FLORENCE,Nov. 23, 1873.
BELOVEDSISTERKIN,—Your "nice long letter," as you call it, of Oct. 26 reached me five days ago, Mother's of November 4th yesterday, and with it one from Father to Harry. Though you will probably disbelieve me, I cannothelp stating how agreeable it is to me to be once more in regular communication with that which, in spite of all shortcomings, is all that has ever been vouchsafed to me in the way of a "home" (and a mother). The hotel in which we live here is anything but home-like. In fact, when the heart aches for cosiness, etc., all it can do is to turn out into the street.
I begin to feel, too, strongly that at my time of life, with such a set of desultory years behind, what a man most wants is to be settled and concentrated, to cultivate a patch of ground which may be humble but still is his own. Here all this dead civilization crowding in upon one's consciousness forces the mind open again even as the knife the unwilling oyster—and what my mind wants most now is practical tasks, not the theoretical digestion of additional masses of what to me are raw and disconnected empirical materials. I feel like one still obliged to eat more and more grapes and pears and pineapples, when the state of the system imperiously demands a fat Irish stew, or something of that sort. I knew it all before I came, however; and I hope in a fortnight to be able comparatively to disregard what lies about me and get interested in the physiological books I brought. So far I find the pictures, etc., drive my thoughts far away. I have just been reading a big German octavo, Burkhardt's "Renaissance in Italy," with the title of which you may enrich your historical consciousness, though I hardly think you need read the book. This is the place for history. I don't see how, if one lived here, historical problems could help being the most urgent ones for the mind. It would suit you admirably. Even art comes before one here much more as a problem—how to account for its development and decline—than as a refreshment and an edification. I really think that end is better served bythe stray photographs which enter our houses at home, finding us in the midst of our work and surprising us.
But here I am pouring out this one-sided splenetic humor upon you without having the least intended it when I sat down. Your pen accidentally slips into a certain vein and you must go on till you get it out clearly. If you had heard me telling Harry two or three times lately that I feared the fatal fascination of this place,—that I began to feel it taking little stitches in my soul,—you would have a different impression of my state than my above written words have left upon you.... I went out intending to stroll in the Boboli Garden, a wonderful old piece of last-century stateliness, but found it shut till twelve. So I returned to Harry's room, where I sit by the pungent wood fire writing this letter which I did not expect to begin till the afternoon, while he, just at this moment rising from the table where his quill has been busily scratching away at the last pages of his Turguenieff article, comes to warm his legs and puts on another log....
Good-bye beloved Sister, and Father and Mother.... Write repeatedly such nice long letters, and make glad the heart of both the Angel and the other brother,
W. J.
ROME,Dec. 17, 1873.
BELOVEDBEAUTLINGTON,—I cannot retire to rest on this eve of a well-filled day without imparting to thy noble nature a tithe of the enjoyment and happiness with which I am filled, and wishing you was here to take your share in it.... The barbarian mind stretches little by little to take in Rome, but I doubt if I shall ever call it the "city of my soul," or "my country." Strange to say, my very enjoymentof what here belongs to hoary eld has done more to reconcile me to what belongs to the present hour, business, factories, etc., etc., than anything I ever experienced. Every day I sally out into the sunshine and plod my way o'er steps of broken thrones and temples until one o'clock, when I repair to a certain café in the Corso, begin to eat and read "Galignani" and the "Débats," until Harry comes in with the flush of successful literary effort fading off his cheek. (It may interest the sympathetic soul of Mother to know that my diet until that hour consists of a roll, which a waiter in wedding costume brings up to my room when I rise, and three sous' worth of big roasted chestnuts, which I buy, on going out, from an old crone a few doors from the hotel. In this respect I am economical. Likewise in my total abstinence from spirituous liquors, to which Harry, I regret to say, has become an utter slave, spending a large part of his earnings in Bass's Ale and wine, and trembling with anger if there is any delay in their being brought to him.) After feeding, the Angel in his old and rather shabby striped overcoat, and I in my usual neat attire, proceed to walk together either to the big Pincian terrace which overhangs the city, and where on certain days everyone resorts, or to different churches and spots of note. I always dine at the table-d'hôte here; Harry sometimes, his indisposition lately (better the past two days) having made him prefer a solitary gorge at the restaurant.
The people in the house are hardly instructive or exciting, but at dinner and for an hour after in the dining-room they very pleasantly kill time. I am become so far Anglicized that I find myself quite fearful of speaking too much to a family of three "cads" who sit opposite me at the table-d'hôte, and of whom the young lady (though rather greasy about the face) is very handsome and intelligent. In theevening I usually light my fire and read some local book....
I got a note from Hillebrand saying Schiff would gladly let me work in his laboratory if I liked. I suppose I ought if I can, but I hanker after home even at the price of a February voyage, and I hate to spend so much money here on my mere gizzard and cheeks.—There, my sweet sister, I hope that is a sufficiently spirited epistle for 10.30P.M.When, oh, when, will you write me another like the solitary one I got from you in Florence? Seven weeks and one letter! C'est très caractéristique de vous! I wrote two days ago to Annie Ashburner. Tell the adorable Sara Sedgwick [Mrs. W. E. Darwin] that I can't possibly refrain much longer—in spite of my just resentment—from writing to her. Love to all.... Your
W. J.
After his return his college duties proved both absorbing and stimulating. Beginning, as the reader has seen, as an instructor in the Department of Natural History, charged with teaching the comparative anatomy and physiology of vertebrates, he added a course on physiological psychology in 1876, and organized the beginnings of the psychological laboratory.[55]The next year this course was transferred to the Department of Philosophy and given under the title "Psychology." He contributed numerous reviews of scientificand philosophic literature, along with a few anonymous articles, to the columns of the "Atlantic Monthly" and the "Nation," and in 1878 appeared in the "Journal of Speculative Philosophy" and the "Critique Philosophique," with three important papers entitled "Spencer's Definition of Mind as Correspondence," "Brute and Human Intellect," and "Quelques Considérations sur la Méthode Subjective."
Meanwhile his correspondence diminished to its minimum. When his brother Henry also came home to America in 1874, it ceased almost entirely. It did not begin to flow freely again, at least so far as letters are now recoverable, until after 1878.
CAMBRIDGE,June 25, 1874.
