quiet and conscientious old passive contemplator of life, not bristling
as you are with "points," and vivacity. Its light is dampened and
suffused--and all the better perhaps for that. Then it is essentially a
confession of faith and a religious attitude--which one doesn't get so
much from you upon the street, although even there 'tis clear that you
have that within which passeth show. The optimism and healthy-mindedness
are yours through and through, so is the wide imagination. But the
moderate and non-emphatic way of putting things is not; nor is the
absence of any "American humor." So I don't know just when or where or
how you wrote it. I can't place it in the Museum or University Hall.
Probably it was in Quincy Street, and in a sort of Piperio-Armadan
trance! Anyhow it is a sincere book, and tremendously impressive by the
gravity and dignity and peacefulness with which it suggests rather than
proclaims conclusions on these eternal themes. No more than you can I
believe that death is due to selection; yet I wish you had framed some
hypothesis as to the physico-chemical necessity thereof, or discussed
such hypotheses as have been made. I think you deduce a little too
easily from the facts the existence of a general guiding tendency toward
ends like those which our mind sets. We never know what ends may have
been kept from realization, for the dead tell no tales. The surviving
witness would in any case, and whatever he were, draw the conclusion
that the universe was planned to make him and the like of him succeed,
for it actually did so. But your argument that it is millions to one
that it didn't do so by chance doesn't apply. It would apply if the
witness had preëxisted in an independent form and framed his scheme, and
then the world had realized it. Such a coincidence would prove the world
to have a kindred mind to his. But there has been no such coincidence.
The world has come but once; the witness is there after the fact and
simply approves, dependently. As I understand improbability, it only
exists where independents coincide. Where only one fact is in question,
there is no relation of "probability" at all. I think, therefore, that
the excellences we have reached and now approve may be due to no general
design but merely to a succession of the short designs we actually know
of, taking advantage of opportunity, and adding themselves together from
point to point. We are all you say we are, as heirs; we are a mystery of
condensation, and yet of extrication and individuation, and we must
worship the soil we have so wonderfully sprung from. Yet I don't think
we are necessitated to worship it as the Theists do, in the shape of one
all-inclusive and all-operative designing power, but rather like
polytheists, in the shape of a collection of beings who have each
contributed and are now contributing to the realization of ideals more
or less like those for which we live ourselves. This more pluralistic
style of feeling seems to me both to allow of a warmer sort of loyalty
to our past helpers, and to tally more exactly with the mixed condition
in which we find the world as to its ideals. What if we did come where
we are by chance, or by mere fact, with no one general design? What is
gained, is gained, all the same. As to what may have been lost, who
knows of it, in any case? or whether it might not have been much better
than what came? But if it might, that need not prevent _us_ from
building on what _we_ have.
There are lots of impressive passages in the book, which certainly will
live and be an influence of a high order. Chapters 8, 10, 14, 15 have
struck me most particularly.
I gave at Edinburgh two lectures on "The Religion of
Healthy-Mindedness," contrasting it with that of "the sick soul." I
shall soon have to quote your book as a healthy-minded document of the
first importance, though I believe myself that the sick soul must have
its say, and probably carries authority too.... Ever yours,
Wm. James.
_To Miss Frances R. Morse._
NAUHEIM, _July 10, 1901_.
DEAREST FANNY,--Your letter of June 28th comes just as I was working
myself up to a last European farewell to you, anyhow, the which has far
more instigative spur now, with your magnificent effusion in my hands.
Dear Fanny, whatever you do, don't _die_ before our return! In these
two short years so many of my best friends have been mown down, that I
feel uncertainty everywhere, and gasp till the interval is over. John
Ropes, Henry Sidgwick, F. Myers, T. Davidson, Carroll Everett, Edward
Hooper, John Fiske, all intimate and valuable, some of them extremely
so, and the circle grows ever smaller and will grow so to the end of
one's own life. Now comes Whitman, whom I never knew very well, but whom
I always liked thoroughly, and wish I had known better.... It will be
interesting to know what new turn it will give to S. W.'s existence. I
haven't the least idea how it will affect her outward life. Doubtless
she will be freer to come abroad; but I hope and trust she will not be
taking to staying any time in London or Paris, in the brutal cynical
atmosphere of which places her little eagerness and efflorescences and
cordialities would receive no such sympathetic treatment as they do with
us, until she had stayed long enough for people to know her thoroughly
and conquered a position by living down the first impression. Nothing so
_anti-English_ as S. W.'s whole "sphere." So keep her at home--with
occasional sallies abroad; and if she must ever winter abroad, let it be
in delightful slipshod old Rome! All which, as you perceive, is somewhat
confidential. I trust that the present failure of health with her is
something altogether transient, and that she will keep swimming long
after everyone else has put into shore.
