Familiar Letters
of William James - I

A brief preliminary reminder of certain biographical facts will help the reader to follow them.

William James was born in 1842, had an irregular education in New York, Newport, and Europe, and entered the Lawrence Scientific School in Cambridge in 1861. His tastes and inclinations defined themselves but slowly, and during the ten years that followed he was frequently compelled to interrupt or abandon his work on account of illness. He studied chemistry for a while, and then comparative anatomy under Jeffries Wyman; entered the Harvard Medical School; broke off to go to Brazil with Louis Agassiz's expedition; went to Germany for a year and a half in pursuit of physiology and health without making much progress in either pursuit; returned to Cambridge and, after taking his medical degree at Harvard, spent three years under his father's roof without any definite occupation. He passed through distressing periods of mental depression during these years of frustration. This first phase of his manhood may be considered to have lasted until his appointment to teach physiology at Harvard in 1872.

During the next seven years he had regular and stimulating responsibilities. His health improved, his powers of work developed; he 'found himself.' He turned definitely to psychology as his immediate chief interest, and started the first psychological laboratory in America.

His life, during the thirteen years between 1878 and 1891, was laborious and productive. It was during these years that he prepared the chapters of the Principles of Psychology and published them in Mind and other journals. Toward the end of the 'eighties (which is also the end of the time covered by the letters selected for this number of the Atlantic) he had not only attained to a position of influence in the Harvard world, but was known on both sides of the Atlantic as a brilliant and original contributor to psychological science.

The student days and the following period of uncertainty and enforced idleness in which there was more time for sociability than there ever was later, may first be illustrated by four letters.]

CAMBRIDGE [circa September, 1863.]

MY DEAREST MOTHER,--

To answer the weighty questions which you propound: I am glad to leave Newport because I am tired of the place itself, and because of the reason which you have very well expressed in your letter, the necessity of the whole family being near the arena of the future activity of us young men. I recommend Cambridge on account of its own pleasantness (though I don't wish to be invidious towards Brookline, Longwood, and other places), and because of its economy if I or Harry continue to study here much longer....I feel very much the importance of making soon a final choice of my business in life. I stand now at the place where the road forks. One branch leads to material comfort, the flesh-pots, but it seems a kind of selling of one's soul. The other to mental dignity and independence, combined, however, with physical penury.

If I myself were the only one concerned, I should not hesitate an instant in my choice. But it seems hard on Mrs. W. J., 'that not impossible she,' to ask her to share an empty purse and a cold hearth. On one side is SCIENCE, upon the other BUSINESS (the honorable, honored and productive business of printing seems most attractive), with medicine, which partakes of [the] advantages of both between them, but which has drawbacks of its own.

I confess I hesitate. I fancy there is a fond maternal cowardice which would make you and every other mother contemplate with complacency the worldly fatness of a son, even if obtained by some sacrifice of his 'higher nature.' But I fear there might be some anguish at looking back from the pinnacle of prosperity (NECESSARILY reached, if not by eating dirt, at least by renouncing some divine ambrosia) over the life you might have led in the pure pursuit of truth. It seems as if one COULD not afford to give that up for any bribe, however great. Still, I am undecided. The medical term opens to-morrow, and between this and the end of the term here, I shall have an opportunity of seeing a little into medical business. I shall confer with Wyman about the prospects of a naturalist and finally decide.

I want you to become familiar with the notion that I MAY stick to science, however, and drain away at your property for a few years more. If I can get into Agassiz's museum I think it not improbable I may receive a salary of $400 to $500 in a couple of years. I know some stupider than I who have done so. You see in that case how desirable it would be to have a home in Cambridge. Anyhow I am convinced that SOMEWHERE in this neighborhood is the place for us to rest. These matters have been a good deal on my mind lately, and I am very glad to get this chance of pouring them into yours. As for the other boys, I don't know. And that idle and useless young female, Alice, too, whom we shall have to feed and clothe! Cambridge is all right for business in Boston. Living in Boston or Brookline, etc., would be as expensive as Newport, if Harry or I stayed here, for we could not easily go home every day.

Give my warmest love to Aunt Kate, Father, who I hope will not tumble again, and all of them over the way. Recess in three weeks, till then, my dearest and best of old mothers, good-bye.

Your loving son,

W. J.

Give my best love to Kitty and give cette petite humbug of a Minny* a hint about writing to me. I hope you liked your shawl.

[*His cousin Katherine Temple, later Mrs. Richard Emmet, and her younger sister].

CAMBRIDGE, Nov. 14, 1866.

Cherie de Jeune Balle,--

I am just in from town in the keen, cold and eke beauteous moonlight, which by the above qualities makes me think of thee, to whom, nor to whose aunt, have I (not) yet written. (I don't understand the grammar of the not.) Your first question is, 'where have I been?' To C. S. Peirce's lecture, which I could not understand a word of but rather enjoyed the sensation of listening to for an hour. I then turned to O. W. Holmes's*, and wrangled with him for another hour. You may thank your stars that you are not in a place where you have to ride in such full horse-cars as these. I rode half way out with my 'form' entirely out of the car overhanging the road, my feet alone being on the same vertical line as any part of the car, there being just room for them on the step. Aunt Kate may and probably WILL have shoot through her prolific mind the supposish: 'How wrong in him to do sich! for if, while in that posish, he should have a sudden stroke of paralysis, or faint, his nerveless fingers relaxing their grasp of the rail, he would fall prostrate to the ground and bust.' To which I reply that when I go so far as to have a stroke of paralysis, I shall not mind going a step farther and getting bruised.

