The Letters of William James Volume Ii Part 33

_To Charles Eliot Norton._

PATTERDALE, ENGLAND, _July 6, 1908_.

DEAR CHARLES,--Going to Coniston Lake the other day and seeing the moving little Ruskin Museum at Coniston (admission a penny) made me think rather vividly of you, and make a resolution to write to you on the earliest opportunity. It was truly moving to see such a collection of R.'s busy handiwork, exquisite and loving, in the way of drawing, sketching, engraving and note-taking, and also such a varied lot of photographs of him, especially in his old age. Glorious old Don Quixote that he was! At Durham, where Alice and I spent three and a half delightful days at the house of F. B. Jevons, Princ.i.p.al of one of the two colleges of which the University is composed, I had a good deal of talk with the very remarkable octogenarian Dean of the Cathedral and Lord of the University, a thorough liberal, or rather radical, in his mind, with a voice like a bell, and an alertness to match, who had been a college friend of Ruskin's and known him intimately all his life, and loved him. He knew not of his correspondence with you, of which I have been happy to be able to order Kent of Harvard Square to send him a copy. His name is Kitchin.

The whole scene at Durham was tremendously impressive (though York Cathedral made the stronger impression on me). It was so unlike Oxford, so much more American in its personnel, in a way, yet nestling in the very bosom of those mediaeval stage-properties and ecclesiastical-princ.i.p.ality suggestions. Oxford is all spread out in length and breadth, Durham concentrated in depth and thickness. There is a great deal of flummery about Oxford, but I think if I were an Oxonian, in spite of my radicalism generally, I might vote against all change there. It is an absolutely unique fruit of human endeavor, and like the cathedrals, can never to the end of time be reproduced, when the conditions that once made it are changed. Let other places of learning go in for all the improvements! The world can afford to keep her one Oxford unreformed. I know that this is a superficial judgment in both ways, for Oxford does manage to keep pace with the utilitarian spirit, and at the same time preserve lots of her flummery unchanged. On the whole it is a thoroughly _democratic_ place, so far as aristocracy in the strict sense goes. But I'm out of it, and doubt whether I want ever to put foot into it again....

England has changed in many respects. The West End of London, which used at this season to be so impressive from its splendor, is now a mixed and mongrel horde of straw hats and cads of every description. Motor-buses of the most brutal sort have replaced the old carriages, Bond and Regent Streets are cheap-jack shows, everything is tumultuous and confused and has run down in quality. I have been "motoring" a good deal through this "Lake District," owing to the kindness of some excellent people in the hotel, dissenters who rejoice in the name of Squance and inhabit the neighborhood of Durham. It is wondrous fine, but especially adapted to trampers, which I no longer am. Altogether England seems to have got itself into a magnificently fine state of civilization, especially in regard to the cheery and wholesome tone of manners of the people, improved as it is getting to be by the greater infusion of the democratic temper. Everything here seems about twice as good as the corresponding thing with us. But I suspect we have the bigger eventual destiny after all; and give us a thousand years and we may catch up in many details. I think of you as still at Cambridge, and I do hope that physical ills are bearing on more gently. Lily, too, I hope is her well self again. You mustn't think of answering this, which is only an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of friendship--I shall be home almost before you can get an answer over. Love to all your circle, including Theodora, whom I miss greatly. Affectionately yours,

Wm. James.

_To Henri Bergson._

LAMB HOUSE, _July 28, 1908_.

DEAR BERGSON,--(can't we cease "Professor"-ing each other?--that t.i.tle establishes a "disjunctive relation" between man and man, and our relation should be "endosmotic" socially as well as intellectually, I think),--

_Jacta est alea_, I am not to go to Switzerland! I find, after a week or more here, that the monotony and simplification is doing my nervous centres so much good, that my wife has decided to go off with our daughter to Geneva, and to leave me alone with my brother here, for repairs. It is a great disappointment in other ways than in not seeing you, but I know that it is best. Perhaps later in the season the _Zusammenkunft_ may take place, for nothing is decided beyond the next three weeks.