Which simile reminds me of Mrs. Holmes's panel, with its superb
inscription.[38] What a sense she has for such things! and how I thank
you for quoting it! With your and her permission, I shall make a vital
use of it in a future book. It sums up the attitude towards life of a
good philosophic pluralist, and that is what, in my capacity of author
of that book, I am to be. I thank you also for the reference to I
Corinthians, 1, 28, etc.[39] I had never expressly noticed that text;
but it will make the splendidest motto for Myers's two posthumous
volumes, and I am going to write to Mrs. Myers to suggest the same. I
thank you also for your sympathetic remarks about my paper on Myers.
Fifty or a hundred years hence, people will know better than now whether
his instinct for truth was a sound one; and perhaps will then pat me on
the back for backing him. At present they give us the cold shoulder. We
are righter, in any event, than the Münsterbergs and Jastrows are,
because we don't undertake, as a condition of our investigating
phenomena, to bargain with them that they shan't upset our
"presuppositions."
It is a beautiful summer morning, and I write under an awning on the
high-perched corner balcony of the bedroom in which we live, of a corner
house on the edge of the little town, with houses on the west of us and
the fertile country spreading towards the east and south. A lovely
region, though a climate terribly _flat_. I expect to take my last bath
today, and to get my absolution from the terrible Schott; whereupon we
shall leave tomorrow morning for Strassburg and the Vosges, for a week
of touring up in higher air, and thence, _über_ Paris, as straight as
may be for Rye. I keep in a state of subliminal excitement over our
sailing on the 31st. It seems too good to be really possible. Yet the
ratchet of time will work along its daily cogs, and doubtless bring it
safe within our grasp. Last year I felt no distinctly beneficial effect
from the baths. This year it is distinct. I have, in other words,
continued pretty steadily getting better for four months past; so it is
evident that I am in a genuinely ameliorative phase of my existence, of
which the acquired momentum may carry me beyond any living man of my
age. At any rate, I set no limits now!
When we return I shall go straight up to Chocorua to the Salters'. What
I _crave_ most is some wild American country. It is a curious
organic-feeling need. One's social relations with European landscape are
entirely different, everything being so fenced or planted that you can't
lie down and sprawl. Kipling, alluding to the "bleeding raw" appearance
of some of our outskirt settlements, says, "Americans don't mix much
with their landscape as yet." But we mix a darned sight more than
Europeans, so far as our individual organisms go, with our camping and
general wild-animal personal relations. Thank Heaven that our Nature is
so much less "redeemed"!...
You see, Fanny, that we are in good spirits on the whole, although my
poor dear Alice has long sick-headaches that consume a good many
days--she is just emerging from a bad one. Happiness, I have lately
discovered, is no positive feeling, but a negative condition of freedom
from a number of restrictive sensations of which our organism usually
seems to be the seat. When they are wiped out, the clearness and
cleanness of the contrast is happiness. This is why anesthetics make us
so happy. But don't you take to drink on that account! Love to your
mother, Mary, and all. Write to us no more. How happy _that_
responsibility gone must make you! We both send warmest love,
W. J.
_To Henry James._
[Post-card]
BAD-NAUHEIM, _July 11, [1901]_.
Your letter and paper, with the shock of John Fiske's death, came
yesterday. It is too bad, for he had lots of good work in him yet, and
is a loss to American letters as well as to his family. Singularly
simple, solid, honest creature, he will be hugely missed by many!
Everybody seems to be going! _We_ stay. Life here is absolutely
monotonous, but very sweet. The country is so innocently pretty. I sit
up here on a terrace-restaurant, looking down on park and town, with the
leaves playing in the warm breeze above me, and the little Gothic town
of Friedberg only a mile off, in the midst of the great fertile plain
all chequer-boarded with the different tinted crops and framed in a
far-off horizon of low hills and woods. Alice and Harry, kept in by the
heat, come later. He went for a distant walk yesterday P.M. and, not
returning till near eleven, we thought he might have got lost in the
woods. Yale beat the University race, _but_ Bill's four[-oared crew]
beat the Yale four. On such things is human contentment based. The baths
stir up my aortic feeling and make me depressed, but I've had 6 of them,
and the rest will pass quickly. Love.