Your next question probably is how are and where are father and mother?...I think father seems more lively for a few days past and cracks jokes with Harry, etc. Mother is recovering from one of her indispositions, which she bears like an angel, doing any amount of work at the same time, putting up cornices and raking out the garret room like a little buffalo.

Your next question is, wherever is Harry? I answer: 'He is to Ashburner's, to a tea-squall in favor of Miss Haggerty.' I declined. He is well; we have had nothing but invitations--six in three or four days. One, a painted one, from 'Mrs. L---,' whoever she may be. I replied that domestic affliction prevented me from going, but I would take a pecuniary equivalent instead, viz., To 1 oyster stew--30 cts.; 1 chicken salad--0.50; 1 roll--0.02; 8 ice creams at 20 cts.--0.60; 6 small cakes at 0.05--0.80; 1 pear--$1.50;

1 lb. confectionery--0.50.

6 glasses hock at 0.50 $3 .00

8 glasses sherry at .30 0.90

Salad spilt on floor 5.00

Dish of do., broken 3.00

Damage to carpet & Miss

L----'s dress frm. do. 75.00

3 glasses broken 1.20

Curtains set fire to in dressing

room 40. 00

Other injury frm. fire in room 250.00

Injury to house frm. water

pumped upon it by steam

fire engine come to put out

fire 5000.00

Miscellaneous 0.35

--------

5300.00

I expect momentarily her reply with a check, and when it comes will take you and Aunt Kate on a tour in Europe and have you examined by the leading physicians and surgeons of that country.

M---- L---- came out here and dined with us yesterday of her own accord. I no longer doubt what I always suspected, her penchant for me, and I don't blame her for it. Elly Temple stayed here two days, too. She scratched, smote, beat, and kicked me so that I shall dread to meet her again. What an awful time Bob & Co. must have had at sea! and how anxious you must have been about them! With best love to Aunt Kate and yourself, believe me

Your af. bro.

WM. JAMES.

[*O.W. Holmes, Jr., now Mr. Justice Holmes.]

[BERLIN] Jany. 3, 1868.

MY DEAR WENDLE,--

Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten, dass ich so traurig bin, to-night. The ghosts of the past all start from their unquiet graves and keep dancing a senseless whirligig around me, so that, after trying in vain to read three books, to sleep or to think, I clutch the pen and ink and resolve to work off the fit by a few lines to one of the most obtrusive ghosts of all--namely the tall and lank one of Charles Street. Good golly! how I would prefer to have about twenty-four hours talk with you up in that whitely lit-up room--without the sun rising or the firmament revolving so as to put the gas out, without sleep, food, clothing or shelter except your whiskey bottle--of which or the like of which I have not partaken since I have been in these longitudes! I should like to have you opposite me in any mood, whether the facetiously discursive, the metaphysically discursive, the personally confidential, or the jadedly CURSIVE and argumentative--so that the oyster-shells which enclose my being might slowly turn open on their rigid hinges under the radiation, and the critter within loll out his dried-up gills into the circumfused ichor of life, till they grow so fat as not to know themselves again. I feel as if a talk with you of any kind could not fail to set me on my legs again for three weeks at least. I have been chewing on two or three dried-up old cuds of ideas I brought from America with me, till they have disappeared, and the nudity of the cosmos has got beyond anything I have as yet experienced. I have not succeeded in finding any companion yet and I feel the want of some outward stimulus in my Soul. There is a man named Grimm* here, whom my soul loves, but in the way Emerson speaks of, i.e., like those people we meet on staircases, etc., and who always ignore our feelings towards them. I don't think we shall ever be able to establish a straight line of communication between us.

I don't know how it is I am able to take so little interest in reading this winter. I marked out a number of books when I first came here, to finish. What with their heaviness, and the damnable slowness with which the Dutch still goes, they weigh on me like a haystack. I loathe the thought of them; and yet they have poisoned my slave of a conscience so that I can't enjoy anything else. I have reached an age when practical work of some kind clamors to be done--and I must still wait!

There! Having worked off that pent up gall of six weeks' accumulation I feel more genial. I wish I could have some news of you--now that the postage is lowered to such a ridiculous figure (and no letter is double) there remains no SHADOW of an excuse for not writing--but still I don't expect anything from you. I suppose you are sinking ever deeper into the sloughs of the law--yet I ween the Eternal Mystery still from time to time gives her goad another turn in the raw she once established between your ribs. Don't let it heal over yet. When I get home let's establish a philosophical society to have regular meetings and discuss none but the very tallest and broadest questions--to be composed of none but the very topmost cream of Boston manhood. It will give each one a chance to air his own opinion in a grammatical form, and to sneer and chuckle when he goes home at what damned fools all the other members are--and may grow into something very important after a sufficient number of years.

