The Letters of William James, Vol. 2

Your third stricture, about Higher Powers, is also very important, and I am not at all sure that you may not be right. I have frankly to confess that my "Varieties" carried "theory" as far as I could then carry it, and that I can carry it no farther today. I can't see clearly over that edge. Yet I am sure that tracks have got to be made there—I think that the fixed point with me is the conviction that our "rational" consciousness touches but a portion of the real universe and that our life is fed by the "mystical" region as well. I have no mystical experience of my own, but just enough of the germ of mysticism in me to recognize the region from which their voice comes when I hear it.

I was much disappointed in Leuba's review of my book in the "International Journal of Ethics." … I confess that the way in which he stamps out all mysticism whatever, using the common pathological arguments, seemed to me unduly crude. I wrote him an expostulatory letter, which evidently made no impression at all, and which he possibly might send you if you had the curiosity to apply.

I am having a happy summer, feeling quite hearty again. I congratulate you on being settled, though I know nothing of the place. I congratulate you and Mrs. Starbuck also on airy fairy Lilian, who makes, I believe, the third. Long may they live and make their parents proud. With best regards to you both, I am yours ever truly,

WM. JAMES.

The "expostulatory" letter to Professor Leuba began with a series of objections to statements which he had made, and continued with the passage which follows.

To James Henry Leuba

CAMBRIDGE, Apr. 17, 1904.

My personal position is simple. I have no living sense of commerce with a God. I envy those who have, for I know the addition of such a sense would help me immensely. The Divine, for my active life, is limited to abstract concepts which, as ideals, interest and determine me, but do so but faintly, in comparison with what a feeling of God might effect, if I had one. It is largely a question of intensity, but differences of intensity may make one's whole centre of energy shift. Now, although I am so devoid of Gottesbewustsein in the directer and stronger sense, yet there is something in me which makes response when I hear utterances made from that lead by others. I recognize the deeper voice. Something tells me, "thither lies truth"—and I am sure it is not old theistic habits and prejudices of infancy. Those are Christian; and I have grown so out of Christianity that entanglement therewith on the part of a mystical utterance has to be abstracted from and overcome, before I can listen. Call this, if you like, my mystical germ. It is a very common germ. It creates the rank and file of believers. As it withstands in my case, so it will withstand in most cases, all purely atheistic criticism, but interpretative criticism (not of the mere "hysteria" and "nerves" order) it can energetically combine with. Your criticism seems to amount to a pure non possumus: "Mystical deliverances must be infallible revelations in every particular, or nothing. Therefore they are nothing, for anyone else than their owner." Why may they not be something, although not everything?

Your only consistent position, it strikes me, would be a dogmatic atheistic naturalism; and, without any mystical germ in us, that, I believe, is where we all should unhesitatingly be today.

Once allow the mystical germ to influence our beliefs, and I believe that we are in my position. Of course the "subliminal" theory is an inessential hypothesis, and the question of pluralism or monism is equally inessential.

I am letting loose a deluge on you! Don't reply at length, or at all. I hate to reply to anybody, and will sympathize with your silence. But I had to restate my position more clearly. Yours truly,

WM. JAMES.

The following document is not a letter, but a series of answers to a questionnaire upon the subject of religious belief, which was sent out in 1904 by Professor James B. Pratt of Williams College, and to which James filled out a reply at an unascertained date in the autumn of that year.

QUESTIONNAIRE 56

It is being realized as never before that religion, as one of the most important things in the life both of the community and of the individual, deserves close and extended study. Such study can be of value only if based upon the personal experiences of many individuals. If you are in sympathy with such study and are willing to assist in it, will you kindly write out the answers to the following questions and return them with this questionnaire, as soon as you conveniently can, to James B. Pratt, 20 Shepard Street, Cambridge, Mass.

Please answer the questions at length and in detail. Do not give philosophical generalizations, but your own personal experience.

1. What does religion mean to you personally? Is it

(1) A belief that something exists? Yes.

(2) An emotional experience? Not powerfully so, yet a social reality.

