To Miss Frances R. Morse.
Rome, Dec. 25, 1900.
...Rome is simply the most satisfying lake of picturesqueness and guilty suggestiveness known to this child. Other places have single features better than anything in Rome, perhaps, but for an ensemble Rome seems to beat the world. Just a FEAST for the eye from the moment you leave your hotel door to the moment you return. Those who say that beauty is all made up of suggestion are well disproved here. For the things the eyes most gloat on, the inconceivably corrupted, besmeared and ulcerated surfaces, and black and cavernous glimpses of interiors, have no suggestions save of moral horror, and their "tactile values," as Berenson would say, are pure gooseflesh. Nevertheless the sight of them delights. And then there is such a geologic stratification of history! I dote on the fine equestrian statue of Garibaldi, on the Janiculum, quietly bending his head with a look half-meditative, half-strategical, but wholly victorious, upon Saint Peter's and the Vatican. What luck for a man and a party to have opposed to it an enemy that stood up for nothing that was ideal, for everything that was mean in life. Austria, Naples, and the Mother of harlots here, were enough to deify anyone who defied them. What glorious things are some of these Italian inscriptions—for example on Giordano Bruno's statue:—
A BRUNO
il secolo da lui divinato
qui
dove il rogo arse.
—"here, where the faggots burned." It makes the tears come, for the poetic justice; though I imagine B. to have been a very pesky sort of a crank, worthy of little sympathy had not the "rogo" done its work on him. Of the awful corruptions and cruelties which this place suggests there is no end.
Our neighbors in rooms and commensaux at meals are the J. G. Frazers—he of the "Golden Bough," "Pausanias," and other three-and six-volume works of anthropological erudition, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a sucking babe of humility, unworldliness and molelike sightlessness to everything except print.... He, after Tylor, is the greatest authority now in England on the religious ideas and superstitions of primitive peoples, and he knows nothing of psychical research and thinks that the trances, etc., of savage soothsayers, oracles and the like, are all feigned! Verily science is amusing! But he is conscience incarnate, and I have been stirring him up so that I imagine he will now proceed to put in big loads of work in the morbid psychological direction.
Dear Fanny ... I can write no more this morning. I hope your Christmas is "merry," and that the new year will be "happy" for you all. Pray take our warmest love, give it to your mother and Mary, and some of it to the brothers. I will write better soon. Your ever grateful and affectionate
W. J.
Don't let up on your own writing, so say we both! Your letters are pure blessings.
To James Sully.
Rome, Mar. 3, 1901.
Dear Sully,—Your letter of Feb. 8th arrived duly and gave me much pleasure qua epistolary manifestation of sympathy, but less qua revelation of depression on your own part. I have been so floundering up and down, now above and now below the line of bad nervous prostration, that I have written no letters for three weeks past, hoping thereby the better to accomplish certain other writing; but the other writing had to be stopped so letters and post-cards may begin.
I see you take the war still very much to heart, and I myself think that the blundering way in which the Colonial Office drove the Dutchmen into it, with no conception whatever of the psychological situation, is only outdone by our still more anti-psychological blundering in the Philippines. Both countries have lost their moral prestige—we far more completely than you, because for our conduct there is literally no excuse to be made except absolute stupidity, whilst you can make out a very fair case, as such cases go. But we can, and undoubtedly shall, draw back, whereas that for an Empire like yours seems politically impossible. Empire anyhow is half crime by necessity of Nature, and to see a country like the United States, lucky enough to be born outside of it and its fatal traditions and inheritances, perversely rushing to wallow in the mire of it, shows how strong these ancient race instincts be. And that is my consolation! We are no worse than the best of men have ever been. We are simply not superhuman; and the loud reaction against the brutal business, in both countries, shows how the theory of the matter has really advanced during the last century.
Yes! H. Sidgwick is a sad loss, with all his remaining philosophic wisdom unwritten. I feel greatly F. W. H. Myers's loss also. He suffered terribly with suffocation, but bore it stunningly well. He died in this very hotel, where he had been not more than a fortnight. I don't know how tolerant (or intolerant) you are towards his pursuits and speculations. I regard them as fragmentary and conjectural—of course; but as most laborious and praiseworthy; and knowing how much psychologists as a rule have counted him out from their profession, I have thought it my duty to write a little tribute to his service to psychology to be read on March 8th, at a memorial meeting of the S. P. R. in his honor. It will appear, whether read or not, in the Proceedings, and I hope may not appear to you exaggerated. I seriously believe that the general problem of the subliminal, as Myers propounds it, promises to be one of the great problems, possibly even the greatest problem, of psychology....
We leave Rome in three days, booked for Rye the first of April. I must get into the country! If I do more than just pass through London, I will arrange for a meeting. My Edinburgh lectures begin early in May—after that I shall have freedom. Ever truly yours,
WM. JAMES.
To Miss Frances R. Morse.
[Post-card]
Florence, March 18, 1901.
Thus far towards home, thank Heaven! after a week at Perugia and Assisi. Glorious air, memorable scenes. Made acquaintance of Sabatier, author of St. Francis's life—very jolly. Best of all, made acquaintance with Francis's retreat in the mountain. Navrant!—it makes one see medieval Christianity face to face. The lair of the individual wild animal, and that animal the saint! I hope you saw it. Thanks for your last letter to Alice. Lots of love.
W. J.
To F. C. S. Schiller.
Rye, April 13, 1901.
Dear Schiller,—You are showering benedictions on me. I return the bulky ones, keeping the lighter weights. I think the parody on Bradley amazingly good—if I had his book here I would probably revive my memory of his discouraged style and scribble a marginal contribution of my own. He is, really, an extra humble-minded man, I think, but even more humble-minded about his reader than about himself, which gives him that false air of arrogance. How you concocted those epigrams, à la preface of B., I don't see. In general I don't see how an epigram, being a pure bolt from the blue, with no introduction or cue, ever gets itself writ. On the Limericks, as you call them, I set less store, much less. If everybody is to come in for a share of allusion, I am willing, but I don't want my name to figure in the ghostly ballet with but few companions. Royce wrote a very funny thing in pedantic German some years ago, purporting to be the proof by a distant-future professor that I was an habitual drunkard, based on passages culled from my writings. He may have it yet. If I ever get any animal spirits again, I may get warmed up, by your example, into making jokes, and may then contribute. But I beg you let this thing mull till you get a lot of matter—and then sift. It's the only way. But Oxford seems a better climate for epigram than is the rest of the world.
I shall stay here—I find myself much more comfortable thoracically already than when I came—until my Edinburgh lectures begin on May 16th, though I shall have to run up to London towards the end of the month to get some clothes made, and to meet my son who arrives from home. I much regret that it will be quite impossible for me to go either to Oxford or Cambridge—though, if things took an unexpectedly good turn, I might indeed do so after June 18th, when my lecture course ends. Do you meanwhile keep hearty and "funny"! I stopped at Gersau half a day and found it a sweet little place. Fondly yours,
W. J.
To Miss Frances R. Morse.