The German character is without mountains or valleys; its favorite food is roast veal; and in other lines it prefers whatever may be the analogue thereof--all which gives life here a certain flatness to the high-tuned American taste. I don't think any one need care much about coming here unless he wants to dig very deeply into some exclusive specialty. I have been reading nothing of any interest but some chapters of physiology. There has a good deal been doing here of late on the physiology of the senses, overlapping perception, and consequently, in a measure, the psychological field. I am wading my way towards it, and if in course of time I strike on anything exhilarating, I'll let you know.

I'll now pull up. I don't know whether you take it as a compliment that I should only write to you when in the dismalest of dumps--perhaps you ought to--you, the one emergent peak to which I cling when all the rest of the world has sunk beneath the wave. Believe me, my Wendly boy, what poor possibility of friendship abides in the crazy frame of W. J. meanders about thy neighborhood. Good-bye! Keep the same bold front as ever to the Common Enemy--and don't forget your ally.

W.J.

That is, after all, all I wanted to write you and it may float the rest of the letter. Pray give my warm regards to your father, mother and sister; and my love to the honest Gray and to Jim Higginson.

[Written on the outside of the envelope]

Jan. 4. By a strange coincidence, after writing this last night, I received yours this morning. Not to sacrifice the postage-stamps which are already on the envelope (Economical W.!) I don't reopen it. But I will write you again soon. Meanwhile, bless your heart! thank you! Vide Shakespeare: sonnet XXLX

[*Hermann Grimm, a son of the younger of the universally beloved brothers of the Fairy Tales, a philologist and Professor of the History of Art in Berlin.]

[Winter of 1868-69]

Gents! entry-thieves--chevaliers d'industrie--well-dressed swindlers--confidence men--wolfs in sheep's clothing--asses in lions' skin--gentlemanly pickpockets--beware! The hand of the law is already on your throats and waits but a wink to be tightened. All the resources of the immensely powerful corporation of Harvard University have been set in motion, and concealment of your miserable selves or of the almost equally miserable (though not as such miserable) goloshes which you stole from our entry on Sunday night is as impossible as would be the concealment of the State House. The motive of your precipitate departure from the house became immediately evident to the remaining guests. But they resolved to IGNORE the matter provided the overshoes were replaced within a week; if not, no CONSIDERATIONS WHATEVER will prevent Messrs. Gurney & Perry* from proceeding to treat you with the utmost severity of the law. It is high time that some of these genteel adventurers should be made an example of, and your offense just comes in time to make the cup of public and private forbearance overflow. My father and self have pledged our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor to see the thing through with Gurney and Perry, as the credit of our house is involved and we might ourselves have been losers, not only from you but from the aforesaid G. and P., who have been heard to go about openly declaring that 'if they had known the party was going to be that kind of an affair, d---d if they would not have started off earlier themselves with some of those aristocratic James overcoats, hats, gloves and canes!'

So let me as a friend advise you to send the swag back. No questions will be asked--Mum's the word.

WM. JAMES.

[*Ephraim W. Gurney and T.S. Perry.]

[The next four letters may be taken from the late 'seventies and early 'eighties--after James had become absorbed in teaching and while he was at work upon his Psychology and upon his first philosophic papers. It should be explained with reference to two of them, that he then considered Charles Renouvier and Shadworth Hodgson to be the most important contributors to contemporary philosophic discussion. They were both somewhat older men than himself, Renouvier being, in fact, twenty-seven years older, and Hodgson his senior by ten years. He had exchanged letters with Renouvier as early as 1872. In 1881-82 he met and became warmly attached to both men during a winter that he then spent in visiting European universities and in making the acquaintance of a number of the British and Continental colleagues whose writings had interested him.

Before he made this particular European trip James had undoubtedly been in a very modest frame of mind about his own equipment for teaching philosophy and psychology, and had also been uncomfortably conscious of the inadequate way in which those subjects were then dealt with in most American colleges. But closer contact with men and methods on the other side of the Atlantic, far from discouraging him or confirming his misgivings, led him, as will appear in the next letter but one, to certain comforting conclusions and confirmed him in his fondness for the liberal atmosphere of Cambridge, and for his place in the brilliant little group who were then building up the Harvard philosophical department.]

CAMBRIDGE, July 29, 1876.

MY DEAR SIR,--

I am quite overcome by your appreciation of my poor little article in the Nation. It gratifies me extremely to hear from your own lips that my apprehension of your thoughts is accurate. In so despicably brief a space as that which a newspaper affords, I could hardly hope to attain any other quality than that, and perhaps clearness. I had written another paragraph of pure eulogy of your powers which the editor suppressed, to my great regret, for want of room. I need not repeat to you again how grateful I feel to you for all I have learned from your admirable writings.

