_ideer_ of being in such delightful conditions and interesting
surroundings, and being conscious of nothing but one's preposterous
physical distress, is too ridiculous! I have just said good-bye to my
circle of admirers, relatively youthful, at the hotel door, under the
pretext (a truth until this morning) that I had to get ready to go to
Lausanne tonight, and I taper off my activity by subsiding upon you.
Yesterday till three, and the day before till five, I was writing my
address, which this morning I gave--in French. I wrote it carefully and
surprised myself by the ease with which I slung the Gallic accent and
intonation, being excited by the occasion.[58] Janet expressed himself
as _stupéfait_, from the linguistic point of view. The thing lasted 40
minutes, and was followed by a discussion which showed that the critics
with one exception had wholly failed to catch the point of view; but
that was quite _en régle_, so I don't care; and I have given the thing
to Claparède to print in Flournoy's "Archives." The Congress was far
too vast, but filled with strange and interesting creatures of all
sorts, and socially _very_ nutritious to anyone who can stand
sociability without distress. A fête of some sort every day--this P.M. I
have just returned from a great afternoon tea given us by some
"Minister" at the Borghese Palace--in the Museum. (The King, you know,
has bought the splendid Borghese park and given it to the City of Rome
as a democratic possession _in perpetuo_. A splendid gift.) The pictures
too! Tonight there is a great banquet with speeches, to which of course
I can't go. I lunched at the da Vitis,--a big table full, she very
simple and nice,--and I have been having this afternoon a very good and
rather intimate talk with the little band of "pragmatists," Papini,
Vailati, Calderoni, Amendola, etc., most of whom inhabit Florence,
publish the monthly journal "Leonardo" at their own expense, and carry
on a very serious philosophic movement, apparently _really_ inspired by
Schiller and myself (I never could believe it before, although Ferrari
had assured me), and show an enthusiasm, and also a literary swing and
activity that I know nothing of in our own land, and that probably our
damned academic technics and Ph.D.-machinery and university organization
prevents from ever coming to a birth. These men, of whom Ferrari is one,
are none of them _Fach-philosophers_, and few of them teachers at all.
It has given me a certain new idea of the way in which truth ought to
find its way into the world.
I have seen such a lot of _important_-looking faces,--probably
everything in the stock in the shop-window,--and witnessed such
charmingly gracious manners, that it is a lesson. The woodenness of our
Anglo-Saxon social ways! I had a really splendid audience for quality
this A.M. (about 200), even though they didn't understand....
_To George Santayana._
ORVIETO, _May 2, 1905_.
DEAR SANTAYANA,--I came here yesterday from Rome and have been enjoying
the solitude. I stayed at the exquisite Albergo de Russie, and didn't
shirk the Congress--in fact they stuck me for a "general" address, to
fill the vacuum left by Flournoy and Sully, who had been announced and
came not (I spoke _agin_ "consciousness," but nobody understood) and I
got _fearfully tired_. On the whole it was an agreeable
nightmare--agreeable on account of the perfectly charming _gentillezza_
of the bloody Dagoes, the way they caress and flatter you--"il piu grand
psicologo del mondo," etc., and of the elaborate provisions for general
entertainment--nightmare, because of my absurd bodily fatigue. However,
these things are "neither here nor there." What I really write to you
for is to tell you to send (if not sent already) your "Life of Reason"
to the "Revue de Philosophie," or rather to its editor, M. Peillaube,
Rue des Revues 160, and to the editor of "Leonardo" (the great little
Florentine philosophical journal), Sig. Giovanni Papini, 14 Borgo
Albizi, Florence. The most interesting, and in fact genuinely edifying,
part of my trip has been meeting this little _cénacle_, who have taken
my own writings, _entre autres, au grand sérieux_, but who are carrying
on their philosophical mission in anything but a technically serious
way, inasmuch as "Leonardo" (of which I have hitherto only known a few
odd numbers) is devoted to good and lively literary form. The sight of
their belligerent young enthusiasm has given me a queer sense of the
gray-plaster temperament of our bald-headed young Ph.D.'s, boring each
other at seminaries, writing those direful reports of literature in the
"Philosophical Review" and elsewhere, fed on "books of reference," and
never confounding "Æsthetik" with "Erkentnisstheorie." Faugh! I shall
never deal with them again--on _those_ terms! Can't you and I, who in
spite of such divergence have yet so much in common in our
_Weltanschauung_, start a systematic movement at Harvard against the
desiccating and pedantifying process? I have been cracking you up
greatly to both Peillaube and Papini, and quoted you twice in my speech,
which was in French and will be published in Flournoy's "Archives de
Psychologie." I hope you're enjoying the Eastern Empire to the full, and
that you had some Grecian "country life." Münsterberg has been called to
Koenigsberg and has refused. Better be America's ancestor than Kant's
successor! Ostwald, to my great delight, is coming to us next year, not
as your replacer, but in exchange with Germany for F. G. Peabody. I go
now to Cannes, to meet Strong, back from his operation. Ever truly
yours,
Wm. James.
