note), calls attention to these courses and remarks: "These frequent
changes were highly characteristic of James's whole career as a teacher.
He changed topics, textbooks and methods frequently, thus utilizing his
own wide range of reading and interest and his own progress in
philosophy, and experimenting from year to year on the mutual contacts
and relations with his students." James continued to be titular
Professor of Psychology until 1897, just as he had been nominally
Assistant Professor of Physiology for several years during which the
original and important part of his teaching was psychological. His title
never indicated exactly what he was teaching.
[3] At this meeting he delivered a presidential address "On the Knowing
of Things Together," a part of which is reprinted in _The Meaning of
Truth_, p. 43, under the title, "The Tigers in India." _Vide_, also,
_Collected Essays and Reviews_.
[4] In a brief letter to the _Harvard Crimson_ (Jan. 9, 1896), James
urged the right and duty of individuals to stand up for their opinions
publicly during such crises, even though in opposition to the
administration. Mr. Rhodes, in his _History of the United States,
1877-1896_, makes the following observation: "Cleveland, in his chapter
on the 'Venezuelan Boundary Controversy,' rates the un-Americans who
lauded 'the extreme forbearance and kindness of England.' ... The
reference ... need trouble no one who allows himself to be guided by two
of Cleveland's trusted servants and friends. Thomas F. Bayard, Secretary
of State during the first administration, and actual ambassador to Great
Britain, wrote in a private letter on May 25, 1895, 'There is no
question now open between the United States and Great Britain that needs
any but frank, amicable and just treatment.' Edward J. Phelps, his first
minister to England, in a public address on March 30, 1896, condemned
emphatically the President's Venezuela policy." See Rhodes, _History_,
vol. VIII, p. 454; also p. 443 _et seq._
[5] "The Evolution of the Summer Resort."
[6] "Address of the President before the Society for Psychical
Research." Proc. of the (Eng.) Soc. for Psych. Res. 1896, vol. XII, pp.
2-10; also in _Science_, 1896, N. S., vol. IV, pp. 881-888.
[7] From the last paragraph of Cleveland's Venezuela message.
[8] In 1910--during his final illness, in fact--James fulfilled this
promise. See "A Pluralistic Mystic," included in Memories and Studies;
also letter of June 25, 1910, p. 348 _infra_.
[9] Cf. William James's unsigned review of Blood's _Anæsthetic
Revelation_ in the _Atlantic Monthly_, 1874, vol. XXXIV, p. 627.
[10] James always did a reasonable share of college committee work,
especially for the committee of his own department. But although he had
exercised a determining influence in the selection of every member of
the Philosophical Department who contributed to its fame in his time
(except Professor Palmer, who was his senior in service), he never
consented to be chairman of the Department. He attended the weekly
meetings of the whole Faculty for any business in which he was
concerned; otherwise irregularly. He spoke seldom in Faculty.
Occasionally he served on special committees. He usually formed an
opinion of his own quite quickly, but his habitual tolerance in matters
of judgment showed itself in good-natured patience with discussion--this
despite the fact that he often chafed at the amount of time consumed.
"Now although I happen accidentally to have been on all the committees
which have had to do with the proposed reform, and have listened to the
interminable Faculty debates last winter, I disclaim all powers or right
to speak in the _name_ of the majority. Members of our dear Faculty have
a way of discovering reasons fitted exclusively for their idiosyncratic
use, and though voting with their neighbors, will often do so on
incommunicable grounds. This is doubtless the effect of much learning
upon originally ingenious minds; and the result is that the abundance of
different points and aspects which a simple question ends by presenting,
after a long Faculty discussion, beggars both calculation beforehand and
enumeration after the fact."--"The Proposed Shortening of the College
Course." _Harvard Monthly_, Jan., 1891.
[1] "I _loved_ Child more than any man I know." Sept. 12, '96.
[11] Eight lectures on "Abnormal Mental States" were delivered at the
Lowell Institute in Boston, but were never published. Their several
titles were "Dreams and Hypnotism," "Hysteria," "Automatisms," "Multiple
Personality," "Demoniacal Possession," "Witchcraft," "Degeneration,"
"Genius." In a letter to Professor Howison (Apr. 5, 1897) James said,
"In these lectures I did not go into psychical research so-called, and
although the subjects were decidedly morbid, I tried to shape them
towards optimistic and hygienic conclusions, and the audience regarded
them as decidedly anti-morbid in their tone."