I do what lies in my feeble power to assist the propagation of your works here; but STUDENTS of philosophy are rare here as everywhere. It astonishes me nevertheless that you have had to wait so long for general recognition. Only a few months ago I had the pleasure of introducing to your Essais two professors of philosophy, able and learned men, who hardly knew your name!! But I am perfectly convinced that it is a mere affair of time, and that you will take your place in the general History of Speculation as the classical and finished representative of the tendency which was begun by Hume, and to which writers before you had made only fragmentary contributions, whilst you have fused the whole matter into a solid, elegant and definitive system, perfectly consistent, and capable, by reason of its moral vitality, of becoming popular, so far as that is permitted to philosophic systems. After your Essays, it seems to me that the only important question is the deepest one of all, the one between the principle of contradiction, and the Sein und Nichts.* You have brought it to that clear issue; and extremely as I value your logical attitude, it would be uncandid of me (after what I have said) not to confess that there are certain psychological and moral facts, which make me, as I stand to-day, unable wholly to commit myself to your position, to burn my ships behind me, and proclaim the belief in the ONE and the many to be the Original Sin of the mind.

I long for leisure to study up these questions. I have been teaching anatomy and physiology in Harvard College here. Next year, I add a course of physiological psychology, using, for certain practical reasons, Spencer's Psychology textbook. My health is not strong, I find that laboratory work and study too are more than I can attend to. It is therefore not impossible that I may in 1877-8 be transferred to the philosophical department, in which there is likely to be a vacancy. If so, you may depend upon it that the name of Renouvier will be as familiar as that of Descartes to the Bachelors of Arts who leave these walls. Believe me with the greatest respect and gratitude,

Faithfully yours,

WM. JAMES.

I must add a vivat to your Critique Philosophique, which keeps up so ably and bravely. And although it is probably an entirely superfluous recommendation, I cannot refrain from calling your attention to the most robust of English philosophic writers, Hodgson, whose Time and Space was published in 1865 by Longmans, and whose Theory of Practice in two volumes followed it in 1870.

[*Being and non-being.]

PARIS, Nov. 22, 1882.

DEAR H.,--

Found at Hottinguer's this A.M. your letter with all the enclosures--and a wail you had sent to Berlin. Also six letters from my wife and seven or eight others, not counting papers and magazines. I will mail you back yours and Father's letter to me. Alice speaks of Father's indubitable improvement in strength, but our sister Alice apparently is somewhat run down. Paris looks delicious. I shall try to get settled as soon as possible, and meanwhile feel as if the confusion of life was recommencing. I saw in Germany all the men I cared to see and talked with most of them. With three or four I had a really nutritious time. The trip has amply paid for itself. I found 3rd class 'Nichtraucher' almost always empty and perfectly comfortable. The great use of such experiences is less the definite information you gain from any one, than a sort of solidification of your own foothold on life. Nowhere did I see a university which seems to do for ALL its students anything like what Harvard does. Our methods throughout are better. It is only in the select 'Seminaria' (private classes) that a few German students, making researches with the professor, gain something from him personally which his genius alone can give. I certainly got a most distinct impression of my own INFORMATION in regard to MODERN philosophic matters being broader than that of any one I met, and of our Harvard post of observation being more cosmopolitan. Delboeuf in Liege was an angel and much the best teacher I've seen.

The Century, with your fiery good portrait, etc., was at Hottinguer's this A.M., sent by my wife. I shall read it presently. I'm off now to see if I can get your leather trunk, sent front London, arrested by inundations and ordered to be returned to Paris. I never needed its contents a second. And in your little American valise, and my flabby black hand-bag and shawl-straps and a small satchel, I carried not only everything I used, but collected a whole library of books in Leipsig, some pieces of Venetian glass in their balky bolsters of seaweed, a quart bottle of eau de Cologne, and a lot of other acquisitions. I feel remarkably tough now and fairly ravenous for my psychologic work. Address Hottinguer's.

W. J.

NEWPORT, Dec. 30, 1885.

MY DEAR HODGSON,--

I have just read your 'Philosophy and Experience' address, and re-read with much care your 'Dialogue on Free Will' in the last Mind. I thank you kindly for the address. But is n't philosophy a sad mistress, estranging the more intimately those who in all other respects are most intimately united--although 't is true she unites them afresh by their very estrangement! I feel for the first time now, after these readings, as if I might be catching sight of your foundations. Always hitherto has there been something elusive, a sense that what I caught could not be all. Now I feel as if it might be all, and yet for me 't is not enough. Your 'method' (which surely after this needs no additional expository touch) I seem at last to understand, but it shrinks in the understanding....

As for the Free Will article, I have very little to say; for it leaves entirely untouched what seems to me the only living issue involved. The paper is an exquisite piece of literary goldsmith's work,--nothing like it in that respect since Berkeley,--but it hangs in the air of speculation and touches not the earth of life, and the beautiful distinctions it keeps making gratify only the understanding which has no end in view but to exercise its eyes by the way. The distinctions between vis impressa and vis insita, and compulsion and 'reaction' MEAN nothing in a monistic world; and any world is a monism in which the parts to come are, as they are in your world, absolutely involved and presupposed in the parts that are already given. Were such a monism a palpable optimism, no man would be so foolish as to care whether it was predetermined or not, or to ask whether he was or was not what you call a 'real agent.' He would acquiesce in the flow and drift of things of which he found himself a part, and rejoice that it was such a whole. The question of free will owes its entire being to a difficulty you disdain to notice, namely that we CANNOT rejoice in such a whole, for it is NOT a palpable optimism and yet, if it be predetermined, we MUST TREAT it as a whole. Indeterminism is the only way to BREAK the world into good parts and into bad, and to stand by the former as against the latter.