W. J.
_To E. L. Godkin._
BAD-NAUHEIM, _July 25, 1901_.
DEAR GODKIN,--Yours of the 9th, which came duly, gave me great pleasure,
first because it showed that your love for me had not grown cold, and,
second, because it seemed to reveal in you tendencies towards
sociability at large which are incompatible with a very alarming
condition of health. Nothing can give us greater pleasure than to come
and see you before we sail. We shall stick here, probably, for a
fortnight longer, then go for a week to the Hartz mountains to brace up
a little--the baths being very debilitating and the air of Nauheim
sedative. Then straight to Rye until we sail--on August 31st. I hope
that you enjoy the "New Forest"--the "Children" thereof, by Capt. Mayne
Reid, I think, was one of my most mysteriously impressive books about
the age of ten. But I fear that there is not much primeval forest to be
seen there nowadays. Nauheim is a sweet little place. One never sees a
soldier and wouldn't know that _Militarismus_ existed. There are two
policemen, one of them an old fellow of 70 who shuffles along to keep
his weak knees from giving way. I went on business to the police office
t' other day. The building stood in a fine cabbage garden, and over the
first door one met on entering stood the word _Küche_[40] in large
letters. Quite like the old idyllic pre-Sadowan German days. My heart is
getting _well_! I made an excursion to Homburg yesterday, with J. B.
Warner of Cambridge, counsellor at law, and general disputant. For about
six hours we discussed the Philippine question, he damning the
anti-Imperialists--yet my thoracic contents remained as solid as if cast
in Portland cement. Six months ago I should have had the wildest
commotion there. Congratulate me! Kindest regards to you both, in which
my wife joins. Yours ever affectionately,
Wm. James.
It should perhaps be explained that E. L. Godkin had had a cerebral
hemorrhage the year before. It had left him clear in mind, but a
permanent invalid, with little power of locomotion. James spent several
days with him at Castle Malwood near Stony Cross before he sailed for
home; and when he was in England again the next year, he repeated the
visit.
[Illustration: William James and Henry James posing for a Kodak in
1900.]
_To E. L. Godkin._
LAMB HOUSE, _Aug. 29, 1901_.
MY DEAR GODKIN,--Just a line to bid you both farewell! We leave for
London tomorrow morning and at four on Saturday we shall be ploughing
the deep. All goes well, save that the wife has sprained her ankle, and
with the "firmness" that characterizes her lovely sex insists on
hobbling about and doing all the packing. I shan't be aisy till I see
her in her berth.
After all, in spite of you and Henry, and all Americo-phobes, I'm glad
I'm going back to my own country again. Notwithstanding its
"humble"ness, its fatigues, and its complications, there's no place like
home--though I think the New Forest might come near it as a substitute.
England in general is too padded and cushioned for my rustic taste.
The most elevating _moral_ thing I've seen during these two years
abroad, after Myers's heroic exit from this world at Rome last winter,
has been the gentleness and cheerful spirit with which you are still
able to remain in it after such a blow as you have received. Who could
suppose so much public ferocity to cover so much private sweetness?
Seriously speaking, it is more edifying to us others, dear Godkin, than
you yourself can understand it to be, and I for one have learned by the
example. I pray that your winter problems may gradually solve themselves
without perplexity, and that next spring may find you relieved of all
this helplessness. It is a very slow progress, with many steps
backwards, but if the length of the forward steps preponderates, one
may be well content. Good-bye and bless you both. Affectionately yours,
Wm. James.
James returned to America in early September, in advance of the
beginning of the College term. But from this time on he limited his
teaching to one half-course during the year. His intention was to
husband his strength for writing. The course which he offered during the
first half of the College year was accordingly announced as a course on
"The Psychological Elements of Religious Life." By the end of the
winter, the second series of Gifford lectures, constituting the last
half of the "Varieties," had been written out.
_To Miss Pauline Goldmark._
SILVER LAKE, N. H., _Sept. 14, 1901_.
DEAR PAULINE,--Your kind letter (excuse pencil--pen won't write) appears
to have reached London after our departure and has just followed us
hither. I had hoped for a word from you, first at Nauheim, then on the
steamer, then at Cambridge; but this makes everything right. How good to
think of you as the same old loveress of woods and skies and waters, and
of your Bryn-Mawr friends. May none of the lot of you ever grow
insufficient or forsake each other! The sight of you sporting in
Nature's bosom once lifted me into a sympathetic region, and made a
better boy of me in ways which it would probably amuse and surprise you
to learn of, so strangely are characters useful to each other, and so
subtly are destinies intermixed. But with you on the mountain-tops of
existence still, and me apparently destined to remain grubbing in the
cellar, we seem far enough apart at present and may have to remain so.
