CAMBRIDGE,Mar. 26, 1910.
Dear Miller,—Your study of me arrives! and I have pantingly turned the pages to find the eulogistic adjectives, and find them in such abundance that my head swims. Glory to God that I have lived to see this day! to have so much said about me, and to be embalmed in literature like the great ones of the past! I didn't know I was so much, was all these things, and yet, as I read, I see that I was (or am?), and shall boldly assert myself when I go abroad.
To speak in all dull soberness, dear Miller, it touches me to the quick that you should have hatched out this elaborate description of me with such patient and loving incubation. I have only spent five minutes over it so far, meaning to take it on the steamer, but I get the impression that it is almost unexampled in our literature as a piece of profound analysis of an individual mind. I'm sorry you stickso much to my psychological phase, which I care little for, now, and never cared much. This epistemological and metaphysical phase seems to me more original and important, and I haven't lost hopes of converting you entirely yet. Meanwhile, thanks! thanks! [Émile] Boutroux, who is a regular angel, has just left our house. I've written an account of his lectures which the "Nation" will print on the 31st. I should like you to look it over, hasty as it is.
...I hope that all these lectures on contemporaries (What a live place Columbia is!) will appear together in a volume. I can't easily believe that any will compare with yours as a thorough piece of interpretative work.
signature my new signature
We sail on Tuesday next. My thorax has been going the wrong way badly this winter, and I hope that Nauheim may patch it up.
Strength to your elbow! Affectionately and gratefully yours,
WM. JAMES.
1910
Final Months—The End
Severalreasons combined to take James to Europe in the early spring of 1910. His heart had been giving him more discomfort. He wished to consult a specialist in Paris from whom an acquaintance of his, similarly afflicted, had received great benefit. He believed that another course of Nauheim baths would be helpful. Last, and not least, he wished to be within reach of his brother Henry, who was ill and concerning whose condition he was much distressed. In reality it was he, not his brother, who already stood in the shadow of Death's door.
Accordingly he sailed for England with Mrs. James, and went first to Lamb House. Thence he crossed alone to Paris, and thence went on to Nauheim, leaving Mrs. James to bring his brother to Nauheim to join him. The Parisian specialist could do nothing but confirm previous diagnoses.
Too much "sitting up and talking" with friends in Paris exhausted him seriously, and, after leaving Paris, he failed for the first time to shake off his fatigue. The immediate effect of the Nauheim baths proved to be very debilitating, and, again, he failed to rally and improve when he had finished them. By July, after trying the air of Lucerne and Geneva, only to find that the altitude caused him unbearable distress, he despaired of any relief beyond what now looked like the incomparable consolations of being at rest in his own home. So he turned his face westward.
The next letters bid good-bye for the summer to two tried friends. Five months later it seemed as if James had been at more pains to make his adieus than he usually put himself to on account of a summer's absence. When Mrs. James returned to the Cambridge house in the autumn, after he had died, and had occasion to open his desk copy of the Harvard Catalogue, she found these words jotted at the head of the Faculty List: "A thousand regrets cover every beloved name." It grieved him that life was too short and too full for him to see many of them as often as he wanted to. One day before he sailed, his eye had been caught by the familiar names and, as a throng of comradely intentions filled his heart, he had had a moment of foreboding, and he had let his hand trace the words that cried this needless "Forgive me!" and recorded an incommunicable Farewell.
CAMBRIDGE,Mar. 28, 1910.
Beloved Henry,—I had most positive hopes of driving in to see you ere the deep engulfs us, but the press is too great here, and it remains impossible. This is just a word to say that you are not forgotten, or ever to be forgotten, and that (after what Mrs. Higginson said) I am hoping you may sail yourself pretty soon, and have a refreshing time, and cross our path. We go straight to Rye, expecting to be in Paris for the beginning of April for a week, and then to Nauheim, whence Alice, after seeing me safely settled, will probably return to Rye for the heft of the summer. It would pay you to turn up both there and at Nauheim and see the mode of life.
Hoping you'll have a good [Club] dinner Friday night, and never need any surgery again, I am ever thine,
W. J.
CAMBRIDGE,March 29, 1910.
Dearest Fanny,—Your beautiful roses and your card arrived duly—the roses were not deserved, not at least by W. J. I have about given up all visits to Boston this winter, and the racket has been so incessant in the house, owing to foreigners of late, that we haven't had the strength to send for you. I sail on the 29th in the Megantic, first to see Henry, who has been ill, not dangerously, but very miserably. Our Harry is with him now. I shall then go to Paris for a certain medical experiment, and after that report at Nauheim, where they probably will keep me for some weeks. I hope that I may get home again next fall with my organism in better shape, and be able to see more of my friends.
After Thursday, when the good Boutrouxs go, I shall try to arrange a meeting with you, dear Fanny. At present we are "contemporaries," that is all, and the one of us who becomes survivor will have regrets that we were no more!
What a lugubrious ending! With love to your mother, and love from Alice, believe me, dearest Fanny, most affectionately yours,
W. J.
Bad-Nauheim,May 22, 1910.