I can understand the determinism of the mere mechanical intellect which will not hear of a moral dimension to existence. I can understand that of mystical monism, shutting its eyes on the concretes of life for the sake of its abstract rupture. I can understand that of mental defeat and despair saying, 'It's all a muddle, and here I go, along with it.' I can NOT understand a determinism like yours, which rejoices in clearness and distinctions, and which is at the same time alive to moral ones--unless it be that the latter are purely speculative for it, and have little to do with its real feeling of the way life is made up.

For life IS evil. Two souls are in my breast; I see the better, and in the very act of seeing it I do the worse. To say that the molecules of the nebula implied this and SHALL HAVE IMPLIED IT to all eternity, so often as it recurs, is to condemn me to that 'dilemma' of pessimism or subjectivism of which I once wrote, and which seems to have so little urgency to you, and to which all talk about abstractions erected into entities, and compulsion vs. 'freedom' is simply irrelevant. What living man cares for such niceties when the real problem stares him in the face, of how practically to meet a world foredone, with no possibilities left in it?

What a mockery then seems your distinction between determination and compulsion, between passivity and an 'activity' every minutest feature of which is preappointed, both as to its whatness and as to its thatness, by what went before? What an insignificant difference then the difference between 'impediments from within' and 'impediments from without'--between being fated to do the thing WILLINGLY or not! The point is not as to how it is done, but as to its being done at all. It seems a wrong complement to the rest of life, which rest of life (according to your precious 'free-will determinism,' as to any other fatalism), whilst shrieking aloud at its WHATNESS, nevertheless exacts rigorously its THATNESS then and there. Is that a reasonable world from the moral point of view? And is it made more reasonable by the fact that when I brought about the THATNESS of the evil WHATNESS decreed to come by the thatness of all else beside, I did so consentingly and aware of no 'impediments outside of my own nature'? With what can I SIDE in such a world as this? this monstrous indifferentism which brings forth everything eodum jure? Our nature demands something OBJECTIVE to take sides with. If the world is a Unit of this sort there ARE no sides--there's the moral rub! And you don't see it!

Ah, Hodgson! Hodgson mio! from whom I hoped so much! Most spirited, most clean, most thoroughbred of philosophers! Perche di tanto inganni i figlii tuoi? If you want to reconcile us rationally to Determinism, write a Theodicy, reconcile us to Evil, but don't talk of the distinction between impediments from within and without when the within and the without of which you speak are both within that WHOLE which is the only real agent in your philosophy. There is no such superstition as the idolatry of the Whole.

I originally finished this letter on sheet number one; but it occurred to me afterwards that the end was too short, so I scratched out the first lines of the crossed writing, and refer you now to what follows them.--[Lines from sheet number 1] It makes me sick at heart, this discord among the only men who ought to agree. I am the more sick this moment as I must write to your ancient foe (at least the stimulus to an old Mind article of yours), One F. E. Abbot, who recently gave me his little book Scientific Theism--the burden of his life--which makes me groan that I cannot digest a word of it. Farewell! Heaven bless you all the same, and enable you to forgive me. We are well and I hope you are the same.

Ever faithfully yours,

W.J.

[From the final sheet.] Let me add a wish for a happy New Year and the expression of my undying regard. You are tenfold more precious to me now that I have braved you thus! Adieu!

[Professor Carl Stumpf of Prague and later of Berlin, to whom the following letter was addressed, will be recognized by all readers of psychology. James had met both him and Professor Wundt in 1881-82, had established the most cordial relations with Stumpf, and always cherished a warm regard for him.]

CAMBRIDGE Feb. 6, 1887.

MY DEAR STUMPF,--

Your two letters, from Rugen of Sept. 8th, and from Halle of Jan. 2, came duly, and I can assure you that their contents were most heartily appreciated, and not by me alone. I fairly squealed with pleasure over the first one and its rich combination of good counsel and humorous commentary, and read the greater part of it to my friend Royce, assistant professor of philosophy here, who enjoyed it almost as much as I. There is a heartiness and solidity about your letters which is truly German, and makes them as nutritious as they are refreshing to receive.

Your Kater-Gefuhl, however, in your second letter, about your Auslassungen* on the subject of Wundt, amused me by its speedy evolution into Auslassungen more animated still. I can well understand why Wundt should make his compatriots impatient. Foreigners can afford to be indifferent, for he does n't crowd them so much. He aims at being a sort of Napoleon of the intellectual world. Unfortunately he will never have a Waterloo, for he is a Napoleon without genius and with no central idea which, if defeated, brings down the whole fabric in ruin. You remember what Victor Hugo says of Napoleon, in the Miserables--'Il genait Dieu'; Wundt only geners his confreres; and whilst they make mincemeat of some one of his views by their criticism, he is meanwhile writing a book on an entirely different subject. Cut him up like a worm, and each fragment crawls; there is no noeud vital in his mental medulla oblongata, so that you can't kill him all at once.