Roxburghe Hotel,
Edinburgh, May 15, 1901.
Dearest Fanny,—You see where we are! I give you the first news of life's journey being so far advanced! It is a deadly enterprise, I'm afraid, with the social entanglements that lie ahead, and I feel a cake of ice in my epigastrium at the prospect, but le vin est versé, il faut le boire, and from the other point of view, that it is real life beginning once more, it is perfectly glorious, and I feel as if yesterday in leaving London I had said good-bye to a rather dreadful and death-bound segment of life. As regards the sociability, it is fortunately a time of year in which only the medical part of the University is present. The professors of the other faculties are already in large part scattered, I think,—at least the two Seths (who are the only ones I directly know) are away, and I have written to the Secretary of the Academic Senate, Sir Ludovic Grant of the Law Faculty, that I am unable to "dine out" or attend afternoon receptions, so we may be pretty well left alone. I always hated lecturing except as regular instruction to students, of whom there will probably be none now in the audience. But to compensate, there begins next week a big convocation here of all ministers in Scotland, and there will doubtless be a number of them present, which, considering the matter to be offered, is probably better.
We had a splendid journey yesterday in an American (almost!) train, first-class, and had the pleasure of some talk with our Cambridge neighbor, Mrs. Ole Bull, on her way to Norway to the unveiling of a monument to her husband. She was accompanied by an extraordinarily fine character and mind—odd way of expressing myself!—a young Englishwoman named Noble, who has Hinduized herself (converted by Vivekananda to his philosophy) and lives now for the Hindu people. These free individuals who live their own life, no matter what domestic prejudices have to be snapped, are on the whole a refreshing sight to me, who can do nothing of the kind myself. And Miss Noble[34] is a most deliberate and balanced person—no frothy enthusiast in point of character, though I believe her philosophy to be more or less false. Perhaps no more so than anyone else's!
We are in one of those deadly respectable hotels where you have to ring the front-door-bell. Give me a cheerful, blackguardly place like the Charing Cross, where we were in London. The London tailor and shirtmaker, it being in the height of the Season, didn't fulfill their promises; and as I sloughed my ancient cocoon at Rye, trusting to pick up my iridescent wings the day before yesterday in passing through the metropolis, I am here with but two chemises at present (one of them now in the wash) and fear that tomorrow, in spite of tailors' promises to send, I may have to lecture in my pyjamas—that would give a cachet of American originality. The weather is fine—we have just finished breakfast.
Our son Harry ... and his mother will soon sally out to explore the town, whilst I lie low till about noon, when I shall report my presence and receive instructions from my boss, Grant, and prepare to meet the storm. It is astonishing how pusillanimous two years of invalidism can make one. Alice and Harry both send love, and so do I in heaps and steamer-loads, dear Fanny, begging your mother to take of it as much as she requires for her share. I will write again—doubtless—tomorrow.
May 17.
It proved quite impossible to write to you yesterday, so I do it the first thing this morning. I have made my plunge and the foregoing chill has given place to the warm "reaction." The audience was more numerous than had been expected, some 250, and exceedingly sympathetic, laughing at everything, even whenever I used a polysyllabic word. I send you the "Scotsman," with a skeleton report which might have been much worse made. I am all right this morning again, so have no doubts of putting the job through, if only I don't have too much sociability. I have got a week free of invitations so far, and all things considered, fancy that we shan't be persecuted.
Edinburgh is surely the noblest city ever built by man. The weather has been splendid so far, and cold and bracing as the top of Mount Washington in early April. Everyone here speaks of it however as "hot." One needs fires at night and an overcoat out of the sun. The full-bodied air, half misty and half smoky, holds the sunshine in that way which one sees only in these islands, making the shadowy side of everything quite black, so that all perspectives and vistas appear with objects cut blackly against each other according to their nearness, and plane rising behind plane of flat dark relieved against flat light in ever-receding gradation. It is magnificent.
But I mustn't become a Ruskin!—the purpose of this letter being merely to acquaint you with our well-being and success so far. We have found bully lodgings, spacious to one's heart's content, upon a cheerful square, and actually with a book-shelf fully two feet wide and two stories high, upon the wall, the first we have seen for two years! (There were of course book-cases enough at Lamb House, but all tight packed already.) We now go out to take the air. I feel as if a decidedly bad interlude in the journey of my life were closed, and the real honest thing gradually beginning again. Love to you all! Your ever affectionate
W. J.
To Miss Frances R. Morse.
Edinburgh, May 30, 1901.
Dearest Fanny,— ...Beautiful as the spring is here, the words you so often let drop about American weather make me homesick for that article. It is blasphemous, however, to pine for anything when one is in Edinburgh in May, and takes an open drive every afternoon in the surrounding country by way of a constitutional. The green is of the vividest, splendid trees and acres, and the air itself an object, holding watery vapor, tenuous smoke, and ancient sunshine in solution, so as to yield the most exquisite minglings and gradations of silvery brown and blue and pearly gray. As for the city, its vistas are magnificent.
We are comblés with civilities, which Harry and Alice are to a certain extent enjoying, though I have to hang back and spend much of the time between my lectures in bed, to rest off the aortic distress which that operation gives. I call it aortic because it feels like that, but I can get no information from the Drs., so I won't swear I'm right. My heart, under the influence of that magical juice, tincture of digitalis,—only 6 drops daily,—is performing beautifully and gives no trouble at all. The audiences grow instead of dwindling, and in spite of rain, being about 300 and just crowding the room. They sit as still as death and then applaud magnificently, so I am sure the lectures are a success. Previous Gifford lectures have had audiences beginning with 60 and dwindling to 15. In an hour and a half (I write this in bed) I shall be beginning the fifth lecture, which will, when finished, put me half way through the arduous job. I know you will relish these details, which please pass on to Jim P. I would send you the reports in the "Scotsman," but they distort so much by their sham continuity with vast omission (the reporters get my MS.), that the result is caricature. Edinburgh is spiritually much like Boston, only stronger and with more temperament in the people. But we're all growing into much of a sameness everywhere.
I have dined out once—an almost fatal experiment! I was introduced to Lord Somebody: "How often do you lecture?"—"Twice a week."—"What do you do between?—play golf?" Another invitation: "Come at 6—the dinner at 7.30—and we can walk or play bowls till dinner so as not to fatigue you"—I having pleaded my delicacy of constitution.
