The Letters of William James, Vol. 2

In the case of one undertaking, which was much too troublesome to be reckoned as a diversion, he let himself be drawn away from his metaphysical work. He had taken no active part in the work of the Society for Psychical Research since 1896. In December, 1905, Richard Hodgson, the secretary of the American Branch, had died suddenly, and almost immediately thereafter Mrs. Piper, the medium whose trances Hodgson had spent years in studying, had purported to give communications from Hodgson's departed spirit. In 1909 James made a report to the S. P. R. on "Mrs. Piper's Hodgson control." The full report will be found in its Proceedings for 19O9,80 and the concluding pages, in which James stated, more analytically than elsewhere, the hypotheses which the phenomena suggested to him, have been reprinted in the volume of "Collected Essays and Reviews." At the same time he wrote out a more popular statement, in a paper which will be found in "Memories and Studies." As to his final opinion of the spirit-theory, the following letter, given somewhat out of its chronological place, states what was still James's opinion in 1910.

To Charles Lewis Slattery

CAMBRIDGE, Apr. 21, 1907.

Dear Mr. Slattery,—My state of mind is this: Mrs. Piper has supernormal knowledge in her trances; but whether it comes from "tapping the minds" of living people, or from some common cosmic reservoir of memories, or from surviving "spirits" of the departed, is a question impossible for me to answer just now to my own satisfaction. The spirit-theory is undoubtedly not only the most natural, but the simplest, and I have great respect for Hodgson's and Hyslop's arguments when they adopt it. At the same time the electric current called belief has not yet closed in my mind.

Whatever the explanation be, trance-mediumship is an excessively complex phenomenon, in which many concurrent factors are engaged. That is why interpretation is so hard.

Make any use, public or private, that you like of this.

In great haste, yours,

WM. JAMES.

The next letter should be understood as referring to the abandonment of an excursion to Lake Champlain with Henry L. Higginson. The celebration alluded to in the last part of the letter had been arranged by the Cambridge Historical Society in honor of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Louis Agassiz.

To Henry L. Higginson

CHOCORUA, N. H., circa, June 1, 1907.

Dear Henry,—On getting your resignation by telephone, I came straight up here instead, without having time to write you my acceptance as I meant to; and now comes your note of the fourth, before I have done so.

I am exceedingly sorry, my dear old boy, that it is the doctor's advice that has made you fear to go. I hope the liability to relapse will soon fade out and leave you free again; for say what they will of Alters Schwäche and resignation to decay, and entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren, it means only sour grapes, and the insides of one always want to be doing the free and active things. However, a river can still be lively in a shrunken bed, and we must not pay too much attention to the difference of level. If you should summon me again this summer, I can probably respond. I shall be here for a fortnight, then back to Cambridge again for a short time.

I thought the Agassiz celebration went off very nicely indeed, didn't you?—John Gray's part in it being of course the best. X– was heavy, but respectable, and the heavy respectable ought to be one ingredient in anything of the kind. But how well Shaler would have done that part of the job had he been there! Love to both of you!

W. J.

To W. Cameron Forbes

CHOCORUA, June 11, 1907.

Dear Cameron Forbes,—Your letter from Baguio of the 18th of April touches me by its genuine friendliness, and is a tremendous temptation. Why am I not ten years younger? Even now I hesitate to say no, and the only reason why I don't say yes, with a roar, is that certain rather serious drawbacks in the way of health of late seem to make me unfit for the various activities which such a visit ought to carry in its train. I am afraid my program from now onwards ought to be sedentary. I ought to be getting out a book next winter. Last winter I could hardly do any walking, owing to a trouble with my heart.

Does your invitation mean to include my wife? And have you a good crematory so that she might bring home my ashes in case of need?

