The Letters of William James Volume I Part 21

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 ent.i.ties; and compulsion _vs._ "freedom" are 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 pa.s.sivity 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 _eodem 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 figli tuoi?_[78] 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 superst.i.tion 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 I._] 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!

_To Carl Stumpf._

CAMBRIDGE, _Jan. 1, 1886_.

MY DEAR STUMPF,--...Let me tell you of my own fate since I wrote you last. It has been an eventful and in some respects a sad year. We lost our youngest child in the summer--the flower of the flock, 18 months old--with a painful and lingering whooping-cough complicated with pneumonia. My wife has borne it like an angel, however, which is something to be thankful for. Her mother, close to whom we have always lived, has had a severe pulmonary illness, which has obliged her to repair to Italy for health. She is now on the Ocean, with her youngest and only unmarried daughter, the second one having only a month ago become the wife of that [W. M.] Salter whose essays on ethics have lately been translated by von Gizycki in Berlin. So I have gained him as a brother-in-law, and regard it as a real gain. I have also gained a full Professorship with an increase of pay, and have moved into a larger and more commodious house.[79] My eyes, too, are much better than they were a year ago, and I am able to do more work, so there is plenty of sweet as well as bitter in the cup.

I don't know whether you have heard of the London "Society for Psychical Research," which is seriously and laboriously investigating all sorts of "supernatural" matters, clairvoyance, apparitions, etc. I don't know what you think of such work; but I think that the present condition of opinion regarding it is scandalous, there being a ma.s.s of testimony, or apparent testimony, about such things, at which the only men capable of a critical judgment--men of scientific education--will not even look. We have founded a similar society here within the year,--some of us thought that the publications of the London society deserved at least to be treated as if worthy of experimental disproof,--and although work advances very slowly owing to the small amount of disposable time on the part of the members, who are all very busy men, we have already stumbled on some rather inexplicable facts out of which something may come. It is a field in which the sources of deception are extremely numerous. But I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomenon are _impossible_.

My teaching is much the same as it was--a little better in quality, I hope. I enjoy very much a new philosophic colleague, Josiah Royce, from California, who is just thirty years old and a perfect little Socrates for wisdom and humor. I still try to write a little psychology, but it is exceedingly slow work. No sooner do I get interested than bang! goes my sleep, and I have to stop a week or ten days, during which my ideas get all cold again. Nothing so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.... I try to spend two hours a day in a laboratory for psycho-physics which I started last year, but of which I fear the _fruits_ will be slow in ripening, as my experimental apt.i.tude is but small. But I am convinced that one must guard in some such way as that against the growing tendency to _subjectivism_ in one's thinking, as life goes on. I am hypnotizing, on a large scale, the students, and have hit one or two rather pretty unpublished things of which some day I hope I may send you an account.... Ever faithfully yours,

WM. JAMES.

When the American Society for Psychical Research was organized in Boston in the autumn of 1884, Thomas Davidson wrote to comment on its apparent anti-spiritual bias. In the following reply, dated February 1, 1885, but more easily understood if inserted here out of its chronological place, James defined the society's conception of its function. In so doing he described his own att.i.tude toward psychical research quite exactly:--

"As for any 'antispiritual bias' of our Society, no theoretic basis, or _bias_ of any sort whatever, so far as I can make out, exists in it. The one thing that has struck me all along in the men who have had to do with it is their complete colorlessness philosophically. They seem to have no preferences for any general _ism_ whatever. I doubt if this could be matched in Europe. Anyhow, it would make no difference in the important work to be done, what theoretic bias the members had. For I take it the urgent thing, to rescue us from the present disgraceful condition, is to ascertain in a manner so thorough as to const.i.tute _evidence_ that will be accepted by outsiders, just what the _phenomenal conditions of certain_ concrete phenomenal occurrences are. Not till that is done, can spiritualistic or anti-spiritualistic theories be even mooted. I'm sure that the more we can steer clear of theories at first, the better. The choice of officers was largely dictated by motives of policy. Not that scientific men are necessarily better judges of all truth than others, but that their adhesion would popularly seem better _evidence_ than the adhesion of others, in the matter. And what we want is not only truth, but evidence. We shall be lucky if our scientific names don't grow discredited the instant they subscribe to any 'spiritual' manifestations. But how much easier to discredit literary men, philosophers or clergymen! I think Newcomb, for President, was an uncommon hit--if he believes, he will probably carry others. You'd better chip in, and not complicate matters by talking either of spiritualism or anti-spiritualism. '_Facts_' are what are wanted."

_To Henry James._

CAMBRIDGE, _May 9, 1886_.