Beloved Thos.,—I have two letters from you—one about ... Harris on Shakespeare.ReHarris, I did think you were a bit superciliousa priori, but I thought of your youth and excused you. Harris himself is horrid, young and crude. Much of his talk seems to me absurd, but neverthelessthat's the way to write about Shakespeare, and I am sure that, if Shakespeare were a Piper-control, he wouldsay that he relished Harris far more than the pack of reverent commentators who treat him as a classic moralist. He seems to me to have been a professionalamuser, in the first instance, with a productivity like that of a Dumas, or a Scribe; but possessing what no other amuser has possessed, a lyric splendor added to his rhetorical fluency, which has made people take him for a more essentially serious human being than he was. Neurotically and erotically, he was hyperæsthetic, with a playful graciousness of character never surpassed. He could be profoundly melancholy; but even then was controlled by the audience's needs. A cork in the rapids, with no ballast of his own, without religious or ethical ideals, accepting uncritically every theatrical and social convention, he was simply an æolian harp passively resounding to the stage's call. Was there ever an author of such emotional importance whose reaction against false conventions of life was such an absolute zero as his? I know nothing of the other Elizabethans, but could they have been as soulless in this respect?—Buthalte-la! or I shall become a Harris myself!... With love to you all, believe me ever thine,
W. J.
Read Daniel Halévy's exquisitely discreet "Vie de Nietzsche," if you haven't already done so. Do you know G. Courtelines' "Les Marionettes de la Vie" (Flammarion)? It beats Labiche.
Bad-Nauheim,May 25, 1910.
My Dear Pillon,—I have been here a week, taking the baths for my unfortunate cardiac complications, and shall probably stay six weeks longer. I passed through Paris, where I spent a week, partly with my friend the philosopherStrong, partly at the Fondation Thiers with the Boutrouxs, who had been our guests in America when he lectured a few months ago at Harvard. Every day I said: "I will get to the Pillons this afternoon"; but every day I found it impossible to attempt your four flights of stairs, and finally had to run away from the Boutrouxs' to save my life from the fatigue and pectoral pain which resulted from my seeing so many people. I have a dilatation of the aorta, which causes anginoid pain of a bad kind whenever I make any exertion, muscular, intellectual, or social, and I should not have thought at all of going through Paris were it not that I wished to consult a certain Dr. Moutier there, who is strong on arteries, but who told me that he could do nothing for my case. I hope that these baths may arrest the disagreeable tendency topejorationfrom which I have suffered in the past year. This is why I didn't come to see the dear Pillons; a loss for which I felt, and shall always feel, deep regret.
The sight of the new "Année Philosophique" at Boutroux's showed me how valiant and solid you still are for literary work. I read a number of the book reviews, but none of the articles, which seemed uncommonly varied and interesting. Your short notice of Schinz's reallybouffonbook showed me to my regret that even you have not yet caught the true inwardness of my notion of Truth. You speak as if I allowed novaleur de connaissance proprement dite, which is a quite false accusation. When an idea "works" successfully amongall the other ideaswhich relate to the object of which it is our mental substitute, associating and comparing itself with them harmoniously, the workings are wholly inside of the intellectual world, and the idea's value purely intellectual, for the time, at least. This is my doctrine and Schiller's, but it seems very hard to express it so as to get it understood!
I hope that, in spite of the devouring years, dear Madame Pillon's state of health may be less deplorable than it has been so long. In particular I wish that the neuritis may have ceased. I wish! I wish! but what's the use of wishing, against the universal law that "youth's a stuff will not endure," and that we must simply make the best of it? Boutroux gave some beautiful lectures at Harvard, and is the gentlest and most lovable of characters. Believe me, dear Pillon, and dear Madame Pillon, your ever affectionate old friend,
WM. JAMES.
Bad-Nauheim,May 29, 1910.
...Paris was splendid, but fatiguing. Among other things I was introduced to the Académie des Sciences Morales, of which you may likely have heard that I am now anassocié étranger(!!). Boutroux says that Renan, when he took his seat after being received at the Académie Française, said: "Qu'on est bien dans ce fauteuil" (it is nothing but a cushioned bench with no back!). "Peut-être n'y a-t-il que cela de vrai!" Delicious Renanesque remark!...
W. J.
The arrangement by which Mrs. James and Henry James were to have arrived at Nauheim had been upset. The two, who were to come from England together, were delayed by Henry's condition; and for a while James was at Nauheim alone.
Bad-Nauheim,May 29, 1910.
Beloved Péguy,—The veryfustthing I want you to do is to look in the drawer marked "Blood" in my tall filingcase in the library closet, and find thedateof a number of the "Journal of Speculative Philosophy" there that contains an article called "Philosophic Reveries." Send thisdate(not the article) to the Revd. Prof. L. P. Jacks, 28 Holywell, Oxford, if you find it,immediately. He will understand what to do with it. If you don't find the article, do nothing! Jacks is notified. I have just corrected the proofs of an article on Blood for the "Hibbert Journal," which, I think, will make people sit up and rub their eyes at the apparition of a new great writer of English. I want Blood himself to get it as a surprise.