(3) A general attitude of the will toward God or toward righteousness! It involves these.

(4) Or something else?

If it has several elements, which is for you the most important? The social appeal for corroboration, consolation, etc., when things are going wrong with my causes (my truth denied), etc.

2. What do you mean by God? A combination of Ideality and (final) efficacity.

(1) Is He a person—if so, what do you mean by His being a person? He must be cognizant and responsive in some way.

(2) Or is He only a Force? He must do.

(3) Or is God an attitude of the Universe toward you? Yes, but more conscious. "God" to me, is not the only spiritual reality to believe in. Religion means primarily a universe of spiritual relations surrounding the earthly practical ones, not merely relations of "value," but agencies and their activities. I suppose that the chief premise for my hospitality towards the religious testimony of others is my conviction that "normal" or "sane" consciousness is so small a part of actual experience. What e'er be true, it is not true exclusively, as philistine scientific opinion assumes. The other kinds of consciousness bear witness to a much wider universe of experiences, from which our belief selects and emphasizes such parts as best satisfy our needs.

3. Why do you believe in God? Is it

(1) From some argument? Emphatically, no.

Or (2) Because you have experienced His presence? No, but rather because I need it so that it "must" be true.

Or (3) From authority, such as that of the Bible or of some prophetic person? Only the whole tradition of religious people, to which something in me makes admiring response.

Or (4) From any other reason? Only for the social reasons.

If from several of these reasons, please indicate carefully the order of their importance.

4. Or do you not so much believe in God as want to use Him? I can't use him very definitely, yet I believe. Do you accept Him not so much as a real existent Being, but rather as an ideal to live by? More as a more powerful ally of my own ideals. If you should become thoroughly convinced that there was no God, would it make any great difference in your life—either in happiness, morality, or in other respects? Hard to say. It would surely make some difference.

5. Is God very real to you, as real as an earthly friend, though different? Dimly [real]; not [as an earthly friend].

Do you feel that you have experienced His presence? If so, please describe what you mean by such an experience. Never.

How vague or how distinct is it? How does it affect you mentally and physically?

If you have had no such experience, do you accept the testimony of others who claim to have felt God's presence directly? Please answer this question with special care and in as great detail as possible. Yes! The whole line of testimony on this point is so strong that I am unable to pooh-pooh it away. No doubt there is a germ in me of something similar that makes response.

6. Do you pray, and if so, why? That is, is it purely from habit, and social custom, or do you really believe that God hears your prayers? I can't possibly pray—I feel foolish and artificial.

Is prayer with you one-sided or two-sided—i.e., do you sometimes feel that in prayer you receive something—such as strength or the divine spirit—from God? Is it a real communion?

7. What do you mean by "spirituality"? Susceptibility to ideals, but with a certain freedom to indulge in imagination about them. A certain amount of "other worldly" fancy. Otherwise you have mere morality, or "taste."

Describe a typical spiritual person. Phillips Brooks.

8. Do you believe in personal immortality? Never keenly; but more strongly as I grow older. If so, why? Because I am just getting fit to live.

9. Do you accept the Bible as authority in religious matters? Are your religious faith and your religious life based on it? If so, how would your belief in God and your life toward Him and your fellow men be affected by loss of faith in the authority of the Bible? No. No. No. It is so human a book that I don't see how belief in its divine authorship can survive the reading of it.

10. What do you mean by a "religious experience"? Any moment of life that brings the reality of spiritual things more "home" to one.

To Miss Pauline Goldmark

CHOCORUA, Sept. 21, 1904.

Dear Pauline,—Alice went off this morning to Cambridge, to get the house ready for the advent of the rest of us a week hence—viz., Wednesday the 28th. Having breakfasted at 6:30 to bid her God speed, the weather was so lordly fine (after a heavy rain in the night) that I trudged across lots to our hill-top, which you never saw, and now lie there with my back against a stone, scribbling you these lines at half-past nine. The vacation has run down with an appalling rapidity, but all has gone well with us, and I have been extraordinarily well and happy, and mean to be a good boy all next winter, to say nothing of remoter futures. My brother Henry stayed a delightful fortnight, and seemed to enjoy nature here intensely—found so much sentiment and feminine delicacy in it all. It is a pleasure to be with anyone who takes in things through the eyes. Most people don't. The two "savans" who were here noticed absolutely nothing, though they had never been in America before.