I think if you had me on the spot you would find me a less impractical kind of an anti-imperialist than you have supposed me to be. I think that the manner in which the McKinley administration railroaded the country into its policy of conquest was abominable, and the way the country pucked up its ancient soul at the first touch of temptation, and followed, was sickening. But with the establishment of the civil commission McKinley did what he could to redeem things and now what the Islands want is CONTINUITY OF ADMINISTRATION to form new habits that may to some degree be hoped to last when we, as controllers, are gone. When? that is the question. And much difference of opinion may be fair as to the answer. That we can't stay forever seems to follow from the fact that the educated Philippinos differ from all previous colonials in having been inoculated before our occupation with the ideas of the French Revolution; and that is a virus to which history shows as yet no anti-toxine. As I am at present influenced, I think that the U. S. ought to solemnly proclaim a date for our going (or at least for a plebiscitum as to whether we should go) and stand by all the risks. Some date, rather than indefinitely drift. And shape the whole interval towards securing things in view of the change. As to this, I may be wrong, and am always willing to be convinced. I wish I could go, and see you all at work. Heaven knows I admire the spirit with which you are animated—a new thing in colonial work.

It must have been a great pleasure to you to see so many of the family at once. I have seen none of them since their return, but hope to do so ere the summer speeds. The only dark spot was poor F–'s death.

Believe me, with affectionate regards, yours truly,

WM. JAMES.

I am ordering a little book of mine, just out, to be sent to you. Some one of your circle may find entertainment in it.

To F. C. S. Schiller

[Post-card]CHOCORUA, June 13, 1907.

Yours of the 27th ult. received and highly appreciated. I'm glad you relish my book so well. You go on playing the Boreas and I shedding the sunbeams, and between us we'll get the cloak off the philosophic traveler! But have you read Bergson's new book?81It seems to me that nothing is important in comparison with that divine apparition. All our positions, real time, a growing world, asserted magisterially, and the beast intellectualism killed absolutely dead! The whole flowed round by a style incomparable as it seems to me. Read it, and digest it if you can. Much of it I can't yet assimilate.

[No signature.]

To Henri Bergson

CHOCORUA, June 13, 1907.

O my Bergson, you are a magician, and your book is a marvel, a real wonder in the history of philosophy, making, if I mistake not, an entirely new era in respect of matter, but unlike the works of genius of the "transcendentalist" movement (which are so obscurely and abominably and inaccessibly written), a pure classic in point of form. You may be amused at the comparison, but in finishing it I found the same after-taste remaining as after finishing "Madame Bovary," such a flavor of persistent euphony, as of a rich river that never foamed or ran thin, but steadily and firmly proceeded with its banks full to the brim. Then the aptness of your illustrations, that never scratch or stand out at right angles, but invariably simplify the thought and help to pour it along! Oh, indeed you are a magician! And if your next book proves to be as great an advance on this one as this is on its two predecessors, your name will surely go down as one of the great creative names in philosophy.

There! have I praised you enough? What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise—although the philosophers generally call it "recognition"! If you want still more praise, let me know, and I will send it, for my features have been on a broad smile from the first page to the last, at the chain of felicities that never stopped. I feel rejuvenated.

