for a day--it is so curiously quaint and characteristic. I had a bad
conscience about leaving him, for I think he feels lonely as he grows
old, and friends pass over to the majority. He and I are so utterly
different in all our observances and springs of action, that we can't
rightly judge each other. I even feel great shrinking from urging him to
pay us a visit, fearing it might yield him little besides painful
shocks--and, after all, what besides pain and shock _is_ the right
reaction for anyone to make upon our vocalization and pronunciation? The
careful consonants and musical cadences of the Scotchwomen were such a
balm to the ear! I wish that you and poor Henry could become really
intimate. He is at bottom a very tender-hearted and generous being! No
more paper! so I cross! I wish when we once get settled again at
Chocorua that we might enclose you under our roof, even if only for one
night, on your way to or from the Merrimans. I should like to show you
true simplicity.
[_No signature_.]
The Gifford Lectures were published as "The Varieties of Religious
Experience, a Study in Human Nature," in June, 1902. The immediate
"popularity" of this psychological survey of man's religious
propensities was great; and the continued sales of the book contributed
not a little to relieve James of financial anxiety during the last years
of his life.
The cordiality with which theological journals and private
correspondents of many creeds greeted the "Varieties," as containing a
fair treatment of facts which other writers had approached with a
sectarian or anti-theological bias, was striking. James was amused at
being told that the book had "supplied the protestant pulpits with
sermons for a twelve-month." Regarding himself as "a most protestant
protestant," as he once said, he was especially pleased by the manner in
which it was received by Roman Catholic reviewers.
Certain philosophical conclusions were indicated broadly in the
"Varieties" without being elaborated. The book was a survey, an
examination, of the facts. James had originally conceived of the Gifford
appointment as giving him "an opportunity for a certain amount of
psychology and a certain amount of metaphysics," and so had thought of
making the first series of lectures descriptive of man's religious
propensities and the second series a metaphysical study of their
satisfaction through philosophy. The psychological material had grown to
unforeseen dimensions, and it ended by filling the book. The
metaphysical study remained to be elaborated; and to such work James now
turned.
XIV
1902-1905
_The Last Period (I)--Philosophical Writing--Statements of Religious
Relief_
JAMES now limited his teaching in Harvard University, as has been said,
to half a course a year and tried to devote his working energies to
formulating a statement of his philosophical conceptions. For two years
he published almost nothing; then the essays which were subsequently
collected in the volumes called "Pragmatism," "The Pluralistic
Universe," "The Meaning of Truth," and "Essays in Radical Empiricism,"
began to appear in the philosophic journals, or were delivered as
special lectures. Whenever he accepted invitations to lecture outside
the College, as he still did occasionally, it was with the purpose of
getting these conceptions expressed and of throwing them into the arena
of discussion. But demands which correspondents and callers from all
parts of the globe now made on his time and sympathy were formidable,
for he could not rid himself of the habit of treating the most trivial
of these with consideration, or acquire the habit of using a secretary.
In this way there continued to be a constant drain on his strength. "It
is probably difficult [thus he wrote wearily to Mr. Lutoslawski, who had
begged him to collaborate with him on a book in 1904] for a man whose
cerebral machine works with such facility as yours does to imagine the
kind of consciousness of men like Flournoy and myself. The background of
my consciousness, so far as my own achievements go, is composed of a
_sense of impossibility_--a sense well warranted by the facts. For
instance, two years ago, the 'Varieties' being published, I decided
that everything was cleared and that my duty was immediately to begin
writing my metaphysical system. Up to last October, when the academic
year began, I had written some 200 pages of _notes_, _i.e._ disconnected
_brouillons_. I hoped this year to write 400 or 500 pages of straight
composition, and could have done so without the interruptions. As a
matter of fact, with the best will in the world, I have written exactly
32 pages! For an academic year's work, that is not brilliant! You see
that, when I refuse your request, it is, after a fashion, in order to
save my own life. My working day is anyhow, _at best_, only three hours
long--by working I mean writing and reading philosophy." This estimate
of his "notes" was, as always, self-deprecatory; but there was no
denying a great measure of truth to the statement. Frequently his health
made it necessary for him to escape from Cambridge and his desk. These
incidents will be noted separately wherever the context requires.