Naturally I have wondered what things your eyes have been falling on. Many views from hill-tops? Many magic dells and brooks? I hope so, and that it has all done you endless good. Such a green and gold and scarlet morn as this would raise the dead. I hope that your sister Susan has also got great good from the summer, and that the fair Josephine is glad to be at home again, and your mother reconciled to losing you. Perhaps even now you are preparing to go down. I have only written as a Lebenszeichen and to tell you of our dates. I expect no reply, till you write a word to say when you are to come to Boston. Unhappily we can't ask you to Irving St, being mortgaged three deep to foreigners. Ever yours,

W. J.

It will be recalled that the St. Louis Exposition had occurred shortly before the date of the last letter and had led a number of learned and scientific associations to hold international congresses in America. James kept away from St. Louis, but asked several foreign colleagues to visit him at Chocorua or in Cambridge before their return to Europe. Among them were Dr. Pierre Janet of Paris and his wife, Professor C. Lloyd Morgan of Bristol, and Professor Harold Höffding of Copenhagen.

To F. C. S. Schiller

CAMBRIDGE, Oct. 26, 1904.

Dear Schiller,– …Last night the Janets left us—a few days previous, Lloyd Morgan. I am glad to possess my soul for a while alone. Make much of dear old Höffding, who is a good pluralist and irrationalist. I took to him immensely and so did everybody. Lecturing to my class, he told against the Absolutists an anecdote of an "American" child who asked his mother if God made the world in six days. "Yes."—"The whole of it?"—"Yes."—"Then it is finished, all done?"—"Yes."—"Then in what business now is God?" If he tells it in Oxford you must reply: "Sitting for his portrait to Royce, Bradley, and Taylor."

Don't return the "McGill Quarterly"!—I have another copy. Good-bye!

W. J.

To F. J. E. Woodbridge

CAMBRIDGE, Feb. 6, 1905.

Dear Woodbridge,—I appear to be growing into a graphomaniac. Truth boils over from my organism as muddy water from a Yellowstone Geyser. Here is another contribution to my radical empiricism, which I send hot on the heels of the last one. I promise that, with the possible exception of one post-scriptual thing, not more than eight pages of MS. long, I shall do no more writing this academic year. So if you accept this,57 you have not much more to fear.... I think, on the whole, that though the present article directly hitches on to the last words of my last article, "The Thing and Its Relations," the article called the "Essence of Humanism" had better appear before it.... Always truly yours

WM. JAMES.

To Edwin D. Starbuck

CAMBRIDGE, Feb. 12, 1905.

Dear Starbuck,—I have read your article in No. 2 of Hall's Journal with great interest and profit. It makes me eager for the book, but pray take great care of your style in that—it seems to me that this article is less well written than your "Psychology of Religion" was, less clear, more involved, more technical in language—probably the result of rapidity. Our American philosophic literature is dreadful from a literary point of view. Pierre Janet told me he thought it was much worse than German stuff—and I begin to believe so; technical and semi-technical language, half-clear thought, fluency, and no composition! Turn your face resolutely the other way! But I didn't start to say this. Your thought in this article is both important and original, and ought to be worked out in the clearest possible manner.... Your thesis needs to be worked out with great care, and as concretely as possible. It is a difficult one to put successfully, on account of the vague character of all its terms. One point you should drive home is that the anti-religious attitudes (Leuba's, Huxley's, Clifford's), so far as there is any "pathos" in them, obey exactly the same logic. The real crux is when you come to define objectively the ideals to which feeling reacts. "God is a Spirit"—darauf geht es an—on the last available definition of the term Spirit. It may be very abstract.

Love to Mrs. Starbuck. Yours always truly,

WM. JAMES.