A few days ago came your letter from Florence of June 3, speaking of the glare on thepiazzaand the coolness and space of your rooms, of your late dinners and your solitude, and of the progress of your novel, and, finally, of your expected departure about the 20th; so that I suppose you are today percolating the cool arcades of Bologna or the faded beauties of Verona, or haply [are] at Venice.... As the weeks glide by, my present life and my last year's life at home seem to glide together across the five months breach that Italy made in them, and to become continuous; while those months step out of the line and become a sort of side-decoration or picture hanging vaguely in my memory. As this happens more and more, I take the greater pleasure in it. Especially does the utter friendliness of Florence, Rome, etc., grow dear to me, and get strangely mixed up with still earlier and more faded impressions, derived I know not whence, which infused into the places when I first saw them that strange thread of familiarity. The thought of theFlorentine places you name in your letters like "leiser Nachhall längst verklungner Lieder, zieht mit Errinnerungsschauer durch die Brust." I hope you'll pass through Dresden if you sail from Germany. I forgot to say that the Eagle line from Hamburg has now the largest and finest ships and the newest....
Miss Theodora Sedgwick, to whom the next letter is addressed, was a member of the Stockbridge and New York family of that name, and a sister of Mrs. Charles Eliot Norton and Mrs. William Darwin, to whom reference has already been made. At this time she was living with two maiden aunts named Ashburner, friends of James's parents, in a house on Kirkland Street, Cambridge, not far from Mr. Norton's "Shady Hill." The letter of November 14, 1866, contained an allusion to this household, and others will occur as the letters proceed.
CAMBRIDGE,Aug. 8, 1874.
HONOREDMISS,—I hope you will find the aforesaid charges moderate. When you transmit me the 90 centsstill due, please send back at the same time whatever letters of mine you may still have in your possession, and the diamonds, silks, etc., which you may have at different times been glad to receive from me. Likewise both pieces of the collar stud I so recently lavished upon you. We can then remain as strangers.
I come of a race sensitive in the extreme; more accustomed to treat than to be treated, especially in this manner; and caring for its money as little as for its life. What wonder then that the mercenary conduct of One whom I have ever fostered without hope of pecuniary reward should work like madness in my brain?
On the point of closing I see with rapture that a way of accommodation is still open! O joy! The salmon, blackberries, etc., I consumed, had a market value. By charging me for the tea 90 cents, you will make the thing reciprocal, and I will call the account square. Perhaps even then the dreadful feeling of wounded pride and Barnum-born resentment may with time fade away. Amen. Respectfully yours,
W. J.
CAMBRIDGE,Jan.[2], 1876.
...Your letter No. 2 speaking of your visit to Turguenieff was received by me duly and greatly enjoyed. I never heard you speak so enthusiastically of any human being. It is too bad he is to leave Paris; but if he gives you the "run" of Flaubert and eke George Sand, it will be so much gained. I don't think you know Miss A——, but if you did, you would thank me for pointing out to you the parallelism between her and George Sand which overwhelmed me the other day when I was calling on her, and she (who has justlost her sister B—— and had her father go through an attack of insanity) was snuggling down so hyper-comfortably into garrulity about B——, and her poor dead T—— and her dead mother, that I was fairly suffocated, just as I am by thecomfortGeorge Sand takes in telling you of the loves of servant men for ladies, and other thingscontra naturam.
Christmas passed off here in a rather wan and sallow manner. I got a gold scarf-ring from Mother and a gold watch-chain from Aunt Kate. Let me, by the way, advise you to get a scarf-ring; 't is one of the greatest inventions of modern times, in saving labor, silk and shirt fronts. Alice got a desk, and from me a Scotch terrier pup only seven weeks old, whom we call Bunch, who has almost doubled his size in a week, who is a perfect lion in determination and courage, and who don't seem to care a jot for any human society but that of Jane in the kitchen, whose person is, I suppose, pervaded by a greasy and smoky smell agreeable to his nostrils. He has a perfect passion for the dining-room; whenever he is left to himself, he travels thither and lies down under the table and takes no notice of you when you go to call him. He does not sleep half as much as Dido, never utters a sound when shut up for the night in the kitchen, and altogether fills us with a sort of awe for the Roman firmness and independence of his character. He is "animated" by a colliquative diarrhœa or cholera, which keeps us all sponging over his tracks, but which don't affect his strength or spirits a bit. He is in short a very queer substitute for poor, dear Dido....
NEWPORT,June 3, 1876.
My dear H.,—I write you after [a] considerable interval filled with too much work and weariness to make letter-writing convenient.... I ran away three days ago, therecitations being over for the year, in order to break from the studious associations of home. I have been staying at the Tweedies with Mrs. Chapman, and James Sturgis and his wife, and enjoying extremely, not the conversation indoors, but the lonely lying on the grass on the cliffs at Lyly Pond, and four or five hours yesterday at the Dumplings, feeling the moving air and the gentle living sea. There is a purity and mildness about the elements here which purges the soul of one. And I have been as if I had taken opium, not wanting to do anything else than the particular thing I happened to be doing at the moment, and feeling equally good whether I stood or walked or lay, or spoke or was silent. It's a splendid relief from the overstrain and stimulus of the past few scholastic months. I go the day after tomorrow (Monday) with the Tweedies to New York, assist at Henrietta Temple's wedding on Tuesday, and then pass on to the Centennial for a couple of days. I suppose it will be pretty tiresome, but I want to see the English pictures, which they say are a good show.... I fancy my vacationizing will be confined to visits of a week at a time to different points, perhaps the pleasantest way after all of spending it. Newport as to its villas, and all that, is most repulsive to me. I really didn't know how little charm and how much shabbiness there was about the place. There are not more than three or four houses out of the whole lot that are not offensive, in some way, externally. But the mild nature grows on one every day. This afternoon, God willing, I shall spend on Paradise.[56]
The Tweedies keep no horses, which makes one walk more or pay more than one would wish. The younger Seabury told me yesterday that he was just reading your "Roderick Hudson," but offered no [comment]. Colonel Waringsaid of your "American" to me: "I'm not a blind admirer of H. James, Jr., but I said to my wife after reading that first number, 'By Jove, I think he's hit it this time!'" I think myself the thing opens very well indeed, you have a first-rate datum to work up, and I hope you'll do it well.
