish and chary
replies. You, however, have forgiven me. Now, at the end of this first
course, I feel my "matter" taking firmer shape, and it will please you
less to hear me say that I believe myself to be (probably) permanently
incapable of believing the Christian scheme of vicarious salvation, and
wedded to a more continuously evolutionary mode of thought. The reasons
you from time to time have given me, never better expressed than in your
letter before the last, have somehow failed to convince. In these
lectures the ground I am taking is this: The mother sea and
fountain-head of all religions lie in the mystical experiences of the
individual, taking the word mystical in a very wide sense. All
theologies and all ecclesiasticisms are secondary growths superimposed;
and the experiences make such flexible combinations with the
intellectual prepossessions of their subjects, that one may almost say
that they have no proper _intellectual_ deliverance of their own, but
belong to a region deeper, and more vital and practical, than that which
the intellect inhabits. For this they are also indestructible by
intellectual arguments and criticisms. I attach the mystical or
religious consciousness to the possession of an extended subliminal
self, with a thin partition through which messages make irruption. We
are thus made convincingly aware of the presence of a sphere of life
larger and more powerful than our usual consciousness, with which the
latter is nevertheless continuous. The impressions and impulsions and
emotions and excitements which we thence receive help us to live, they
found invincible assurance of a world beyond the sense, they melt our
hearts and communicate significance and value to everything and make us
happy. They do this for the individual who has them, and other
individuals follow him. Religion in this way is absolutely
indestructible. Philosophy and theology give their conceptual
interpretations of this experiential life. The farther margin of the
subliminal field being unknown, it can be treated as by Transcendental
Idealism, as an Absolute mind with a part of which we coalesce, or by
Christian theology, as a distinct deity acting on us. Something, not our
immediate self, does act on our life! So I seem doubtless to my audience
to be blowing hot and cold, explaining away Christianity, yet defending
the more general basis from which I say it proceeds. I fear that these
brief words may be misleading, but let them go! When the book comes out,
you will get a truer idea.
Believe me, with profound regards, your always truly,
Wm. James.
_To Charles Eliot Norton._
RYE, _June 26, 1901_.
DEAR CHARLES NORTON,--Your delightful letter of June 1st has added one
more item to my debt of gratitude to you; and now that the Edinburgh
strain is over, I can sit down and make you a reply a little more
adequate than heretofore has been possible. The lectures went off most
successfully, and though I got tired enough, I feel that I am
essentially tougher and stronger for the old familiar functional
activity. My _tone_ is changed immensely, and that is the main point. To
be actually earning one's salt again, after so many months of listless
waiting and wondering whether such a thing will ever again become
possible, puts a new heart into one, and I now look towards the future
with aggressive and hopeful eyes again, though perhaps not with quite
the cannibalistic ones of the youth of the new century.
Edinburgh is great. A strong broad city, and, in its spiritual essence,
almost exactly feeling to me like old Boston, _nuclear_ Boston, though
on a larger, more important scale. People were very friendly, but we had
to dodge invitations--_hoffentlich_ I may be able to accept more of them
next year. The audience was extraordinarily attentive and reactive--I
never had an audience so keen to catch every point. I flatter myself
that by blowing alternately hot and cold on their Christian prejudices I
succeeded in baffling them completely till the final quarter-hour, when
I satisfied their curiosity by showing more plainly my hand. Then, I
think, I permanently dissatisfied both extremes, and pleased a mean
numerically quite small. _Qui vivra verra_. London seemed curiously
profane and free-and-easy, not exactly _shabby_, but go-as-you-please,
in aspect, as we came down five days ago. Since then I spent a day with
poor Mrs. Myers.... I mailed you yesterday a notice I wrote in Rome of
him.[36] He "looms" upon me after death more than he did in life, and I
think that his forthcoming book about "Human Personality" will probably
rank hereafter as "epoch-making."
At London I saw Theodora [Sedgwick] and the W. Darwins. Theodora was as
good and genial as ever, and Sara [Darwin] looked, I thought,
wonderfully "distinguished" and wonderfully little changed considering
the length of intervening years and the advance of the Enemy. I was too
tired to look up Leslie Stephen, or anyone else save Mrs. John Bancroft
when in London, although I wanted much to see L. S. The first volume of
his "Utilitarians" seems to me a wonderfully spirited performance--I
haven't yet got at the other two.
I am hoping to get off to Nauheim tomorrow, leaving Alice and Harry to
follow a little later. I confess that the Continent "draws" me again. I
don't know whether it be the essential identity of soul that expresses
itself in English things, and makes them seem known by heart already and
intellectually dead and unexciting, or whether it is the singular lack
of visible _sentiment_ in England, and absence of "charm," or the
oppressive ponderosity and superfluity and prominence of the
unnecessary, or what it is, but I'm blest if I ever wish to be in
England again. Any continental country whatever stimulates and refreshes
vastly more, in spite of so much strong picturesqueness here, and so
beautiful a Nature. England is ungracious, unamiable and heavy; whilst
the Continent is everywhere light and amiably quaint, even where it is
ugly, as in many elements it is in Germany. To tell the truth, I long to
steep myself in America again and let the broken rootlets make new
adhesions to the native soil. A man coquetting with too many countries
is as bad as a bigamist, and loses his soul altogether.
I suppose you are at Ashfield and I hope surrounded, or soon to be so,
by more children than of late, and all well and happy. Don't feel too
bad about the country. We've thrown away our old privileged and
prerogative position among the nations, but it only showed we were less
sincere about it than we supposed we were. The eternal fight of
liberalism has now to be fought by us on much the same terms as in the
older countries. We have still the better chance in our freedom from all
the corrupting influences from on top from which they suffer.--Good-bye
and love from both of us, to you all. Yours ever faithfully,
Wm. James.
_To Nathaniel S. Shaler._
[1901?]
DEAR SHALER,--Being a man of methodical sequence in my reading, which in
these days is anyhow rather slower than it used to be, I have only just
got at your book.[37] Once begun, it slipped along "like a novel," and I
must confess to you that it leaves a good taste behind; in fact a sort
of _haunting_ flavor due to its individuality, which I find it hard to
explain or define.