The Letters of William James, Vol. 1

Thanks are due to Mr. E. F. Walbridge, Librarian of the New York Harvard Club, for identifying a number of abbreviated titles.

43

Psychology, vol. I, p. 130, note. The quotation is literal. The subject of the foot-note in the Psychology is "the author."

44

See, for example, the use made of Touchstone's question, in the Nation in 1876 (quoted on page 190 infra). James was certainly unconscious of the repetition when he wrote page 7 of Some Problems of Philosophy. Consider also, a few sentences from a notice of Morley's Voltaire (Atlantic Monthly, 1872, vol. XXX, p. 624). "As the opinions of average men are swayed more by examples and types than by mere reasons, so a personality so accomplished as Mr. Morley's cannot fail by its mere attractiveness to influence all who come within its reach and inspire them with a certain friendliness toward the faith that animates it. The standard example, Goethe, is ever at hand. But to be thus widely effective, a man must not be a specialist. Mr. John Mill, weighty and many-sided as he is by nature and culture, is yet deficient in the æsthetic direction; and the same is true of M. Littré in France. Their lances lack that final tipping with light that made Voltaire's so irresistible. What Henry IV's soldiers followed was his white plume; and that imponderable superfluity, grace, in some shape, seems one factor without which no awakening of men's sympathies on a large scale can take place."

45

William James, by Theodore Flournoy (Geneva, 1911), p. 149 note.

46

Grubbing among subtleties.

47

Regardings, or contemplative views.

48

MS. doubtful.

49

"I made a discovery in sending in my credentials to the Dean which gratified me. It was that, adding in conscientiously every week in which I have had anything to do with medicine, I can't sum up more than three years and two or three months. Three years is the minimum with which one can go up for examination; but as I began away back in '63, I have been considering myself as having studied about five years, and have felt much humiliated by the greater readiness of so many younger men to answer questions and understand cases." To Henry James, June 12, 1869.

50

Ephraim W. Gurney and T. S. Perry.

51

It ought perhaps to be noted, even if only to dismiss the subject and prevent misapprehension, that at about this time a man whose philosophic ability was great and whose thought was vigorously materialistic was often at the house in Quincy Street. This was Chauncey Wright. He was twelve years James's senior; a man whose best work was done in conversation—who wrote little, and whose talents are now to be measured chiefly by the strong impression that he made on some of his contemporaries. "Of the two motives to which philosophic systems owe their being, the craving for consistency or unity in thought, and the desire for a solid outward warrant for our emotional ends, his mind was dominated only by the former. Never in a human head was contemplation more separated from desire." (Vide James's obituary notice of Wright, contributed to the Nation for Sept. 23, 1875.) It has been suggested that Wright influenced James's thinking. If so, his influence was not lasting and, in the opinion of the editor, can easily be overstated. James was not limited to any one philosophic companionship even at this time; and if he felt Wright's influence, it is remarkable that there should be no mention of him in any of the letters or memoranda that have survived and that there was never any acknowledgment in James's subsequent writings. He was ever inclined to make acknowledgment, even to his opponents.

52

Cf. the description of Henry James, Senior's, home-comings in A Small Boy and Others, p. 72.

53

The early history of experimental psychology in America once occasioned discussion. But the discussion seems to have arisen from its being assumed that some particular formality or event should be recognized as marking the coming into being, or the coming of age, of a "Department" or a "Laboratory." James has stated the facts as to the history of the Harvard Laboratory in his own words: "I, myself, 'founded' the instruction in experimental psychology at Harvard in 1874-5, or 1876, I forget which. For a long series of years the laboratory was in two rooms of the Scientific School building, which at last became choked with apparatus, so that a change was necessary. I then, in 1890, resolved on an altogether new departure, raised several thousand dollars, fitted up Dane Hall, and introduced laboratory exercises as a regular part of the undergraduate psychology course."—Vide Science, (N. S.) vol. II, pp. 626, 735. Also, p. 301 infra.

54

Henry James (in A Small Boy and Others, p. 5) says of Catherine Barber; "She represented for us in our generation the only English blood—that of both her own parents—flowing in our veins." She may well have seemed to her grandson to be of a different type from other members of the family, who were more recently, and doubtless obviously, Irish or Scotch; but the statement is incorrect. John Barber was the son of Patrick Barber, who came from Longford County, Ireland, about 1750 and settled at Neelytown near Newburgh (after having lived in New York City and Princeton) about 1764, and of Jannet Rhea (or Rea) whose parents were well-to-do people in old Shawangunk in 1790. Whatever may have been the previous history of the Rhea family, their name does not suggest an English origin. Both Patrick Barber and Matthew Rhea were pillars of Goodwill Presbyterian Church in Montgomery.

"First term, '61-'62, James, W., entered this term, passed examination on qualitative analysis well."

"Second term, '61-'62, James, W., studied quantitative analysis. Irregular in attendance at laboratory, passed examination on Fownes's Organic Chemistry, mark 85."