Your last few letters home have breathed a tone of contentment and domestication in Paris which was very agreeable to get.... Your accounts of Ivan Sergeitch are delightful, and I envy you the possession of the young painter's intimacy. Give my best love to Ivan. I read his book which you sent home (foreign books sent by mail pay duty now, though; so send none but good ones), and although the vein of "morbidness" was so pronounced in the stories, yet the mysterious depths which his plummet sounds atone for all. It is the amount of life which a man feels that makes you value his mind, and Turguenieff has a sense of worlds within worlds whose existence is unsuspected by the vulgar. It amuses me to recommend his books to people who mention them as they would the novels of Wilkie Collins. You say we don't notice "Daniel Deronda." I find it extremely interesting. Gwendolen and her spouse are masterpieces of conception and delineation. Her ideal figures are much vaguer and thinner. But her "sapience," as you excellently call it, passes all decent bounds. There is something essentially womanish in the irrepressible garrulity of her moral reflections. Why is it that it makes women feel so good to moralize? Man philosophizes as a matter of business, because he must,—he does it to a purpose and then lets it rest; but women don't seem to get over being tickled at the discovery that they have the faculty; hence the tedious iteration and restlessness of George Eliot's commentary on life. The La Farges are absent. Yours always,
W. J.
Under the title "Bain and Renouvier," James contributed a review containing a brief discussion of free will and determinism to the "Nation" of June 8, 1876. He of course sent a copy to Renouvier. The following letter begins with a reference to Renouvier's acknowledgment. James had been acquainted with Renouvier's work since 1868, when, as the reader will recall, he read a number of the "Année Philosophique," Renouvier's annual survey of contemporary philosophy, for the first time. The diary entry already quoted from the year 1870 has shown what effect Renouvier's essays then had on his mind. His admiration for the elder philosopher was great and he cherished it loyally for the rest of his life. Indeed, in the unfinished manuscript, which was published posthumously as "Some Problems of Philosophy," James looked back at the formative period of his own philosophical thinking and wrote: "Renouvier was one of the greatest of philosophic characters, and but for the decisive impression made on me in the seventies by his masterly advocacy of pluralism I might never have got free from the monistic superstition under which I had grown up." In time he made Renouvier's acquaintance in France and wrote to him often. He examined and discussed his writings with college classes. Occasionally he reported these discussions and read Renouvier's answers to the students. On the other side, Renouvier paid James the compliment of printing or translating several of his papers in the "Critique Philosophique," and thus brought him early to the notice of French readers.
CAMBRIDGE,July 29, 1876.
My dear Sir,—I am quite overcome by your appreciation of my poor little article in the "Nation." It gratifiesme 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, butstudentsof 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" twoprofessorsof 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 theSein und Nichts.[57]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 today, unable wholly to commit myself to your position,to burn my ships behind me, and proclaim the belief in theoneand 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" as a 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 avivatto 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, [Shadworth] Hodgson, whose "Time and Space" was published in 1865 by Longmans, and whose "Theory of Practice," in two volumes, followed it in 1870.
In connection with the allusion to two professors of philosophy who hardly knew Renouvier's name, it would be fair to say that James was acutely conscious of the prevailing academic conditions. He was, in fact, one among a few younger men who were already rejuvenating the teaching of philosophy in American colleges. They began their work under difficult conditions.
Dr. G. Stanley Hall wrote an open letter to the "Nation" in 1876, in which he said:—
"I have often wished that the 'Nation' would devotesome space to the condition of philosophy in American colleges. Within the last few years I have visited the class-rooms of many of our best institutions, and believe that there are few if any branches which are so inadequately taught as those generally roughly classed as philosophy. Deductive logic, or the syllogism, is the most thoroughly dwelt upon, while induction, æsthetic and psychological and ethical studies, and especially the history of the leading systems of philosophy, ancient and modern, and the marvellous new developments in England and Germany, are almost entirely ignored. The persistent use of Hamilton, Butler's 'Analogy' and a score of treatises on 'moral science,' which deduce all the ground of obligation from theological considerations, as text-books, is largely responsible for the supposed unpopularity of the studies.... I think the success which has attended the recent lecture courses at Cambridge on modern systems of philosophy, and on æsthetic studies of literature and the fine arts, shows plainly how much might be accomplished in this direction by the proper method of instruction."
James's comment on this, printed anonymously in the "Nation" for September 21, 1876, expressed his view of the situation more fully:—
"The philosophical teaching, as a rule, in our higher seminaries is in the hands of the president, who is usually a minister of the Gospel, and, as he more often owes his position to general excellence of character and administrative faculty than to any speculative gifts or propensities, it usually follows that 'safeness' becomes the main characteristic of his tuition; that his classes are edified rather than awakened, and leave college with the generous youthful impulse, to reflect on the world and our position in it, rather dampened and discouraged than stimulated by the lifelessdiscussions and flabby formulas they have had to commit to memory....
"Let it not be supposed that we are prejudging the question whether the final results of speculation will be friendly or hostile to the formulas of Christian thought. All we contend for is that we, like the Greeks and the Germans, should now attack things as if there were no official answer preoccupying the field. At present we are bribed beforehand by our reverence or dislike for the official answer; and the free-thinking tendency which the 'Popular Science Monthly,' for example, represents, is condemned to an even more dismal shallowness than the spiritualistic systems of our text-books of 'Mental Science.' We work with one eye on our problem, and with the other on the consequences to our enemy or to our lawgiver, as the case may be; the result in both cases is mediocrity.
"If the best use of our colleges is to give young men a wider openness of mind and a more flexible way of thinking than special technical training can generate, then we hold that philosophy (taken in the broad sense in which our correspondent uses the word) is the most important of all college studies. However skeptical one may be of the attainment of universal truths (and to make our position more emphatic, we are willing here to concede the extreme Positivistic position), one can never deny that philosophic study means the habit of always seeing an alternative, of not taking the usual for granted, of making conventionalities fluid again, of imagining foreign states of mind. In a word, it means the possession of mental perspective. Touchstone's question, 'Hast any philosophy in thee, shepherd?' will never cease to be one of the tests of a wellborn nature. It says, Is there space and air in your mind, or must your companions gasp for breath whenever theytalk with you? And if our colleges are to make men, and not machines, they should look, above all things, to this aspect of their influence....
"As for philosophy, technically so called, or the reflection of man on his relations with the universe, its educational essence lies in the quickening of the spirit to itsproblems. What doctrines students take from their teachers are of little consequence provided they catch from them the living, philosophic attitude of mind, the independent, personal look at all the data of life, and the eagerness to harmonize them....
"In short, philosophy, like Molière, claims her own where she finds it. She finds much of it today in physics and natural history, and must and will educate herself accordingly.... Meanwhile, when we find announced that the students in Harvard College next year may study any or all of the following works under the guidance of different professors,—Locke's 'Essay,' Kant's 'Kritik,' Schopenhauer and Hartmann, Hodgson's 'Theory of Practice,' and Spencer's 'Psychology,'—we need not complain of universal academic stagnation, even today."
