Chapter XVI (1)

1907-1909

_The Last Period (III)--Hibbert Lectures in Oxford--The Hodgson Report_

The story of the remaining years is written so fully in the letters themselves as to require little explanation.

Angina pectoris and such minor ailments as are only too likely to afflict a man of sixty-five years and impaired constitution interrupted the progress of reading and writing more and more. Physical exertion, particularly that involved in talking long to many people, now brought on pain and difficulty in breathing. But James still carried himself erect, still walked with a light step, and until a few weeks before his death wore the appearance of a much younger and stronger man than he really was. None but those near to him realized how often he was in discomfort or pain, or how constantly he was using himself to the limit of his endurance. He bore his ills without complaint and ordinarily without mention; although he finally made up his mind to try to discourage the appeals and requests of all sorts that still harassed him, by proclaiming the fact that he was an invalid. As his power of work became more and more reduced, frustrations became harder to bear, and the sense that they were unavoidable oppressed him. When an invitation to deliver a course of lectures on the Hibbert Foundation at Manchester College, Oxford, arrived, he was torn between an impulse to clutch at this engagement as a means of hastening the writing-out of certain material that was in his mind, and the fear, only too reasonable, that the obligation to have the lectures ready by a certain date would strain him to the snapping point. After some hesitation he agreed, however, and the lectures were, ultimately, prepared and delivered successfully.

In proportion as the number of hours a day that he could spend on literary work and professional reading decreased, James's general reading increased again. He began for the first time to browse in military biographies, and commenced to collect material for a study which he sometimes spoke of as a "Psychology of Jingoism," sometimes as a "Varieties of Military Experience." What such a work would have been, had he ever completed it, it is impossible to tell. It was never more than a rather vague project, turned to occasionally as a diversion. But it is safe to reckon that two remarkable papers--the "Energies of Men" (written in 1906) and the "Moral Equivalent of War" (written in 1909)--would have appeared to be related to this study. That it would not have been a utopian flight in the direction of pacifism need hardly be said. However he might have described it, James was not disposed to underestimate the "fighting instinct." He saw it as a persistent and highly irritable force, underlying the society of all the dominant races; and he advocated international courts, reduction of armaments, and any other measures that might prevent appeals to the war-waging passion as commendable devices for getting along without arousing it.

"The fatalistic view of the war-function is to me nonsense, for I know that war-making is due to definite motives and subject to prudential checks and reasonable criticisms, just like any other form of enterprise.... All these beliefs of mine put me squarely into the anti-militarist party. But I do not believe that peace either ought to be or will be permanent on this globe, unless the states pacifically organized preserve some of the old elements of army-discipline.... In the more or less socialistic future towards which mankind seems drifting, we must still subject ourselves collectively to those severities which answer to our real position upon this only partly hospitable globe. We must make new energies and hardihoods continue the manliness to which the military mind so faithfully clings. Martial virtues must be the enduring cement; intrepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of private interest, obedience to command, must still remain the rock upon which states are built--unless, indeed, we wish for dangerous reactions against commonwealths fit only for contempt, and liable to invite attack whenever a centre of crystallization for military-minded enterprise gets formed anywhere in their neighborhood."[76]

Any utterances about war, arbitration, and disarmament, are now likely to have their original meaning distorted by reason of what may justly be called the present fevered state of public opinion on such questions. It should be clear that the foregoing sentences were not directed to any particular question of domestic or foreign policy. They were part of a broad picture of the fighting instinct, and led up to a suggestion for diverting it into non-destructive channels. As to particular instances, circumstances were always to be reckoned with. James believed in organizing and strengthening the machinery of arbitration, but did not think that the day for universal arbitration had yet come. He saw a danger in military establishments, went so far--in the presence of the "jingoism" aroused by Cleveland's Venezuela message--as to urge opposition to any increase of the American army and navy, encouraged peace-societies, and was willing to challenge attention by calling himself a pacifist.[77] "The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own peculiar ways of being happy, provided those ways do not presume to interfere by violence with ours."[78] Tolerance--social, religious, and political--was fundamental in his scheme of belief; but he took pains to make a proviso, and drew the line at tolerating interference or oppression. Where he recognized a military danger, there he would have had matters so governed as to meet it, not evade it. Writing of the British garrison in Halifax in 1897, he said: "By Jove, if England should ever be licked by a Continental army, it would only be Divine justice upon her for keeping up the Tommy Atkins recruiting system when the others have compulsory service."