Meanwhile let me say how rarely delighted your letter made me. There are many points in your philosophy which I don't yet grasp, but I have seemed to myself to understand your anti-intellectualistic campaign very clearly, and that I have really done it so well in your opinion makes me proud. I am sending your letter to Strong, partly out of vanity, partly because of your reference to him. It does seem to me that philosophy is turning towards a new orientation. Are you a reader of Fechner? I wish that you would read his "Zend-Avesta," which in the second edition (1904, I think) is better printed and much easier to read than it looks at the first glance. He seems to me of the real race of prophets, and I cannot help thinking that _you_, in particular, if not already acquainted with this book, would find it very stimulating and suggestive. His day, I fancy, is yet to come. I will write no more now, but merely express my regret (and hope) and sign myself, yours most warmly and sincerely,

Wm. James.

The subject of the next letter was a volume of "Essays Philosophical and Psychological, in Honor of William James,"[85] by nineteen contributors, which had been issued by Columbia University in the spring of 1908. A note at the beginning of the book said: "This volume is intended to mark in some degree its authors' sense of Professor James's memorable services in philosophy and psychology, the vitality he has added to those studies, and the encouragement that has flowed from him to colleagues without number. Early in 1907, at the invitation of Columbia University, he delivered a course of lectures there, and met the members of the Philosophical and Psychological Departments on several occasions for social discussion. They have an added motive for the present work in the recollections of this visit."

_To John Dewey._

RYE, SUSs.e.x, _Aug. 4, 1908_.

DEAR DEWEY,--I don't know whether this will find you in the Adirondacks or elsewhere, but I hope 'twill be on East Hill. My own copy of the Essays in my "honor," which took me by complete surprise on the eve of my departure, was too handsome to take along, so I have but just got round to reading the book, which I find at my brother Henry's, where I have recently come. It is a masterly set of essays of which we may all be proud, distinguished by good style, direct dealing with the facts, and hot running on the trail of truth, regardless of previous conventions and categories. I am sure it hitches the subject of epistemology a good day's journey ahead, and proud indeed am I that it should be dedicated to my memory.

Your own contribution is to my mind the most _weighty_--unless perhaps Strong's should prove to be so. I rejoice exceedingly that you should have got it out. No one yet has succeeded, it seems to me, in jumping into the centre of your vision. Once there, all the perspectives are clear and open; and when you or some one else of us shall have spoken the exact word that opens the centre to everyone, mediating between it and the old categories and prejudices, people will wonder that there ever could have been any other philosophy. That it is the philosophy of the future, I'll bet my life. Admiringly and affectionately yours,

Wm. James.

_To Theodore Flournoy._

LAMB HOUSE, RYE, _Aug. 9, 1908_.

DEAR FLOURNOY,--I can't make out from my wife's letters whether she has seen you face to face, or only heard accounts of you from Madame Flournoy. She reports you very tired from the "Congress"--but I don't know what Congress has been meeting at Geneva just now. I don't suppose that you will go to the philosophical congress at Heidelberg--I certainly shall not. I doubt whether philosophers will gain so much by talking with each other as other cla.s.ses of _Gelehrten_ do. One needs to _frequenter_ a colleague daily for a month before one can begin to understand him. It seems to me that the collective life of philosophers is little more than an organization of misunderstandings. I gave eight lectures at Oxford, but besides Schiller and one other tutor, only two persons ever _mentioned_ them to me, and those were the two heads of Manchester College by whom I had been invited. Philosophical work it seems to me must go on in silence and in print exclusively.

You will have heard (either directly or indirectly) from my wife of my reasons for not accompanying them to Geneva. I have been for more than three weeks now at my brother's, and am much better for the simplification. I am very sorry not to have met with you, but I think I took the prudent course in staying away.

I have just read Miss Johnson's report in the last S. P. R.

"Proceedings," and a good bit of the proofs of Piddington's on cross-correspondences between Mrs. Piper, Mrs. Verrall, and Mrs.

Holland, which is to appear in the next number. You will be much interested, if you can gather the philosophical energy, to go through such an amount of tiresome detail. It seems to me that these reports open a new chapter in the history of automatism; and Piddington's and Johnson's ability is of the highest order. Evidently "automatism" is a word that covers an extraordinary variety of fact. I suppose that you have on the whole been gratified by the "vindication" of Eusapia [Paladino] at the hands of Morselli _et al._ in Italy. Physical phenomena also seem to be entering upon a new phase in their history.

Well, I will stop, this is only a word of greeting and regret at not seeing you. I got your letter of many weeks ago when we were at Oxford.