_To Mrs. James._
CANNES, _May 13, 1905_.
...I came Sunday night, and this is Saturday. The six days have been
busy ones in one sense, but have rested me very much in another. No
sight-seeing fatigues, but more usual, and therefore more normal
occupations.... I have written some 25 letters, long and short, to
European correspondents since being here, have walked and driven with
Strong, and have had philosophy hot and heavy with him almost all the
time. I never knew such an unremitting, untiring, monotonous addiction
as that of his mind to truth. He goes by points, pinning each one
definitely, and has, I think, the very clearest mind I ever knew. Add to
it his absolute sincerity and candor and it is no wonder that he is a
"growing" man. I suspect that he will outgrow us all, for his rate
accelerates, and he never stands still. He is an admirable philosophic
figure, and I am glad to say that in most things he and I are fully in
accord. He gains a great deal from such talks, noting every point down
afterwards, and I gain great stimulation, though in a vaguer way. I
shall be glad, however, on Monday afternoon, to relax....
_To Mrs. James._
[Post-card]
GENEVA, _May 17, 1905_.
So far, thank Heaven, on my way towards home! A rather useful time with
the superior, but sticky X----, at Marseilles, and as far as Lyons in
the train, into which an hour beyond Lyons there came (till then I was
alone in my compartment) a Spanish bishop, canon and "familar," an aged
holy woman, sister of the bishop, a lay-brother and sister, a dog, and
more baggage than I ever saw before, including a feather-bed. They spoke
no French--the bishop about as much Italian as I, and the lay-sister as
much of English as I of Spanish. They took out their rosaries and began
mumbling their litanies forthwith, whereon I took off my hat, which
seemed to touch them so, when they discovered I was a Protestant, that
we all grew very affectionate and I soon felt ashamed of the way in
which I had at first regarded their black and superstitious invasion of
my privacy. Good, saintly people on their way to Rome. I go now to our
old haunts and to the Flournoys'....
W.
_To H. G. Wells._
S. S. CEDRIC, _June 6, 1905_.
MY DEAR MR. WELLS,--I have just read your "Utopia" (given me by F. C. S.
Schiller on the one day that I spent in Oxford on my way back to
Cambridge, Mass., after a few weeks on the Continent), and
"Anticipations," and "Mankind in the Making" having duly preceded,
together with numerous other lighter volumes of yours, the "summation of
stimuli" reaches the threshold of discharge and I can't help overflowing
in a note of gratitude. You "have your faults, as who has not?" but your
virtues are unparalleled and transcendent, and I believe that you will
prove to have given a shove to the practical thought of the next
generation that will be amongst the greatest of its influences for good.
All in the line of the English genius too, no wire-drawn French
doctrines, and no German shop technicalities inflicted in an
_unerbittlich consequent_ manner, but everywhere the sense of the full
concrete, and the air of freedom playing through all the joints of your
argument. You have a tri-dimensional human heart, and to use your own
metaphor, don't see different levels projected on one plane. In this
last book you beautifully soften cocksureness by the penumbra of the
outlines--in fact you're a trump and a jewel, and for human perception
you beat Kipling, and for hitting off a thing with the right word, you
are unique. Heaven bless and preserve you!--You are now an eccentric;
perhaps 50 years hence you will figure as a classic! Your Samurai
chapter is magnificent, though I find myself wondering what developments
in the way of partisan politics those same Samurai would develop, when
it came to questions of appointment and running this or that man in.