To F. J. E. Woodbridge

[Feb. 22, 1905.]

Dear Woodbridge,—Here's another! But I solemnly swear to you that this shall be my very last offense for some months to come. This is the "postscriptual" article58 of which I recently wrote you, and I have now cleaned up the pure-experience philosophy from all the objections immediately in sight.... Truly yours,

WM. JAMES.

XV

1905-1907The Last Period (II)—Italy and Greece—Philosophical Congress in Rome—Stanford University—The Earthquake—Resignation of Professorship

In the spring of 1905 an escape from influenza, from Cambridge duties, and from correspondents, became imperative. James had long wanted to see Athens with his own eyes, and he sailed on April 3 for a short southern holiday. During the journey he wrote letters to almost no one except his wife. On his way back from Athens he stopped in Rome with the purpose of seeing certain young Italian philosophers. A Philosophical Congress was being held there at the time; and James, though he had originally declined the invitation to attend it, inevitably became involved in its proceedings and ended by seizing the occasion to discuss his theory of consciousness. It was obvious that the appropriate language in which to address a full meeting of the Congress would be French, and so he shut himself up in his hotel and composed "La Notion de Conscience." His experience in writing this paper threw an instructive sidelight on his process of composition. Ordinarily—when he was writing in English—twenty-five sheets of manuscript, written in a large hand and corrected, were a maximum achievement for one day. The address in Rome was not composed in English and then translated, but was written out in French. When he had finished the last lines of one day's work, James found to his astonishment that he had completed and corrected over forty pages of manuscript. The inhibitions which a habit of careful attention to points of style ordinarily called into play were largely inoperative when he wrote in a language which presented to his mind a smaller variety of possible expressions, and thus imposed limits upon his self-criticism.

In the following year (1906), James took leave of absence from Harvard in January and accepted an invitation from Stanford University to give a course during its spring term. He planned the course as a general introduction to Philosophy. Had he not been interrupted by the San Francisco earthquake, he would have rehearsed much of the projected "Introductory Textbook of Philosophy," in which he meant to outline his metaphysical system. But the earthquake put an end to the Stanford lectures in April, as the reader will learn more fully. In the ensuing autumn and winter (1907), James made the same material the basis of a half-year's work with his last Harvard class.

In November, 1906, the lectures which compose the volume called "Pragmatism" were written out and delivered in November at the Lowell Institute in Boston. In January, 1907, they were repeated at Columbia University, and then James published them in the spring.

The time had now come for him to stop regular teaching altogether. He had been continuing to teach, partly in deference to the wishes of the College; but it had become evident that he must have complete freedom to use his strength and time for writing when he could write, for special lectures, like the series on Pragmatism, when such might serve his ends, and for rest and change when recuperation became necessary. So, in February, 1907, he sent his resignation to the Harvard Corporation. The last meeting of his class ended in a way for which he was quite unprepared. His undergraduate students presented him with a silver loving-cup, the graduate students and assistants with an inkwell. There were a couple of short speeches, and words were spoken by which he was very much moved. Unfortunately there was no record of what was said.

To Mrs. James

Amalfi, Mar. 30, 1905.

It is good to get something in full measure, without haggling or stint, and today I have had the picturesque ladled out in buckets full, heaped up and running over. I never realized the beauties of this shore, and forget (in my habit of never noticing proper names till I have been there) whether you have ever told me of the drive from Sorrento to this place. Anyhow, I wish that you could have taken it with me this day. "Thank God for this day!" We came to Sorrento by steamer, and at 10:30 got away in a carriage, lunching at the half-way village of Positano; and proceeding through Amalfi to Ravello, high up on the mountain side, whence back here in time for a 7:15 o'clock dinner. Practically six hours driving through a scenery of which I had never realized the beauty, or rather the interest, from previous descriptions. The lime-stone mountains are as strong as anything in Switzerland, though of course much smaller. The road, a Cornice affair cut for the most part on the face of cliffs, and crossing little ravines (with beaches) on the side of which nestle hamlets, is positively ferocious in its grandeur, and on the side of it the azure sea, dreaming and blooming like a bed of violets. I didn't look for such Swiss strength, having heard of naught but beauty. It seems as if this were a race such that, when anyone wished to express an emotion of any kind, he went and built a bit of stone-wall and limed it onto the rock, so that now, when they have accumulated, the works of God and man are inextricably mixed, and it is as if mankind had been a kind of immemorial coral insect. Every possible square yard is terraced up, reclaimed and planted, and the human dwellings are the fiercest examples of cliff-building, cave-habitation, staircase and foot-path you can imagine. How I do wish that you could have been along today....

