exquisite Keene Valley, where I was able to do a good deal of uphill
walking, with good rather than bad effects, much to my joy. Yesterday I
took a three hours walk here, three quarters of an hour of it uphill. I
have to go alone, and slowly; but it's none the worse for that and makes
one feel like old times. I leave this P.M. for two more days at
Chocorua--at the hotel. The fall is late, but the woods are beginning
to redden beautifully. With the sun behind them, some maples look like
stained-glass windows. But the penury of the human part of this region
is depressing, and I begin to have an appetite for Europe again. Alice
too! To be at Cambridge with no lecturing and no students to nurse along
with their thesis-work is an almost incredibly delightful prospect. I am
going to settle down to the composition of another small book, more
original and ground-breaking than anything I have yet put forth(!),
which I expect to print by the spring; after which I can lie back and
write at leisure more routine things for the rest of my days.
The Bryces are wholly unchanged, excellent friends and hosts, and I like
her as much as him. The trouble with him is that his insatiable love of
information makes him try to pump _you_ all the time instead of letting
you pump _him_, and I have let my own tongue wag so, that, when gone, I
shall feel like a fool, and remember all kinds of things that I have
forgotten to ask him. I have just been reading to Mrs. B., with great
gusto on her part and renewed gusto on mine, the first few pages of your
chapter on Florida in "The American Scene." _Köstlich_ stuff! I had just
been reading to myself almost 50 pages of the New England part of the
book, and fairly melting with delight over the Chocorua portion.
Evidently that book will last, and bear reading over and over again--a
few pages at a time, which is the right way for "literature" fitly so
called. It all makes me wish that we had you here again, and you will
doubtless soon come. I mustn't forget to thank you for the gold
pencil-case souvenir. I have had a plated silver one for a year past,
now worn through, and experienced what a "comfort" they are. Good-bye,
and Heaven bless you. Your loving
W. J.
_To Theodore Flournoy._
Cambridge, _Jan._ 2, 1908.
...I am just back from the American Philosophical Association, which had
a really delightful meeting at Cornell University in the State of New
York. Mostly epistemological. We are getting to know each other and
understand each other better, and shall do so year by year, Everyone
cursed my doctrine and Schiller's about "truth." I think it largely is
misunderstanding, but it is also due to our having expressed our meaning
very ill. The general blanket-word pragmatism covers so many different
opinions, that it naturally arouses irritation to see it flourished as a
revolutionary flag. I am also partly to blame here; but it was
_tactically_ wise to use it as a title. Far more persons have had their
attention attracted, and the result has been that everybody has been
forced to think. Substantially I have nothing to alter in what I have
said....
I have just read the first half of Fechner's "Zend-Avesta," a wonderful
book, by a wonderful genius. He had his vision and he knows how to
discuss it, as no one's vision ever was discussed.
I may tell you in confidence (I don't talk of it here because my damned
arteries may in the end make me give it up--for a year past I have a
sort of angina when I make efforts) that I have accepted an invitation
to give eight public lectures at Oxford next May. I was ashamed to
refuse; but the work of preparing them will be hard (the title is "The
Present Situation in Philosophy"[84]) and they doom me to relapse into
the "popular lecture" form just as I thought I had done with it forever.
(What I wished to write this winter was something ultra dry in form,
impersonal and exact.) I find that my free and easy and personal way of
writing, especially in "Pragmatism," has made me an object of loathing
to many respectable academic minds, and I am rather tired of awakening
that feeling, which more popular lecturing on my part will probably
destine me to increase.
...I have been with Strong, who goes to Rome this month. Good,
truth-loving man! and a very penetrating mind. I think he will write a
great book. We greatly enjoyed seeing your friend Schwarz, the teacher.
A fine fellow who will, I hope, succeed.
A happy New Year to you now, dear Flournoy, and loving regards from us
all to you all. Yours as ever
Wm. James.
_To Norman Kemp Smith._
[Post-card]
Cambridge, _Jan._ 31, 1908.
I have only just "got round" to your singularly solid and compact study
of Avenarius in "Mind." I find it clear and very clarifying, after the
innumerable hours I have spent in trying to dishevel him. I have read
the "Weltbegriff" three times, and have half expected to have to read
both books over again to assimilate his immortal message to man, of
which I have hitherto been able to make nothing. You set me free! I
shall not re-read him! but leave him to his spiritual dryness and
preposterous pedantry. His only really original idea seems to be that of
the _Vitalreihe_, and that, so far as I can see, is quite false,
certainly no improvement on the notion of adaptive reflex actions.
Wm. James.
_To his Daughter._
Cambridge, _Apr._ 2, 1908,
DARLING PEG,--You must have wondered at my silence since your dear
mother returned. I hoped to write to you each day, but the strict
routine of my hours now crowded it out. I write on my Oxford job till
one, then lunch, then nap, then to my ... doctor at four daily, and from
then till dinner-time making calls, and keeping "out" as much as
possible. To bed as soon after 8 as possible--all my odd reading done
between 3 and 5 A.M., an hour not favorable for letter-writing--so that
my necessary business notes have to get in just before dinner (as now)
or after dinner, which I hate and try to avoid. I think I see my way
clear to go [to Oxford] now, if I don't get more fatigued than at
present. Four and a quarter lectures are fully written, and the rest are
down-hill work, much raw material being ready now....
_To Henry James._
Cambridge, _April_ 15, 1908.
DEAREST HENRY,--Your good letter to Harry has brought news of your play,
of which I had only seen an enigmatic paragraph in the papers. I'm right
glad it is a success, and that such good artists as the Robertsons are
in it. I hope it will have a first-rate run in London. Your apologies
for not writing are the most uncalled-for things--your assiduity and the
length of your letters to this family are a standing marvel--especially
considering the market-value of your "copy"! So waste no more in that
direction. 'Tis I who should be prostrating myself--silent as I've been
for months in spite of the fact that I'm so soon to descend upon you.
The fact is I've been trying to compose the accursed lectures in a state
of abominable brain-fatigue--a race between myself and time. I've got
six now done out of the eight, so I'm safe, but sorry that the infernal
nervous condition that with me always accompanies literary production
must continue at Oxford and add itself to the other fatigues--a fixed
habit of wakefulness, etc. I ought not to have accepted, but they've
panned out good, so far, and if I get through them successfully, I shall
be very glad that the opportunity came. They will be a good thing to
_have done_. Previously, in such states of fatigue, I have had a break
and got away, but this time no day without its half dozen pages--but the
thing hangs on so long!...
_To Henry James._
R. M. S. IVERNIA,
[Arriving at Liverpool], _Apr. 29, 1908_.
DEAR H.,--Your letter of the 26th, unstamped or post-marked, has just
been wafted into our lap--I suppose mailed under another cover to the
agent's care.
I'm glad you're not hurrying from Paris--I feared you might be awaiting
us in London, and wrote you a letter yesterday to the Reform Club, which
you will doubtless get ere you get this, telling you of our prosperous
though tedious voyage in good condition.
We cut out London and go straight to Oxford, _via_ Chester. I have been
sleeping like a top, and feel in good fighting trim again, eager for the
scalp of the Absolute. My lectures will put his wretched clerical
defenders fairly on the defensive. They begin on Monday. Since you'll
have the whole months of May and June, if you urge it, to see us, I pray
you not to hasten back from "gay Paree" for the purpose.... Up since two
A.M.
W. J.
_To Miss Pauline Goldmark._
PATTERDALE, ENGLAND, _July 2, 1908_.
Your letter, beloved Pauline, greeted me on my arrival here three hours
ago.... How I _do wish_ that I could be in Italy alongside of you now,
now or any time! You could do me so much good, and your ardor of
enjoyment of the country, the towns and the folk would warm up my cold
soul. I might even learn to speak Italian by conversing in that tongue
with you. But I fear that you'd find me betraying the coldness of my
soul by complaining of the heat of my body--a most unworthy attitude to
strike. Dear Paolina, never, never think of whether your body is hot or
cold; live in the _objective_ world, above such miserable
considerations. I have been up here eight days, Alice having gone down
last Saturday, the 27th, to meet Peggy and Harry at London, after only
two days of it. After all the social and other fever of the past six and
a half weeks (save for the blessed nine days at Bibury), it looked like
the beginning of a real vacation, and it would be such but for the
extreme heat, and the accident of one of my recent malignant "colds"
beginning. I have been riding about on stage-coaches for five days past,
but the hills are so treeless that one gets little shade, and the sun's
glare is tremendous. It is a lovely country, however, for
pedestrianizing in cooler weather. Mountains and valleys compressed
together as in the Adirondacks, great reaches of pink and green hillside
and lovely lakes, the higher parts quite fully alpine in character but
for the fact that no snow mountains form the distant background. A
strong and noble region, well worthy of one's life-long devotion, if one
were a Briton. And on the whole, what a magnificent land and race is
this Britain! Every thing about them is of better quality than the
corresponding thing in the U.S.--with but few exceptions, I imagine. And
the equilibrium is so well achieved, and the human tone so cheery,
blithe and manly! and the manners so delightfully good. Not one
_unwholesome_-looking man or woman does one meet here for 250 that one
meets in America. Yet I believe (or suspect) that ours is eventually
the bigger destiny, if we can only succeed in living up to it, and thou
in 22nd St. and I in Irving St. must do our respective strokes, which
after 1000 years will help to have made the glorious collective
resultant. Meanwhile, as my brother Henry once wrote, thank God for a
world that holds so rich an England, so rare an Italy! Alice is entirely
_aufgegangen_ in her idealization of it. And truly enough, the gardens,
the manners, the manliness are an excuse.
But profound as is my own moral respect and admiration, for a _vacation_
give me the Continent! The civilization here is too heavy, too _stodgy_,
if one could use so unamiable a word. The very stability and good-nature
of all things (of course we are leaving out the slum-life!) rest on the
basis of the national stupidity, or rather unintellectuality, on which
as on a safe foundation of non-explosible material, the magnificent
minds of the élite of the race can coruscate as they will, safely. Not
until those weeks at Oxford, and these days at Durham, have I had any
sense of what a part the Church plays in the national life. So massive
and all-pervasive, so authoritative, and on the whole so decent, in
spite of the iniquity and farcicality of the whole thing. Never were
incompatibles so happily yoked together. Talk about the genius of
Romanism! It's nothing to the genius of Anglicanism, for Catholicism
still contains some haggard elements, that ally it with the Palestinian
desert, whereas Anglicanism remains obese and round and comfortable and
decent with this world's decencies, without an _acute_ note in its whole
life or history, in spite of the shrill Jewish words on which its ears
are fed, and the nitro-glycerine of the Gospels and Epistles which has
been injected into its veins. Strange feat to have achieved! Yet the
success is great--the whole Church-machine makes for all sorts of graces
and decencies, and is not incompatible with a high type of Churchman,
high, that is, on the side of moral and worldly virtue....
How I wish you were beside me at this moment! A breeze has arisen on the
Lake which is spread out before the "smoking-room" window at which I
write, and is very grateful. The lake much resembles Lake George. Your
ever grateful and loving
W. J.
_To Charles Eliot Norton._
PATTERDALE, ENGLAND, _July 6, 1908_.
DEAR CHARLES,--Going to Coniston Lake the other day and seeing the
moving little Ruskin Museum at Coniston (admission a penny) made me
think rather vividly of you, and make a resolution to write to you on
the earliest opportunity. It was truly moving to see such a collection
of R.'s busy handiwork, exquisite and loving, in the way of drawing,
sketching, engraving and note-taking, and also such a varied lot of
photographs of him, especially in his old age. Glorious old Don Quixote
that he was! At Durham, where Alice and I spent three and a half
delightful days at the house of F. B. Jevons, Principal of one of the
two colleges of which the University is composed, I had a good deal of
talk with the very remarkable octogenarian Dean of the Cathedral and
Lord of the University, a thorough liberal, or rather radical, in his
mind, with a voice like a bell, and an alertness to match, who had been
a college friend of Ruskin's and known him intimately all his life, and
loved him. He knew not of his correspondence with you, of which I have
been happy to be able to order Kent of Harvard Square to send him a
copy. His name is Kitchin.