"First term, '62-'63, James, W., studied quantitative analysis and was tolerably punctual at recitations till Thanksgiving, when he began an investigation of the effects of different bread-raising materials on the urine. He worked steadily on this until the end of the term, mastering the processes, and studying the effect of yeast on bicarbonate of sodium and bitartrate of potash." The investigation referred to consisted of experiments of which he himself was the subject.

There is no record for the second term of 1862-63.

President Eliot has generously supplied the Editor with a memorandum on William James's connection with the College, from which these, and several statements below, have been drawn.

All theory is gray, dear friend,

But the golden tree of life is green.

55

The name of a rocky promontory near Newport.

56

Being and Non-Being.

57

Harvard Graduates' Magazine, vol. XVIII, p. 631 (June, 1910).

58

"The only decent thing I have ever written" appeared in Mind under the title "The Sentiment of Rationality." A footnote (p. 346) ran as follows: "This article is the first chapter of a psychological work on the motives which lead men to philosophize. It deals with the purely theoretic or logical impulse. Other chapters treat of practical and emotional motives, and in the conclusion an attempt is made to use the motives as tests of the soundness of different philosophies."

59

"The Spatial Quale," Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 1879, vol. XIII, p. 64.

60

Bastien-Lepage's Les Foins (The Hay-Makers).

61

Vide Introduction, p. 9 supra.

62

That I was intimate with their writings and did not wish to leave Prague without exchanging a few words with them.

63

Loquacity.

64

Service is service.

65

The true names of three compatriots, who may be living, are not given.

66

"My tour in Germany was pleasant, and from the pedagogic point of view instructive; although its chief result was to make me more satisfied than ever with our Harvard College methods of teaching, and to make me feel that in America we have perhaps a more cosmopolitan post of observation than is elsewhere to be found." To Renouvier, Dec. 18, 1882.

67

See p. 179 supra, and note.

68

See an unsigned review of Epes Sargent's "Planchette," in the Boston Advertiser of March 10, 1869. "The present attitude of society on this whole question is as extraordinary and anomalous as it is discreditable to the pretension of an age which prides itself on enlightenment and the diffusion of knowledge.... The phenomena seem, in their present state, to pertain more to the sphere of the disinterested student of nature than to that of the ordinary layman." The review was reprinted in Collected Essays and Reviews.

69

As an example of this James once quoted Huxley: "I take no interest in the subject. The only case of 'Spiritualism' I have had the opportunity of examining into for myself was as gross an imposture as ever came under my notice. But supposing the phenomena to be genuine—they do not interest me. If anybody would endow me with the faculty of listening to the chatter of old women and curates in the nearest cathedral town, I should decline the privilege, having better things to do. And if the folk in the spiritual world do not talk more wisely and sensibly than their friends report them to do, I put them in the same category. The only good that I can see in the demonstration of the truth of 'Spiritualism' is to furnish an additional argument against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper, than die and be made to talk twaddle by a 'medium' hired at a guinea a séance." Life and Letters, vol. I, p. 452 (New York, 1900).

James's comment should be added: "Obviously the mind of the excellent Huxley has here but two whole-souled categories, namely, revelation or imposture, to apperceive the case by. Sentimental reasons bar revelation out, for the messages, he thinks, are not romantic enough for that; fraud exists anyhow; therefore the whole thing is nothing but imposture. The odd point is that so few of those who talk in this way realize that they and the spiritists are using the same major premise and differing only in the minor. The major premise is: 'Any spirit-revelation must be romantic.' The minor of the spiritist is: 'This is romantic'; that of the Huxleyan is: 'This is dingy twaddle'—whence their opposite conclusions!" (Memories and Studies, pp. 185, 186.)

70

The Will to Believe, etc., p. 302.

71

Cf. The Will to Believe, etc., p. 319.

72

It is not the province of this book to estimate the importance of the work done by James and the other men—Sidgwick, Myers, Gurney, Richard Hodgson, Sir Oliver Lodge, and Richet, to go no further—who supported and guided the S. P. R. It must be traced in the literature of automatisms, hypnosis, divided personality, and the "subliminal." In James's own writings the reader may be referred to the above named chapter of The Will to Believe, etc., two papers included in Memories and Studies, and a review of Myers's Human Personality in Proc. of the (Eng.) S. P. R., vol. XVIII, p. 22 (1903). See also p. 306 infra, and note.

73

Mind, 1884, vol. IX, pp. 1-26.

74

Unitarian Review, Dec., 1883; vol. XX, p. 481.

75

"The Dilemma of Determinism." Unitarian Review, Sept., 1884. Republished in The Will to Believe and Other Essays.

76

Professor Howison had accepted an appointment at the University of California (Berkeley).

77

"Why so heartlessly deceive your sons?"LEOPARDI, To Sylvia.

78

From 15 Appian Way to 18 Garden Street.