[12] _Demon Possession and Allied Themes_, by John C. Nevius.
[13] _The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy_ had
just appeared.
[14] The Address has been reprinted in _Memories and Studies_.
[15] For a short while MacMonnies's Bacchante stood in the court of the
Boston Public Library.
[16] These words were not employed in public, but were once applied to a
well-known professor in a private letter.
[17] A full report of the speech made at the Legislative hearing was
printed in the _Banner of Light_, Mar. 12, 1898. The letter to the
Boston _Transcript_ in 1894 appeared in the issue of Mar. 24.
[18] _James J. Putnam to William James_
BOSTON, _Mar. 9, 1898_.
DEAR WILLIAM,--We have thought and talked a good deal about the subject
of your speech in the course of the last week. I prepared with infinite
labor a letter intended for the _Transcript_ of last Saturday, but it
was not a weighty contribution and I am rather glad it was too late to
get in. I think it is generally felt among the best doctors that your
position was the liberal one, and that it would be a mistake to try to
exact an examination of the mind-healers and Christian Scientists. On
the other hand, I am afraid most of the doctors, even including myself,
do not have any great feeling of fondness for them, and we are more in
the way of seeing the fanatical spirit in which they proceed and the
harm that they sometimes do than you are. Of course they do also good
things which would remain otherwise not done, and that is the important
point, and sincere fanatics are almost always, and in this case I think
certainly, of real value.
Always affectionately,
JAMES J. P.
[19] That is, there was here no path to follow, only "blazes" on the
trees.
[20] The housekeeper at the Putnam-Bowditch "shanty."
[21] Photograph of a boy and girl standing on a rock which hangs dizzily
over a great precipice above the Yosemite Valley.
[22] G. E. Woodberry: _The Heart of Man_; 1899.
[23] James's house was number 95, his mother-in-law's number 107.
[24] Augusta was the house-maid; Dinah, a bull-terrier.
[25] It will be recalled that Davidson had a summer School of Philosophy
at his place called Glenmore on East Hill, and that East Hill is at one
end of Keene Valley. See also James's essay on Thomas Davidson, "A
Knight Errant of the Intellectual Life," in _Memories and Studies_.
[26] A gift which provided for building the "Harvard Union."
[27] "You have never spent a night under our roof, or eaten a meal in
our house!" This fictitious charge had become the recognized theme of
frequent elaborations.
[28] _The World and the Individual_, vol. I. Mrs. Evans was inclined to
contend for Royce's philosophy.
[29] The name of an American claret which his correspondent had
"discovered" and in which it also pleased James to find merit.
[30] The second volume of _The World and the Individual_. (Gifford
Lectures at the University of Aberdeen.)
[31] _Interpretations of Poetry and Religion._ New York, 1900.
[32] _Memoiren einer Idealistin_, by Malwida von Meysenbug, Stuttgart,
1877.
[33] _Recollections of My Mother_ [Anne Jean Lyman], by Susan I. Lesley,
Boston, 1886.
[34] Sister Nivedita.
[35] Booker T. Washington's _Up from Slavery_.
[36] "Frederick Myers's Services to Psychology." Reprinted in _Memories
and Studies_.
[37] _The Individual, A Study of Life and Death_. New York, 1900. This
letter is reproduced from the _Autobiography_ of N. S. Shaler, where it
has already been published.
[38] Mrs. O. W. Holmes had used the following translation of an epitaph
in the Greek Anthology:--
A shipwrecked sailor buried on this coast
Bids thee take sail.
Full many a gallant ship, when we were lost,
Weathered the gale.
[39] "And base things of the world and things which are despised hath
God chosen, yes, and things which are not, to bring to naught things
that are."
[40] Kitchen.
[41] Although James had received the usual hint that Harvard intended to
confer an honorary degree upon him, he had absented himself from both
the honors and fatigues of Commencement time. The next year he was
present, and the LL.D. was conferred.