Don't take the trouble to _write_ now--my wife will bring me all the news of you and your family, and will have given you all mine. Love to Madame F. and all the young ones, too, please. Your ever affectionate

W. J.

_To Shadworth H. Hodgson._

PAIGNTON, S. DEVON, _Oct. 3, 1908_.

DEAR HODGSON,--I have been five months in England (you have doubtless heard of my lecturing at Oxford) yet never given you a sign of life. The reason is that I have sedulously kept away from London, which I admire, but at my present time of life abhor, and only touched it two or three times for thirty-six hours to help my wife do her "shopping" (strange use for an elderly philosopher to be put to). The last time I was in London, about a month ago, I called at your affectionately remembered No. 45, only to find you gone to Yorkshire, as I feared I should. I go back in an hour, en route for Liverpool, whence, with wife and daughter, I sail for Boston in the Saxonia. I am literally enchanted with rural England, yet I doubt whether I ever return. I never had a fair chance of getting acquainted with the country here, and if I were a stout pedestrian, which I no longer am, I think I should frequent this land every summer. But in my decrepitude I must make the best of the more effortless relations which I enjoy with nature in my own country. I have seen many philosophers, at Oxford, especially, and James Ward at Cambridge; but, apart from _very_ few conversations, didn't get at close quarters with any of them, and they probably gained as little from me as I from them. "We are columns left alone, of a temple once complete." The power of mutual misunderstanding in philosophy seems infinite, and grows discouraging. Schiller of course, and his pragmatic friend Captain Knox, James Ward, and McDougall, stand out as the most satisfactory talkers. But there is too much fencing and scoring of "points" at Oxford to make construction active.

Good-bye! dear Hodgson, and pray think of me with a little of the affection and intellectual interest with which I always think of you. My Oxford lectures won't appear till next April. Don't read the extracts which the "Hibbert Journal" is publishing. They are torn out of their natural setting. I have, as you probably know, ceased teaching and am enjoying a Carnegie pension. Yours ever fondly,

Wm. James.

_To Theodore Flournoy._

LONDON, _Oct. 4, 1908_.

DEAR FLOURNOY,--I got your delightful letter duly two weeks ago, or more. I always have a bad conscience on receiving a letter from you, because I feel as if I _forced_ you to write it, and I know too well by your own confessions (as well as by my own far less extreme experience of reluctance to write) what a nuisance and an effort letters are apt to be. But no matter! this letter of yours was a good one indeed....

We sail from Liverpool the day after tomorrow, and tomorrow will be a busy day winding up our affairs and making some last purchases of small things. Alice has an insatiable desire (as Mrs. Flournoy may have noticed at Geneva) to increase her possessions, whilst I, like an American Tolstoy, wish to diminish them. The most convenient arrangement for a Tolstoy is to have an anti-Tolstoyan wife to "run the house" for him. We have been for three days in Devonshire, and for four days at Oxford previous to that. Extraordinary warm summer weather, with exquisite atmospheric effects. I am extremely glad to leave England with my last optical images so beautiful. In any case the harmony and softness of the landscape of rural England probably excels everything in the world in that line.

At Oxford I saw McDougall and Schiller quite intimately, also Schiller's friend, Capt. Knox, who, retired from the army, lives at Grundelwald, and is an extremely acute mind, and fine character, I should think. He is a militant "Pragmatist." Before that I spent three days at Cambridge, where again I saw James Ward intimately. I prophesy that if he gets his health again ... he will become also a militant pluralist of some sort.

I think he has worked out his original monistic-theistic vein and is steering straight towards a "critical point" where the umbrella will turn inside out, and not go back. I hope so! I made the acquaintance of Boutroux here last week. He came to the "Moral Education Congress" where he made a very fine address. I find him very _simpatico_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: William James and Henry Clement, at the "Putnam Shanty,"

in the Adirondacks (1907?).]

But the best of all these meetings has been one of three hours this very morning with Bergson, who is here visiting his relatives. So modest and unpretending a man, but such a genius intellectually! We talked very easily together, or rather _he_ talked easily, for he talked much more than I did, and although I can't say that I follow the folds of his system much more clearly than I did before, he has made some points much plainer. I have the strongest suspicions that the tendency which he has brought to a focus will end by prevailing, and that the present epoch will be a sort of turning-point in the history of philosophy. So many things converge towards an anti-rationalistic crystallization.