Marriage—Contract for the Psychology—European Colleagues—Death of his Parents
EARLYin 1876 James had been introduced by their common friend Thomas Davidson (that ardent and lovable man whom he sketched with incomparable strokes in "A Knight Errant of the Intellectual Life") to Miss Alice H. Gibbens, and the next day he wrote to his brother Wilky that he had met "the future Mrs. W. J." Miss Gibbens had grown up in Weymouth, a pleasant little Massachusetts town in which several generations of her ancestors had lived comfortably and which was then still untouched by the "development" that later converted it and its neighbour, Quincy, into unseemly stone-quarriers' suburbs. In 1876 she had just returned, with her widowed mother and two younger sisters, from a five-years' residence in Europe and was teaching in a school for girls in Boston. On July 10, 1878, after a short engagement, he and Miss Gibbens were married by the Reverend Rufus Ellis at the house of the bride's grandmother in Boston.
It must be left to a later day and a less intimate and partial hand to do adequate justice to a marriage which was happy in the rarest and fullest sense, and which was soon to work an abiding transformation in James's health and spirits. No mere devotion could have achieved the skill and care with which his wife understood and helped him. Family duties and responsibilities, often grave and worrisome enough, weighed lightly in the balance against thetranquillity and confidence that his new domesticity soon brought him. During the twenty-one years that immediately followed his marriage he accomplished an amount of teaching, college committee-service and administration, friendly and helpful personal intercourse with his students, reading and book-writing, original research, not to speak of his initial excursions into the field of psychical research, and a good deal of popular lecturing to eke out his income, that would have astonished anyone who had known him only during the early seventies, and that would have honored the capacity and endurance of any man. The serener tone of his letters soon contrasts itself with much that has gone before. The occasional references to fatigue, insomnia, and eye-strain, which still occur in his correspondence are explained by the amount of work he imposed upon himself rather than by the lack of strength with which he met his tasks.
Meanwhile his wife, who entered into all his plans and undertakings with unfailing understanding and high spirit, stood guard over his library door, protected him from interruptions and distractions, managed the household and the children and the family business, helped him to order his day and to see and entertain his friends at convenient times, sped him off on occasional much-needed vacations, and encouraged him to all his major undertakings, with a sustaining skill and cheer which need not be described to anyone who knew his household. To the importance of her companionship it is still, happily, impossible to do justice. If consulted, she would not tolerate even this allusion; yet to gloss over her sustaining influence entirely would be to do injustice to James himself.
The summer of 1878 was momentous in James's life foranother reason. In June, one month before his marriage, he contracted with Messrs. Henry Holt & Company to write a volume on Psychology for the "American Science Series" that they were beginning to publish. He was asked by Mr. Holt, in the course of preliminary correspondence, whether he could deliver the manuscript in a year's time. James replied (June, 1878): "My other engagements and my health both forbid the attempt to execute the work rapidly. Its quality too might then suffer. I don't think I could finish it inside of two years—say the fall of 1880." Thus he proposed to throw the book off rapidly. He doubtless conceived of it in the beginning as a more or less literary survey of the subject as it was then known, and he certainly did not foresee that he was going to devote twelve years of critical study and original research to its preparation.
Meanwhile, immediately after their marriage, James took his wife to the upper end of Keene Valley in the Adirondacks for the rest of the summer. They both knew and loved the region already. Indeed, although there has been no occasion to mention it before, Keene Valley had already become for James the playground toward which he turned most eagerly when summer came. It never lost its charm for him; he managed to spend a week or two of almost every year there or nearby; and allusions to the region will appear in a number of later letters.
At the head of these valleys, in the basin of the Ausable Lakes and on the surrounding slopes of the most interesting group of mountains in the Adirondacks, a great tract of forest has been preserved. Giant, Noonmark, Colvin, and the Gothics raise their splendid ridges and summits to the enclosing horizon, and Dix, Haystack, and Marcy, thelast the highest mountain of the Adirondack range, are within a day's walk of the little community that used to be known as "Beede's." Where the Ausable Club's picturesque golf-course is now laid out, the fields of Smith Beede's farm then surrounded his primitive, white-painted hotel. Half a mile to the eastward, in a patch of rocky pasture beside Giant Brook, stood the original Beede farm-house, and this Henry P. Bowditch, Charles and James Putnam, and William James had bought for a few hundred dollars (subject to Beede's cautious proviso in the deed that "the purchasers are to keep no boarders"). They had adapted the little story-and-a-half dwelling to their own purposes and converted its surrounding sheds and pens into habitable shanties of the simplest kind. So they established a sort of camp, with the mountains for their climbing, the brook to bathe in, and the primeval forest fragrant about them.
With a friend or native guide,—or often alone, with a book and lunch in his light rücksack,—James would go off for a long day's walk on one of the mountain trails. He liked to start early and to spend several hours at mid-day stretched out on the sheltered side of an open ridge or summit. In this way he would combine a day of outdoor exercise with fifty to eighty pages of professional reading, the daily stint to which he often held himself in his holidays.
In the summer of seventy-eight he planned to combine this sort of refreshment with work on the "Psychology." The plan seemed a little innocent to at least one friend,—Francis J. Child,—who said in a letter to James Russell Lowell: "William has already begun a Manual of Psychology—in the honeymoon;—but they are both writing it."
[Dictated to Mrs. James]
KEENEVALLEY,Aug. 16[1878].
CARISSIMO,—Daily since the first instant have we trembled with joyous expectancy of your holiday face arriving at our door. Daily have we dashed the teardrop of disappointment from our common eye! And now to get a letter instead of your revered form! It is shameful. We are dying with the tedium of each other's society and you would make the wheels of life go round again. Your excursion to Scarborough is simply criminal under the circumstances. You know we longed to see you. It is not too late to repair your fault, for although we shall not outstay the 1st of September, you would find the Putnams and the best thirty-five-year-old medical society in Boston to keep you company after we go. You had better come from Scarborough through Portland direct to Burlington by the White Mt. R.R. From Burlington take boat to Westport, whence stage to Beede's and our beating heart. But such is the crassitude of your malignity that after this we hardly dare expect you. Seriously, how could you be so insane?
As for the remaining matter of your somewhat illegible letter, what is this mythological and poetical talk about psychology and Psyche and keeping back a manuscript composed during a honeymoon? The only Psyche now recognized by science is a decapitated frog whose writhings express deeper truths than your weakminded poets ever dreamed.She(not Psyche but the bride) loves all these doctrines which are quite novel to her mind, hitherto accustomed to all sorts of mysticism and superstitions. She swears entirely by reflex action now, and believes in universalNothwendigkeit. Hope not with your ballad-mongering ever to gain an influence.
We have spent, however, a ballad-like summer in this delicious cot among the hills. We only needed crooks and a flock of sheep. I need not say that our psychic reaction has been one of content—perhaps as great as ever enjoyed by man.
So farewell, false friend, till such near time as your ehrwürdig person decorate our hearth at Mrs. Hanks's in Harvard St.
Communicate our hearty love to Mrs. Child and believe us your always doting
(W. and A.) J.