* * * * *

In the case of one undertaking, which was much too troublesome to be reckoned as a diversion, he let himself be drawn away from his metaphysical work. He had taken no active part in the work of the Society for Psychical Research since 1896. In December, 1905, Richard Hodgson, the secretary of the American Branch, had died suddenly, and almost immediately thereafter Mrs. Piper, the medium whose trances Hodgson had spent years in studying, had purported to give communications from Hodgson's departed spirit. In 1909 James made a report to the S. P. R. on "Mrs. Piper's Hodgson control." The full report will be found in its Proceedings for 19O9,[79] and the concluding pages, in which James stated, more analytically than elsewhere, the hypotheses which the phenomena suggested to him, have been reprinted in the volume of "Collected Essays and Reviews." At the same time he wrote out a more popular statement, in a paper which will be found in "Memories and Studies." As to his final opinion of the spirit-theory, the following letter, given somewhat out of its chronological place, states what was still James's opinion in 1910.

_To Charles Lewis Slattery._

Cambridge, _Apr. 21, 1907_.

DEAR MR. SLATTERY,--My state of mind is this: Mrs. Piper has supernormal knowledge in her trances; but whether it comes from "tapping the minds" of living people, or from some common cosmic reservoir of memories, or from surviving "spirits" of the departed, is a question impossible for _me_ to answer just now to my own satisfaction. The spirit-theory is undoubtedly not only the most natural, but the simplest, and I have great respect for Hodgson's and Hyslop's arguments when they adopt it. At the same time the electric current called _belief_ has not yet closed in my mind.

Whatever the explanation be, trance-mediumship is an excessively complex phenomenon, in which many concurrent factors are engaged. That is why interpretation is so hard.

Make any use, public or private, that you like of this.

In great haste, yours,

Wm. James.

The next letter should be understood as referring to the abandonment of an excursion to Lake Champlain with Henry L. Higginson. The celebration alluded to in the last part of the letter had been arranged by the Cambridge Historical Society in honor of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Louis Agassiz.

_To Henry L. Higginson._

CHOCORUA, N. H., _circa, June 1, 1907_.

DEAR HENRY,--On getting your resignation by telephone, I came straight up here instead, without having time to write you my acceptance as I meant to; and now comes your note of the fourth, before I have done so.

I am exceedingly sorry, my dear old boy, that it is the doctor's advice that has made you fear to go. I hope the liability to relapse will soon fade out and leave you free again; for say what they will of _Alters Schwäche_ and resignation to decay, and _entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren_, it means only sour grapes, and the insides of one always want to be doing the free and active things. However, a river can still be lively in a shrunken bed, and we must not pay too much attention to the difference of level. If you should summon me again this summer, I can probably respond. I shall be here for a fortnight, then back to Cambridge again for a short time.

I thought the Agassiz celebration went off very nicely indeed, didn't you?--John Gray's part in it being of course the best. X---- was heavy, but respectable, and the heavy respectable _ought_ to be one ingredient in anything of the kind. But how well Shaler would have done that part of the job had he been there! Love to both of you!

W. J.

_To W. Cameron Forbes._

CHOCORUA, _June 11, 1907_.

DEAR CAMERON FORBES,--Your letter from Baguio of the 18th of April touches me by its genuine friendliness, and is a tremendous temptation. Why am I not ten years younger? Even now I hesitate to say no, and the only reason why I don't say yes, with a roar, is that certain rather serious drawbacks in the way of health of late seem to make me unfit for the various activities which such a visit ought to carry in its train. I am afraid my program from now onwards ought to be sedentary. I ought to be getting out a book next winter. Last winter I could hardly do any walking, owing to a trouble with my heart.

Does your invitation mean to include my wife? And have you a good crematory so that she might bring home my ashes in case of need?