_That_ I believe to be human nature's ruling passion. Live long! and
keep writing; and believe me, yours admiringly and sincerely,
Wm. James.
_To Henry L. Higginson._
Cambridge, _July 18 [1905]_.
DEAR H.,--You asked me how rich I was getting by my own (as
distinguished from _your_) exertions....
I find on reaching home today a letter from Longmans, Green & Co. with a
check ... which I have mailed to your house in State Street....
This ought to please you slightly; but don't reply! Instead, think of
the virtues of Roosevelt, either as permanent sovereign of this great
country, or as President of Harvard University. I've been having a
discussion with Fanny Morse about him, which has resulted in making me
his faithful henchman for life, Fanny was so violent. Think of the
mighty good-will of him, of his enjoyment of his post, of his power as a
preacher, of the number of things to which he gives his attention, of
the safety of his second thoughts, of the increased courage he is
showing, and above all of the fact that he is an open, instead of an
underground leader, whom the voters can control once in four years, when
he runs away, whose heart is in the right place, who is an enemy of red
tape and quibbling and everything that in general the word "politician"
stands for. That significance of him in the popular mind is a great
national asset, and it would be a shame to let it run to waste until it
has done a lot more work for us. His ambitions are not selfish--he wants
to do good only! Bless him--and damn all his detractors like you and F.
M.![59]
Don't reply, but vote! Your affectionately
Wm. James.
_To T. S. Perry._
Cambridge, _Aug. 24, 1905_.
DEAR THOS!--You're a _philosophe sans le savoir_ and, when you write
your treatise against philosophy, you will be classed as the
arch-metaphysician. Every philosopher (W. J., _e.g._) pretends that all
the others are metaphysicians against whom he is simply defending the
rights of common sense. As for Nietzsche, the worst break of his I
recall was in a posthumous article in one of the French reviews a few
months back. In his high and mighty way he was laying down the law about
all the European countries. Russia, he said, is "the only one that has
any possible future--and that she owes to the strength of the principle
of autocracy to which she alone remains faithful," Unfortunately one
can't appeal to the principle of democracy to explain Japan's recent
successes.
I am very glad you've done something about poor dear old John Fiske, and
I should think that you would have no difficulty in swelling it up to
the full "Beacon Biography" size. If you want an extra anecdote, you
might tell how, when Chauncey Wright, Chas. Peirce, St. John Green,
Warner and I appointed an evening to discuss the "Cosmic Philosophy,"
just out, J. F. went to sleep under our noses.
I hope that life as a farmer agrees with you, and that your "womenkind"
wish nothing better than to be farmers' wives, daughters or other
relatives. Unluckily we let our farm this summer; so I am here in
Cambridge with Alice, both of us a prey to as bad an attack of grippe as
the winter solstice ever brought forth. Today, the 10th day, I am weaker
than any kitten. Don't ever let _your_ farm! Affectionately,
W. J.
_To Dickinson S. Miller._
Cambridge, _Nov. 10, 1905_.
DEAR MILLER,--W. R. Warren has just been here and says he has just seen
you; the which precipitates me into a letter to you which has long hung
fire. I hope that all goes well. You must be in a rather cheerful
quarter of the City. Do you go home Sundays, or not? I hope that the
work is congenial. How do you like your students as compared with those
here? I reckon you get more out of your colleagues than you did
here--barring of course _der Einzige_. We are all such old stories to
each other that we say nothing. Santayana is the only [one] about whom
we had any curiosity, and he has now quenched that. Perry and Holt have
some ideas in reserve.... The fact is that the classroom exhausts our
powers of speech. Royce has never made a syllable of reference to all
the stuff I wrote last year--to me, I mean. He may have spoken of it to
others, if he has read, it, which I doubt. So we live in parallel
trenches and hardly show our heads.