And for Heaven's sakecomewhile yet there is time!
Wm.
When the College opened in the autumn of seventy-eight James and his wife returned to Cambridge and lived for a few months in lodgings at 387 Harvard Street. The next letter begins a series from which a number of later letters will be given. One of the warmest of James's lifelong friendships was with Miss Frances R. Morse of Boston. The "exquisite Mary" referred to near the end is her sister, later Mrs. John W. Elliot.
[Dictated to Mrs. James]
CAMBRIDGE,Dec. 26, 1878.
Ourdear Fanny,—I (W.) shield myself under my wife's handwriting to drop that formal style of address which has so long cast its cold shadow over our intercourse, and for which, now that I have become an old fogy whilst you still remain a blooming child, there seems no further good reason. Are you willing that henceforward we should call each other by our first names? If so, respond in kind. Ihave got into the habit of dictating toherall that I write, in order to save my eyes. This letter is from both of us.
Your letter from Brighton of Oct. 15th was duly and gladly received. You have since then seen a great many things, and we have heard of you occasionally, latest of your ascent of the Nile with the Longfellows. They will be pleasant companions and I hope the long rest, delicious climate and beautiful outlook of that voyage will do —— a world of good. It is too pitiful to think of her breaking down just at a time when one's active faculties have so much incitement to exert themselves. I am glad your mother is so much better. And how you will enjoy the sights of the winter! Don't you wish you had taken history instead of English literature!
We are very happily "boarding" on the corner of Harvard and Ware Street, next door to old Mrs. Cary's, where the Tappans used to live. We have absolutely no housekeeping trouble; we live surrounded by our wedding presents, and can devote all our energies to studying our lessons, dining with our respective mothers-in-law, receiving and repaying our "calls," which average one a day, and anxiously keeping our accounts in a little book so as to see where the trouble is if both ends don't meet.
We meant to have sent you this letter on Christmas day, but it was crowded out by many interruptions. We had, considering the age of the world and the hard times, quite a show of Xmas gifts and mild festivities.
...I suppose you get your "Nation" regularly on the Nile, so I make no comments on public affairs. We all feel sorry for poor old England just now. It really seems as if with us things were settling down upon a solid and orderly basis of general frugality. Keen cold weather, bare ground, and clear sky, west wind filling the air with clouds of frozendust, and an engagement at the dentist's in an hour from this will seem to you on the Nile like tales told by an idiot. Still they are true for me. Pray write again and let us hear that you are all well, especially the exquisite Mary, to whom give lots of love, and with plenty to your parents and self, believe me, yours faithfully,
WM. JAMES.
The passage which follows is taken from a letter to Mrs. James, of about this time. It is so unusual a bit of self-analysis that it is included here. James himself never failed to recognize that every man's thought is biased by his temperament as well as guided by purely rational considerations.
...I have often thought that the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: "Thisis the real me!" And afterwards, considering the circumstances in which the man is placed, and noting how some of them are fitted to evoke this attitude, whilst others do not call for it, an outside observer may be able to prophesy where the man may fail, where succeed, where be happy and where miserable. Now as well as I can describe it, this characteristic attitude in me always involves an element of active tension, of holding my own, as it were, and trusting outward things to perform their part so as to make it a full harmony, but without anyguarantythat they will. Make it a guaranty—and the attitude immediately becomes to my consciousness stagnant and stingless. Takeaway the guaranty, and I feel (provided I amüberhauptin vigorous condition) a sort of deep enthusiastic bliss, of bitter willingness to do and suffer anything, which translates itself physically by a kind of stinging pain inside my breast-bone (don't smile at this—it is to me an essential element of the whole thing!), and which, although it is a mere mood or emotion to which I can give no form in words, authenticates itself to me as the deepest principle of all active and theoretic determination which I possess....
W. J.
The next letter contains the first reference to work on the "Psychology." It also introduces into this volume the name and personality of a colleague-to-be with whom James's relations were destined to be close and permanent.
Josiah Royce was then a young man "from the intellectual barrens of California" whose brilliant work was still to be done, and whose philosophic genius had not yet been disclosed to the public, although it may fairly be said to have been announced by every line of his engagingly Socrates-like face and figure. He had been born and brought up among the most primitive surroundings in Grass Valley, California, and won his way to a brief period of study in Germany and to a degree at Johns Hopkins in 1878. While yet a student there, he paid a visit to Cambridge, and he has left his own quotable record of the meeting which resulted, and of what followed.
"My real acquaintance with [James] began one summer-day in 1877, when I first visited him in [his father's] house on Quincy Street, and was permitted to pour out my soul to somebody who really seemed to believe that a young man might rightfully devote his life to philosophy if he chose. I was then a student at the Johns Hopkins University. Theopportunities for a life-work in philosophy in this country were few. Most of my friends and advisers had long been telling me to let the subject alone. Perhaps, so far as I was concerned, their advice was sound; but in any case I was, so far, incapable of accepting that advice. Yet if somebody had not been ready to tell me that I had a right to work for truth in my own way, I should ere long have been quite discouraged. I do not know what I then could have done. James found me at once—made out what my essential interests were at our first interview, accepted me with all my imperfections, as one of those many souls who ought to be able to find themselves in their own way, gave a patient and willing ear to just my variety of philosophical experience, and used his influence from that time on, not to win me as a follower, but to give me my chance. It was upon his responsibility that I was later led to get my first opportunities here at Harvard."[58]
The opportunities did not ripen until 1882-83, however; and in the meanwhile Royce returned to the young University of California as an instructor in logic and rhetoric. Letters written to him there will show how cordially James continued to sympathize with the aspirations of his young friend, and how eagerly he fostered the possibility of an appointment to the Harvard philosophical department. When the opportunity arose, James seized it. Thereafter he and Royce saw each other so constantly in Cambridge that there were not many occasions for either to write letters to the other. Instead, allusions to Royce appear frequently in the letters to other people.
The philosophical club which is alluded to at the end of the letter was presided over by Dr. W. T. Harris and held informal meetings in Boston during this one winter.Its purpose was to read and discuss Hegel. Dr. C. C. Everett, Prof. G. H. Palmer, and Thomas Davidson were among the members.
CAMBRIDGE,Feb. 16[1879].
My dear Royce,—Your letter was most welcome. I had often found myself wondering how you were getting on, and your wail as the solitary philosopher between Behrings' Strait and Tierra del Fuego has a grand, lonesome picturesqueness about it. I am sorry your surroundings are not more mentally congenial. But recollect your extreme youth and the fact that you are making a living and practising yourself in the pedagogic art,überhaupt. You might be forced to do something much farther away from your chosen line, and even then not make a living. I think you are a lucky youth even as matters stand. Unexpected chances are always turning up. A fortnight ago President Eliot was asked to recommend some one for a $5000 professorship of philosophy in the New York City College. One Griffin of Amherst was finally appointed. I imagine that Gilman [of Johns Hopkins] is keeping his eye on you and only waiting for the disgrace of youth to fade from your person.
I liked your article on Schiller very much, and hope you will send more to Harris. That most villainous of editors, as I am told, has himself been to Baltimore lately as an office-seeker. But the rumor may be false. In some respects he might be a useful man for the Johns Hopkins University, but I would give no more for his judgment than for that of a Digger Indian. I hope you will write something about Hodgson. He is quite as worthy as Kant of supporting any number of parasites and partial assimilators of hissubstance. My sentence, I perceive, has a rather uncomplimentary sound. I meant only to say that you should not be deterred from treating him in your own way from fear of inadequacy. All his commentators must undoubtedly be inadequate for some time to come; but they will all help each other out. He seems to me the wealthiest mine of thought I ever met with.
With me, save for my eyes, things are jogging along smoothly. I am writing (very slowly) what may become a text-book of psychology. A proposal from Gilman to teach in Baltimore three months yearly for the next three years had to be declined as incompatible with work here. I will send you a corrected copy of Harris's journal with my article on Space, which was printed without my seeing the proof.
I suppose you subscribe to "Mind." The only decent thing I have ever written will, I hope, appear in the July number of that sheet.[59]The delays of publication are fearful. Most of this was written in 1877. If it ever sees the light, I hope you will let me know what you think of it, and how it tallies with your own theory of the Concept, which latter I would fain swallow and digest. I wish you belonged to our philosophic club here. It is very helpful to the uprooting of weeds from one's own mind as well as the detection of beams in one's neighbor's eyes. Write often and believe me faithfully yours,
WM. JAMES.
CAMBRIDGE,Feb. 3, 1880.
Beloved Royce!—So far was I from having forgotten you that I had been revolving in my mind, on the very day when your letter came, the rhetorical formulas of objurgation with which I was to begin a page of inquiries of you: whether you were dead and buried or had become an idiot or were sick or blind or what, that you sent no word of yourself.Iam blind as ever, which may excuse my silence.
First of allGlückwünscheas to yourVerlobung! which, like the true philosopher that you are, you mention parenthetically and without names, dates, numbers of dollars, etc., etc. I think it shows great sense in her, and no small amount of it in you, whoe'er she be. I have found in marriage a calm and repose I never knew before, and only wish I had done the thing ten years earlier. I think the lateness of our usual marriages is a bad thing, and hope your engagement will not last very long.
It is refreshing to hear your account of philosophic work.... I'm sorry you've given up your article on Hodgson. Heisobscure enough, and makes me sometimes wonder whether theignotumdoes not pass itself off for themagnificoin his pages. I enclose his photograph as a loan, trusting you will return it soon. I will never write again for Harris's journal. He refused an article of mine a year ago "for lack of room," and has postponed the printing of two admirable original articles by T. Davidson and Elliot Cabot for the last ten months or more, in order to accommodate Mrs. Channing's verses and Miss——'s drivel about the school of Athens, etc., etc. It is too loathsome. Harris has resigned his school position in St. Louis and will, I am told, come East to live. I know not whether he means to lay siege to the Johns Hopkins professorship.My ignorant prejudice against all Hegelians, except Hegel himself, grows wusser and wusser. Their sacerdotal airs! and their sterility! Contemplating their navels and the syllableoum! My dear friend Palmer, assistant professor of philosophy here, is already one of the white-winged band, having been made captive by Caird in two summers of vacation in Scotland.... The ineffectiveness and impotence of the ending of [Caird's] work on Kant seem to me simply scandalous, after its pretentious (and able) beginning. What do you think of Carveth [Reid]'s Essay on Shadworth [Hodgson]? I haven't read it. Our Philosophic Club here is given up this year—I think we're all rather sick of each other's voices. My teaching is small in numbers, though my men are good. I've tried Renouvier as a text-book—for the last time! His exposition offers too many difficulties. I enjoyed your Rhapsody on Space, and hereby pledge myself to buy two copies of your work ten years hence, and to devote the rest of my life to the propagation of its doctrines. I despise my own article,[60]which was dashed off for a momentary purpose and published for another. But I don't see why its main doctrine, from a psychologic and sublunary point of view, is not sound; and I think I can, if my psychology ever gets writ, set it down in decently clear and orderly form. Alldeducersof space are, I am sure, mythologists. You are, after all, not so very much isolated in California. We are all isolated—"columns left alone of a temple once complete," etc. Books are our companions more than men. But I wish nevertheless, and firmly expect, that somehow or other you will get a call East, and within my humble sphere of power I will do what I can to further that end. My accursed eye-sight balks me always about study and production.Ora pro me!With most respectful and devout regards to the fair Object, believe me always your
WM. JAMES.
CAMBRIDGE,June 1, 1880.
My dear Monsieur Renouvier,—My last lesson in the course on your "Essais" took place today. The final examination occurs this week. The students have been profoundly interested, though their reactions on your teaching seem as diverse as their personalities; one (the maturest of all) being yours body and soul, another turning out a strongly materialistic fatalist! and the rest occupying positions of mixed doubt and assent; all however (but one) being convinced by your treatment of freedom and certitude.
As for myself, I must frankly confess to you that I am more unsettled than I have been for years. I have read several times over your reply to Lotze, and your reply to my letter. The latter was fully discussed in the class. The former seems to me a perfectly masterly expression of a certain intellectual position, and with the latter, I think it makes it perfectly clear to me where our divergence lies. I can formulate all your reasonings for myself, but—dare I say it?—they fail to awaken conviction. It seems as if, the simpler the point, the more hopeless the disagreement in philosophy. But I will enter into no further discussion now. I think it will be profitable for me, for some time to come, inwardly to digest the matters in question and your utterances before trying to articulate any more opinions.
I am overwhelmed with duties at present, and shall very shortly sail for England to pass part of the vacation; maybe I shall get to the Continent and see you. If we meet, I hope you will treat my heresies on the question of theInfinite with the indulgence and magnanimity which your doctrine of freedom in theoretic affirmations exacts!! I will send you in a day or two an essay which develops your psychology of the voluntary process, and which I hope will give you pleasure.
Pray excuse the haste and superficiality of this note, which is only meant to explain why I do not write at greater length and to announce my hope of soon grasping you by the hand and assuring you in person of my devotion and indebtedness. Always yours,
WM. JAMES.
James sailed in June a good deal fagged by his year's work, and got back by the first week of September, having spent most of the interval seeking solitude and refreshment in the Alps and Northern Italy. On his way home he paid his respects to Renouvier at Avignon, but otherwise made no effort to meet his European colleagues.
CAMBRIDGE,Dec. 27, 1880.
My dear Monsieur Renouvier,—Your note and the conclusion of my article in the "Critique" came together this morning. It gives me almost a feeling of pain that you, at your age and with your achievements, should be spending your time in translating my feeble words, when by every principle of right I should be engaged in turning your invaluable writings into English. The state of my eyes is, as you know, my excuse for this as for all other shortcomings. I have not even read the whole of your translation of [my] "Feeling of Effort," though the passages I have perused have seemed to me excellently well done. My exposition strikes me as rather complicated now. It was written in great haste and,were I to rewrite it, it should be simpler. The omissions of which you speak are of no importance whatever.
I have read your discussion with Lotze in the "Revue Philosophique" and agree with Hodgson that you carry off there the honors of the battle.Quant au fond de la question, however, I am still in doubt and wait for the light of further reflexion to settle my opinion. The matter in my mind complicates itself with the question of a universal ego. If time and space are notin se, do we not need an enveloping ego to make continuous the times and spaces, not necessarily coincident, of the partial egos? On this question, as I told you, I will not fail to write again when I get new light, which I trust may decide me in your favor.
My principal amusement this winter has been resisting the inroads of Hegelism in our University. My colleague Palmer, a recent convert and a man of much ability, has been making an active propaganda among the more advanced students. It is a strange thing, this resurrection of Hegel in England and here, after his burial in Germany. I think his philosophy will probably have an important influence on the development of our liberal form of Christianity. It gives a quasi-metaphysic backbone which this theology has always been in need of, but it is too fundamentally rotten and charlatanish to last long. As a reaction against materialistic evolutionism it has its use, only this evolutionism is fertile while Hegelism is absolutely sterile.
I think often of the too-short hours I spent with you and Monsieur Pillon and wish they might return. Believe me with the warmest thanks and regards, yours faithfully,
WM. JAMES.
In August of 1882 James arranged with the College for a year's leave of absence, and sailed for Europe again, thistime with the double purpose of giving himself a vacation and of meeting some of the European investigators who were working on the problems in which he had become absorbed.
He landed in England, and paused there just long enough to throw his brother Henry into the state of half-resentful bewilderment that invariably resulted from their first European reunions. Henry, to whom Europe, and England in particular, had already become an absorbing passion and for whom American reactions upon Europe were still an unexhausted theme, greeted every arriving American with eager curiosity and a confident expectation that the stranger would "register" impressions of the most charming enchantment and pleasure for his edification. William, on the other hand, was always most under the European spell when in America; and—whether moved by the constitutional restlessness that seized him so soon as ever he began to travel, or by the perversity that was a fascinating trait in his character and was usually provoked by his younger brother's admiring neighborhood—he was always most ardently American when on European soil. Thus his first words of greeting to Henry on stepping out of the steamer-train were: "My!—how cramped and inferior England seems! After all, it's poor old Europe, just as it used to be in our dreary boyhood! America may be raw and shrill, but I could never live with this as you do! I'm going to hurry down to Switzerland [or wherever] and then home again as soon as may be. It was a mistake to come over! I thought it would do me good. Hereafter I'll stay at home. You'll have to come to America if you want to see the family."
The effect on Henry can better be imagined than described. Time never accustomed him to these collisions,even though he learned to expect them. England inferior! A mistake to come abroad! Horror and consternation are weak terms by which to describe his feelings; and nothing but a devotion seldom existing between brothers, and a lively interest in the astonishing phenomenon of such a reaction, ever carried him through the hour. He usually ended by hurrying William onward—anywhere—within the day if possible—and remained alone to ejaculate, to exclaim and to expatiate for weeks on the rude and exciting cyclone that had burst upon him and passed by.
On this occasion it took only two days for William to start on from London for the Rhine, Nüremburg, and Vienna; then to Venice, where he idled for the first half of October. After this short pause he returned to Prague; and then, working northward, consumed the autumn in visiting the universities of Dresden, Berlin, Leipzig, Liège and Paris. Intimate letters to his wife, who had remained in Cambridge with their two little boys, are almost the only ones that survive. A few passages from these will therefore be included.
VIENNA,Sept. 24, 1882.
...I wish you could have been with me yesterday to see some French pictures at the "Internationale Kunst Ausstellung"; they gave an idea of the vigor of France in that way just now. One, a peasant woman, in all her brutish loutishness sitting staring before her at noonday on the grass she's been cutting, while the man lies flat on his back with straw hat over face. She with such a look of infinite unawakenedness, such childlike virginity under her shapeless body and in her face, as to make it a poem.[61]Dear, perhaps the deepest impression I've got since I've been in Germany is that made on me by the indefatigable beavers of old wrinkled peasant women, striding like men through the streets, dragging their carts or lugging their baskets, minding their business, seeming to notice nothing, in the stream of luxury and vice, but belonging far away, to something better and purer. Their poor, old, ravaged and stiffened faces, their poor old bodies dried up with ceaseless toil, their patient souls make me weep. "They are our conscripts." They are the venerable ones whom we should reverence. All the mystery of womanhood seems incarnated in their ugly being—the Mothers! the Mothers! Ye are all one! Yes, Alice dear, what I love in you is only what these blessed old creatures have; and I'm glad and proud, when I think of my own dear Mother with tears running down my face, to know that she is one with these.[62]Good-night, good-night!...
Aussig, Bohemia,Nov. 2, 1882.
...As for Prague,veni, vidi, vici. I went there with much trepidation to do my social-scientific duty. The mighty Hering in especial intimidated me beforehand; but having taken the plunge, the cutaneous glow and "euphoria" (videdictionary) succeeded, and I have rarely enjoyed a forty-eight hours better, in spite of the fact that the good and sharp-nosed Stumpf (whose book "Über die Raumvorstellungen" I verily believe thou art capable of never having noticed the cover of!) insisted on trotting me about, day and night, over the whole length and breadth of Prague, and that [Ernst] Mach (Professor of Physics), genius of all trades, simply took Stumpf's place to do thesame. I heard [Ewald] Hering give a very poor physiology lecture and Mach a beautiful physical one. I presented them with my visiting card, saying that I was with their "Schriften sehr vertraut und wollte nicht eher Prague verlassen als bis ich wenigstens ein Paar Worte mit ihnen umtauschte," etc.[63]They received me with open arms. I had an hour and a half's talk with Hering, which cleared up some things for me. He asked me to come to his house that evening, but I gave an evasive reply, being fearful of boring him. Meanwhile Mach came to my hotel and I spent four hours walking and supping with him at his club, an unforgettable conversation. I don't think anyone ever gave me so strong an impression of pure intellectual genius. He apparently has read everything and thought about everything, and has an absolute simplicity of manner and winningness of smile when his face lights up, that are charming.