As to the content of it, I am not in a mood at present to make any definite reaction. There is so much that is absolutely new that it will take a long time for your contemporaries to assimilate it, and I imagine that much of the development of detail will have to be performed by younger men whom your ideas will stimulate to coruscate in manners unexpected by yourself. To me at present the vital achievement of the book is that it inflicts an irrecoverable death-wound upon Intellectualism. It can never resuscitate! But it will die hard, for all the inertia of the past is in it, and the spirit of professionalism and pedantry as well as the æsthetic-intellectual delight of dealing with categories logically distinct yet logically connected, will rally for a desperate defense. The élan vital, all contentless and vague as you are obliged to leave it, will be an easy substitute to make fun of. But the beast has its death-wound now, and the manner in which you have inflicted it (interval versus temps d'arrêt, etc.) is masterly in the extreme. I don't know why this later rédaction of your critique of the mathematics of movement has seemed to me so much more telling than the early statement—I suppose it is because of the wider use made of the principle in the book. You will be receiving my own little "pragmatism" book simultaneously with this letter. How jejune and inconsiderable it seems in comparison with your great system! But it is so congruent with parts of your system, fits so well into interstices thereof, that you will easily understand why I am so enthusiastic. I feel that at bottom we are fighting the same fight, you a commander, I in the ranks. The position we are rescuing is "Tychism" and a really growing world. But whereas I have hitherto found no better way of defending Tychism than by affirming the spontaneous addition of discrete elements of being (or their subtraction), thereby playing the game with intellectualist weapons, you set things straight at a single stroke by your fundamental conception of the continuously creative nature of reality. I think that one of your happiest strokes is your reduction of "finality," as usually taken, to its status alongside of efficient causality, as the twin-daughters of intellectualism. But this vaguer and truer finality restored to its rights will be a difficult thing to give content to. Altogether your reality lurks so in the background, in this book, that I am wondering whether you couldn't give it any more development in concreto here, or whether you perhaps were holding back developments, already in your possession, for a future volume. They are sure to come to you later anyhow, and to make a new volume; and altogether, the clash of these ideas of yours with the traditional ones will be sure to make sparks fly that will illuminate all sorts of dark places and bring innumerable new considerations into view. But the process may be slow, for the ideas are so revolutionary. Were it not for your style, your book might last 100 years unnoticed; but your way of writing is so absolutely commanding that your theories have to be attended to immediately. I feel very much in the dark still about the relations of the progressive to the regressive movement, and this great precipitate of nature subject to static categories. With a frank pluralism of beings endowed with vital impulses you can get oppositions and compromises easily enough, and a stagnant deposit; but after my one reading I don't exactly "catch on" to the way in which the continuum of reality resists itself so as to have to act, etc., etc.

The only part of the work which I felt like positively criticising was the discussion of the idea of nonentity, which seemed to me somewhat overelaborated, and yet didn't leave me with a sense that the last word had been said on the subject. But all these things must be very slowly digested by me. I can see that, when the tide turns in your favor, many previous tendencies in philosophy will start up, crying "This is nothing but what we have contended for all along." Schopenhauer's blind will, Hartmann's unconscious, Fichte's aboriginal freedom (reëdited at Harvard in the most "unreal" possible way by Münsterberg) will all be claimants for priority. But no matter—all the better if you are in some ancient lines of tendency. Mysticism also must make claims and doubtless just ones. I say nothing more now—this is just my first reaction; but I am so enthusiastic as to have said only two days ago, "I thank heaven that I have lived to this date—that I have witnessed the Russo-Japanese war, and seen Bergson's new book appear—the two great modern turning-points of history and of thought!" Best congratulations and cordialest regards!

WM. JAMES.

To T. S. Perry

Silver Lake, N.H., June 24, 1907.

Dear Thos.,—Yours of the 11th is at hand, true philosopher that you are. No one but one bawn & bred in the philosophic briar-patch could appreciate Bergson as you do, without in the least understanding him. I am in an identical predicament. This last of his is the divinest book that has appeared in my life-time, and (unless I am the falsest prophet) it is destined to rank with the greatest works of all time. The style of it is as wonderful as the matter. By all means send it to Chas. Peirce, but address him Prescott Hall, Cambridge. I am sending you my "Pragmatism," which Bergson's work makes seem like small potatoes enough.

Are you going to Russia to take Stolypin's place? or to head the Revolution? I would I were at Giverny to talk metaphysics with you, and enjoy a country where I am not responsible for the droughts and the garden. Have been here two weeks at Chocorua, getting our place ready for a tenant.

Affectionate regards to you all.

W. J.

To Dickinson S. Miller

Lincoln, Mass., Aug. 5, 1907.