I rejoice in the prospect of Booker W.'s[35] book, and thank your mother heartily. My mouth had been watering for just that volume. Autobiographies take the cake. I mean to read nothing else. Strange to say, I am now for the first time reading Marie Bashkirtseff. It takes hold of me tremenjus. I feel as if I had lived inside of her, and in spite of her hatefulness, esteem and even like her for her incorruptible way of telling the truth. I have not seen Huxley's life yet. It must be delightful, only I can't agree to what seems to be becoming the conventionally accepted view of him, that he possessed the exclusive specialty of living for the truth. A good deal of humbug about that!—at least when it becomes a professional and heroic attitude.
Your base remark about Aguinaldo is clean forgotten, if ever heard. I know you wouldn't harm the poor man, who, unless Malay human nature is weaker than human nature elsewhere, has pretty surely some surprises up his sleeve for us yet. Best love to you all. Your affectionate
WM. JAMES.
To Henry W. Rankin.
Edinburgh, June 16, 1901.
Dear Mr. Rankin,—I have received all your letters and missives, inclusive of the letter which you think I must have lost, some months back. I professor-ed you because I had read your name printed with that title in a newspaper letter from East Northfield, and supposed that, by courtesy at any rate, that title was conferred on you by a public opinion to which I liked to conform.
I have given nine of my lectures and am to give the tenth tomorrow. They have been a success, to judge by the numbers of the audience (300-odd) and their non-diminution towards the end. No previous "Giffords" have drawn near so many. It will please you to know that I am stronger and tougher than when I began, too; so a great load is off my mind. You have been so extraordinarily brotherly to me in writing of your convictions and in furnishing me ideas, that I feel ashamed of my churlish and chary replies. You, however, have forgiven me. Now, at the end of this first course, I feel my "matter" taking firmer shape, and it will please you less to hear me say that I believe myself to be (probably) permanently incapable of believing the Christian scheme of vicarious salvation, and wedded to a more continuously evolutionary mode of thought. The reasons you from time to time have given me, never better expressed than in your letter before the last, have somehow failed to convince. In these lectures the ground I am taking is this: The mother sea and fountain-head of all religions lie in the mystical experiences of the individual, taking the word mystical in a very wide sense. All theologies and all ecclesiasticisms are secondary growths superimposed; and the experiences make such flexible combinations with the intellectual prepossessions of their subjects, that one may almost say that they have no proper intellectual deliverance of their own, but belong to a region deeper, and more vital and practical, than that which the intellect inhabits. For this they are also indestructible by intellectual arguments and criticisms. I attach the mystical or religious consciousness to the possession of an extended subliminal self, with a thin partition through which messages make irruption. We are thus made convincingly aware of the presence of a sphere of life larger and more powerful than our usual consciousness, with which the latter is nevertheless continuous. The impressions and impulsions and emotions and excitements which we thence receive help us to live, they found invincible assurance of a world beyond the sense, they melt our hearts and communicate significance and value to everything and make us happy. They do this for the individual who has them, and other individuals follow him. Religion in this way is absolutely indestructible. Philosophy and theology give their conceptual interpretations of this experiential life. The farther margin of the subliminal field being unknown, it can be treated as by Transcendental Idealism, as an Absolute mind with a part of which we coalesce, or by Christian theology, as a distinct deity acting on us. Something, not our immediate self, does act on our life! So I seem doubtless to my audience to be blowing hot and cold, explaining away Christianity, yet defending the more general basis from which I say it proceeds. I fear that these brief words may be misleading, but let them go! When the book comes out, you will get a truer idea.
Believe me, with profound regards, your always truly,
WM. JAMES.
To Charles Eliot Norton.
Rye, June 26, 1901.
Dear Charles Norton,—Your delightful letter of June 1st has added one more item to my debt of gratitude to you; and now that the Edinburgh strain is over, I can sit down and make you a reply a little more adequate than heretofore has been possible. The lectures went off most successfully, and though I got tired enough, I feel that I am essentially tougher and stronger for the old familiar functional activity. My tone is changed immensely, and that is the main point. To be actually earning one's salt again, after so many months of listless waiting and wondering whether such a thing will ever again become possible, puts a new heart into one, and I now look towards the future with aggressive and hopeful eyes again, though perhaps not with quite the cannibalistic ones of the youth of the new century.
Edinburgh is great. A strong broad city, and, in its spiritual essence, almost exactly feeling to me like old Boston, nuclear Boston, though on a larger, more important scale. People were very friendly, but we had to dodge invitations—hoffentlich I may be able to accept more of them next year. The audience was extraordinarily attentive and reactive—I never had an audience so keen to catch every point. I flatter myself that by blowing alternately hot and cold on their Christian prejudices I succeeded in baffling them completely till the final quarter-hour, when I satisfied their curiosity by showing more plainly my hand. Then, I think, I permanently dissatisfied both extremes, and pleased a mean numerically quite small. Qui vivra verra. London seemed curiously profane and free-and-easy, not exactly shabby, but go-as-you-please, in aspect, as we came down five days ago. Since then I spent a day with poor Mrs. Myers.... I mailed you yesterday a notice I wrote in Rome of him.[36] He "looms" upon me after death more than he did in life, and I think that his forthcoming book about "Human Personality" will probably rank hereafter as "epoch-making."
At London I saw Theodora [Sedgwick] and the W. Darwins. Theodora was as good and genial as ever, and Sara [Darwin] looked, I thought, wonderfully "distinguished" and wonderfully little changed considering the length of intervening years and the advance of the Enemy. I was too tired to look up Leslie Stephen, or anyone else save Mrs. John Bancroft when in London, although I wanted much to see L. S. The first volume of his "Utilitarians" seems to me a wonderfully spirited performance—I haven't yet got at the other two.
I am hoping to get off to Nauheim tomorrow, leaving Alice and Harry to follow a little later. I confess that the Continent "draws" me again. I don't know whether it be the essential identity of soul that expresses itself in English things, and makes them seem known by heart already and intellectually dead and unexciting, or whether it is the singular lack of visible sentiment in England, and absence of "charm," or the oppressive ponderosity and superfluity and prominence of the unnecessary, or what it is, but I'm blest if I ever wish to be in England again. Any continental country whatever stimulates and refreshes vastly more, in spite of so much strong picturesqueness here, and so beautiful a Nature. England is ungracious, unamiable and heavy; whilst the Continent is everywhere light and amiably quaint, even where it is ugly, as in many elements it is in Germany. To tell the truth, I long to steep myself in America again and let the broken rootlets make new adhesions to the native soil. A man coquetting with too many countries is as bad as a bigamist, and loses his soul altogether.
I suppose you are at Ashfield and I hope surrounded, or soon to be so, by more children than of late, and all well and happy. Don't feel too bad about the country. We've thrown away our old privileged and prerogative position among the nations, but it only showed we were less sincere about it than we supposed we were. The eternal fight of liberalism has now to be fought by us on much the same terms as in the older countries. We have still the better chance in our freedom from all the corrupting influences from on top from which they suffer.—Good-bye and love from both of us, to you all. Yours ever faithfully,
WM. JAMES.
To Nathaniel S. Shaler.
[1901?]
Dear Shaler,—Being a man of methodical sequence in my reading, which in these days is anyhow rather slower than it used to be, I have only just got at your book.[37] Once begun, it slipped along "like a novel," and I must confess to you that it leaves a good taste behind; in fact a sort of haunting flavor due to its individuality, which I find it hard to explain or define.
To begin with, it doesn't seem exactly like you, but rather like some quiet and conscientious old passive contemplator of life, not bristling as you are with "points," and vivacity. Its light is dampened and suffused—and all the better perhaps for that. Then it is essentially a confession of faith and a religious attitude—which one doesn't get so much from you upon the street, although even there 'tis clear that you have that within which passeth show. The optimism and healthy-mindedness are yours through and through, so is the wide imagination. But the moderate and non-emphatic way of putting things is not; nor is the absence of any "American humor." So I don't know just when or where or how you wrote it. I can't place it in the Museum or University Hall. Probably it was in Quincy Street, and in a sort of Piperio-Armadan trance! Anyhow it is a sincere book, and tremendously impressive by the gravity and dignity and peacefulness with which it suggests rather than proclaims conclusions on these eternal themes. No more than you can I believe that death is due to selection; yet I wish you had framed some hypothesis as to the physico-chemical necessity thereof, or discussed such hypotheses as have been made. I think you deduce a little too easily from the facts the existence of a general guiding tendency toward ends like those which our mind sets. We never know what ends may have been kept from realization, for the dead tell no tales. The surviving witness would in any case, and whatever he were, draw the conclusion that the universe was planned to make him and the like of him succeed, for it actually did so. But your argument that it is millions to one that it didn't do so by chance doesn't apply. It would apply if the witness had preëxisted in an independent form and framed his scheme, and then the world had realized it. Such a coincidence would prove the world to have a kindred mind to his. But there has been no such coincidence. The world has come but once; the witness is there after the fact and simply approves, dependently. As I understand improbability, it only exists where independents coincide. Where only one fact is in question, there is no relation of "probability" at all. I think, therefore, that the excellences we have reached and now approve may be due to no general design but merely to a succession of the short designs we actually know of, taking advantage of opportunity, and adding themselves together from point to point. We are all you say we are, as heirs; we are a mystery of condensation, and yet of extrication and individuation, and we must worship the soil we have so wonderfully sprung from. Yet I don't think we are necessitated to worship it as the Theists do, in the shape of one all-inclusive and all-operative designing power, but rather like polytheists, in the shape of a collection of beings who have each contributed and are now contributing to the realization of ideals more or less like those for which we live ourselves. This more pluralistic style of feeling seems to me both to allow of a warmer sort of loyalty to our past helpers, and to tally more exactly with the mixed condition in which we find the world as to its ideals. What if we did come where we are by chance, or by mere fact, with no one general design? What is gained, is gained, all the same. As to what may have been lost, who knows of it, in any case? or whether it might not have been much better than what came? But if it might, that need not prevent us from building on what we have.
There are lots of impressive passages in the book, which certainly will live and be an influence of a high order. Chapters 8, 10, 14, 15 have struck me most particularly.
I gave at Edinburgh two lectures on "The Religion of Healthy-Mindedness," contrasting it with that of "the sick soul." I shall soon have to quote your book as a healthy-minded document of the first importance, though I believe myself that the sick soul must have its say, and probably carries authority too.... Ever yours,
WM. JAMES.
To Miss Frances R. Morse.
Nauheim, July 10, 1901.
Dearest Fanny,—Your letter of June 28th comes just as I was working myself up to a last European farewell to you, anyhow, the which has far more instigative spur now, with your magnificent effusion in my hands. Dear Fanny, whatever you do, don't die before our return! In these two short years so many of my best friends have been mown down, that I feel uncertainty everywhere, and gasp till the interval is over. John Ropes, Henry Sidgwick, F. Myers, T. Davidson, Carroll Everett, Edward Hooper, John Fiske, all intimate and valuable, some of them extremely so, and the circle grows ever smaller and will grow so to the end of one's own life. Now comes Whitman, whom I never knew very well, but whom I always liked thoroughly, and wish I had known better.... It will be interesting to know what new turn it will give to S. W.'s existence. I haven't the least idea how it will affect her outward life. Doubtless she will be freer to come abroad; but I hope and trust she will not be taking to staying any time in London or Paris, in the brutal cynical atmosphere of which places her little eagerness and efflorescences and cordialities would receive no such sympathetic treatment as they do with us, until she had stayed long enough for people to know her thoroughly and conquered a position by living down the first impression. Nothing so anti-English as S. W.'s whole "sphere." So keep her at home—with occasional sallies abroad; and if she must ever winter abroad, let it be in delightful slipshod old Rome! All which, as you perceive, is somewhat confidential. I trust that the present failure of health with her is something altogether transient, and that she will keep swimming long after everyone else has put into shore.
Which simile reminds me of Mrs. Holmes's panel, with its superb inscription.[38] What a sense she has for such things! and how I thank you for quoting it! With your and her permission, I shall make a vital use of it in a future book. It sums up the attitude towards life of a good philosophic pluralist, and that is what, in my capacity of author of that book, I am to be. I thank you also for the reference to I Corinthians, 1, 28, etc.[39] I had never expressly noticed that text; but it will make the splendidest motto for Myers's two posthumous volumes, and I am going to write to Mrs. Myers to suggest the same. I thank you also for your sympathetic remarks about my paper on Myers. Fifty or a hundred years hence, people will know better than now whether his instinct for truth was a sound one; and perhaps will then pat me on the back for backing him. At present they give us the cold shoulder. We are righter, in any event, than the Münsterbergs and Jastrows are, because we don't undertake, as a condition of our investigating phenomena, to bargain with them that they shan't upset our "presuppositions."
It is a beautiful summer morning, and I write under an awning on the high-perched corner balcony of the bedroom in which we live, of a corner house on the edge of the little town, with houses on the west of us and the fertile country spreading towards the east and south. A lovely region, though a climate terribly flat. I expect to take my last bath today, and to get my absolution from the terrible Schott; whereupon we shall leave tomorrow morning for Strassburg and the Vosges, for a week of touring up in higher air, and thence, über Paris, as straight as may be for Rye. I keep in a state of subliminal excitement over our sailing on the 31st. It seems too good to be really possible. Yet the ratchet of time will work along its daily cogs, and doubtless bring it safe within our grasp. Last year I felt no distinctly beneficial effect from the baths. This year it is distinct. I have, in other words, continued pretty steadily getting better for four months past; so it is evident that I am in a genuinely ameliorative phase of my existence, of which the acquired momentum may carry me beyond any living man of my age. At any rate, I set no limits now!