Santayana's book[60] is a great one, if the inclusion of opposites is a
measure of greatness. I think it will probably be reckoned great by
posterity. It has no _rational_ foundation, being merely one man's way
of viewing things: so much of experience admitted and no more, so much
criticism and questioning admitted and no more. He is a paragon of
Emersonianism.--declare your intuitions, though no other man share them;
and the integrity with which he does it is as fine as it is rare. And
his naturalism, materialism, Platonism, and atheism form a combination
of which the centre of gravity is, I think, very deep. But there is
something profoundly alienating in his unsympathetic tone, his
"preciousness" and superciliousness. The book is Emerson's first rival
and successor, but how different the reader's feeling! The same things
in Emerson's mouth would sound entirely different. E. receptive,
expansive, as if handling life through a wide funnel with a great
indraught; S. as if through a pin-point orifice that emits his cooling
spray outward over the universe like a nose-disinfectant from an
"atomizer." ... I fear that the real originality of the book will be
lost on nineteen-twentieths of the members of the Philosophical and
Psychological Association!! The enemies of Harvard will find lots of
blasphemous texts in him to injure us withal. But it is a great feather
in our cap to harbor such an absolutely free expresser of individual
convictions. But enough!
"Phil. 9" is going well. I think I _lecture_ better than I ever did; in
fact I know I do. But this professional evolution goes with an
involution of all miscellaneous faculty. I am well, and efficient
enough, but purposely going slow so as to keep efficient into the Palo
Alto summer, which means that I have written nothing. I am pestered by
doubts as to whether to put my resignation through this year, in spite
of opposition, or to drag along another year or two. I think it is
inertia against energy, energy in my case meaning being my own man
absolutely. American philosophers, young and old, seem scratching where
the wool is short. Important things are being published; but all of them
too technical. The thing will never clear up satisfactorily till someone
writes out its resultant in decent English....
* * * * *
The reader will have understood "the Palo Alto summer" to refer to the
lectures to be delivered at Stanford University during the coming
spring. The Stanford engagement was again in James's mind when he spoke,
in the next letter, of "dreading the prospect of lecturing till
mid-May."
_To Dickinson S. Miller._
Cambridge, _Dec. 6, 1905_.
DEAR MILLER,-- ...You seem to take radical empiricism more simply than I
can. What I mean by it is the thesis that there is no fact "not
actually experienced to be such." In other words, the concept of "being"
or "fact" is not wider than or prior to the concept "content of
experience"; and you can't talk of _experiences being_ this or that, but
only of _things experienced as being_ this or that. But such a thesis
would, it seems to me, if literally taken, force one to drop the notion
that in point of fact one experience is _ex_ another, so long as the
_ex_-ness is not itself a "content" of experience. In the matter of two
minds not having the same content, it seems to me that your view commits
you to an assertion _about their experiences_; and such an assertion
assumes a realm in which the experiences lie, which overlaps and
surrounds the "content" of them. This, it seems to me, breaks down
radical empiricism, which I hate to do; and I can't yet clearly see my
way out of the quandary. I am much boggled and muddled; and the total
upshot with me is to see that all the hoary errors and prejudices of man
in matters philosophical are based on something pretty inevitable in the
structure of our thinking, and to distrust summary executions by
conviction of contradiction. I suspect your execution of being too
summary; but I have copied the last paragraph of the sheets (which I
return with heartiest thanks) for the extraordinarily neat statement....
I dread the prospect of lecturing till mid-May, but the wine being
ordered, I must drink it. I dislike lecturing more and more. Have just
definitely withdrawn my candidacy for the Sorbonne job, with great
internal relief, and wish I could withdraw from the whole business, and
get at writing.[61] Not a line of writing possible this year--except of
course occasional note-making. All the things that one is really
concerned with are too nice and fine to use in lectures. You remember
the definition of T. H. Greene's student: "The universe is a thick
complexus of intelligible relations." Yesterday I got _my_ system
similarly defined in an examination-book, by a student whom I appear to
have converted to the view that "the Universe is a vague pulsating mass
of next-to-next movement, always feeling its way along to a good
purpose, or trying to." That is about as far as lectures can carry them.
I particularly like the "trying to."
I wish I could have been at your recent discussion. I am getting
impatient with the awful abstract rigmarole in which our American
philosophers obscure the truth. It will be fatal. It revives the palmy
days of Hegelianism. It means utter relaxation of intellectual duty, and
God will smite it. If there's anything he hates, it is that kind of oozy
writing.