Alas! how brief is life's glory, at the best. I can't get to Keene
Valley this year, and [may] possibly never get there. Give a kindly
thought, my friend, to the spectre who once for a few times trudged by
your side, and who would do so again if he could. I'm a "motor," and
morally ill-adapted to the game of patience. I have reached home in
pretty poor case, but I think it's mainly "nerves" at present, and
therefore remediable; so I live on the future, but keep my expectations
modest. Two years away has been too long, and the "strangeness" which I
dreaded (from past experience of it) covers all things American as with
a veil. Pathetic and poverty-stricken is all I see! This will pass away,
but I don't want good things to pass away also, so I beseech you,
Pauline, to sit down and write me a good intimate letter telling me what
your life and interest were in New York last winter.
I am very sorry to hear of your sister Susan's illness, and pray that
the summer will set her right. Did you see much of Miller this summer? I
hate to think of his having grown so delicate! Did you see Perry again?
He was at the Putnam Camp? How is Adler after his _Cur_?--or is he not
yet back? What have you read? What have you cared for? Be indulgent to
me, and write to me here--I stay for 10 days longer--the family--all
well--remain in Cambridge. I find letters a great thing to keep one from
slipping out of life.
Love to you all! Your
W. J.
The next letter was written across the back of a circular invitation to
join the American Philosophical Association, then being formed, of which
Professor Gardiner was Secretary.
_To H. N. Gardiner._
Cambridge, _Nov. 14, 1901_.
DEAR GARDINER,--I am still pretty poorly and can't "jine" anything--but,
apart from that, I don't foresee much good from a Philosophical Society.
Philosophical discussion proper only succeeds between intimates who have
learned how to converse by months of weary trials and failure. The
philosopher is a lone beast dwelling in his individual burrow.--Count me
_out_!--I hope all goes well with you. I expect to get well, but it
needs _patience_.
Wm. James.
On April 1, 1902, James sailed for England, to deliver the second
"course" of his series of Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh.
_To F. C. S. Schiller._
HATLEY ST. GEORGE,
TORQUAY, _Apr. 20, 1902_.
MY DEAR SCHILLER,--I could shed tears that you should have been so near
me and yet been missed. I got your big envelope on Thursday at the
hotel, and your two other missives here this morning. Of the Axioms
paper I have only read a sheet and a half at the beginning and the
superb conclusion which has just arrived. I shall fairly _gloat_ upon
the whole of it, and will write you my impressions and criticisms, if
criticisms there be. It is an uplifting thought that truth is to be told
at last in a radical and attention-compelling manner. I think I know,
though, how the attention of many will find a way not to be
compelled--their will is so set on having a technically and artificially
and _professionally_ expressed system, that all talk carried on as yours
is on principles of common-sense activity is as remote and little
worthy of being listened to as the slanging each other of boys in the
street as we pass. Men disdain to notice that. It is only after our
(_i.e._ your and my) general way of thinking gets organized enough to
become a regular part of the _bureaucracy_ of philosophy that we shall
get a serious hearing. Then, I feel inwardly convinced, our day will
have come. But then, you may well say, the brains will be out and the
man will be dead. Anyhow, _vive_ the Anglo-Saxon amateur, disciple of
Locke and Hume, and _pereat_ the German professional!
We are here for a week with the Godkins--poor old G., once such a power,
and now an utter wreck after a stroke of paralysis three years ago.
Beautiful place, southeast gale, volleying rain and streaming panes and
volumes of soft sea-laden wind.
I hope you are not serious about an Oxford degree for your humble
servant. If you are, pray drop the thought! I am out of the race for all
such vanities. Write me a degree on parchment and send it yourself--in
any case it would be but your award!--and it will be cheaper and more
veracious. I _had_ to take the Edinburgh one, and accepted the Durham
one to please my wife. Thank you, no coronation either! I am a poor New
Hampshire rustic, in bad health, and long to get back, after four
summers' absence, to my own cottage and children, and never come away
again for lectures or degrees or anything else. It all depends on a
man's age; and after sixty, if ever, one feels as if one ought to come
to some sort of equilibrium with one's native environment, and by means
of a regular life get one's small message to mankind on paper. That
nowadays is my only aspiration. The Gifford lectures are all facts and
no philosophy--I trust that you may receive the volume by the middle of
June.