[42] "I have been re-reading Bergson's books, and nothing that I have
read in years has so excited and stimulated my thought. Four years ago I
couldn't understand him at all, though I felt his power. I am sure that
that philosophy has a great future. It breaks through old _cadres_ and
brings things into a solution from which new crystals can be got." (From
a letter to Flournoy, Jan. 27, 1902.)
[43] The Ingersoll Lecture on Human Immortality.
[44] There had been a celebration of Mrs. Agassiz's eightieth birthday
at Radcliffe College, of which she was President.
[45] On the Amazon in 1865-66.
[46] An 8-page _Syllabus_ printed for the use of his students in the
course on the "Philosophy of Nature" which James was giving during the
first half of the college year.
[47] _Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death_, by F. W. H.
Myers.
[48] "The piles driven into the quicksand are too few for such a
structure. But it is essential as a preliminary attempt at methodizing,
and will doubtless keep a very honorable place in history." To F. C. S.
Schiller, April 8, 1903.
[49] Eusapia Paladino, the Italian "medium." The physical manifestations
which occurred during her trance had excited much discussion.
[50] The name of a student-society.
[51] The horse.
[52] W. E. B. Du Bois: _The Souls of Black Folk_.
[53] These five lectures were delivered at the summer school at
"Glenmore," which Thomas Davidson had founded. Their subject was
"Radical Empiricism as a Philosophy"; but they were neither written out
nor reported.
[54] _Aristotelian Society Proceedings_, vol. IV, pp. 87-110.
[55] James's answers are printed in italics.
[56] "How Two Minds Can Know One Thing," _Journal of Philosophy,
Psychology, and Scientific Methods_, 1905, vol. II, p. 176.
[57] "Is Radical Empiricism Solipsistic?" _Journal of Philosophy,
Psychology, and Scientific Methods_, 1905, vol. II, p. 235.
[58] This address, "La Notion de Conscience," was printed first in the
_Archives de Psychologie_, 1905, vol. V, p. 1. It will also be found in
the _Essays in Radical Empiricism_.
[59] "My own desire to see Roosevelt president here for a limited term
of years was quenched by a speech he made at the Harvard Union a couple
of years ago." (To D. S. Miller, Jan. 2, 1908.)
[60] _The Life of Reason._ New York, 1905.
[61] He had been "sounded" regarding an appointment as Harvard Exchange
Lecturer at the Sorbonne, and had at first been inclined to accept.
[62] Busse, _Leib und Seele, Geist und Körper_; Heymans, _Einführung in
die Metaphysik_.
[63] _Vide Letters of Henry James_, vol. II, p. 43.
[64] "Also outside 'addresses,' impossible to refuse. Damn them! Four in
this Hotel [in San Francisco] where I was one of four orators who spoke
for two hours on 'Reason and Faith,' before a Unitarian Association of
Pacific Coasters. Consequence: _gout_ on waking this morning! _Unitarian
gout_--was such a thing ever heard of?" (To T. S. Perry, Feb. 6, 1906.)
[65] Dr. Snow kindly wrote an account of the afternoon that he spent in
James's company in the city and it may here be given in part.
"When I met Professor James in San Francisco early in the afternoon of
the day of the earthquake, he was full of questions about my personal
feelings and reactions and my observations concerning the conduct and
evidences of self-control and fear or other emotions of individuals with
whom I had been closely thrown, not only in the medical work which I
did, but in the experiences I had on the fire-lines in dragging hose and
clearing buildings in advance of the dynamiting squads.
"I described to him an incident concerning a great crowd of people who
desired to make a short cut to the open space of a park at a time when
there was danger of all of them not getting across before certain
buildings were dynamited. Several of the city's police had stretched a
rope across this street and were volubly and vigorously combating the
onrush of the crowd, using their clubs rather freely. Some one cut the
rope. At that instant, a lieutenant of the regular army with three
privates appeared to take up guard duty. The lieutenant placed his guard
and passed on. The three soldiers immediately began their beat, dividing
the width of the street among themselves. The crowd waited, breathless,
to see what the leaders of the charge upon the police would now do. One
man started to run across the street and was knocked down cleverly by
the sentry, with the butt of his gun. This sentry coolly continued his
patrol and the man sat up, apparently thinking himself wounded, then
scuttled back into the crowd, drawing from every one a laugh which was
evidently with the soldiers. Immediately, the crowd began to melt away
and proceed up a side street in the direction laid out for them.