Igot as a surprise your finely typed copy of the rest of my MS., the other day. I thank you for it; also for your delightful letters. The type-writing seems to set free both your and Aleck's genius more than the pen. (If you need a new ribbon it must be got from the agency in Milk St. just above Devonshire—but you'll find it hard work to get it into its place.) You seem to be leading a very handsome and domestic life, avoiding social excitements, and hearing of them only from the brethren. It is good sometimes to face the naked ribs of reality as it reveals itself in homes. I face themherewith no one but the blackbirds and the trees for my companions, save some rather odd Americans at theMittagstischandAbendessen, and the good smilingDienstmädchenwho brings me my breakfast in the morning.... I went to my bath at 6 o'clock this morning, and had the Park all to the blackbirds and myself. This was because I am expecting a certain Prof. Goldstein from Darmstadt to come to see me this morning, and I had to get the bath out of the way. He is a powerful young writer, and is translating my "Pluralistic Universe." But the weather has grown so threatening that I hope now that he won't come till next Sunday. It is a shame to converse here and not be in the open air. I would to Heaventhouwertmit—I think thou wouldst enjoy it very much for a week or more. The German civilization isgood! Only this place would give a very false impression of our wicked earth to a Mars-Bewohnerwho should descend and leave and see nothing else. Not a dark spot (save what the patients' hearts individually conceal), no poverty, no vice, nothing but prettiness and simplicity of life. I snip out a concert-program (the afternoon one unusually good) which I find lying on my table. The like is given free in the open air every day. The baths weaken one so that I have little brain for reading, and must write letters to all kinds of people every day. A big quarrel is on in Paris between my would-be translators and publishers. I wish translators would let my books alone—they are written for my own people exclusively! You will have received Hewlett's delightful "Halfway House," sent to our steamer by Pauline Goldmark, I think. I have been reading a charmingly discreet life of Nietzsche by D. Halévy, and have invested in a couple more of his (N.'s) books, but haven't yet begun to read them. I am half through "Waffen-nieder!" afirst-rateanti-war novel by Baroness von Suttner. It has been translated, and I recommend it as in many ways instructive. How are Rebecca and Maggie [the cook and house-maid]? You don't say how you enjoy ordering the bill of fare every day. You can't vary it properly unless you make alistand keep it. A good sweet dish isrothe Grütze, a form of fine sago consolidated by currant-jelly juice, and sauced with custard, or, I suppose, cream.
Well! no more today! Give no end of love to the good boys, and to your Grandam, and believe me, ever thy affectionate,
W. J.
Bad-Nauheim,June 4, 1910.
Dearest Heinrich,—The envelope in which this letter goes was addrest in Cambridge, Mass., and expected to go towards you with a letter in it, long before now. But better late than never, so here goes! I came over, as you may remember, for the double purpose of seeing my brother Henry, who had been having a sort of nervous breakdown, and of getting my heart, if possible, tuned up by foreign experts. I stayed upwards of a month with Henry, and then came hitherüberParis, where I stayed ten days. I have been here two and a half weeks, taking the baths, and enjoying the feeling of the strong, calm, successful, new German civilization all about me. Germany isgreat, and no mistake! But what a contrast, in the well-set-up, well-groomed, smart-looking German man of today, and his rather clumsily drest, dingy, and unworldly-looking father of forty years ago! But something of the oldGemüthlichkeitremains, the friendly manners, and the disposition to talk with you and take you seriously and to respect the serious side of whatever comes along. But I can write you more interestingly of physiology than I can of sociology.... The baths may or may not arrest for a while the downward tendency which has been so marked in the past year—but at any rate it is a comfort to know that my sufferings have a respectable organic basis, and are not, as so many of my friends tell me, due to pure "nervousness." Dear Henry, you see that you are not the only pebble on the beach, or toad in the puddle, of senile degeneration! I admit that the form of your tragedy beats that of that of most of us; but youth's a stuff that won't endure, in any one, and to have had it, as you and I have had it, is a good deal gained anyhow, while to see the daylight still underanyconditionsis perhaps also better than nothing, and meanwhile the good months are sure to bring the final relief after which, "when you and I behind the veil are passed, Oh, but the long, long time the world shall last!" etc., etc. Rather gloomy moralizing, this, to end an affectionate family letter with; but the circumstances seem to justify it, and I know that you won't take it amiss.
Alice is staying with Henry, but they will both be here in a fortnight or less. I find it pretty lonely all by myself, and the German language doesn't run as trippingly off the tongue as it did forty years ago. Passage back is taken for August 12th....
Well, I must stop! Pray give my love to Selma, the faithful one. Also to Fanny, Harold, and Friedel. With Harold's engagement you are more and more of a patriarch. Heaven keep you, dear Henry.
Believe me, ever your affectionately sympathetic old friend,
WM. JAMES.
Bad-Nauheim,June 8, 1910.
My dear Pillon,—I have your good letter of the 4th—which I finally had to take a magnifying-glass to read (!)—and remained full of admiration for the nervous centres which, after 80 years of work, could still guide the fingers to execute, without slipping or trembling, that masterpiece of microscopic calligraphy! Truly your nervous centres are "well preserved"—the optical ones also, in spite of the cataracts and loss of accommodation! How proud I should be if now, at the comparatively youthful age of 68, I could flattermyselfwith the hope of doing what you have done, and living down victoriously twelve more devouring enemiesof years! With a fresh volume produced, to mark each year by! I give you leave, as a garland and reward, to misinterpret my doctrine of truthad libitumand to your heart's content, in all your future writings. I will never think the worse of you for it.