Yet in spite of these difficulties and notwithstanding his complaints of
constant frustration, the spirit with which James still did his work
emerges from the essays of this time as well as from his letters. It was
as if the years that had preceded had been years of preparation for just
what he was now doing. At the age of sixty-three he turned to the
formulation of his empirical philosophy with the eagerness of a
schoolboy let out to play. Misunderstanding disturbed him only
momentarily, opposition stimulated him, he rejoiced openly in the
controversies which he provoked, and engaged in polemics with the good
humor and vigor that were the essence of his genius. His "truth" must
prevail! the Absolute should suffer its death-blow! Flournoy, Bergson,
Schiller, Papini, and others too were "on his side." He made merry at
the expense of his critics, or bewailed the perversity of their
opposition; but he always encouraged them to "lay on." The imagery of
contest and battle appeared in the letters which he threw off, and he
expressed himself as freely as only a man can who has outgrown the
reserves of his youth.
_To Henry L. Higginson._
CHOCORUA, _July 3, 1902_.
DEAR HENRY,--Thanks for your letter of the other day, etc. Alice tells
me of a queer conversation you and she had upon the cars. I am not
anxious about money, beyond wishing not to live on capital.... As I have
frequently said, I mean to support you in your old age. In fact the hope
of that is about all that I now live for, being surfeited with the glory
of academic degrees just escaped, like this last one which, in the
friendliness of its heart, your [Harvard] Corporation designed sponging
upon me at Commencement.[41] Boil it and solder it up from the microbes,
and it may do for another year, if I am not in prison! The friendliness
of such recognition is a delightful thing to a man about to graduate
from the season of his usefulness. "La renommé vient," as I have heard
John La Farge quote, "à ceux qui ont la patience d'attendre, et
s'accroit à raison de leur imbecillité." Best wishes to you all. Yours
ever,
Wm. James.
_To Miss Grace Norton._
CHOCORUA, _Aug. 29, 1902_.
MY DEAR GRACE,--Will you kindly let me know, by the method of
effacement, on the accompanying post-card, whether the box from Germany
of which I wrote you some time ago has or has not yet been left at your
house. I paid the express, over twenty dollars, on it three weeks ago,
directing it to be left with you.
The ice being thus broken, let me ramble on! How do-ist thou? And how is
the moist and cool summer suiting thee? I hope, well! It has certainly
been a boon to most people. Our house has been full of company of which
tomorrow the last boys will leave, and I confess I shall enjoy the
change to no responsibility. The scourge of life is _responsibility_--always
there with its scowling face, and when it ceases to someone else, it
begins to yourself, or to your God, if you have one. Consider the
lilies, how free they are from it, and yet how beautiful the expression
of their face. Especially should those emerging from "nervous
prostration" be suffered to be without it--they have trouble enough in
any case. I am getting on famously, but for that drawback, on which my
temper is liable to break; but I _walk_ somewhat as in old times, and
that is the main corner to have turned. The country seems as beautiful
as ever--it is good that, when age takes away the zest from so many
things, it seems to make no difference at all in one's capacity for
enjoying landscape and the aspects of Nature. We are all well, and shall
very soon be buzzing about Irving Street as of yore. Keep well yourself,
dear Grace; and believe me ever your friend,
Wm. James.
To this word about enjoying the aspects of nature may be added a few
lines from a letter to his son William, which James wrote from Europe in
1900:--
"Scenery seems to wear in one's consciousness better than any other
element in life. In this year of much solemn and idle meditation, I
have often been surprised to find what a predominant part in my own
spiritual experience it has played, and how it stands out as almost the
only thing the memory of which I should like to carry over with me
beyond the veil, unamended and unaltered. From the midst of every thing
else, almost, _surgit amari aliquid_; but from the days in the open air,
never any bitter whiff, save that they are gone forever."