When, oh, when is your volume to appear? The sheet you send me leaves
off just at the point where Boyle-Gibson begins to me to be most
interesting! Ever fondly yours,
Wm. James.
Your ancient President, Schurman, was also at Edinburgh getting LL.D'd.
He is conducting a campaign in favor of Philippino independence with
masterly tactics, which reconcile me completely to him, laying his
finger on just the right and telling points.
_To Charles Eliot Norton._
LAMB HOUSE, RYE, _May 4, 1902_.
DEAR NORTON,--I hear with grief and concern that you have had a bad
fall. In a letter received this morning you are described as better, so
I hope it will have had no untoward consequences beyond the immediate
shock. We need you long to abide with us in undiminished vigor and
health. Our voyage was smooth, though cloudy, and we found Miss Ward a
very honest and lovable girl. Henry D. Lloyd, whose name you know as
that of a state-socialist writer, sat opposite to us, and proved one of
the most "winning" men it was ever my fortune to know.
We went to Stratford for the first time. The absolute extermination and
obliteration of every record of Shakespeare save a few sordid material
details, and the general suggestion of narrowness and niggardliness
which ancient Stratford makes, taken in comparison with the way in which
the spiritual quantity "Shakespeare" has mingled into the soul of the
world, was most uncanny, and I feel ready to believe in almost any
mythical story of the authorship. In fact a visit to Stratford now seems
to me the strongest appeal a Baconian can make. The country round about
was exquisite. Still more so the country round about Torquay, where we
stayed with the Godkins for eight days--he holding his own, as it seemed
to me, but hardly improving, she earning palms of glory by her strength
and virtue. A regular little trump! They have taken for the next two
months the most beautiful country place I ever saw, occupying an elbow
of the Dart, and commanding a view up and down. We are here for but a
week, my lectures beginning on the 13th. H. J. seems tranquil and happy
in his work, though he has been much pestered of late by gout.
I suppose you are rejoicing as much as I in the public interest finally
aroused in the Philippine conquest. A personal scandal, it seems, is
really the only thing that will wake the ordinary man's attention up. It
should be the first aim of every good leader of opinion to rake up one
on the opposite side. It should be introduced among our Faculty methods!
Don't think, dear Norton, that you must answer this letter, which only
your accident has made me write. We shall be home so soon that I shall
see you face to face. The wife sends love, as I do, to you all. No warm
weather whatever as yet--I am having chilblains!! Ever affectionately
yours,
Wm. James.
_To Mrs. Henry Whitman._
R.M.S. IVERNIA, _June 18, 1902_.
DEAR MRS. WHITMAN,--We ought to be off Boston tonight. After a cold and
wet voyage, including two days of head-gale and heavy sea, and one of
unbroken fog with lugubriously moo-ing fog-horn, the sun has risen upon
American weather, a strong west wind like champagne, blowing out of a
saturated blue sky right in our teeth, the sea all effervescing and
sparkling with white caps and lace, the strong sun lording it in the
sky, and hope presiding in the heart. What more natural than to report
all this happy turn of affairs to you, buried as you probably still are
in the blankets of the London atmosphere, beautiful opalescent blankets
though they be, and (when one's vitals once are acclimated) yielding
more wonderful artistic effects than anything to be seen in America.
"C'est le pays de la couleur," as my brother is fond of saying in the
words of Alphonse Daudet! But no matter for international comparisons,
which are the least profitable of human employments. Christ died for us
all, so let us all be as we are, save where we want to reform ourselves.
(The only unpardonable crime is that of wanting to reform _one another_,
after the fashion of the U. S. in the Philippines.) ... Your sweet
letter of several dates reached us just before we left Edinburgh--excuse
the insipid adjective "sweet," which after all does express something
which less simple vocables may easily miss--and gave an impression of
harmony and inner health which it warms the heart to become sensible of.
I understand your temptation to stay over, but I also understand your
temptation to get back; and I imagine that more and more you will solve
the problem by a good deal of alternation in future years. It is curious
how utterly distinct the three countries of England, Ireland and
Scotland are, which we so summarily lump together--Scotland so
democratic and so much like New England in many respects. But it would
be a waste of time for you to go there. Keep to the South and spend one
winter in Rome, before you die, and a spring in the smaller Italian
cities!