Dear Miller,—I got your letter about "Pragmatism," etc., some time ago. I hear that you are booked to review it for the "Hibbert Journal." Lay on, Macduff! as hard as you can—I want to have the weak places pointed out. I sent you a week ago a "Journal of Philosophy"82 with a word more about Truth in it, written at you mainly; but I hardly dare hope that I have cleared up my position. A letter from Strong, two days ago, written after receiving a proof of that paper, still thinks that I deny the existence of realities outside of the thinker; and [R. B.] Perry, who seems to me to have written far and away the most important critical remarks on Pragmatism (possibly the only important ones), accused Pragmatists (though he doesn't name me) of ignoring or denying that the real object plays any part in deciding what ideas are true. I confess that such misunderstandings seem to me hardly credible, and cast a "lurid light" on the mutual understandings of philosophers generally. Apparently it all comes from the word Pragmatism—and a most unlucky word it may prove to have been. I am a natural realist. The world per se may be likened to a cast of beans on a table. By themselves they spell nothing. An onlooker may group them as he likes. He may simply count them all and map them. He may select groups and name these capriciously, or name them to suit certain extrinsic purposes of his. Whatever he does, so long as he takes account of them, his account is neither false nor irrelevant. If neither, why not call it true? It fits the beans-minus-him, and expresses the total fact, of beans-plus-him. Truth in this total sense is partially ambiguous, then. If he simply counts or maps, he obeys a subjective interest as much as if he traces figures. Let that stand for pure "intellectual" treatment of the beans, while grouping them variously stands for non-intellectual interests. All that Schiller and I contend for is that there is no "truth" without some interest, and that non-intellectual interests play a part as well as intellectual ones. Whereupon we are accused of denying the beans, or denying being in anyway constrained by them! It's too silly!…

To Miss Pauline Goldmark

Putnam Shanty,Keene Valley, Sept. 14, 1907.

Dear Pauline,– …No "camping" for me this side the grave! A party of fourteen left here yesterday for Panther Gorge, meaning to return by the Range, as they call your "summit trail." Apparently it is easier than when on that to me memorable day we took it, for Charley Putnam swears he has done it in five and a half hours. I don't well understand the difference, except that they don't reach Haystack over Marcy as we did, and there is now a good trail. Past and future play such a part in the way one feels the present. To these youngsters, as to me long ago, and to you today, the rapture of the connexion with these hills is partly made of the sense of future power over them and their like. That being removed from me, I can only mix memories of past power over them with the present. But I have always observed a curious fading in what Tennyson calls the "passion" of the past. Memories awaken little or no sentiment when they are too old; and I have taken everything here so prosily this summer that I find myself wondering whether the time-limit has been exceeded, and whether for emotional purpose I am a new self. We know not what we shall become; and that is what makes life so interesting. Always a turn of the kaleidoscope; and when one is utterly maimed for action, then the glorious time for reading other men's lives! I fairly revel in that prospect, which in its full richness has to be postponed, for I'm not sufficiently maimed-for-action yet. By going slowly and alone, I find I can compass such things as the Giant's Washbowl, Beaver Meadow Falls, etc., and they make me feel very good. I have even been dallying with the temptation to visit Cameron Forbes at Manila; but I have put it behind me for this year at least. I think I shall probably give some more lectures (of a much less "popular" sort) at Columbia next winter—so you see there's life in the old dog yet. Nevertheless, how different from the life that courses through your arteries and capillaries! Today is the first honestly fine day there has been since I arrived here on the 2nd. (They must have been heavily rained on at Panther Gorge yesterday evening.) After writing a couple more letters I will take a book and repair to "Mosso's Ledge" for the enjoyment of the prospect....

To W. Jerusalem (Vienna)

St. Hubert's, N.Y. Sept. 15, 1907.

Dear Professor Jerusalem,—Your letter of the 1st of September, forwarded from Cambridge, reaches me here in the Adirondack Mountains today. I am glad the publisher is found, and that you are enjoying the drudgery of translating ["Pragmatism"]. Also that you find the book more and more in agreement with your own philosophy. I fear that its untechnicality of style—or rather its deliberate anti-technicality—will make the German Gelehrtes Publikum,83 as well as the professors, consider it oberflächliches Zeug84—which it assuredly is not, although, being only a sketch, it ought to be followed by something tighter and abounding in discriminations. Pragmatism is an unlucky word in some respects, and the two meanings I give for it are somewhat heterogeneous. But it was already in vogue in France and Italy as well as in England and America, and it was tactically advantageous to use it....

To Henry James

Stonehurst, Intervale, N.H., Oct. 6, 1907.