I have just read Busse's book, in which I find a lot of reality by the
way, but a pathetic waste of work on side issues--for against the
Strong-Heymans view of things, it seems to me that he brings no solid
objection whatever. Heymans's book is a wonder.[62] Good-bye, dear
Miller. _Come to us_, if you can, as soon as your lectures are over.
Your affectionate
W. J.
_To Dickinson S. Miller._
[Post-card]
Cambridge, _Dec. 9. 1905_.
"My idea of Algebra," says a non-mathematically-minded student, "is that
it is a sort of form of low cunning."
W. J.
_To Daniel Merriman._
Cambridge, _Dec. 9, 1905_.
No, dear Merriman, not "e'en for thy sake." After an unblemished record
of declining to give addresses, successfully maintained for four years
(I have certainly declined 100 in the past twelve-month), I am not going
to break down now, for Abbot Academy, and go dishonored to my grave. It
is better, as the "Bhagavat-Gita" says, to lead your own life, however
bad, than to lead another's, however good. Emerson teaches the same
doctrine, and I live by it as bad and congenial a life as I can. If
there is anything that God despises more than a man who is constantly
making speeches, it is another man who is constantly accepting
invitations. What must he think, when they are both rolled into one? Get
thee behind me, Merriman,--I 'm sure that your saintly partner would
never have sent me such a request,--and believe me, as ever, fondly
yours,
Wm. James.
_To Miss Pauline Goldmark._
EL TOVAR,
GRAND CANYON, ARIZONA, _Jan. 3, 1906_.
DEAR PAOLINA,--I am breaking my journey by a day here, and it seems a
good place from which to date my New Year's greeting to you. But we
correspond so rarely that when it comes to the point of tracing actual
words with the pen, the last impressions of one's day and the more
permanent interest of one's life block the way for each other. I think,
however, that a word about the Canyon may fitly take precedence. It
certainly is equal to the brag; and, like so many of the more stupendous
freaks of nature, seems at first-sight smaller and more manageable than
one had supposed. But it grows in immensity as the eye penetrates it
more intimately. It is so entirely alone in character, that one has no
habits of association with "the likes" of it, and at first it seems a
foreign curiosity; but already in this one day I am feeling myself grow
nearer, and can well imagine that, with greater intimacy, it might
become the passion of one's life--so far as "Nature" goes. The
conditions have been unfavorable for intimate communion. Three degrees
above zero, and a spring overcoat, prevent that forgetting of "self"
which is said to be indispensable to absorption in Beauty. Moreover, I
have kept upon the "rim," seeing the Canyon from several points some
miles apart. I meant to go down, having but this day; but they couldn't
send me or any one today; and I confess that, with my precipice-disliking
soul, I was relieved, though it very likely would have proved less
uncomfortable than I have been told. (I resolved to go, in order to be
worthy of being your correspondent.) As Chas. Lamb says, there is
nothing so nice as doing good by stealth and being found out by
accident, so I now say it is even nicer to make heroic decisions and to
be prevented by "circumstances beyond your control" from even trying to
execute them. But if ever I get here in summer, I shall go straight down
and live there. I'm sure that it is indispensable. But it is vain to
waste descriptive words on the wondrous apparition, with its symphonies
of architecture and of color. I have just been watching its peaks blush
in the setting sun, and slowly lose their fire. Night nestling in the
depths. Solemn, solemn! And a unity of design that makes it seem like an
individual, an animated being. Good-night, old chasm!...
_To Henry James._
STANFORD UNIVERSITY, _Feb. 1, 1906_.
BELOVED H.,--Verily 'tis long since I have written to thee, but I have
had many and mighty things to do, and lately many business letters to
write, so I came not at it. Your last was your delightful reply to my
remarks about your "third manner," wherein you said that you would
consider your bald head dishonored if you ever came to pleasing _me_ by
what you wrote, so shocking was my taste.[63] Well! only write _for_ me,
and leave the question of pleasing open! I have to admit that in "The
Golden Bowl" and "The Wings of the Dove," you have succeeded _in getting
there_ after a fashion, in spite of the perversity of the method and its
_longness_, which I am not the only one to deplore.
But enough! let me tell you of my own fortunes!