When we return I shall go straight up to Chocorua to the Salters'. What I crave most is some wild American country. It is a curious organic-feeling need. One's social relations with European landscape are entirely different, everything being so fenced or planted that you can't lie down and sprawl. Kipling, alluding to the "bleeding raw" appearance of some of our outskirt settlements, says, "Americans don't mix much with their landscape as yet." But we mix a darned sight more than Europeans, so far as our individual organisms go, with our camping and general wild-animal personal relations. Thank Heaven that our Nature is so much less "redeemed"!...
You see, Fanny, that we are in good spirits on the whole, although my poor dear Alice has long sick-headaches that consume a good many days—she is just emerging from a bad one. Happiness, I have lately discovered, is no positive feeling, but a negative condition of freedom from a number of restrictive sensations of which our organism usually seems to be the seat. When they are wiped out, the clearness and cleanness of the contrast is happiness. This is why anesthetics make us so happy. But don't you take to drink on that account! Love to your mother, Mary, and all. Write to us no more. How happy that responsibility gone must make you! We both send warmest love,
W. J.
To Henry James.
[Post-card]
Bad-Nauheim, July 11, [1901].
Your letter and paper, with the shock of John Fiske's death, came yesterday. It is too bad, for he had lots of good work in him yet, and is a loss to American letters as well as to his family. Singularly simple, solid, honest creature, he will be hugely missed by many! Everybody seems to be going! We stay. Life here is absolutely monotonous, but very sweet. The country is so innocently pretty. I sit up here on a terrace-restaurant, looking down on park and town, with the leaves playing in the warm breeze above me, and the little Gothic town of Friedberg only a mile off, in the midst of the great fertile plain all chequer-boarded with the different tinted crops and framed in a far-off horizon of low hills and woods. Alice and Harry, kept in by the heat, come later. He went for a distant walk yesterday P.M. and, not returning till near eleven, we thought he might have got lost in the woods. Yale beat the University race, but Bill's four[-oared crew] beat the Yale four. On such things is human contentment based. The baths stir up my aortic feeling and make me depressed, but I've had 6 of them, and the rest will pass quickly. Love.
W. J.
To E. L. Godkin.
Bad-Nauheim, July 25, 1901.
Dear Godkin,—Yours of the 9th, which came duly, gave me great pleasure, first because it showed that your love for me had not grown cold, and, second, because it seemed to reveal in you tendencies towards sociability at large which are incompatible with a very alarming condition of health. Nothing can give us greater pleasure than to come and see you before we sail. We shall stick here, probably, for a fortnight longer, then go for a week to the Hartz mountains to brace up a little—the baths being very debilitating and the air of Nauheim sedative. Then straight to Rye until we sail—on August 31st. I hope that you enjoy the "New Forest"—the "Children" thereof, by Capt. Mayne Reid, I think, was one of my most mysteriously impressive books about the age of ten. But I fear that there is not much primeval forest to be seen there nowadays. Nauheim is a sweet little place. One never sees a soldier and wouldn't know that Militarismus existed. There are two policemen, one of them an old fellow of 70 who shuffles along to keep his weak knees from giving way. I went on business to the police office t' other day. The building stood in a fine cabbage garden, and over the first door one met on entering stood the word Küche[40] in large letters. Quite like the old idyllic pre-Sadowan German days. My heart is getting well! I made an excursion to Homburg yesterday, with J. B. Warner of Cambridge, counsellor at law, and general disputant. For about six hours we discussed the Philippine question, he damning the anti-Imperialists—yet my thoracic contents remained as solid as if cast in Portland cement. Six months ago I should have had the wildest commotion there. Congratulate me! Kindest regards to you both, in which my wife joins. Yours ever affectionately,
WM. JAMES.
It should perhaps be explained that E. L. Godkin had had a cerebral hemorrhage the year before. It had left him clear in mind, but a permanent invalid, with little power of locomotion. James spent several days with him at Castle Malwood near Stony Cross before he sailed for home; and when he was in England again the next year, he repeated the visit.
William James and Henry James posing for a Kodak in
1900.
To E. L. Godkin.
Lamb House, Aug. 29, 1901.
My dear Godkin,—Just a line to bid you both farewell! We leave for London tomorrow morning and at four on Saturday we shall be ploughing the deep. All goes well, save that the wife has sprained her ankle, and with the "firmness" that characterizes her lovely sex insists on hobbling about and doing all the packing. I shan't be aisy till I see her in her berth.
After all, in spite of you and Henry, and all Americo-phobes, I'm glad I'm going back to my own country again. Notwithstanding its "humble"ness, its fatigues, and its complications, there's no place like home—though I think the New Forest might come near it as a substitute. England in general is too padded and cushioned for my rustic taste.
The most elevating moral thing I've seen during these two years abroad, after Myers's heroic exit from this world at Rome last winter, has been the gentleness and cheerful spirit with which you are still able to remain in it after such a blow as you have received. Who could suppose so much public ferocity to cover so much private sweetness? Seriously speaking, it is more edifying to us others, dear Godkin, than you yourself can understand it to be, and I for one have learned by the example. I pray that your winter problems may gradually solve themselves without perplexity, and that next spring may find you relieved of all this helplessness. It is a very slow progress, with many steps backwards, but if the length of the forward steps preponderates, one may be well content. Good-bye and bless you both. Affectionately yours,
WM. JAMES.
James returned to America in early September, in advance of the beginning of the College term. But from this time on he limited his teaching to one half-course during the year. His intention was to husband his strength for writing. The course which he offered during the first half of the College year was accordingly announced as a course on "The Psychological Elements of Religious Life." By the end of the winter, the second series of Gifford lectures, constituting the last half of the "Varieties," had been written out.
To Miss Pauline Goldmark.
Silver Lake, N. H., Sept. 14, 1901.
Dear Pauline,—Your kind letter (excuse pencil—pen won't write) appears to have reached London after our departure and has just followed us hither. I had hoped for a word from you, first at Nauheim, then on the steamer, then at Cambridge; but this makes everything right. How good to think of you as the same old loveress of woods and skies and waters, and of your Bryn-Mawr friends. May none of the lot of you ever grow insufficient or forsake each other! The sight of you sporting in Nature's bosom once lifted me into a sympathetic region, and made a better boy of me in ways which it would probably amuse and surprise you to learn of, so strangely are characters useful to each other, and so subtly are destinies intermixed. But with you on the mountain-tops of existence still, and me apparently destined to remain grubbing in the cellar, we seem far enough apart at present and may have to remain so. Alas! how brief is life's glory, at the best. I can't get to Keene Valley this year, and [may] possibly never get there. Give a kindly thought, my friend, to the spectre who once for a few times trudged by your side, and who would do so again if he could. I'm a "motor," and morally ill-adapted to the game of patience. I have reached home in pretty poor case, but I think it's mainly "nerves" at present, and therefore remediable; so I live on the future, but keep my expectations modest. Two years away has been too long, and the "strangeness" which I dreaded (from past experience of it) covers all things American as with a veil. Pathetic and poverty-stricken is all I see! This will pass away, but I don't want good things to pass away also, so I beseech you, Pauline, to sit down and write me a good intimate letter telling me what your life and interest were in New York last winter.