"In connection with this story Professor James casually mentioned that
not long before, where there were no soldiers or police, he had run on
to a crowd stringing a man to a lamp-post because of his endeavor to rob
the body of a woman of some rings. At the time, I did not learn other
details of this particular incident, us Professor James was so full of
the many scenes he had witnessed and was particularly intent on
gathering from me impressions of what I had seen. I suppose he had
similarly been gathering observations from others whom he met,
"An incident which struck me as humorous at the time was that he should
have gathered up a box of "Zu-zu gingersnaps," and, as I recall it, some
small pieces of cheese. I do not now recall his comment on where he had
obtained these, but there was some humorous incident connected with the
transaction, and he was quite happy and of opinion that he was enjoying
a nourishing meal.
"Professor James told me vividly and in a few words the circumstances of
the damage done by the earthquake at Stanford University, and I left him
to make arrangements for going down to the University that night to
provide for my family. As it turned out, Professor James returned to the
campus before I did, and true to his promise thoughtfully hunted up Mrs.
Snow and told her that he had seen me and that I was alive and well."
[66] James had not used a type-writer since the time when his eyes
troubled him in the seventies. The machine now had the fascination of a
strange toy again.
[67] He did mistake, as Mr. Chesterton's subsequent utterances showed.
[68] As to "Jimmy," _vide_ vol. I, p. 301 _supra_.
[69] _Cf._ pp. 16, 17, and 220 _supra_.
[70] Dr. Miller writes: "These four evenings at the Faculty Club were
singularly interesting occasions. One was a meeting of the Philosophical
Club of New York, whose members, about a dozen in number, were of
different institutions. The others were impromptu meetings arranged
either by members of the Department of Philosophy at Columbia or a wider
group. At one of them Mr. James sat in a literal circle of chairs, with
professors of Biology, Mathematics, etc., as well as Philosophy, and
answered in a particularly friendly and charming way the frank
objections of a group that were by no means all opponents. At the close,
when he was thanked for his patience, he remarked in his humorously
disclaiming manner that he was not accustomed to be taken so seriously.
Privately he remarked how pleasantly such an unaffected, easy meeting
contrasted with a certain formal and august dinner club, the exaggerated
amusement of the diners at each other's jokes, etc."
[71] His resignation did not take effect until the end of the Academic
year, although his last meeting with the class to which he was giving a
"half-course," occurred at the mid-year.
[72] "La Notion de Conscience," _Archives de Psychologie_, vol. V, No.
17, June, 1905. Later included in _Essays in Radical Empiricism_.
[73] "Pragmatism's Conception of Truth." Included in _Selected Essays
and Reviews_.
[74] The story of the Committee for Mental Hygiene is interestingly told
in Part V of the 4th Edition of C. W. Beers's _A Mind that Found
Itself_. Several letters from James are incorporated in the story.
_Vide_ pp. 339 and 340; also pp. 320, 352.
[75] Mrs. James's niece, Rosamund Gregor, age 6.
[76] _Memories and Studies_, pp. 286 _et seq._
[77] The reader need hardly be reminded that new meanings and
associations have attached themselves to this word in particular.
[78] _Talks to Teachers_, p. 265.
[79] Proceedings of (English) S.P.R., vol. XXIII, pp. 1-121. Also, Proc.
American S.P.R., vol. III, p. 470.
[80] _L'Évolution Créatrice._
[81] "A Word More about Truth," reprinted in _Collected Essays and
Reviews_.
[82] Learned public.
[83] Superficial stuff.
[84] The lectures were published as _A Pluralistic Universe_.
[85] New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1908.
[86] "The Confidences of a Psychical Researcher," reprinted in _Memories
and Studies_ under the title "Final Impressions of a Psychical
Researcher."
[87] By Frank Harris; New York: 1909.
[88] See the footnote on p. 39 _supra_.