MY DEAR HARRY,--I seize my pen the first leisure moment I have had for a week to tell you that I have read "The Bostonians" in the full flamingness of its bulk, and consider it an exquisite production. My growling letter was written to you before the end of Book I had appeared in the "Atlantic"; and the suspense of narrative in that region, to let the relation of Olive and Verena grow, was enlarged by the vacant months between the numbers of the magazine, so that it seemed to me so slow a thing had ne'er been writ. Never again shall I attack one of your novels in the magazine. I've only read one number of the "Princess Casama.s.sima"--though I hear all the people about me saying it is the best thing you've done yet. To return to "The Bostonians"; the two last books are simply sweet. There isn't a hair wrong in Verena, you've made her neither too little nor too much--but absolutely _liebenswurdig_. It would have been so easy to spoil her picture by some little excess or false note. Her moral situation, between Woman's rights and Ransom, is of course deep, and her discovery of the truth on the Central Park day, etc., inimitably given. Ransom's character, which at first did not become alive to me, does so, handsomely, at last. In Washington, Hay told me that Secretary Lamar was delighted with it; Hay himself ditto, but especially with "Casama.s.sima." I enclose a sheet from a letter of Gurney's but just received. You see how seriously he takes it. And I suppose he's right from a profoundly serious point of view,--_i.e._, he would be right if the characters were real,--but as the story stands, I don't feel his objection. The _fancy_ is more tickled by R.'s victory being complete. I hear very little said of the book, and I imagine it is being less read than its predecessors. The truth about it, combining what I said in my previous letter with what I have just written, seems to be this, that it is superlatively well done, provided one admits that method of doing such a thing at all. Really the _datum_ seems to me to belong rather to the region of fancy, but the treatment to that of the most elaborate realism. One can easily imagine the story cut out and made into a bright, short, sparkling thing of a hundred pages, which would have been an absolute success. But you have worked it up by dint of descriptions and psychologic commentaries into near 500--charmingly done for those who have the leisure and the peculiar mood to enjoy that amount of miniature work--but perilously near to turning away the great majority of readers who crave more matter and less art. I can truly say, however, that as I have lain on my back after dinner each day for ten days past reading it to myself, my enjoyment has been complete. I imagine that inhabitants of other parts of the country have read it more than natives of these parts. They have bought it for the sake of the information. The way you have touched off the bits of American nature, Central Park, the Cape, etc., is exquisitely true and calls up just the feeling. Knowing you had done such a good thing makes the meekness of your reply to me last summer all the more wonderful.

I cannot write more--being much overloaded and in bad condition. The spring is opening deliciously--all the trees half out, and the white, bright, afternoon east winds beginning. Our household is well....

Don't be alarmed about the labor troubles here. I am quite sure they are a most healthy phase of evolution, a little costly, but normal, and sure to do lots of good to all hands in the end. I don't speak of the senseless "anarchist" riot in Chicago, which has nothing to do with "Knights of Labor," but is the work of a lot of pathological Germans and Poles. I'm amused at the anti-Gladstonian capital which the English papers are telegraphed to be making of it. All the Irish names are among the killed and wounded policemen. Almost every anarchist name is Continental. Affectly.,

W. J.

James read "The Bostonians," and wrote to his brother about it, with that special shade of detachment which is peculiar to fraternal judgments. He was less careful to measure his praise when he wrote to other authors about their novels.

_To W. D. Howells._

JAFFREY, N.H., _July 21, 1886_.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--I "s.n.a.t.c.h" a moment from the limitless vacation peace and leisure in which I lie embedded and which doesn'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, 'tis cubical, and set it up any way you please 'twill stand. That blessed young female made me squeal at every page. How _can_ you have got back to the conversations of your prime?

But I won't discriminate or a.n.a.lyze. This is only meant for an inarticulate cry of _viva Howells_. I repeat it: long live Howells! G.o.d 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.

Mr. Howells called such letters "whoops of blessing." When a new book pleased James particularly, he was apt to send a "whoop" to its author.

With respect to the next letter, it will be recalled that Croom Robertson was the Editor of "Mind." Richard Hodgson was later for many years the Secretary of the American Branch of the Society for Psychical Research, in Boston. He became a warm friend. Other allusions to him occur later.

_To G. Croom Robertson._

_Aug. 13, 1886_.

MY DEAR ROBERTSON,--...I have just been reading the last number of "Mind," and find it rather below par. R. Hodgson muddled, clotted, dusky and ineffectual, save for a gleam or two of light in as many separate points. How can an adult man spend his time in trying to torture an accurate meaning into Spencer's incoherent accidentalities? It is so much more easy to do the work over for oneself. I rubbed my eyes at the Macdonald paper, as a dim sense came over me that it might be a Divinity student who "sat under" me for a part of last year. I ween it is. Little did I know the viper I was nourishing. Why don't you have a special "Neo-Hegelian Department" in "Mind," like the "Children's Department" or the "Agricultural Department" in our newspapers--which educated readers skip? With Montgomery's paper I am for the most part in warm sympathy, though he might make a discrimination or two more. I'm sorry I've not yet read his first number. His non-empirical style, so different from that of the British school, will stand in the way of his views'

deglut.i.tion by the ordinary reader. I've got the same stuff all neatly down in black and white, in a very empirical style, which alas! must wait perhaps years till the other chapters are finished. However, in these matters, no matter how much different men strike the same vein, they do it in such different _ways_, that no one of them absolutely supersedes the need of the others.

Davidson I saw the other day in Cambridge. He was fresh from the Concord School, where they had been belaboring Goethe as their _piece de resistance_ and topping off with pantheism as dessert. He had read aloud a paper of Montgomery's against pantheism, as well as one of his own on Goethe's t.i.tanism. Montgomery's is shortly to appear in a journal here.

I am rather curious to read it.

To go on with "Mind," Hull's paper (Donaldson's) is refreshing. X---- is a little stub-and-twist fellow who also sat under me last year, and now has a fellowship for next year. He is a silent, mannerless little cub, but has first-rate stuff in him, I think, as an original worker; theological training. Have you had time yet to look into Royce's book?

Royce seems to me to be a man of the greatest promise, performance too, in that book. I wish you would have it worthily reviewed.

Here I have run on about the accidents of the hour, instead of the eternal things of the soul. No matter; all is a symbol, and these words will probably waft my presence somehow into yours....

Pray drop me even a short line soon, to let me know about you and Mrs.

Robertson. I've heard nothing _of_ you, even, for many months. Haven't you a brother, or something, to send over here, since there seems no hope of having you yourself? Gurney wrote the other day that he was about to send his brother.