I am very sorry to hear of your sister Susan's illness, and pray that the summer will set her right. Did you see much of Miller this summer? I hate to think of his having grown so delicate! Did you see Perry again? He was at the Putnam Camp? How is Adler after his Cur?—or is he not yet back? What have you read? What have you cared for? Be indulgent to me, and write to me here—I stay for 10 days longer—the family—all well—remain in Cambridge. I find letters a great thing to keep one from slipping out of life.
Love to you all! Your
W. J.
The next letter was written across the back of a circular invitation to join the American Philosophical Association, then being formed, of which Professor Gardiner was Secretary.
To H. N. Gardiner.
CAMBRIDGE, Nov. 14, 1901.
Dear Gardiner,—I am still pretty poorly and can't "jine" anything—but, apart from that, I don't foresee much good from a Philosophical Society. Philosophical discussion proper only succeeds between intimates who have learned how to converse by months of weary trials and failure. The philosopher is a lone beast dwelling in his individual burrow.—Count me out!—I hope all goes well with you. I expect to get well, but it needs patience.
WM. JAMES.
On April 1, 1902, James sailed for England, to deliver the second "course" of his series of Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh.
To F. C. S. Schiller.
Hatley St. George,
Torquay, Apr. 20, 1902.
My dear Schiller,—I could shed tears that you should have been so near me and yet been missed. I got your big envelope on Thursday at the hotel, and your two other missives here this morning. Of the Axioms paper I have only read a sheet and a half at the beginning and the superb conclusion which has just arrived. I shall fairly gloat upon the whole of it, and will write you my impressions and criticisms, if criticisms there be. It is an uplifting thought that truth is to be told at last in a radical and attention-compelling manner. I think I know, though, how the attention of many will find a way not to be compelled—their will is so set on having a technically and artificially and professionally expressed system, that all talk carried on as yours is on principles of common-sense activity is as remote and little worthy of being listened to as the slanging each other of boys in the street as we pass. Men disdain to notice that. It is only after our (i.e. your and my) general way of thinking gets organized enough to become a regular part of the bureaucracy of philosophy that we shall get a serious hearing. Then, I feel inwardly convinced, our day will have come. But then, you may well say, the brains will be out and the man will be dead. Anyhow, vive the Anglo-Saxon amateur, disciple of Locke and Hume, and pereat the German professional!
We are here for a week with the Godkins—poor old G., once such a power, and now an utter wreck after a stroke of paralysis three years ago. Beautiful place, southeast gale, volleying rain and streaming panes and volumes of soft sea-laden wind.
I hope you are not serious about an Oxford degree for your humble servant. If you are, pray drop the thought! I am out of the race for all such vanities. Write me a degree on parchment and send it yourself—in any case it would be but your award!—and it will be cheaper and more veracious. I had to take the Edinburgh one, and accepted the Durham one to please my wife. Thank you, no coronation either! I am a poor New Hampshire rustic, in bad health, and long to get back, after four summers' absence, to my own cottage and children, and never come away again for lectures or degrees or anything else. It all depends on a man's age; and after sixty, if ever, one feels as if one ought to come to some sort of equilibrium with one's native environment, and by means of a regular life get one's small message to mankind on paper. That nowadays is my only aspiration. The Gifford lectures are all facts and no philosophy—I trust that you may receive the volume by the middle of June.
When, oh, when is your volume to appear? The sheet you send me leaves off just at the point where Boyle-Gibson begins to me to be most interesting! Ever fondly yours,
WM. JAMES.
Your ancient President, Schurman, was also at Edinburgh getting LL.D'd. He is conducting a campaign in favor of Philippino independence with masterly tactics, which reconcile me completely to him, laying his finger on just the right and telling points.
To Charles Eliot Norton.
Lamb House, Rye, May 4, 1902.
Dear Norton,—I hear with grief and concern that you have had a bad fall. In a letter received this morning you are described as better, so I hope it will have had no untoward consequences beyond the immediate shock. We need you long to abide with us in undiminished vigor and health. Our voyage was smooth, though cloudy, and we found Miss Ward a very honest and lovable girl. Henry D. Lloyd, whose name you know as that of a state-socialist writer, sat opposite to us, and proved one of the most "winning" men it was ever my fortune to know.
We went to Stratford for the first time. The absolute extermination and obliteration of every record of Shakespeare save a few sordid material details, and the general suggestion of narrowness and niggardliness which ancient Stratford makes, taken in comparison with the way in which the spiritual quantity "Shakespeare" has mingled into the soul of the world, was most uncanny, and I feel ready to believe in almost any mythical story of the authorship. In fact a visit to Stratford now seems to me the strongest appeal a Baconian can make. The country round about was exquisite. Still more so the country round about Torquay, where we stayed with the Godkins for eight days—he holding his own, as it seemed to me, but hardly improving, she earning palms of glory by her strength and virtue. A regular little trump! They have taken for the next two months the most beautiful country place I ever saw, occupying an elbow of the Dart, and commanding a view up and down. We are here for but a week, my lectures beginning on the 13th. H. J. seems tranquil and happy in his work, though he has been much pestered of late by gout.
I suppose you are rejoicing as much as I in the public interest finally aroused in the Philippine conquest. A personal scandal, it seems, is really the only thing that will wake the ordinary man's attention up. It should be the first aim of every good leader of opinion to rake up one on the opposite side. It should be introduced among our Faculty methods!
Don't think, dear Norton, that you must answer this letter, which only your accident has made me write. We shall be home so soon that I shall see you face to face. The wife sends love, as I do, to you all. No warm weather whatever as yet—I am having chilblains!! Ever affectionately yours,
WM. JAMES.
To Mrs. Henry Whitman.
R.M.S. Ivernia, June 18, 1902.