What you say of dear Madame Pillon awakens in me very different feelings. She has led, indeed, a life of suffering for many years, and it seems to me a real tragedy that she should now be confined to the house so absolutely. If only you might inhabit the country, where, on fine days, with no stairs to mount or descend, she could sit with flowers and trees around her! The city is not good when one is confined to one's apartment. Pray give Madame Pillon my sincerest love—I never think of her without affection—I am almost ashamed to accept year after year your "Année Philosophique," and to give you so little in return for it. I am expecting my wife and brother to arrive here from England this afternoon, and we shallprobablyall return together through Paris, by the middle of July. I will then come and see you, with the wife, so please keep the "Année" till then, and put it into my hands. I can read nothing serious here—the baths destroy one's strength so. Whether they will do any good to my circulatory organs remains to be seen—there is no good effect perceptible so far. Believe me, dear old friend, with every message of affection to you both, yours ever faithfully,
WM. JAMES.
The letters which follow concern Henry Adams's "Letter to American Teachers," originally printed for private circulation, but recently published, with a preface by Mr. Brooks Adams, under the title: "The Degradation of Democratic Dogma."
Bad-Nauheim,June 17, 1910.
Dear Henry Adams,—I have been so "slim" since seeing you, and the baths here have so weakened my brain, that I have been unable to do any reading except trash, and have only just got round to finishing your "letter," which I had but half-read when I was with you at Paris. To tell the truth, it doesn't impress me at all, save by its wit and erudition; and I ask you whether an old man soon about to meet his Maker can hope to save himself from the consequences of his life by pointing to the wit and learning he has shown in treating a tragic subject. No, sir, you can't do it, can't impress God in that way. So far as our scientific conceptions go, it may be admitted that your Creator (and mine) started the universe with a certain amount of "energy" latent in it, and decreed that everything that should happen thereafter should be a result of parts of that energy falling to lower levels; raising other parts higher, to be sure, in so doing, but never in equivalent amount, owing to the constant radiation of unrecoverable warmth incidental to the process. It is customary for gentlemen to pretend to believe one another, and until some one hits upon a newer revolutionary concept (which may be tomorrow) all physicists must play the game by holding religiously to the above doctrine. It involves of course the ultimate cessation of all perceptible happening, and the end of human history. With this general conception assurroundingeverything you say in your "letter," no one can find any fault—in the present stage of scientific conventions and fashions. But I protest against your interpretation of some of the specifications of the great statistical drift downwards of the original high-level energy. If, instead of criticizing what you seem to me to say, Iexpress my own interpretation dogmatically, and leave you to make the comparison, it will doubtless conduce to brevity and economize recrimination.
To begin with, theamountof cosmic energy it costs to buy a certain distribution of fact which humanly we regard as precious, seems to me to be an altogether secondary matter as regards the question of history and progress. Certain arrangements of matteron the same energy-levelare, from the point of view of man's appreciation, superior, while others are inferior. Physically a dinosaur's brain may show as much intensity of energy-exchange as a man's, but it can do infinitely fewer things, because as a force of detent it can only unlock the dinosaur's muscles, while the man's brain, by unlocking far feebler muscles, indirectly can by their means issue proclamations, write books, describe Chartres Cathedral, etc., and guide the energies of the shrinking sun into channels which never would have been entered otherwise—in short,makehistory. Therefore the man's brain and muscles are, from the point of view of the historian, the more important place of energy-exchange, small as this may be when measured in absolute physical units.
The "second law" is wholly irrelevant to "history"—save that it sets a terminus—for history is the course of things before that terminus, and all that the second law says is that, whatever the history, it must invest itself between that initial maximum and that terminal minimum of difference in energy-level. As the great irrigation-reservoir empties itself, the whole question for us is that of the distribution of its effects, ofwhichrills to guide it into; and the size of the rills has nothing to do with their significance. Human cerebration is the most important rill we know of, and both the "capacity" and the "intensity" factor thereof may be treated as infinitesimal. Yet the filling of such rillswould be cheaply bought by the waste of whole sums spent in getting a little of the down-flowing torrent to enter them. Just so of human institutions—their value has in strict theory nothing whatever to do with their energy-budget—being wholly a question of the form the energy flows through. Though theultimatestate of the universe may be its vital and psychical extinction, there is nothing in physics to interfere with the hypothesis that the penultimate state might be the millennium—in other words a state in which a minimum of difference of energy-level might have its exchanges so skillfullycanalisésthat a maximum of happy and virtuous consciousness would be the only result. In short, the last expiring pulsation of the universe's life might be, "I am so happy and perfect that I can stand it no longer." You don't believe this and I don't say I do. But I can find nothing in "Energetik" to conflict with its possibility. You seem to me not to discriminate, but to treat quantity and distribution of energy as if they formed one question.
There! that's pretty good for a brain after 18 Nauheim baths—so I won't write another line, nor ask you to reply to me. In case you can't help doing so, however, I will gratify you now by saying that I probably won't jaw back.—It was pleasant at Paris to hear your identically unchanged and "undegraded" voice after so many years of loss of solar energy. Yours ever truly,
WM. JAMES.
[Post-card]
Nauheim,June 19, 1910.
P. S. Another illustration of my meaning: The clock of the universe is running down, and by so doing makes the hands move. The energy absorbed by the hands and themechanicalwork they do is the same day after day, no matter how far the weights have descended from the position they were originally wound up to. Thehistorywhich the hands perpetrate has nothing to do with thequantityof this work, but follows thesignificanceof the figures which they cover on the dial. If they move from O to XII, there is "progress," if from XII to O, there is "decay," etc. etc.
W. J.
Facsimile of Post-card addressed to Henry Adams.Facsimile of Post-card addressed to Henry Adams.
[Post-card]
Constance,June 26, [1910].
Yours of the 20th, just arriving, pleases me by its docility of spirit and passive subjection to philosophic opinion. Never, never pretend to an opinion of your own! that way lies every annoyance and madness! You tempt me to offer you another illustration—that of thehydraulic ram(thrown back to me in an exam, as a "hydraulic goat" by an insufficiently intelligent student). Let this arrangement of metal, placed in the course of a brook, symbolize the machine of human life. It works, clap, clap, clap, day and night, so long as the brook runsat all, and no matter how full the brook (which symbolizes the descending cosmic energy) may be, it works always to the same effect, of raising so many kilogrammeters of water. What thevalueof this work as history may be, depends on the uses to which the water is put in the house which the ram serves.
W. J.
Constance,June 25, 1910.
My dear Blood,—About the time you will receive this, you will also be surprised by receiving the "Hibbert Journal"for July, with an article signed by me, but written mainly by yourself.[88]Tired of waiting for your final synthetic pronunciamento, and fearing I might be cut off ere it came, I took time by the forelock, and at the risk of making ducks and drakes of your thoughts, I resolved to save at any rate some of your rhetoric, and the result is what you see. Forgive! forgive! forgive! It will at any rate have made you famous, for the circulation of the H. J. is choice, as well as large (12,000 or more, I'm told), and the print and paper the best ever yet, I seem to have lost the editor's letter, or I would send it to you. He wrote, in accepting the article in May, "I have already 40 articles accepted, and some of the writers threaten lawsuits for non-publication, yet such was the exquisite refreshment Blood's writing gave me, under the cataract of sawdust in which editorially I live, that I have this day sent the article to the printer. Actions speak louder than words! Blood is simplygreat, and you are to be thanked for having dug him out. L. P.Jacks." Of course I've used you for my own purposes, and probably misused you; but I'm sure you will feel more pleasure than pain, and perhaps write again in the "Hibbert" to set yourself right. You're sure of being printed, whatever you may send. How I wish that I too could write poetry, for pluralism is in itsSturm und Drangperiod, and verse is the only way to express certain things, I've just been taking the "cure" at Nauheim for my unlucky heart—no results so far!
Sail for home again on August 12th. Address always Cambridge, Mass.; things are forwarded. Warm regards, fellow pluralist. Yours ever,
WM. JAMES.
Geneva,July 9, 1910.
Dearest Flournoy,—Your two letters, of yesterday, and of July 4th sent to Nauheim, came this morning. I am sorry that the Nauheim one was not written earlier, since you had the trouble of writing it at all. I thank you for all the considerateness you show—you understand entirely my situation. My dyspnœa gets worse at an accelerated rate, and all I care for now is to get home—doingnothingon the way. It is partly a spasmodic phenomenon I am sure, for the aeration of my tissues, judging by the color of my lips, seems to be sufficient. I will leave Geneva now without seeing you again—better not come, unless just to shake hands with my wife! Through all these years I have wished I might live nearer to you and see more of you and exchange more ideas, for we seem two men particularly wellfaits pour nous comprendre. Particularly, now, as my own intellectual house-keeping has seemed on the point of working out some good results, would it have been good to work out the less unworthy parts of it in your company. But that is impossible!—I doubt if I ever do any more writing of a serious sort; and as I am able to look upon my life rather lightly, I can truly say that "I don't care"—don't care in the least pathetically or tragically, at any rate.—I hope that Ragacz will be a success, or at any rate a wholesome way of passing the month, and that little by little you will reach your new equilibrium. Those dear daughters, at any rate, are something to live for—to show them Italy should be rejuvenating. I can write no more, my very dear old friend, but only ask you to think of me as ever lovingly yours,
W. J.
After leaving Geneva James rested at Lamb House for a few days before going to Liverpool to embark. Walking, talking and writing had all become impossible or painful. The short northern route to Quebec was chosen for the home voyage. When he and Mrs. James and his brother Henry landed there, they went straight to Chocorua. The afternoon light was fading from the familiar hills on August 19th, when the motor brought them to the little house, and James sank into a chair beside the fire, and sobbed, "It's so good to get home!"
A change for the worse occurred within forty-eight hours and the true situation became apparent. The effort by which he had kept up a certain interest in what was going on about him during the last weeks of his journey, and a certain semblance of strength, had spent itself. He had been clinging to life only in order to get home.
Death occurred without pain in the early afternoon of August 26th.
His body was taken to Cambridge, where there was a funeral service in the College Chapel. After cremation, his ashes were placed beside the graves of his parents in the Cambridge Cemetery.
THE END
Three Criticisms for Students
In his smaller classes, made up of advanced students, James found it possible to comment in detail on the work of individuals. Three letters have come into the hands of the editor, from which extracts may be taken to illustrate such comments. They were written for persons with whom he could communicate only by letter, and are extended enough to suggest theviva vocecomments which many a student recalls, but of which there is no record. The first is from a letter to a former pupil and refers to work of Bertrand Russell and others which the pupil was studying at the time. The second and third comment on manuscripts that had been prepared as "theses" and had been submitted to James for unofficial criticism. They exhibit him, characteristically, as encouraging the student to formulate something more positive.
Jan. 26, 1908.
Those propositions or supposals which [Russell, Moore and Meinong] make the exclusive vehicles of truth are mongrel curs that have no real place between realities on the one hand and beliefs on the other. The negative, disjunctive and hypothetic truths which they so conveniently express can all, perfectly well (so far as I see), be translated into relations between beliefs and positive realities. "Propositions" are expressly devised for quibbling between realities and beliefs. They seem to have the objectivity of the one and the subjectivity of the other, and he who uses them can straddle as he likes, owing to the ambiguity of the wordthat, which is essential to them. "ThatCæsar existed" is "true," sometimes means thefact thatbe existed is real, sometimes thebelief thathe existed is true. You can get no honest discussion out of such terms....
Aug. 15, 1908.
Dear K——, ...[I have] read your thesis once through. I only finished it yesterday. It is a big effort, hard to grasp at asingle reading, and I'm too lazy to go over it a second time in its present physically inconvenient shape. It is obvious that parts of it have been written rapidly and not boiled down; and my impression is that you have left over in it too much of the complication of form in which our ideas, our critical ideas especially, first come to us, and which has, with much rewriting, to be straightened out. You were dealing with dialecticians and logic-choppers, and you have met them on their own ground with a logic-chopping even more diseased than theirs. So far as I can see, youhavemet them, though your own expressions are often far from lucid (—result of haste?); but in some cases I doubt whether they themselves would think that they were met at all. I fear a little that both Bradley and Royce will think that yourreductiones ad absurdumare too fine spun and ingenious to have real force. Too complicated, too complicated! is the verdict of my horse-like mind on much of this thesis. Your defense will be, of course, that it is a thesis, and as such, expected to be barbaric. But then I point to the careless, hasty writing of much of it. Youmustsimplify yourself, if you hope to have any influence in print.
The writing becomes more careful and the style clearer, the moment you tackle Russell in the 6th part. And when you come to your own dogmatic statement of your vision of things in the last 30 pages or so, I think the thesis splendid, prophetic in tone andveryfelicitous, often, in expression. This is indeed thephilosophie de l'avenir, and a dogmatic expression of it will be far more effective than critical demolition of its alternatives. It will render that unnecessary if able enough. One will simplyfeelthem to be diseased. My total impression is that the critter K—— has areally magnificent visionof the lay of the land in philosophy,—of the land of bondage, as well as of that of promise,—but that he has a tremendous lot of work to do yet in the way of getting himself into straight and effective literary shape. He haselementsof extraordinary literary power, but they are buried in much sand and shingle....
May. 26, 1900.
Dear Miss S——, I am a caitiff! I have left your essay on my poor self unanswered.... It is a great compliment to me to be taken so philologically and importantly; and I must say thatfrom the technical point of view you may be proud of your production. I like greatly the objective and dispassionate key in which you keep everything, and the number of subdivisions and articulations which you make gives me vertiginous admiration. Nevertheless, the tragic fact remains that I don't feel wounded at all by all that output of ability, and for reasons which I think I can set down briefly enough. It all comes, in my eyes, from too much philological method—as a Ph.D. thesis your essay is supreme, but why don't you go farther? You take utterances of mine written at different dates, for different audiences belonging to different universes of discourse, and string them together as the abstract elements of a total philosophy which you then show to be inwardly incoherent. This is splendid philology, but is it live criticism of anyone'sWeltanschauung? Your use of the method only strengthens the impression I have got from reading criticisms of my "pragmatic" account of "truth," that the whole Ph.D. industry of building up an author's meaning out of separate texts leads nowhere, unless you have first grasped his centre of vision, by an act of imagination. That, it seems to me, you lack in my case.
For instance: [Seven examples are next dealt with in two and a half pages of type-writing. These pages are omitted.]
...I have been unpardonably long; and if you were a man, I should assuredly not expect to influence you a jot by what I write. Being a woman, there may be yet a gleam of hope!—which may serve as the excuse for my prolixity. (It is not for the likes ofyou, however, to hurl accusations of prolixity!) Now if I may presume to give a word of advice to one so much more accomplished than myself in dialectic technique, may I urge, since you have shown what a superb mistress you are in that difficult art of discriminating abstractions and opposing them to each other one by one, since in short there is no university extant that wouldn't give you itssumma cum laude,—I should certainly so reward your thesis at Harvard,—may I urge, I say, that you should now turn your back upon that academic sort of artificiality altogether, and devote your great talents to the study of reality in its concreteness? In other words, do somepositivework at the problem of what truth signifies, substitute a definitive alternative for the humanism which I present, as thelatter's substitute. Not by proving their inward incoherence does one refute philosophies—every human being is incoherent—but only by superseding them by other philosophies more satisfactory. Your wonderful technical skill ought to serve you in good stead if you would exchange the philological kind of criticism for constructive work. I fear however that you won't—the iron may have bitten too deeply into your soul!!
Have you seen Knox's paper on pragmatism in the "Quarterly Review" for April—perhaps the deepest-cutting thing yet written on the pragmatist side? On the other side read Bertrand Russell's paper in the "Edinburgh Review" just out. A thing after your own heart, but ruined in my eyes by the same kind of vicious abstractionism which your thesis shows. It is amusing to see the critics of the will to believe furnish such exquisite instances of it in their own persons.E.g., Russell's own splendid atheistic-titanic confession of faith in that volume of essays on "Ideals of Science and of Faith" edited by one Hand. X——, whom you quote, has recently worked himself up to the pass of being ordained in the Episcopal church.... I justify them both; for only by such experiments on the part of individuals will social man gain the evidence required. They meanwhile seem to think that the only "true" position to hold is that everything not imposed upon a will-less and non-coöperant intellect must count as false—a preposterous principle which no human being follows in real life.
Well! There! that is all! But, dear Madam, I should like to know where you come from, who you are, what your present "situation" is, etc., etc.—It is natural to have some personal curiosity about a lady who has taken such an extraordinary amount of pains for me!
Believe me, dear Miss S——, with renewed apologies for the extreme tardiness of this acknowledgment, yours with mingled admiration and abhorrence,
Wm. James.
Books by William James
The following chronological list includes books only, but it gives the essays and chapters contained in each.
Professor R. B. Perry's "Bibliography" (see below) lists a great number of contributions to periodicals, which have never been reprinted, and includes notes indicative of the matter of each.
(No attempt has been made to compile a list of references to literature about William James, but the following may be mentioned as easily obtainable:William James, byÉmile Boutroux. Paris, 1911. Translation: Longmans, Green & Co., New York and London, 1912.La Philosophie de William James, byTheodore Flournoy. St. Blaise, 1911. Translation:The Philosophy of William James.Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1917.)
Literary Remains of Henry James, Sr., with an Introduction byWilliam James. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1884.
The Principles of Psychology.New York: Henry Holt & Co.; London: Macmillan & Co., 1890.
Volume I.Scope of Psychology—Functions of the Brain—Conditions of Brain Activity—Habit—The Automaton Theory—The Mind-Stuff Theory—Methods and Snares of Psychology—Relations of Minds to Other Things—The Stream of Thought—The Consciousness of Self—Attention—Conception—Discrimination and Comparison—Association—The Perception of Time—Memory.
Volume II.Sensation—Imagination—Perception of Things—The Perception of Space—The Perception of Reality—Reasoning—The Production of Movement—Instinct—The Emotions—Will—Hypnotism—Necessary Truth and the Effects of Experience.
A Text-Book of Psychology.Briefer Course. New York: Henry Holt & Co.; London: Macmillan & Co., 1892.
Introductory—Sensation—Sight—Hearing—Touch—Sensations of Motion—Structure of the Brain—Functions of the Brain—Some General Conditions of Neural Activity—Habit—Stream of Consciousness—The Self—Attention—Conception—Discrimination—Association—Sense of Time—Memory—Imagination—Perception—The Perception of Space—Reasoning—Consciousness and Movement—Emotion—Instinct—Will—Psychology and Philosophy.
The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy.New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1897.
The Will to Believe—Is Life Worth Living?—The Sentiment of Rationality—Reflex Action and Theism—The Dilemma of Determinism—The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life—Great Men and their Environment—The Importance of Individuals—On Some Hegelisms—What Psychical Research has Accomplished.
Human Immortality, Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine.London: Constable & Co., also Dent & Sons; Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1898.
The Same.A New Edition with Preface in Reply to His Critics. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1899.
Talks to Teachers on Psychology, and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals.New York: Henry Holt & Co.; London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899.
Psychology and the Teaching Art—The Stream of Consciousness—The Child as a Behaving Organism—Education and Behavior—The Necessity of Reactions—Native and Acquired Reactions—What the Native Reactions Are—The Laws of Habit—Association of Ideas—Interest—Attention—Memory—Acquisition of Ideas—Apperception—The Will.
Talks to Students: The Gospel of Relaxation—On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings—What Makes Life Significant?
The Varieties of Religious Experience.A Study in Human Nature. The Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion, Edinburgh, 1901-1902. New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1902.
Religion and Neurology—Circumscription of the Topic—The Reality of the Unseen—The Religion of Healthy-Mindedness—The Sick Soul—The Divided Self, and the Process of its Unification—Conversion—Saintliness—The Value of Saintliness—Mysticism—Philosophy—Other Characteristics—Conclusions—Postscript.