Dearest Brother,—I write this at the [James] Bryces', who have taken the Merrimans' house for the summer, and whither I came the day before yesterday, after closing our Chocorua house, and seeing Alice leave for home. We had been there a fortnight, trying to get some work done, and having to do most of it with our own hands, or rather with Alice's heroic hands, for mine are worth almost nothing in these degenerate days. It is enough to make your heart break to see the scarcity of "labor," and the whole country tells the same story. Our future at Chocorua is a somewhat problematic one, though I think we shall manage to pass next summer there and get it into better shape for good renting, thereafter, at any cost (not the renting but the shaping). After that what I want is a free foot, and the children are now not dependent on a family summer any longer....

I spent the first three weeks of September—warm ones—in my beloved and exquisite Keene Valley, where I was able to do a good deal of uphill walking, with good rather than bad effects, much to my joy. Yesterday I took a three hours walk here, three quarters of an hour of it uphill. I have to go alone, and slowly; but it's none the worse for that and makes one feel like old times. I leave this P.M. for two more days at Chocorua—at the hotel. The fall is late, but the woods are beginning to redden beautifully. With the sun behind them, some maples look like stained-glass windows. But the penury of the human part of this region is depressing, and I begin to have an appetite for Europe again. Alice too! To be at Cambridge with no lecturing and no students to nurse along with their thesis-work is an almost incredibly delightful prospect. I am going to settle down to the composition of another small book, more original and ground-breaking than anything I have yet put forth(!), which I expect to print by the spring; after which I can lie back and write at leisure more routine things for the rest of my days.

The Bryces are wholly unchanged, excellent friends and hosts, and I like her as much as him. The trouble with him is that his insatiable love of information makes him try to pump you all the time instead of letting you pump him, and I have let my own tongue wag so, that, when gone, I shall feel like a fool, and remember all kinds of things that I have forgotten to ask him. I have just been reading to Mrs. B., with great gusto on her part and renewed gusto on mine, the first few pages of your chapter on Florida in "The American Scene." Köstlich stuff! I had just been reading to myself almost 50 pages of the New England part of the book, and fairly melting with delight over the Chocorua portion. Evidently that book will last, and bear reading over and over again—a few pages at a time, which is the right way for "literature" fitly so called. It all makes me wish that we had you here again, and you will doubtless soon come. I mustn't forget to thank you for the gold pencil-case souvenir. I have had a plated silver one for a year past, now worn through, and experienced what a "comfort" they are. Good-bye, and Heaven bless you. Your loving

W. J.

To Theodore Flournoy

CAMBRIDGE, Jan. 2, 1908.

I am just back from the American Philosophical Association, which had a really delightful meeting at Cornell University in the State of New York. Mostly epistemological. We are getting to know each other and understand each other better, and shall do so year by year, Everyone cursed my doctrine and Schiller's about "truth." I think it largely is misunderstanding, but it is also due to our having expressed our meaning very ill. The general blanket-word pragmatism covers so many different opinions, that it naturally arouses irritation to see it flourished as a revolutionary flag. I am also partly to blame here; but it was tactically wise to use it as a title. Far more persons have had their attention attracted, and the result has been that everybody has been forced to think. Substantially I have nothing to alter in what I have said....

I have just read the first half of Fechner's "Zend-Avesta," a wonderful book, by a wonderful genius. He had his vision and he knows how to discuss it, as no one's vision ever was discussed.

I may tell you in confidence (I don't talk of it here because my damned arteries may in the end make me give it up—for a year past I have a sort of angina when I make efforts) that I have accepted an invitation to give eight public lectures at Oxford next May. I was ashamed to refuse; but the work of preparing them will be hard (the title is "The Present Situation in Philosophy"85) and they doom me to relapse into the "popular lecture" form just as I thought I had done with it forever. (What I wished to write this winter was something ultra dry in form, impersonal and exact.) I find that my free and easy and personal way of writing, especially in "Pragmatism," has made me an object of loathing to many respectable academic minds, and I am rather tired of awakening that feeling, which more popular lecturing on my part will probably destine me to increase.