Dear Mrs. Whitman,—We ought to be off Boston tonight. After a cold and wet voyage, including two days of head-gale and heavy sea, and one of unbroken fog with lugubriously moo-ing fog-horn, the sun has risen upon American weather, a strong west wind like champagne, blowing out of a saturated blue sky right in our teeth, the sea all effervescing and sparkling with white caps and lace, the strong sun lording it in the sky, and hope presiding in the heart. What more natural than to report all this happy turn of affairs to you, buried as you probably still are in the blankets of the London atmosphere, beautiful opalescent blankets though they be, and (when one's vitals once are acclimated) yielding more wonderful artistic effects than anything to be seen in America. "C'est le pays de la couleur," as my brother is fond of saying in the words of Alphonse Daudet! But no matter for international comparisons, which are the least profitable of human employments. Christ died for us all, so let us all be as we are, save where we want to reform ourselves. (The only unpardonable crime is that of wanting to reform one another, after the fashion of the U. S. in the Philippines.) ... Your sweet letter of several dates reached us just before we left Edinburgh—excuse the insipid adjective "sweet," which after all does express something which less simple vocables may easily miss—and gave an impression of harmony and inner health which it warms the heart to become sensible of. I understand your temptation to stay over, but I also understand your temptation to get back; and I imagine that more and more you will solve the problem by a good deal of alternation in future years. It is curious how utterly distinct the three countries of England, Ireland and Scotland are, which we so summarily lump together—Scotland so democratic and so much like New England in many respects. But it would be a waste of time for you to go there. Keep to the South and spend one winter in Rome, before you die, and a spring in the smaller Italian cities!
I hope that Henry will have managed to get you and Miss Tuckerman to Rye for a day—it is so curiously quaint and characteristic. I had a bad conscience about leaving him, for I think he feels lonely as he grows old, and friends pass over to the majority. He and I are so utterly different in all our observances and springs of action, that we can't rightly judge each other. I even feel great shrinking from urging him to pay us a visit, fearing it might yield him little besides painful shocks—and, after all, what besides pain and shock is the right reaction for anyone to make upon our vocalization and pronunciation? The careful consonants and musical cadences of the Scotchwomen were such a balm to the ear! I wish that you and poor Henry could become really intimate. He is at bottom a very tender-hearted and generous being! No more paper! so I cross! I wish when we once get settled again at Chocorua that we might enclose you under our roof, even if only for one night, on your way to or from the Merrimans. I should like to show you true simplicity.
[No signature.]
The Gifford Lectures were published as "The Varieties of Religious Experience, a Study in Human Nature," in June, 1902. The immediate "popularity" of this psychological survey of man's religious propensities was great; and the continued sales of the book contributed not a little to relieve James of financial anxiety during the last years of his life.
The cordiality with which theological journals and private correspondents of many creeds greeted the "Varieties," as containing a fair treatment of facts which other writers had approached with a sectarian or anti-theological bias, was striking. James was amused at being told that the book had "supplied the protestant pulpits with sermons for a twelve-month." Regarding himself as "a most protestant protestant," as he once said, he was especially pleased by the manner in which it was received by Roman Catholic reviewers.
Certain philosophical conclusions were indicated broadly in the "Varieties" without being elaborated. The book was a survey, an examination, of the facts. James had originally conceived of the Gifford appointment as giving him "an opportunity for a certain amount of psychology and a certain amount of metaphysics," and so had thought of making the first series of lectures descriptive of man's religious propensities and the second series a metaphysical study of their satisfaction through philosophy. The psychological material had grown to unforeseen dimensions, and it ended by filling the book. The metaphysical study remained to be elaborated; and to such work James now turned.
XIV
1902-1905
The Last Period (I)—Philosophical Writing—Statements of Religious Relief
James now limited his teaching in Harvard University, as has been said, to half a course a year and tried to devote his working energies to formulating a statement of his philosophical conceptions. For two years he published almost nothing; then the essays which were subsequently collected in the volumes called "Pragmatism," "The Pluralistic Universe," "The Meaning of Truth," and "Essays in Radical Empiricism," began to appear in the philosophic journals, or were delivered as special lectures. Whenever he accepted invitations to lecture outside the College, as he still did occasionally, it was with the purpose of getting these conceptions expressed and of throwing them into the arena of discussion. But demands which correspondents and callers from all parts of the globe now made on his time and sympathy were formidable, for he could not rid himself of the habit of treating the most trivial of these with consideration, or acquire the habit of using a secretary. In this way there continued to be a constant drain on his strength. "It is probably difficult [thus he wrote wearily to Mr. Lutoslawski, who had begged him to collaborate with him on a book in 1904] for a man whose cerebral machine works with such facility as yours does to imagine the kind of consciousness of men like Flournoy and myself. The background of my consciousness, so far as my own achievements go, is composed of a sense of impossibility—a sense well warranted by the facts. For instance, two years ago, the 'Varieties' being published, I decided that everything was cleared and that my duty was immediately to begin writing my metaphysical system. Up to last October, when the academic year began, I had written some 200 pages of notes, i.e. disconnected brouillons. I hoped this year to write 400 or 500 pages of straight composition, and could have done so without the interruptions. As a matter of fact, with the best will in the world, I have written exactly 32 pages! For an academic year's work, that is not brilliant! You see that, when I refuse your request, it is, after a fashion, in order to save my own life. My working day is anyhow, at best, only three hours long—by working I mean writing and reading philosophy." This estimate of his "notes" was, as always, self-deprecatory; but there was no denying a great measure of truth to the statement. Frequently his health made it necessary for him to escape from Cambridge and his desk. These incidents will be noted separately wherever the context requires.
Yet in spite of these difficulties and notwithstanding his complaints of constant frustration, the spirit with which James still did his work emerges from the essays of this time as well as from his letters. It was as if the years that had preceded had been years of preparation for just what he was now doing. At the age of sixty-three he turned to the formulation of his empirical philosophy with the eagerness of a schoolboy let out to play. Misunderstanding disturbed him only momentarily, opposition stimulated him, he rejoiced openly in the controversies which he provoked, and engaged in polemics with the good humor and vigor that were the essence of his genius. His "truth" must prevail! the Absolute should suffer its death-blow! Flournoy, Bergson, Schiller, Papini, and others too were "on his side." He made merry at the expense of his critics, or bewailed the perversity of their opposition; but he always encouraged them to "lay on." The imagery of contest and battle appeared in the letters which he threw off, and he expressed himself as freely as only a man can who has outgrown the reserves of his youth.
To Henry L. Higginson.
CHOCORUA, July 3, 1902.
Dear Henry,—Thanks for your letter of the other day, etc. Alice tells me of a queer conversation you and she had upon the cars. I am not anxious about money, beyond wishing not to live on capital.... As I have frequently said, I mean to support you in your old age. In fact the hope of that is about all that I now live for, being surfeited with the glory of academic degrees just escaped, like this last one which, in the friendliness of its heart, your [Harvard] Corporation designed sponging upon me at Commencement.[41] Boil it and solder it up from the microbes, and it may do for another year, if I am not in prison! The friendliness of such recognition is a delightful thing to a man about to graduate from the season of his usefulness. "La renommé vient," as I have heard John La Farge quote, "à ceux qui ont la patience d'attendre, et s'accroit à raison de leur imbecillité." Best wishes to you all. Yours ever,
WM. JAMES.