The whole scene at Durham was tremendously impressive (though York
Cathedral made the stronger impression on me). It was so unlike Oxford,
so much more American in its personnel, in a way, yet nestling in the
very bosom of those mediæval stage-properties and ecclesiastical-principality
suggestions. Oxford is all spread out in length and breadth, Durham
concentrated in depth and thickness. There is a great deal of flummery
about Oxford, but I think if I were an Oxonian, in spite of my
radicalism generally, I might vote against all change there. It is an
absolutely unique fruit of human endeavor, and like the cathedrals, can
never to the end of time be reproduced, when the conditions that once
made it are changed. Let other places of learning go in for all the
improvements! The world can afford to keep her one Oxford unreformed. I
know that this is a superficial judgment in both ways, for Oxford does
manage to keep pace with the utilitarian spirit, and at the same time
preserve lots of her flummery unchanged. On the whole it is a thoroughly
_democratic_ place, so far as aristocracy in the strict sense goes. But
I'm out of it, and doubt whether I want ever to put foot into it
again....
England has changed in many respects. The West End of London, which used
at this season to be so impressive from its splendor, is now a mixed and
mongrel horde of straw hats and cads of every description. Motor-buses
of the most brutal sort have replaced the old carriages, Bond and Regent
Streets are cheap-jack shows, everything is tumultuous and confused and
has run down in quality. I have been "motoring" a good deal through this
"Lake District," owing to the kindness of some excellent people in the
hotel, dissenters who rejoice in the name of Squance and inhabit the
neighborhood of Durham. It is wondrous fine, but especially adapted to
trampers, which I no longer am. Altogether England seems to have got
itself into a magnificently fine state of civilization, especially in
regard to the cheery and wholesome tone of manners of the people,
improved as it is getting to be by the greater infusion of the
democratic temper. Everything here seems about twice as good as the
corresponding thing with us. But I suspect we have the bigger eventual
destiny after all; and give us a thousand years and we may catch up in
many details. I think of you as still at Cambridge, and I do hope that
physical ills are bearing on more gently. Lily, too, I hope is her well
self again. You mustn't think of answering this, which is only an
ejaculation of friendship--I shall be home almost before you can get an
answer over. Love to all your circle, including Theodora, whom I miss
greatly. Affectionately yours,
Wm. James.
_To Henri Bergson._
LAMB HOUSE, _July 28, 1908_.
DEAR BERGSON,--(can't we cease "Professor"-ing each other?--that title
establishes a "disjunctive relation" between man and man, and our
relation should be "endosmotic" socially as well as intellectually, I
think),--
_Jacta est alea_, I am not to go to Switzerland! I find, after a week or
more here, that the monotony and simplification is doing my nervous
centres so much good, that my wife has decided to go off with our
daughter to Geneva, and to leave me alone with my brother here, for
repairs. It is a great disappointment in other ways than in not seeing
you, but I know that it is best. Perhaps later in the season the
_Zusammenkunft_ may take place, for nothing is decided beyond the next
three weeks.
Meanwhile let me say how rarely delighted your letter made me. There are
many points in your philosophy which I don't yet grasp, but I have
seemed to myself to understand your anti-intellectualistic campaign very
clearly, and that I have really done it so well in your opinion makes me
proud. I am sending your letter to Strong, partly out of vanity, partly
because of your reference to him. It does seem to me that philosophy is
turning towards a new orientation. Are you a reader of Fechner? I wish
that you would read his "Zend-Avesta," which in the second edition
(1904, I think) is better printed and much easier to read than it looks
at the first glance. He seems to me of the real race of prophets, and I
cannot help thinking that _you_, in particular, if not already
acquainted with this book, would find it very stimulating and
suggestive. His day, I fancy, is yet to come. I will write no more now,
but merely express my regret (and hope) and sign myself, yours most
warmly and sincerely,
Wm. James.