I think if you had me on the spot you would find me a less impractical kind of an anti-imperialist than you have supposed me to be. I think that the manner in which the McKinley administration railroaded the country into its policy of conquest was abominable, and the way the country pucked up its ancient soul at the first touch of temptation, and followed, was sickening. But with the establishment of the civil commission McKinley did what he could to redeem things and now what the Islands want is CONTINUITY OF ADMINISTRATION to form new habits that may to some degree be hoped to last when we, as controllers, are gone. WHEN? that is the question. And much difference of opinion may be fair as to the answer. That we can't stay forever seems to follow from the fact that the educated Philippinos differ from all previous colonials in having been inoculated before our occupation with the ideas of the French Revolution; and that is a virus to which history shows as yet no anti-toxine. As I am at present influenced, I think that the U. S. ought to solemnly proclaim a date for our going (or at least for a plebiscitum as to whether we should go) and stand by all the risks. _Some_ date, rather than indefinitely drift. And shape the whole interval towards securing things in view of the change. As to this, I may be wrong, and am always willing to be convinced. I wish I could go, and see you all at work. Heaven knows I admire the spirit with which you are animated--a new thing in colonial work.

It must have been a great pleasure to you to see so many of the family at once. I have seen none of them since their return, but hope to do so ere the summer speeds. The only dark spot was poor F----'s death.

Believe me, with affectionate regards, yours truly,

Wm. James.

I am ordering a little book of mine, just out, to be sent to you. Some one of your circle may find entertainment in it.

_To F. C. S. Schiller._

[Post-card]

CHOCORUA, _June_ 13, 1907.

Yours of the 27th ult. received and highly appreciated. I'm glad you relish my book so well. You go on playing the Boreas and I shedding the sunbeams, and between us we'll get the cloak off the philosophic traveler! But _have_ you read Bergson's new book?[80]It seems to me that nothing is important in comparison with that divine apparition. All _our_ positions, real time, a growing world, asserted magisterially, and the beast intellectualism killed absolutely _dead_! The whole flowed round by a style incomparable as it seems to me. Read it, and digest it if you can. Much of it I can't yet assimilate.

[_No signature._]

_To Henri Bergson._

CHOCORUA, _June 13, 1907_.

O my Bergson, you are a magician, and your book is a marvel, a real wonder in the history of philosophy, making, if I mistake not, an entirely new era in respect of matter, but unlike the works of genius of the "transcendentalist" movement (which are so obscurely and abominably and inaccessibly written), a pure classic in point of form. You may be amused at the comparison, but in finishing it I found the same after-taste remaining as after finishing "Madame Bovary," such a flavor of persistent _euphony_, as of a rich river that never foamed or ran thin, but steadily and firmly proceeded with its banks full to the brim. Then the aptness of your illustrations, that never scratch or stand out at right angles, but invariably simplify the thought and help to pour it along! Oh, indeed you are a magician! And if your next book proves to be as great an advance on this one as this is on its two predecessors, your name will surely go down as one of the great creative names in philosophy.

There! have I praised you enough? What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is _praise_--although the philosophers generally call it "recognition"! If you want still more praise, let me know, and I will send it, for my features have been on a broad smile from the first page to the last, at the chain of felicities that never stopped. I feel rejuvenated.

As to the content of it, I am not in a mood at present to make any definite reaction. There is so much that is absolutely new that it will take a long time for your contemporaries to assimilate it, and I imagine that much of the development of detail will have to be performed by younger men whom your ideas will stimulate to coruscate in manners unexpected by yourself. To me at present the vital achievement of the book is that it inflicts an irrecoverable death-wound upon Intellectualism. It can never resuscitate! But it will die hard, for all the inertia of the past is in it, and the spirit of professionalism and pedantry as well as the æsthetic-intellectual delight of dealing with categories logically distinct yet logically connected, will rally for a desperate defense. The _élan vital_, all contentless and vague as you are obliged to leave it, will be an easy substitute to make fun of. But the beast _has_ its death-wound now, and the manner in which you have inflicted it (interval _versus_ temps d'arrêt, etc.) is masterly in the extreme. I don't know why this later _rédaction_ of your critique of the mathematics of movement has seemed to me so much more telling than the early statement--I suppose it is because of the wider _use_ made of the principle in the book. You will be receiving my own little "pragmatism" book simultaneously with this letter. How jejune and inconsiderable it seems in comparison with your great system! But it is so congruent with parts of your system, fits so well into interstices thereof, that you will easily understand why I am so enthusiastic. I feel that at bottom we are fighting the same fight, you a commander, I in the ranks. The position we are rescuing is "Tychism" and a really growing world. But whereas I have hitherto found no better way of defending Tychism than by affirming the spontaneous addition of _discrete_ elements of being (or their subtraction), thereby playing the game with intellectualist weapons, you set things straight at a single stroke by your fundamental conception of the continuously creative nature of reality. I think that one of your happiest strokes is your reduction of "finality," as usually taken, to its status alongside of efficient causality, as the twin-daughters of intellectualism. But this vaguer and truer finality restored to its rights will be a difficult thing to give content to. Altogether your reality lurks so in the background, in this book, that I am wondering whether you _couldn't_ give it any more development _in concreto_ here, or whether you perhaps were holding back developments, already in your possession, for a future volume. They are sure to come to you later anyhow, and to make a new volume; and altogether, the clash of these ideas of yours with the traditional ones will be sure to make sparks fly that will illuminate all sorts of dark places and bring innumerable new considerations into view. But the process may be slow, for the ideas are so revolutionary. Were it not for your style, your book might last 100 years unnoticed; but your way of writing is so absolutely commanding that your theories have to be attended to immediately. I feel very much in the dark still about the relations of the progressive to the regressive movement, and this great precipitate of nature subject to static categories. With a frank pluralism of _beings_ endowed with vital impulses you can get oppositions and compromises easily enough, and a stagnant deposit; but after my one reading I don't exactly "catch on" to the way in which the continuum of reality resists itself so as to have to act, etc., etc.