To Miss Grace Norton.
CHOCORUA, Aug. 29, 1902.
My dear Grace,—Will you kindly let me know, by the method of effacement, on the accompanying post-card, whether the box from Germany of which I wrote you some time ago has or has not yet been left at your house. I paid the express, over twenty dollars, on it three weeks ago, directing it to be left with you.
The ice being thus broken, let me ramble on! How do-ist thou? And how is the moist and cool summer suiting thee? I hope, well! It has certainly been a boon to most people. Our house has been full of company of which tomorrow the last boys will leave, and I confess I shall enjoy the change to no responsibility. The scourge of life is responsibility—always there with its scowling face, and when it ceases to someone else, it begins to yourself, or to your God, if you have one. Consider the lilies, how free they are from it, and yet how beautiful the expression of their face. Especially should those emerging from "nervous prostration" be suffered to be without it—they have trouble enough in any case. I am getting on famously, but for that drawback, on which my temper is liable to break; but I walk somewhat as in old times, and that is the main corner to have turned. The country seems as beautiful as ever—it is good that, when age takes away the zest from so many things, it seems to make no difference at all in one's capacity for enjoying landscape and the aspects of Nature. We are all well, and shall very soon be buzzing about Irving Street as of yore. Keep well yourself, dear Grace; and believe me ever your friend,
WM. JAMES.
To this word about enjoying the aspects of nature may be added a few lines from a letter to his son William, which James wrote from Europe in 1900:—
"Scenery seems to wear in one's consciousness better than any other element in life. In this year of much solemn and idle meditation, I have often been surprised to find what a predominant part in my own spiritual experience it has played, and how it stands out as almost the only thing the memory of which I should like to carry over with me beyond the veil, unamended and unaltered. From the midst of every thing else, almost, surgit amari aliquid; but from the days in the open air, never any bitter whiff, save that they are gone forever."
To Miss Frances R. Morse.
Stonehurst,
Intervale, N. H., Sept. 18, 1902.
Dearest Fanny,—How long it is since we have exchanged salutations and reported progress! Happy the country which is without a history! I have had no history to communicate, and I hope that you have had none either, and that the summer has glided away as happily for you as it has for us. Now it begins to fade towards the horizon over which so many ancient summers have slipped, and our household is on the point of "breaking up" just when the season invites one most imperiously to stay. Dang all schools and colleges, say I. Alice goes down tomorrow (I being up here with the Merrimans only for one day) to start Billy for Europe—he will spend the winter at Geneva University—and to get "the house" ready for our general reception on the 26th. I may possibly make out to stay up here till the Monday following, and spend the interval of a few days by myself among the mountains, having stuck to the domestic hearth unusually tight all summer....
We have had guests—too many of them, rather, at one time, for me—and a little reading has been done, mostly philosophical technics, which, by the strange curse laid upon Adam, certain of his descendants have been doomed to invent and others, still more damned, to learn. But I've also read Stevenson's letters, which everybody ought to read just to know how charming a human being can be, and I've read a good part of Goethe's Gedichte once again, which are also to be read, so that one may realize how absolutely healthy an organization may every now and then eventuate into this world. To have such a lyrical gift and to treat it with so little solemnity, so that most of the output consists of mere escape of the over-tension into bits of occasional verse, irresponsible, unchained, like smoke-wreaths!—it du give one a great impression of personal power. In general, though I'm a traitor for saying so, it seems to me that the German race has been a more massive organ of expression for the travail of the Almighty than the Anglo-Saxon, though we did seem to have something more like it in Elizabethan times. Or are clearness and dapperness the absolutely final shape of creation? Good-bye! dear Fanny—you see how mouldy I am temporarily become. The moment I take my pen, I can write in no other way. Write thou, and let me know that things are greener and more vernal where you are. Alice would send much love to you, were she here. Give mine to your mother, brother, and sister-in-law, and all. Your loving,
W. J.
To Henry L. Higginson.
Cambridge, Mass., Nov. 1, 1902.
Dear Henry,—I am emboldened to the step I am taking by the consciousness that though we are both at least sixty years old and have known each other from the cradle, I have never but once (or possibly twice) traded on your well-known lavishness of disposition to swell any "subscription" which I was trying to raise.
Now the doomful hour has struck. The altar is ready, and I take the victim by the ear. I choose you for a victim because you still have some undesiccated human feeling about you and can think in terms of pure charity—for the love of God, without ulterior hopes of returns from the investment.
The subject is a man of fifty who can be recommended to no other kind of a benefactor. His story is a long one, but it amounts to this, that Heaven made him with no other power than that of thinking and writing, and he has proved by this time a truly pathological inability to keep body and soul together. He is abstemious to an incredible degree, is the most innocent and harmless of human beings, isn't propagating his kind, has never had a dime to spend except for vital necessities, and never has had in his life an hour of what such as we call freedom from care or of "pleasure" in the ordinary exuberant sense of the term. He is refinement itself mentally and morally; and his writings have all been printed in first-rate periodicals, but are too scanty to "pay." There's no excuse for him, I admit. But God made him; and after kicking and cuffing and prodding him for twenty years, I have now come to believe that he ought to be treated in charity pure and simple (even though that be a vice) and I want to guarantee him $350 a year as a pension to be paid to the Mills Hotel in Bleecker Street, New York, for board and lodging and a few cents weekly over and above. I will put in $150. I have secured $100 more. Can I squeeze £50 a year out of you for such a non-public cause? If not, don't reply and forget this letter. If "ja" and you think you really can afford it, and it isn't wicked, let me know, and I will dun you regularly every year for the $50. Yours as ever,
WM. JAMES.
It is a great compliment that I address you. Most men say of such a case, "Is the man deserving?" Whereas the real point is, "Does he need us?" What is deserving nowadays?
The beneficiary of this appeal was that same unfulfilled promise of a metaphysician who appeared as "X" on page 292 of the first volume—a man upon whom, in Cicero's phrase, none but a philosopher could look without a groan. There were more parallels to X's case than it would be permissible to cite here. James did not often appeal to others to help such men with money, but he did things for them himself, even after it had become evident that they could give nothing to the world in return, and even when they had exhausted his patience. "Damn your half-successes, your imperfect geniuses!" he exclaimed of another who shall be called Z. "I'm tired of making allowances for them and propping them up.... Z has never constrained himself in his life. Selfish, conceited, affected, a monster of desultory intellect, he has become now a seedy, almost sordid, old man without even any intellectual residuum from his work that can be called a finished construction; only 'suggestions' and a begging old age." But Z, too, was helped to the end.