The Letters of William James Volume I Part 34

[44] A note-book in which there are many pages of t.i.tles, under dates between 1867 and 1872, appears to have been a record of reading; it was not kept systematically and is incomplete. The following entries were made between the date "June 21, '69--M.D."--the date of graduation from the Medical School--and the end of the year 1869. It will be understood that "R 2 M" signified the _Revue des deux Mondes_. The original entries stand in a column, without punctuation, and occupy two and a half pages.

Amplifications are added in brackets:--

"A. Dumas, fils; Pere prod[igue], 1/2 Monde; Fils naturel, Question D'Argent. / Jung; Stilling's Leben. [5 vols. 1806]. / J. S. Mill; Subjection of Women [1869]. / H[orace] Bushnell; Woman suffrage, etc.

[1869]. / Balzac; Le cure de Tours. / Browning; The Ring and the Book. / Ravaison [Mollien]; Rapport s. l. Philosophie [La philosophie en France au xixe Siecle. Paris, 1868]. / Goethe; Aus meinem Leben. / Coquerel fils; [Perhaps Athanase Josue Coquerel, 1820-1875, author of "Libres etudes" (1867)]. / Em. Burnouf; [La] Sc[ience] des Relig[ions, vi. Les orthodoxies, comment elles se forment et declinent] R2M. July 1, 69. / Leblais; Materialisme and Sp[iri]t[ua]l[i]sme. [Paris, 1865]. / Littre; Paroles de [la] Philos[ophie] pos[itive, 1859]. / Caro; le Mat[erialis]me and la Science [1868]. / Comte and Littre; principes de Phil. pos. [Comte, Auguste. Cours de philosophie positive, 6 vols., 2nd ed. with preface by Littre. Paris, 1864]. / Littre, Bridges; replies to Mill. [Bridges, John Henry. Unity of Comte's life and doctrine; a reply to strictures on Comte's later writings, addressed to J. S. Mill.

London, 1866]. / H. Spencer; Reasons for dissenting from Comte. / Secretan; Preface to Phil. de la Liberte [1848]. / Schopenhauer; das Metaph. Bedurfniss. / H[enry] James [sen.]; Moralism and Christianity [N.Y. 1850]. / Jouffroy; Dist. ent. Psych. and Phys. [Part of the "Melanges Philosophiques"?]. / Benedikt; Electrotherap[ie], first 100 pp. / Lecky; History of Morals [2 vols. 1869]. / Froude; Short Studies, etc. (skimmed). / Duke of Argyle; Primeval Man [1869]. / Turgeneff; Nouvelles Moscovites. / Lewes: [Biographical] Hist. of Phil., Prolegomena, Kant, Comte. / Geo. Sand; Constance Verrier. / Merimee; Lokis. R2M. 15 Sept. 69. / J. Grote; Exploratio philosophica, [1865]. / H[enry] James [Sen.]; Lectures and Miscellanies. [1852]. / [K. J?]

Simrock. / C. Reade; Griffith Gaunt. / G. Droz; Autour d'une Source. / O. Feuillet. / D. F. Strauss; Chr[istian] Marklin. Mannheim. 1851. / M.

Muller; Chips [from a German workshop] vol. I and vol. II partly. / Lis [Elisa?] Maier; W. Humboldt's Leben. [1865]. / Lis Maier; Geo. Forster's [Leben, 1856]. / Schleiermacher; Correspondenz. vol. I. / Reville; Israelitic monotheism, R2M, 1er Sept. 69. [La religion primitive d'Israel et le developpement du monotheisme]. / Deutsch; Islam.

Quarterly Rev. Oct. '69. / Fichte; Best[immung] des Gelehrten. i and ii Vorlesungen. / Ste.-Beuve; Art[icle on] Leopardi, [in] Port[raits]

cont[emporains] iii. / Westm[inster]: Rev[iew] Art. on Lecky. Oct. 69. / [T. G. von] Hippel; Selbstleben. / Vita de Leopardi. / Fichte; Bestim[mung] des Menschen. / Gwinner; Schopenhauer. /"

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

[45] _Psychology_, vol. I, p. 130, note. The quotation is literal. The subject of the foot-note in the _Psychology_ is "the author."