79

"It's amusing to see how, even upon my microscopic field, minute events are perpetually taking place illustrative of the broadest facts of human nature. Yesterday Nurse and I had a good laugh, but I must allow that decidedly she 'had' me. I was thinking of something that interested me very much, and my mind was suddenly flooded by one of those luminous waves that sweep out of consciousness all but the living sense, and overpower one with joy in the rich, throbbing complexity of life, when suddenly I looked up at Nurse, who was dressing me, and saw her primitive, rudimentary expression (so common here), as of no inherited quarrel with her destiny of putting petticoats over my head; the poverty and deadness of it, contrasted to the tide of speculation that was coursing through my brain, made me exclaim, 'Oh, Nurse, don't you wish you were inside of me?' Her look of dismay, and vehement disclaimer—'Inside of you, Miss, when you have just had a sick-headache for five days!'—gave a greater blow to my vanity than that much-battered article has ever received. The headache had gone off in the night and I had clean forgotten it when the little wretch confronted me with it, at this sublime moment, when I was feeling within me the potency of a Bismarck, and left me powerless before the immutable law that, however great we may seem to our own consciousness, no human being would exchange his for ours, and before the fact that my glorious rôle was to stand for sick-headache to mankind! What a grotesque being I am, to be sure, lying in this room, with the resistance of a thistle-down, having illusory moments of throbbing with the pulse of the race, the mystery to be solved at the next breath, and the fountain of all happiness within me—the sense of vitality, in short, simply proportionate to the excess of weakness. To sit by and watch these absurdities is amusing in its way, and reminds me of how I used to listen to my 'company manners' in the days when I had 'em, and how ridiculous they sounded.

"Ah! Those strange people who have the courage to be unhappy! Are they unhappy, by the way?" [From a diary of Alice James's.]

80

Whose picture used to adorn the numerous advertisements of a patent medicine called "Mrs. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound."

81

The state of self-reproachful irritation described by Kater-Gefühl cannot be justly rendered by any English word.

82

Outbursts.

83

Mediatory attitude (view).

84

"The Perception of Space." Mind, 1887; vol. XII, pp. 1-30, 183-211, 321-353, 516-548.

85

Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 1886, vol. XX, p. 374.

86

Epochmaking manifestation.

87

I send her heartiest greetings.

88

From pure.

89

If it was printed, this notice has escaped identification.

90

"How I shall miss that man's presence in the world!… Our problems were the same and for the most part our solutions."

"He is a terrible loss to me. I didn't know till the news came how much I mentally referred to him as a critic and sympathizer, or how much I counted on seeing more of him hereafter." (From letters to G. Croom Robertson.)

Vide, also, The Will to Believe, etc., pp. 306-7.

91

Vide, pp. 290-91 infra.

92

"I write every morning at one of the card tables in the parlor, all alone in a room 120 feet long—just about the right size for one man." (Letter from the Hotel Del Monte, Sept. 8, 1898.)

93

"I have fully decided to try being a painter. I shall know in a year or two whether I am made to be one. If not, it will be easy to retreat. There's nothing in the world so despicable as a bad artist." (1860.)

94

J. M. Cattell. Address upon the 25th Anniversary of the American Psychological Association, Dec. 1916. Science (N.S.), vol. XLV, p. 276.

95

To Hugo Münsterberg, Aug. 22, 1890.

96

E.g., Principles of Psychology, vol. I, p. 369. "One is almost tempted to believe that the pantomime state of mind and that of the Hegelian dialectics are, emotionally considered, one and the same thing. In the pantomime all common things are represented to happen in impossible ways, people jump down each other's throats, houses turn inside out, old women become young men, everything 'passes into its opposite' with inconceivable celerity and skill; and this, so far from producing perplexity, brings rapture to the beholder's mind. And so, in the Hegelian logic, relations elsewhere recognized under the insipid name of distinctions (such as that between knower and object, many and one) must first be translated into impossibilities and contradictions, then 'transcended' and identified by miracles, ere the proper temper is induced for thoroughly enjoying the spectacle they show."

97

"What Psychical Research has Accomplished," was first published in The Forum, 1892, vol. XIII, p. 727.

98

It will be recalled that Mrs. Whitman had been a Baltimorean before she came to live in Boston.

99

Aug. 14. "Lowell's funeral at mid-day.... Went to Child's to say good-bye, and found Walcott, Howells, Cranch, etc. Poor dear old Child! We drank a glass standing to the hope of seeing Lowell again."

100

Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Sedgwick. Mr. Sedgwick was Miss Ashburner's nephew.

101

See vol. II, p. 39 infra.

102

See "The Galileo Festival at Padua": Nation (New York), Jan. 5, 1893; a four-column account of the Festival.

103

Philosophical Review (1893), vol. II, p. 213

104

Mr. Frank Duveneck, painter and sculptor, now of Cincinnati.

105

Mr. Duveneck was Mr. Boott's son-in-law. Vide page 153 supra.

106

Jan. 24, '94. To Carl Stumpf. "One should not be a cosmopolitan, one's soul becomes 'disintegrated,' as Janet would say. Parts of it remain in different places, and the whole of it is nowhere. One's native land seems foreign. It is not wholly a good thing, and I think I suffer from it."