But surely you must admit that, since there must be professors in the world, Wundt is the most praiseworthy and never-too-much-to-be-respected type of the species. He is n't a genius, he is a professor--a being whose duty is to know everything, and have his own opinion about everything, connected with his Fach. [Field] Wundt has the most prodigious faculty of appropriating and preserving knowledge, and as for opinions, he takes au grand serieux his duties there. He says of each possible subject, 'Here I must have an opinion. Let's see! what shall it be? How many possible opinions are there? three? four? Yes! just four! Shall I take one of these? It will seem more original to take a higher position, a sort of Vermittelungs-ansicht [Mediating attitude] between them all. THAT I will do,' etc., etc.

So he acquires a complete assortment of opinions of his own; and, as his memory is so good, he seldom forgets which they are. But this is not reprehensible; it is admirable--from the professorial point of view. To be sure, one gets tired of that point of view after a while. But was there ever, since Christian Wolff's time, such a model of the German Professor? He has utilized to the uttermost fibre every gift that Heaven endowed him with at his birth, and made of it all that mortal pertinacity could make. He is the finished example of how much mere EDUCATION can do for a man. Beside him, Spencer is an ignoramus as well as a charlatan. I admit that Spencer is occasionally more AMUSING than Wundt. His Data of Ethics seems to me incomparably his best book, because it is a more or less frank expression of the man's personal ideal of living--which has of course little to do with science, and which, in Spencer's case, is full of definiteness and vigor. Wundt's Ethics I have not yet seen, and probably shall not 'tackle' it for a good while to come.

I was much entertained by your account of F--, of whom you have seen much more than I have. I am eager to see him, to hear about his visit to Halle, and to get his account of you. But [F----'s place of abode] and Boston are ten hours asunder by rail, and I never go there and he never comes here. He seems a very promising fellow, with a good deal of independence of character; and if you knew the conditions of education in this country, and of preparation to fill chairs of philosophy in colleges, you would not express any surprise at his, or mine, or any other American's, small amount of 'Information uber die Philosophische Literatur.' Times are mending, however, and within the past six or eight years it has been possible, in three or four of our colleges, to get really educated for philosophy as a profession.

The most promising man we have in this country is, in my opinion, the above-mentioned Royce, a young Californian of thirty, who is really built for a metaphysician, and who is besides that a very complete human being, alive at every point. He wrote a novel last summer which is now going through the press, and which I am very curious to see. He has just been in here, interrupting this letter, and I have told him he must send a copy of his book, the Religious Aspect of Philosophy, to you, promising to urge you to read it when you had time. The first half is ethical, and very readable and full of profound and witty details, but to my mind not of vast importance philosophically. The second half is a new argument for monistic idealism, an argument based on the possibility of truth and error in knowledge, subtle in itself, and rather lengthily expounded, but seeming to me to be one of the few big original suggestions of recent philosophical writing. I have vainly tried to escape from it, I still suspect it of inconclusiveness, but I frankly confess that I am UNABLE to overthrow it. Since you too are an anti-idealist, I wish very much you would try your critical teeth upon it. I can assure you that, if you come to close quarters with it, you will say its author belongs to the genuine philosophic breed.

I am myself doing very well this year, rather light work, etc., but still troubled with bad sleep so as to advance very slowly with private study and writing. However, few days without a line at least. I found to my surprise and pleasure that Robertson was willing to print my chapter on Space, in Mind, even though it should run through all four numbers of the year. So I sent it to him. Most of it was written six or even seven years ago. To tell the truth, I am off of Space now, and can probably carry my little private ingenuity concerning it no farther than I have already done in this essay; and fearing that some evil fiend might put it into Helmholtz's mind to correct all his errors and tell the full truth in the new edition of his Optics, I felt it was high time that what I had written should see the light and not be lost. It is dry stuff to read, and I hardly dare to recommend it to you; but if you do read it, there is no one whose favorable opinion I should more rejoice to hear; for, as you know, you seem to me, of all writers on Space, the one who, on the whole, has thought out the subject most philosophically. Of course, the experimental patience, and skill and freshness of observation of the Helmholtzes and Herings are altogether admirable, and perhaps at bottom worth more than philosophic ability. Space is really a direfully difficult subject!

the third dimension bothers me very much still....

[During the very hard-working period of the 'eighties James had little time for long letters, but the short notes and the post-cards which he threw off daily were perhaps the more vivid for that fact. He was almost certain to respond with a word of comment to whatever interested him, and a book which he had enjoyed often called forth what Mr. Howells once called 'a whoop of blessing' to its author.]