Mar. 31, 1905.

From half-past four to half-past six I walked alone through the old Naples, hilly streets, paved from house to house and swarming with the very poor, vocal with them too (their voices carry so that every child seems to be calling to the whole street, goats, donkeys, chickens, and an occasional cow mixed in), and no light of heaven getting indoors. The street floor composed of cave-like shops, the people doing their work on chairs in the street for the sake of light, and in the black inside, beds and a stove visible among the implements of trade. Such light and shade, and grease and grime, and swarm, and apparent amiability would be hard to match. I have come here too late in life, when the picturesque has lost its serious reality. Time was when hunger for it haunted me like a passion, and such sights would have then been the solidest of mental food. I put up then with such inferior substitutional suggestions as Geneva and Paris afforded—but these black old Naples streets are not suggestions, they are the reality itself—full orchestra. I have got such an impression of the essential sociability of this race, especially in the country. A smile will go so far with them—even without the accompanying copper. And the children are so sweet. Tell Aleck to drop his other studies, learn Italian (real Italian, not the awful gibberish I try to speak), cultivate his beautiful smile, learn a sentimental song or two, bring a tambourine or banjo, and come down here and fraternize with the common people along the coast—he can go far, and make friends, and be a social success, even if he should go back to a clean hotel of some sort for sleep every night....

To his Daughter

On board S.S. Orénogne, approachingPiræus, Greece, Apr. 3, 1905.

Darling Peg,—Your loving Dad is surely in luck sailing over this almost oily sea, under the awning on deck, past the coast of Greece (whose snow-capped mountains can be seen on the horizon), towards the Piræus, where we are due to arrive at about two. I had some misgivings about the steamer from Marseilles, but she has turned out splendid, and the voyage perfect. A 4000-ton boat, bran new as to all her surface equipment, stateroom all to myself, by a happy stroke of luck (the boat being full), clean absolutely, large open window, sea like Lake Champlain, with the color of Lake Leman, about a hundred and twenty first-class passengers of the most interesting description, one sixth English archeologists, one sixth English tourists, one third French archeologists, etc.,—an international archeological congress opens at Athens this week,—the rest Dagoes quelconques, many distinguished men, almost all educated and pronounced individualities, and so much acquaintance and sociability, that the somewhat small upper deck on which I write resounds with conversation like an afternoon tea. The meals are tip-top, and the whole thing almost absurdly ideal in its kind. I only wish your mother could be wafted here for one hour, to sit by my side and enjoy the scene. The best feature of the boat is little Miss Boyd, the Cretan excavatress, from Smith College, a perfect little trump of a thing, who has been through the Greco-Turkish war as nurse (as well as being nurse at Tampa during our Cuban war), and is the simplest, most generally intelligent little thing, who knows Greece by heart and can smooth one's path beautifully. Waldstein of Cambridge is on board, also M. Sylvain of the Théâtre Français, and his daughter—going to recite prologues or something at the representation of Sophocles's "Antigone," which is to take place—he looking just like your uncle Henry—both eminent comedians—I mean the two Sylvains. On the bench opposite me is the most beautiful woman on board, a sort of Mary Salter translated into French, though she is with rather common men. Well, now I will stop, and use my Zeiss glass on the land, which is getting nearer. My heart wells over with love and gratitude at having such a family—meaning Alice, you, Harry, Bill, Aleck, and Mother-in-law—and resolutions to live so as to be more worthy of them. I will finish this on land.