_To Miss Frances R. Morse._
STONEHURST,
INTERVALE, N. H., _Sept. 18, 1902_.
DEAREST FANNY,--How long it is since we have exchanged salutations and
reported progress! Happy the country which is without a history! _I_
have had no history to communicate, and I hope that you have had none
either, and that the summer has glided away as happily for you as it has
for us. Now it begins to fade towards the horizon over which so many
ancient summers have slipped, and our household is on the point of
"breaking up" just when the season invites one most imperiously to stay.
_Dang_ all schools and colleges, say I. Alice goes down tomorrow (I
being up here with the Merrimans only for one day) to start Billy for
Europe--he will spend the winter at Geneva University--and to get "the
house" ready for our general reception on the 26th. I may possibly make
out to stay up here till the Monday following, and spend the interval of
a few days by myself among the mountains, having stuck to the domestic
hearth unusually tight all summer....
We have had guests--too many of them, rather, at one time, for me--and a
little reading has been done, mostly philosophical technics, which, by
the strange curse laid upon Adam, certain of his descendants have been
doomed to invent and others, still more damned, to learn. But I've also
read Stevenson's letters, which everybody ought to read just to know how
charming a human being can be, and I've read a good part of Goethe's
_Gedichte_ once again, which are also to be read, so that one may
realize how absolutely healthy an organization may every now and then
eventuate into this world. To have such a lyrical gift and to treat it
with so little solemnity, so that most of the output consists of mere
escape of the over-tension into bits of occasional verse, irresponsible,
unchained, like smoke-wreaths!--it _du_ give one a great impression of
personal power. In general, though I'm a traitor for saying so, it seems
to me that the German race has been a more massive organ of expression
for the travail of the Almighty than the Anglo-Saxon, though we did seem
to have something more like it in Elizabethan times. Or are clearness
and dapperness the absolutely final shape of creation? Good-bye! dear
Fanny--you see how mouldy I am temporarily become. The moment I take my
pen, I can write in no other way. Write thou, and let me know that
things are greener and more vernal where you are. Alice would send much
love to you, were she here. Give mine to your mother, brother, and
sister-in-law, and all. Your loving,
W. J.
_To Henry L. Higginson._
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., _Nov. 1, 1902_.
DEAR HENRY,--I am emboldened to the step I am taking by the
consciousness that though we are both at least sixty years old and have
known each other from the cradle, I have never but once (or possibly
twice) traded on your well-known lavishness of disposition to swell any
"subscription" which I was trying to raise.
Now the doomful hour has struck. The altar is ready, and I take the
victim by the ear. I choose you for a victim because you still have some
undesiccated human feeling about you and can think in terms of pure
charity--for the love of God, without ulterior hopes of returns from the
investment.
The subject is a man of fifty who can be recommended to no other kind of
a benefactor. His story is a long one, but it amounts to this, that
Heaven made him with no other power than that of thinking and writing,
and he has proved by this time a truly pathological inability to keep
body and soul together. He is abstemious to an incredible degree, is the
most innocent and harmless of human beings, isn't propagating his kind,
has never had a dime to spend except for vital necessities, and never
has had in his life an hour of what such as _we_ call freedom from care
or of "pleasure" in the ordinary exuberant sense of the term. He is
refinement itself mentally and morally; and his writings have all been
printed in first-rate periodicals, but are too scanty to "pay." There's
no excuse for him, I admit. But God made him; and after kicking and
cuffing and prodding him for twenty years, I have now come to believe
that he ought to be treated in charity pure and simple (even though that
be a vice) and I want to guarantee him $350 a year as a pension to be
paid to the Mills Hotel in Bleecker Street, New York, for board and
lodging and a few cents weekly over and above. I will put in $150. I
have secured $100 more. Can I squeeze £50 a year out of you for such a
non-public cause? If not, don't reply and forget this letter. If "ja"
and you think you really can afford it, and it isn't wicked, let me
know, and I will dun you regularly every year for the $50. Yours as
ever,
Wm. James.