The subject of the next letter was a volume of "Essays Philosophical and
Psychological, in Honor of William James,"[85] by nineteen contributors,
which had been issued by Columbia University in the spring of 1908. A
note at the beginning of the book said: "This volume is intended to mark
in some degree its authors' sense of Professor James's memorable
services in philosophy and psychology, the vitality he has added to
those studies, and the encouragement that has flowed from him to
colleagues without number. Early in 1907, at the invitation of Columbia
University, he delivered a course of lectures there, and met the members
of the Philosophical and Psychological Departments on several occasions
for social discussion. They have an added motive for the present work in
the recollections of this visit."
_To John Dewey._
RYE, SUSSEX, _Aug. 4, 1908_.
DEAR DEWEY,--I don't know whether this will find you in the Adirondacks
or elsewhere, but I hope 'twill be on East Hill. My own copy of the
Essays in my "honor," which took me by complete surprise on the eve of
my departure, was too handsome to take along, so I have but just got
round to reading the book, which I find at my brother Henry's, where I
have recently come. It is a masterly set of essays of which we may all
be proud, distinguished by good style, direct dealing with the facts,
and hot running on the trail of truth, regardless of previous
conventions and categories. I am sure it hitches the subject of
epistemology a good day's journey ahead, and proud indeed am I that it
should be dedicated to my memory.
Your own contribution is to my mind the most _weighty_--unless perhaps
Strong's should prove to be so. I rejoice exceedingly that you should
have got it out. No one yet has succeeded, it seems to me, in jumping
into the centre of your vision. Once there, all the perspectives are
clear and open; and when you or some one else of us shall have spoken
the exact word that opens the centre to everyone, mediating between it
and the old categories and prejudices, people will wonder that there
ever could have been any other philosophy. That it is the philosophy of
the future, I'll bet my life. Admiringly and affectionately yours,
Wm. James.
_To Theodore Flournoy._
LAMB HOUSE, RYE, _Aug. 9, 1908_.
DEAR FLOURNOY,--I can't make out from my wife's letters whether she has
seen you face to face, or only heard accounts of you from Madame
Flournoy. She reports you very tired from the "Congress"--but I don't
know what Congress has been meeting at Geneva just now. I don't suppose
that you will go to the philosophical congress at Heidelberg--I
certainly shall not. I doubt whether philosophers will gain so much by
talking with each other as other classes of _Gelehrten_ do. One needs to
_frequenter_ a colleague daily for a month before one can begin to
understand him. It seems to me that the collective life of philosophers
is little more than an organization of misunderstandings. I gave eight
lectures at Oxford, but besides Schiller and one other tutor, only two
persons ever _mentioned_ them to me, and those were the two heads of
Manchester College by whom I had been invited. Philosophical work it
seems to me must go on in silence and in print exclusively.
You will have heard (either directly or indirectly) from my wife of my
reasons for not accompanying them to Geneva. I have been for more than
three weeks now at my brother's, and am much better for the
simplification. I am very sorry not to have met with you, but I think I
took the prudent course in staying away.
I have just read Miss Johnson's report in the last S. P. R.
"Proceedings," and a good bit of the proofs of Piddington's on
cross-correspondences between Mrs. Piper, Mrs. Verrall, and Mrs.
Holland, which is to appear in the next number. You will be much
interested, if you can gather the philosophical energy, to go through
such an amount of tiresome detail. It seems to me that these reports
open a new chapter in the history of automatism; and Piddington's and
Johnson's ability is of the highest order. Evidently "automatism" is a
word that covers an extraordinary variety of fact. I suppose that you
have on the whole been gratified by the "vindication" of Eusapia
[Paladino] at the hands of Morselli _et al._ in Italy. Physical
phenomena also seem to be entering upon a new phase in their history.
Well, I will stop, this is only a word of greeting and regret at not
seeing you. I got your letter of many weeks ago when we were at Oxford.
Don't take the trouble to _write_ now--my wife will bring me all the
news of you and your family, and will have given you all mine. Love to
Madame F. and all the young ones, too, please. Your ever affectionate
W. J.
_To Shadworth H. Hodgson._
PAIGNTON, S. DEVON, _Oct. 3, 1908_.