The only part of the work which I felt like positively criticising was the discussion of the idea of nonentity, which seemed to me somewhat overelaborated, and yet didn't leave me with a sense that the last word had been said on the subject. But all these things must be very slowly digested by me. I can see that, when the tide turns in your favor, many previous tendencies in philosophy will start up, crying "This is nothing but what _we_ have contended for all along." Schopenhauer's blind will, Hartmann's unconscious, Fichte's aboriginal freedom (reëdited at Harvard in the most "unreal" possible way by Münsterberg) will all be claimants for priority. But no matter--all the better if you are in some ancient lines of tendency. Mysticism also must make claims and doubtless just ones. I say nothing more now--this is just my first reaction; but I am so enthusiastic as to have said only two days ago, "I thank heaven that I have lived to this date--that I have witnessed the Russo-Japanese war, and seen Bergson's new book appear--the two great modern turning-points of history and of thought!" Best congratulations and cordialest regards!

Wm. James.

_To T. S. Perry._

SILVER LAKE, N.H., _June 24, 1907_.

DEAR THOS.,--Yours of the 11th is at hand, true philosopher that you are. No one but one bawn & bred in the philosophic briar-patch could appreciate Bergson as you do, without in the least understanding him. I am in an identical predicament. This last of his is the _divinest_ book that has appeared in _my_ life-time, and (unless I am the falsest prophet) it is destined to rank with the greatest works of all time. The style of it is as wonderful as the matter. By all means send it to Chas. Peirce, but address him Prescott Hall, Cambridge. I am sending you my "Pragmatism," which Bergson's work makes seem like small potatoes enough.

Are you going to Russia to take Stolypin's place? or to head the Revolution? I would I were at Giverny to talk metaphysics with you, and enjoy a country where I am not responsible for the droughts and the garden. Have been here two weeks at Chocorua, getting our place ready for a tenant.

Affectionate regards to you all.

W. J.

_To Dickinson S. Miller._

LINCOLN, MASS., _Aug. 5, 1907_.

DEAR MILLER,--I got your letter about "Pragmatism," etc., some time ago. I hear that you are booked to review it for the "Hibbert Journal." Lay on, Macduff! as hard as you can--I want to have the weak places pointed out. I sent you a week ago a "Journal of Philosophy"[81] with a word more about Truth in it, written _at_ you mainly; but I hardly dare hope that I have cleared up my position. A letter from Strong, two days ago, written after receiving a proof of that paper, still thinks that I deny the existence of realities outside of the thinker; and [R. B.] Perry, who seems to me to have written far and away the most important critical remarks on Pragmatism (possibly the _only_ important ones), accused Pragmatists (though he doesn't name _me_) of ignoring or denying that the real object plays any part in deciding what ideas are true. I confess that such misunderstandings seem to me hardly credible, and cast a "lurid light" on the mutual understandings of philosophers generally. Apparently it all comes from the _word_ Pragmatism--and a most unlucky word it may prove to have been. I am a natural realist. The world _per se_ may be likened to a cast of beans on a table. By themselves they spell nothing. An onlooker may group them as he likes. He may simply count them all and map them. He may select groups and name these capriciously, or name them to suit certain extrinsic purposes of his. Whatever he does, so long as he _takes account_ of them, his account is neither false nor irrelevant. If neither, why not call it true? It _fits_ the beans-_minus_-him, and _expresses_ the _total_ fact, of beans-_plus_-him. Truth in this total sense is partially ambiguous, then. If he simply counts or maps, he obeys a subjective interest as much as if he traces figures. Let that stand for pure "intellectual" treatment of the beans, while grouping them variously stands for non-intellectual interests. All that Schiller and I contend for is that there is _no_ "truth" without _some_ interest, and that non-intellectual interests play a part as well as intellectual ones. Whereupon we are accused of denying the beans, or denying being in anyway constrained by them! It's too silly!...