It is a great compliment that I address you. Most men say of such a
case, "Is the man deserving?" Whereas the real point is, "Does he need
us?" What is deserving nowadays?
* * * * *
The beneficiary of this appeal was that same unfulfilled promise of a
metaphysician who appeared as "X" on page 292 of the first volume--a man
upon whom, in Cicero's phrase, none but a philosopher could look without
a groan. There were more parallels to X's case than it would be
permissible to cite here. James did not often appeal to others to help
such men with money, but he did things for them himself, even after it
had become evident that they could give nothing to the world in return,
and even when they had exhausted his patience. "Damn your
half-successes, your imperfect geniuses!" he exclaimed of another who
shall be called Z. "I'm tired of making allowances for them and propping
them up.... Z has never constrained himself in his life. Selfish,
conceited, affected, a monster of desultory intellect, he has become now
a seedy, almost sordid, old man without even any intellectual residuum
from his work that can be called a finished construction; only
'suggestions' and a begging old age." But Z, too, was helped to the end.
_To Henri Bergson._
Cambridge, _Dec. 14, 1902_.
MY DEAR SIR,--I read the copy of your "Matière et Mémoire" which you so
kindly sent me, immediately on receiving it, four years ago or more. I
saw its great originality, but found your ideas so new and vast that I
could not be sure that I fully understood them, although the _style_,
Heaven knows, was lucid enough. So I laid the book aside for a second
reading, which I have just accomplished, slowly and carefully, along
with that of the "Données Immédiates," etc.
I think I understand the main lines of your system very well at
present--though of course I can't yet trace its proper relations to the
aspects of experience of which you do not treat. It needs much building
out in the direction of Ethics, Cosmology and Cosmogony, Psychogenesis,
etc., before one can apprehend it fully. That I should take it in so
much more easily than I did four years ago shows that even at the age of
sixty one's mind can grow--a pleasant thought.
It is a work of exquisite genius. It makes a sort of Copernican
revolution as much as Berkeley's "Principles" or Kant's "Critique" did,
and will probably, as it gets better and better known, open a new era of
philosophical discussion. It fills _my_ mind with all sorts of new
questions and hypotheses and brings the old into a most agreeable
liquefaction. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
The _Hauptpunkt_ acquired for me is your conclusive demolition of the
dualism of object and subject in perception. I believe that the
"transcendency" of the object will not recover from your treatment, and
as I myself have been working for many years past on the same line, only
with other general conceptions than yours, I find myself most agreeably
corroborated. My health is so poor now that work goes on very slowly;
but I am going, if I live, to write a general system of metaphysics
which, in many of its fundamental ideas, agrees closely with what you
have set forth and the agreement inspires and encourages me more than
you can well imagine. It would take far too many words to attempt any
detail, but some day I hope to send you the book.[42]
How good it is sometimes simply to _break away_ from all old categories,
deny old worn-out beliefs, and restate things _ab initio_, making the
lines of division fall into entirely new places!
I send you a little popular lecture of mine on immortality,[43]--no
positive theory but merely an _argumentum ad hominem_ for the ordinary
cerebralistic objection,--in which it may amuse you to see a formulation
like your own that the brain is an organ of _filtration_ for spiritual
life.
I also send you my last book, the "Varieties of Religious Experience,"
which may some time beguile an hour. Believe, dear Professor Bergson,
the high admiration and regard with which I remain, always sincerely
yours,
Wm. James.
_To Mrs. Louis Agassiz._
Cambridge, _Dec. 15, 1902_.
DEAR MRS. AGASSIZ,--I never dreamed of your replying to that note of
mine (of Dec. 5th). If you are replying to all the notes you received on
that eventful day, it seems to me a rather heavy penalty for becoming an
octogenarian.[44] But glad I am that you replied to mine, and so
beautifully. Indeed I do remember the meeting of those two canoes, and
the dance, over the river from Manaos; and many another incident and
hour of that wonderful voyage.[45] I remember your freshness of
interest, and readiness to take hold of everything, and what a blessing
to me it was to have one civilized lady in sight, to keep the memory of
cultivated conversation from growing extinct. I remember my own folly in
wishing to return home after I came out of the hospital at Rio; and my
general greenness and incapacity as a naturalist afterwards, with my
eyes gone to pieces. It was all because my destiny was to be a
"philosopher"--a fact which then I didn't know, but which only means, I
think, that, if a man is good for nothing else, he can at least teach
philosophy. But I'm going to write one book worthy of you, dear Mrs.