With Stumpf I spent five hours on Monday evening (this is Thursday), three on Wednesday morning and four in the afternoon; so I feel rather intimate. A clear-headed and just-minded, though pale and anxious-looking man in poor health. He had another philosopher named Marty [?] to dine with me yesterday—jolly young fellow. My nativeGeschwätzigkeit[64]triumphed over even the difficulties of the German tongue; I careered over the field, taking the pitfalls and breastworks at full run, and was fairly astounded myself at coming in alive. I learned a good many things from them, both in the way of theory and fact, and shall probably keep up a correspondence with Stumpf. They are not so different from us as we think. Their greater thoroughness is largely the result of circumstances. I foundthat I had a morecosmopolitanknowledge of modern philosophic literature than any of them, and shall on the whole feel much less intimidated by the thought of their like than hitherto.
My letters will hereafter, I feel sure, have a more jocund tone. Damn Italy! It isn't a good thing to stay with one's inferiors. With the nourishing breath of the German air, and the sort of smoky and leathery German smell, vigor and good spirits have set in. I have walked well and slept well and eaten well and read well, and in short begin to feel as I expected I should when I decided upon this arduous pilgrimage. Prague is a —— city—the adjective is hard to find; not magnificent, but everything is too honest and homely,—we have in fact no English word for the peculiar quality that good German things have, of depth, solidity, picturesqueness, magnitude and homely goodness combined. They have worked out a really great civilization. "Dienst ist Dienst"![65]said the gateman of a certain garden yesterday afternoon whom Stumpf was trying to persuade to let me in, as an American, to see the view five minutes after the closing hour had struck.Dienst ist Dienst.That is really the German motto everywhere—and I should like to know what American would ever think of justifying himself by just that formula. I say German of Prague, for it seems to me, in spite of the feverish nationalism of the natives, to be outwardly a pure German city....
BERLIN,Nov. 9, 1882.
...Yesterday I went to the veterinary school to see H. Munk, the great brain vivisector. He was very cordial and poured out a torrent of talk for one and a half hours,though he could show me no animals. He gave me one of his new publications and introduced me to Dr. Baginsky (Professor Samuel Porter's favorite authority on the semicircular canals, whose work I treated superciliously in my article). So we opened on the semicircular canals, and Baginsky's torrent of words was even more overwhelming than Munk's. I never felt quite so helpless and small-boyish before, and am to this hour dizzy from the onslaught. In the evening at the house of Gizycki (a Docent on Ethics), to a "privatissimum" with a supper after it. Good, square, deep-chested talk again, which I couldn't help contrasting with the whining tones of our students and of some of the members of the Hegel Club—I hate to leave the wholesome, tonic atmosphere, the land where one talks best when he talks manliest—slowest, distinctest, with most deliberate emphasis and strong voice....
LEIPZIG,Nov. 11, 1882.
...Jones spoilt my incipient nap this afternoon and I adjourned to his room to meet Smith and Brown[66]again, with another American wild-cat reformer. Jones is too many for me—I'm glad I'm to get far off. Religion is well, moral regeneration is well, so is improvement of society, so are the courage, disinterestedness, ideality of all sorts, these men show in their lives; but I verily believe that the condition of being a man of the world, a gentleman, etc., carries something with it, an atmosphere, an outlook, a play, that all these things together fail to carry, and that is worth them all. I got so suffocated with their everlasting spiritual gossip! The falsest views and tastes somehow in a man of fashion are truer than the truest in a plebeian cad. And when I told the new man there that a "materialist"would have no difficulty in keeping his place in Harvard College provided he was well-bred, I said what was really the highest test of the College excellence. I suppose he thought it sounded cynical.Theirsphere is with the masses struggling into light, not with us at Harvard; though I'm glad I can meet them cordially for a while now and then. Thou see'est I have some "spleen" on me today....
LEIPZIG,Nov. 13, 1882.
...Yesterday was a splendid day within and without.... The old town delightful in its blackness and plainness. I heard several lecturers. Old Ludwig's lecture in the afternoon was memorable for the extraordinary impression of character he made on me. The traditional German professor in its highest sense. A rusty brown wig and broad-skirted brown coat, a voluminous black neckcloth, an absolute unexcitability of manner, a clean-shaven face so plebeian and at the same time so grandly carved, with its hooked nose and gentle kindly mouth and inexhaustible patience of expression, that I never saw the like. Then to Wundt, who has a more refined elocution than any one I've yet heard in Germany. He received me very kindly after the lecture in his laboratory, dimly trying to remember my writings, and I stay over today, against my intention, to go to hispsychologische Gesellschafttonight. Have been writing psychology most all day....
In train for LIÈGE,Nov. 18, 1882.
...I believe I didn't tell you, in the bustle of traveling, much about Wundt. He made a very pleasant and personal impression on me, with his agreeable voice and ready, tooth-showing smile. His lecture also was very able, and my opinion of him is higher than before seeing him. Buthe seemed very busy and showed no desire to see more of me than the present interview either time. Thepsychologische GesellschaftI stayed over to see was postponed, but he did not propose to me to do anything else—to the gain of my ease, but to the loss of my vanity. Dear old Stumpf has been the friendliest of these fellows. With him I shall correspond....
LIÈGE,Nov. 20, 1882.
...I am still at Delbœuf's, aching in every joint and muscle, weary in every nerve-cell, but unable to get away till tomorrow noon. I was to have started today.... The total lesson of what I have done in the past month is to make me quieter with my home-lot and readier to believe that it is one of the chosen places of the Earth. Certainly the instruction and facilities at our university are on the whole superior to anything I have seen; the rawnesses we mention with such affliction at home belong rather to the century than to us (witness the houses here); we are not a whit more isolated than they are here. In all Belgium there seem to be but two genuine philosophers; in Berlin they have little to do with each other, and I really believe that in my way I have a wider view of the field than anyone I've seen (I count out, of course, my ignorance of ancient authors). We are a sound country and my opinion of our essential worth has risen and not fallen. We only lack abdominal depth of temperament and the power to sit for an hour over a single pot of beer without being able to tell at the end of it what we've been thinking about. Also to reform our altogether abominable, infamous and infra-human voices and way of talking. (Whatfurtherfatal defects hang together with that I don't know—it seems as if it must carry something very bad with it.) The first thingto do is to establish in Cambridge a genuine German plebeian Kneipe club, to which all instructors and picked students shall be admitted. If that succeeds, we shall be perfect, especially if we talk therein with deeper voices....