[46] See, for example, the use made of Touchstone's question, in the _Nation_ in 1876 (quoted on page 190 _infra_). James was certainly unconscious of the repet.i.tion when he wrote page 7 of _Some Problems of Philosophy_. Consider also, a few sentences from a notice of Morley's _Voltaire_ (_Atlantic Monthly_, 1872, vol. x.x.x, p. 624). "As the opinions of average men are swayed more by examples and types than by mere reasons, so a personality so accomplished as Mr. Morley's cannot fail by its mere attractiveness to influence all who come within its reach and inspire them with a certain friendliness toward the faith that animates it. The standard example, Goethe, is ever at hand. But to be thus widely effective, a man must not be a specialist. Mr. John Mill, weighty and many-sided as he is by nature and culture, is yet deficient in the aesthetic direction; and the same is true of M. Littre in France.

Their lances lack that final tipping with light that made Voltaire's so irresistible. What Henry IV's soldiers followed was his white plume; and that imponderable superfluity, grace, in some shape, seems one factor without which no awakening of men's sympathies on a large scale can take place."

[47] _William James_, by Theodore Flournoy (Geneva, 1911), p. 149 note.

[48] Grubbing among subtleties.

[49] Regardings, or contemplative views.

[50] MS. doubtful.

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

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

[53] It ought perhaps to be noted, even if only to dismiss the subject and prevent misapprehension, that at about this time a man whose philosophic ability was great and whose thought was vigorously materialistic was often at the house in Quincy Street. This was Chauncey Wright. He was twelve years James's senior; a man whose best work was done in conversation--who wrote little, and whose talents are now to be measured chiefly by the strong impression that he made on some of his contemporaries. "Of the two motives to which philosophic systems owe their being, the craving for consistency or unity in thought, and the desire for a solid outward warrant for our emotional ends, his mind was dominated only by the former. Never in a human head was contemplation more separated from desire." (_Vide_ James's obituary notice of Wright, contributed to the _Nation_ for Sept. 23, 1875.) It has been suggested that Wright influenced James's thinking. If so, his influence was not lasting and, in the opinion of the editor, can easily be overstated.

James was not limited to any one philosophic companionship even at this time; and if he felt Wright's influence, it is remarkable that there should be no mention of him in any of the letters or memoranda that have survived and that there was never any acknowledgment in James's subsequent writings. He was ever inclined to make acknowledgment, even to his opponents.

[54] _Cf._ the description of Henry James, Senior's, home-comings in _A Small Boy and Others_, p. 72.

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

[56] The name of a rocky promontory near Newport.

[57] Being and Non-Being.

[58] _Harvard Graduates' Magazine_, vol. XVIII, p. 631 (June, 1910).

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

[60] "The Spatial Quale," _Journal of Speculative Philosophy_, 1879, vol. XIII, p. 64.

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

[62] _Vide_ Introduction, p. 9 _supra_.

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

[64] Loquacity.

[65] Service is service.

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

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

[68] See p. 179 _supra_, and note.

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

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

James's comment should be added: "Obviously the mind of the excellent Huxley has here but two whole-souled categories, namely, revelation or imposture, to apperceive the case by. Sentimental reasons bar revelation out, for the messages, he thinks, are not romantic enough for that; fraud exists anyhow; therefore the whole thing is nothing but imposture.

The odd point is that so few of those who talk in this way realize that they and the spiritists are using the same major premise and differing only in the minor. The major premise is: 'Any spirit-revelation must be romantic.' The minor of the spiritist is: 'This _is_ romantic'; that of the Huxleyan is: 'This is dingy twaddle'--whence their opposite conclusions!" (_Memories and Studies_, pp. 185, 186.)

[71] _The Will to Believe_, etc., p. 302.

[72] _Cf._ _The Will to Believe_, etc., p. 319.

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

[74] _Mind_, 1884, vol. IX, pp. 1-26.

[75] _Unitarian Review_, Dec., 1883; vol. XX, p. 481.

[76] "The Dilemma of Determinism." _Unitarian Review_, Sept., 1884.

Republished in _The Will to Believe and Other Essays_.

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

[78]

"Why so heartlessly deceive your sons?"

LEOPARDI, _To Sylvia_.

[79] From 15 Appian Way to 18 Garden Street.

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

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

[81] Whose picture used to adorn the numerous advertis.e.m.e.nts of a patent medicine called "Mrs. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound."