The Letters of William James, Vol. 1

"I have often wished that the 'Nation' would devote some 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 lifeless discussions 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 they talk 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 its problems. 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."

VIII

1878-1883

Marriage—Contract for the Psychology—European Colleagues—Death of his Parents

EARLY in 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 the tranquillity 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 for another 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, the last 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."

To Francis J. Child

[Dictated to Mrs. James]KEENE VALLEY, 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 universal Nothwendigkeit. 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 sake come while 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.

To Miss Frances R. Morse

[Dictated to Mrs. James]CAMBRIDGE, Dec. 26, 1878.

Our dear 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. I have got into the habit of dictating to her all 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 frozen dust, 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.

To Mrs. James

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: "This is 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 any guaranty that they will. Make it a guaranty—and the attitude immediately becomes to my consciousness stagnant and stingless. Take away the guaranty, and I feel (provided I am überhaupt in 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. The opportunities 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."57

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.

To Josiah Royce

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 his substance. 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.58 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,