Agassiz, and of the Thayer expedition, if I am spared a couple of years
longer.
I hope you were not displeased at the _applause_ the other night, as you
went out. _I_ started it; if I hadn't, someone else would a moment
later, for the tension had grown intolerable.
How delightful about the Radcliffe building!
Well, once more, dear Mrs. Agassiz, we both thank you for this beautiful
and truly affectionate letter. Your affectionate,
Wm. James.
E. L. Godkin had recently died, and at the date of the next letter a
movement was on foot to raise money for a memorial in commemoration of
his public services. The money was soon subscribed and the Memorial took
shape in the endowment of the Godkin Lectureship at Harvard. James had
started discussion of the project at a meeting of the dinner Club and
Henry L. Higginson had continued it in a letter to which the following
replied.
_To Henry L. Higginson._
Cambridge, _Feb. 8, 1903_.
DEAR HENRY,--I am sorry to have given a wrong impression, and made you
take the trouble of writing--nutritious though your letters be to
receive. My motive in mentioning the Godkin testimonial was pure
curiosity, and not desire to promote it. We were ten "liberals"
together, and I wanted to learn how many of us had been alienated from
Godkin by his temper in spite of having been influenced by his writing.
I found that it was just about half and half. I never said--Heaven bear
me witness--that I had learned more from G. than from anyone. I said I
had got more _political_ education from him. You see the "Nation" took
me at the age of 22--you were already older and wickeder. If you follow
my advice now, you don't subscribe a cent to this memorial. _I_ shall
subscribe $100, for mixed reasons. Godkin's "home life" was very
different from his life against the world. When a man differed in type
from him, and consequently reacted differently on public matters; he
thought him a preposterous monster, pure and simple, and so treated him.
He couldn't imagine a different kind of creature from himself in
politics. But in private relations he was simplicity and sociability and
affectionateness incarnate, and playful as a young opossum. I never knew
his first wife well, but I admire the pluck and fidelity of the second,
and I note your chivalrous remarks about the sex, including Mrs. W. J.,
to whom report has been made of them, making her blush with pleasure.
Don't subscribe, dear Henry. I am not trying to raise subscriptions. You
left too early Friday eve. Ever affectionately yours,
W. J.
James's college class finished its work at the end of the first half of
the academic year, and in early February he turned for a few days to the
thought of a Mediterranean voyage, as a vacation and a means of escape
from Cambridge during the bad weather of March. While considering this
plan, he cabled M. Bergson to inquire as to the possibility of a meeting
in Paris or elsewhere.
_To Henri Bergson._
Cambridge, _Feb. 25, 1903_.
DEAR PROFESSOR BERGSON,--Your most obliging cablegram (with 8 words
instead of four!) arrived duly a week ago, and now I am repenting that I
ever asked you to send it, for I have been feeling so much less fatigued
than I did a month ago, that I have given up my passage to the
Mediterranean, and am seriously doubting whether it will be necessary to
leave home at all. I _ought_ not to, on many grounds, unless my health
imperatively requires it. Pardon me for having so frivolously stirred
you up, and permit me at least to pay the cost (as far as I can
ascertain it) of the despatch which you were so liberal as to send.
There is still a bare possibility (for I am so strongly tempted) that I
may, after the middle of March, take a cheaper vessel direct to England
or to France, and spend ten days or so in Paris and return almost
immediately. In that case, we could still have our interview. I think
there must be great portions of your philosophy which you have not yet
published, and I want to see how well they combine with mine. _Writing_
is too long and laborious a process, and I would not inflict on you the
task of answering my questions by letter, so I will still wait in the
hope of a personal interview some time.