_To Miss Pauline Goldmark._

PUTNAM SHANTY, KEENE VALLEY, _Sept. 14, 1907_.

DEAR PAULINE,-- ...No "camping" for me this side the grave! A party of fourteen left here yesterday for Panther Gorge, meaning to return by the Range, as they call your "summit trail." Apparently it is easier than when on that to me memorable day we took it, for Charley Putnam swears he has done it in five and a half hours. I don't well understand the difference, except that they don't reach Haystack over Marcy as we did, and there is now a good trail. Past and future play such a part in the way one feels the present. To these youngsters, as to me long ago, and to you today, the rapture of the connexion with these hills is partly made of the sense of future power over them and their like. That being removed from me, I can only mix memories of past power over them with the present. But I have always observed a curious _fading_ in what Tennyson calls the "passion" of the past. Memories awaken little or no sentiment when they are too old; and I have taken everything here so prosily this summer that I find myself wondering whether the time-limit has been exceeded, and whether for emotional purpose I am a new self. We know not what we shall become; and that is what makes life so interesting. Always a turn of the kaleidoscope; and when one is utterly maimed for action, then the glorious time for _reading_ other men's lives! I fairly revel in that prospect, which in its full richness has to be postponed, for I'm not sufficiently maimed-for-action yet. By going slowly and alone, I find I can compass such things as the Giant's Washbowl, Beaver Meadow Falls, etc., and they make me feel very good. I have even been dallying with the temptation to visit Cameron Forbes at Manila; but I have put it behind me for this year at least. I think I shall probably give some more lectures (of a much less "popular" sort) at Columbia next winter--so you see there's life in the old dog yet. Nevertheless, how different from the life that courses through _your_ arteries and capillaries! Today is the first honestly fine day there has been since I arrived here on the 2nd. (They must have been heavily rained on at Panther Gorge yesterday evening.) After writing a couple more letters I will take a book and repair to "Mosso's Ledge" for the enjoyment of the prospect....

_To W. Jerusalem_ (Vienna).

ST. HUBERT'S, N.Y. _Sept._ 15, 1907.

DEAR PROFESSOR JERUSALEM,--Your letter of the 1st of September, forwarded from Cambridge, reaches me here in the Adirondack Mountains today. I am glad the publisher is found, and that you are enjoying the drudgery of translating ["Pragmatism"]. Also that you find the book more and more in agreement with your own philosophy. I fear that its untechnicality of style--or rather its deliberate _anti_-technicality--will make the German _Gelehrtes Publikum_,[82] as well as the professors, consider it _oberflächliches Zeug_[83]--which it assuredly is not, although, being only a sketch, it ought to be followed by something _tighter_ and abounding in discriminations. Pragmatism is an unlucky word in some respects, and the two meanings I give for it are somewhat heterogeneous. But it was already in vogue in France and Italy as well as in England and America, and it was _tactically_ advantageous to use it....

_To Henry James._

STONEHURST, INTERVALE, N.H., _Oct._ 6, 1907.

DEAREST BROTHER,--I write this at the [James] Bryces', who have taken the Merrimans' house for the summer, and whither I came the day before yesterday, after closing our Chocorua house, and seeing Alice leave for home. We had been there a fortnight, trying to get some work done, and having to do most of it with our own hands, or rather with Alice's heroic hands, for mine are worth almost nothing in these degenerate days. It is enough to make your heart break to see the scarcity of "labor," and the whole country tells the same story. Our future at Chocorua is a somewhat problematic one, though I think we shall manage to pass next summer there and get it into better shape for good renting, thereafter, at any cost (not the renting but the shaping). After that what _I_ want is a free foot, and the children are now not dependent on a family summer any longer....

I spent the first three weeks of September--warm ones--in my beloved and 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_.