Pragmatism.A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1907.
The Present Dilemma in Philosophy—What Pragmatism Means—Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered—The One and the Many—Pragmatism and Common Sense—Pragmatism's Conception of Truth—Pragmatism and Humanism—Pragmatism and Religion.
A Pluralistic Universe.Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College. New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1909.
The Types of Philosophic Thinking—Monistic Idealism—Hegel and his Method—Concerning Fechner—Compounding of Consciousness—Bergson and his Critique of Intellectualism—The Continuity of Experience—Conclusions—— Appendixes:A.The Thing and its Relations.B.The Experience of Activity.C.On the Notion of Reality as Changing.
The Meaning of Truth.A Sequel toPragmatism. New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1909.
The Function of Cognition—The Tigers in India—Humanism and Truth—The Relation between Knower and Known—The Essence of Humanism—A Word More about Truth—Professor Pratt on Truth—The Pragmatist Account of Truth and its Misunderstanders—The Meaning of the Word Truth—The Existence of Julius Cæsar—The Absolute and the Strenuous Life—Hébert on Pragmatism—Abstractionism and "Relativismus"—Two English Critics—A Dialogue.
Some Problems of Philosophy.A Beginning of an Introduction to Philosophy. New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1911.
Philosophy and its Critics—The Problems of Metaphysics—The Problem of Being—Percept and Concept—The One and the Many—The Problem of Novelty—Novelty andthe Infinite—Novelty and Causation—— Appendix: Faith and the Right to Believe.
Memories and Studies.New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1911.
Louis Agassiz—Address at the Emerson Centenary in Concord—Robert Gould Shaw—Francis Boott—Thomas Davidson—Herbert Spencer's Autobiography—Frederick Myers's Services to Psychology—Final Impressions of a Psychical Researcher—On Some Mental Effects of the Earthquake—The Energies of Men—The Moral Equivalent of War—Remarks at the Peace Banquet—The Social Value of the College-bred—The Ph.D. Octopus—The True Harvard—Stanford's Ideal Destiny—A Pluralistic Mystic (B. P. Blood).
Essays in Radical Empiricism.Edited byRalph Barton Perry. New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1912.
Introduction—Does Consciousness Exist?—A World of Pure Experience—The Thing and its Relations—How Two Minds can Know One Thing—The Place of Affectional Facts in a World of Pure Experience—The Experience of Activity—The Essence of Humanism—La Notion de Conscience—Is Radical Empiricism Solipsistic?—Mr. Pitkin's Refutation of Radical Empiricism—Humanism and Truth Once More—Absolutism and Empiricism.
Collected Essays and Reviews.Edited byRalph Barton Perry. New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1920.
Review of E. Sargent'sPlanchette(1869)—Review of G. H. Lewes'sProblems of Life and Mind(1875)—Review entitled "German Pessimism" (1875)—Chauncey Wright (1875)—Review of "Bain and Renouvier" (1876)—Review of Renan'sDialogues(1876)—Review of G. H. Lewes'sPhysical Basis of Mind(1877)—Remarks on Spencer's Definition of Mind as Correspondence (1878)—Quelques Considérations sur la Méthode Subjective (1878)—The Sentiment of Rationality (1879)—Review (unsigned) of W. K. Clifford'sLectures and Essays(1879)—Review of Herbert Spencer'sData of Ethics(1879)—The Feeling of Effort (1880)—The Sense of Dizziness in Deaf Mutes (1882)—What is an Emotion? (1884)—Review ofRoyce'sThe Religious Aspect of Philosophy(1885)—The Consciousness of Lost Limbs (1887)—Réponse de W. James aux Remarques de M. Renouvier sur sa théorie de la volonté (1888)—The Psychological Theory of Extension (1889)—A Plea for Psychology as a Natural Science (1892)—The Original Datum of Space Consciousness (1893)—Mr. Bradley on Immediate Resemblance (1893)—Immediate Resemblance—Review of G. T. Ladd'sPsychology(1894)—The Physical Basis of Emotion (1894)—The Knowing of Things Together (1895)—Review of W. Hirsch'sGenie und Entartung(1895)—Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results (1898)—Review of R. Hodgson'sA Further Record of Observations of Certain Phenomena of Trance(1898)—Review of Sturt'sPersonal Idealism(1903)—The Chicago School (1904)—Review of F. C. S. Schiller'sHumanism(1904)—Laura Bridgman (1904)—G. Papini and the Pragmatist Movement in Italy (1906)—The Mad Absolute (1906)—Controversy about Truth with John E. Russell (1907)—Report on Mrs. Piper's Hodgson Control; Conclusion (1909)—Bradley or Bergson? (1910)—A Suggestion about Mysticism (1910).
A List of the Published Writings of William James, with notes, and an index; byRalph Barton Perry. New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1920.
THROUGHOUTthe index the initialJ.stands for William James. In the list of references to his own writings, arranged alphabetically at the end of the entries under his name, the titles of separate papers are set in roman and quoted, those of volumes in italics.
The words "See Contents" under a name indicate that letters addressed to the person in question are to be sought in theTable of Contents, where all letters are listed.
A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,Y,Z