JAFFREY, N.H., July 21, 1886.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--

I 'snatch' a moment from the limitless vacation peace and leisure in which I lie embedded and which does n't leave me 'time' for anything, to tell you that I have been reading your Indian Summer, and that it has given me about as exquisite a kind of delight as anything I ever read in my life, in the line to which it belongs. How you tread the narrow line of nature's truth so infallibly is more than I can understand. Then the profanity, the humor, the humanity, the morality--the everything! In short, 't is cubical, and set it up any way you please, 't will stand. That blessed young female made me squeal at every page. How can you have got back to the conversations of our prime?

But I won't discriminate or analyze. This is only meant for an inarticulate cry of viva Howells. I repeat it: long live Howells! God grant you may do as good things again! I don't believe you can do better.

With warmest congratulations to Mrs. Howells that you AND she were born, I am ever yours,

WM . JAMES.

[Post Card] [CHOCORUA|, Aug. 12, '88.

It would take G[uy] de M[aupassant] himself to just fill a post-card chok-full, and yet leave naught to be desired, with an account of Pierre et Jean. It is a little cube of bronze; or, like the body of the Capitaine Beausire, 'plein comme un oeuf, dur comme une balle'--dur surtout! Fifteen years ago, I might have been ENTHUSED by such art; but I'm growing weak-minded, and the charm of this admirable precision and adequacy of art to subject leaves me too cold. It is like these modern tools and instruments, so admirably compact, and strong, and reduced to their fighting weight--one of those little metallic pumps, e.g., so oily & powerful, with a handle about two feet long, which will throw a column of water about 4 inches thick 100 feet. Unfortunately G. de M.'s pump only throws dirty water--and I am BEGINNING to be old fogy eno' to like even an old, shackly, wooden pump-handle, if the water it fetches only carries all the sweetness of the mountain-side. Yrs. ever, W. J.

The dying fish on p[in]s stick most in my memory. Is that right in a novel of human life?

CAMBRIDGE, June 12, 1891.

MY DEAR HOWELLS--

You are a sublime and immortal genius! I have just read Silas Lapham and Lemuel Barker,--strange that I should not have read them before, after hearing my wife rave about them so,--and of all the perfect works of fiction they are the perfectest. The truth, in gross and in detail; the concreteness and solidity; the geniality, humanity, and unflagging humor; the steady way in which it keeps up without a dead paragraph; and especially the fidelity with which you stick to the ways of human nature, with the ideal and the unideal inseparably beaten up together so that you never give them 'clear'--all make them a feast of delight, which, if I mistake not, will last for all future time, or as long as novels can last. Silas is the bigger total success because it deals with a more important story. I think you ought to have made young Corey angrier about Irene's mistake and its consequences, but the work on the much obstructed Lemuel surely was never surpassed. I hope his later life was happy!

Altogether you ought to be happy--you can fold your arms and write no more if you like. I've just got your Criticism and Fiction, which shall speedily be read. And whilst in the midst of this note have received from the postman your clipping from Kate Field's Washington, the author of which I can't divine, but she's a blessed creature whoever she is. Yours ever,

WM. JAMES.

[No picture of James's life would be fair which ignored its domestic side. He married in 1878, and his marriage was happy in the fullest sense. By 1891, the date which these letters have reached, four children were growing up; he had built himself a house in Cambridge, and had also acquired a little place at Chocorua, where he spent most of each summer with his family. This bundle of letters may fittingly close with three which were addressed to his sister and his two little boys. It need only be explained that the sister was living in England and had consequently never seen the Chocorua place, 'Mrs. Gibbens' and 'Margaret' were his mother-in-law and sister-in-law.

CAMBRIDGE, Feb. 1887.

We are getting along very well, on the whole, I keeping very continuously occupied, but not seeming to get ahead much, for the days GROW SO SHORT with each advancing year. A day is now about a minute--hardly time to turn round in. Mrs. Gibbens arrived from Chicago last night; and in ten days she and Margaret will start, with our little Billy, for Aiken, S.C., to be gone till May. B. is asthmatic, she is glad to go south for her own sake, and the open-air life all day long will be much better for him than our arduous winter and spring. He is the most utterly charming little piece of human nature you ever saw, so packed with life, impatience, and feeling, that I think father must have been just like him at his age....

I have been paying ten or eleven visits to a mind-cure doctress, a sterling creature, resembling the Venus of Medicine, Mrs Lydia E. Pinkham, made solid and veracious-looking. I sit down beside her and presently drop asleep, whilst she disentangles the snarls out of my mind. She says she never saw a mind with so many, so agitated, so restless, etc. She said my EYES, mentally speaking, kept revolving like wheels in front of each other and in front of my face, and it was four or five sittings ere she could get them FIXED. I am now, UNCONSCIOUSLY TO MYSELF, much better than when I first went, etc. I thought it might please you to hear an opinion of my mind so similar to your own. Meanwhile what boots it to be made unconsciously better, yet all the while consciously to lie awake o' nights as I still do?--

Lectures are temporarily stopped and examinations begun. I seized the opportunity to go to my Chocorua place and see just what was needed to make it habitable for the summer. It is a goodly little spot, but we may not, after all, fit up the buildings till we have spent a summer in the place and 'studied' the problem a little more closely. The snow was between two and three feet deep on a level, in spite of the recent thaws. The day after I arrived was one of the most crystalline purity, and the mountain simply exquisite in gradations of tint. I have a tenant in the house, one Sanborn, who owes me a dollar and a half a month, but can't pay it, being of a poetic and contemplative rather than of an active nature, and consequently excessively poor. He has a sign out, 'Attorney and Pension Agent,' and writes and talks like one of the greatest of men. He was working the sewing-machine when I was there, and talking of his share in the war, and why he did n't go to live in Boston, etc., --namely that he was n't known,--and my heart was heavy in my breast that so rich a nature, fitted to inhabit a tropical dreamland, should have nothing but that furnitureless cabin within and snow and sky without to live upon. For, however spotlessly pure and dazzlingly lustrous snow may be, pure snow, always snow, and naught but snow, for four months on end, is, it must be confessed, a rather lean diet for the human soul--deficient in variety, chiaroscuro, and oleaginous and mediaeval elements. I felt as I was returning home that some intellectual inferiority ought to accrue to all populations whose environment for many months in the year consisted of pure snow. You are better off,--better off than you know,--in that great, black-earthed dunghill of an England. I say naught of politics, wars, strikes, railroad accidents or public events, unless the departure of C. W. Eliot and his wife for a year in Europe, be a public event.....

[The next year the children were taken to Aiken for the worst months of the winter and spring by Mrs. James. A pet dog remained in Cambridge and will be recognized under the name 'Jap.']

CAMBRIDGE, Mar. 1, 1888.

BELOVED HEINRICH,--

You lazy old scoundrel, why don't you write a letter to your old Dad? Tell me how you enjoy your riding on horseback, what Billy does for a living, and which things you like best of all the new kinds of things you have to do with in Aiken. How do you like the darkeys being so numerous? Everything goes on quietly here. The house so still that you can hear a pin drop, and so clean that everything makes a mark on it. All because there are no brats and kids around. Jap is my only companion, and he sneezes all over me whenever I pick him up. Mrs. Hildreth and the children are gone to Florida. The Emmets seem very happy. I will close with a fable. A donkey felt badly because he was not so great a favorite as a lapdog. He said, I must act like the lap-dog, and then my mistress will like me. So he came into the house and began to lick his mistress, and put his paws on her, and tried to get into her lap. Instead of kissing him for this, she screamed for the servants, who beat him and put him out of the house. Moral: It's no use to try to be anything but a donkey if you are one. But neither you nor Billy are one. Good-night! you blessed boy. Stick to your three R's and your riding, so as to get on FAST.

The ancient Persians only taught their boys to ride, to shoot the bow and to tell the truth. Good-night!

Kiss your dear old Mammy and that bellyache of a Billy, and little Margaret Mary for her Dad. Good-night.

YOUR FATHER.

18 Garden Street,

Apr. 29, 1888, 9:30 A.M.

BELOVED WILLIAMSON,--

This is Sunday, the sabbath of the Lord, and it has been very hot for two days. I think of you and Harry with such longing, and of that infant whom I know so little, that I cannot help writing you some words. Your Mammy writes me that she can't get YOU to WORK much; though Harry works. You MUST work a little this summer in our own place. How nice it will be! I have wished that both you and Harry were by my side in some amusements which I have had lately. First, the learned seals in a big tank of water in Boston. The loveliest beasts, with big black eyes, poking their heads up and down in the water, and then scrambling out on their bellies like boys tied up in bags. They play the guitar and banjo and organ; and one of them saves the life of a child who tumbles in the water, catching him by the collar with its teeth, and swimming him ashore. They are both, child and seal, trained to do it. When they have done well, their master gives them a lot of fish. They eat an awful lot;--scales, and fins, and bones and all, without chewing. That is the worst thing about them. He says he never beats them. They are full of curiosity--more so than a dog for far-off things; for when a man went round the room with a pole pulling down the windows at the top, all their heads bobbed out of the water and followed him about with their eyes aus lauter curiosity. Dogs would hardly have noticed him, I think.

Now, speaking of dogs, Jap was NAUSEATED two days ago. I thought, from his licking his nose, that he was going to be sick, and got him out of doors just in time. He vomited most awfully on the grass. He then acted as if he thought I was going to punish him, poor thing. He can't discriminate between sickness and sin. He leads a dull life, without you and Margaret Mary. I tell him if it lasts much longer, he'll grow into a common beast; he hates to be a beast, but unless he has human companionship, he will sink to the level of one. So you must hasten back and make much of him.

I also went to the panorama of the battle of Bunker Hill, which is as good as that of Gettysburg. I wished Harry had been there because he knows the, story of it. You and he shall go soon after your return. It makes you feel just as if you lived there.

Well, I will now stop. On Monday Morning the 14th, or Sunday night the 15th of May, I will take you into my arms; that is, I will meet you with a carriage on the wharf, when the boat comes in. And I tell you I shall be glad to see the whole lot of you come roaring home. Give my love to your Mammy, to Aunt Margaret, to Fraulein, to Harry, to Margaret Mary, and to yourself.

Your loving Dad,

WM. JAMES.