Category: American Literature
About the middle of the nineteenth century, in the quiet sunshine of provincial prosperity, New England had an Indian summer of the mind; and an agreeable reflective literature showed how brilliant that russet and yellow season could be. There were poets, historians, orators,...
Meantime the mantle of philosophical authority had fallen at Harvard upon other shoulders. A young Californian, Josiah Royce, had come back from Germany with a reputation for wi...
7. CHAPTER VII—ENGLISH LIBERTY IN AMERICAThe straits of Dover, which one may sometimes see across, have sufficed so to isolate England that it has never moved quite in step with the rest of Europe in politics, morals,...
3. CHAPTER III—WILLIAM JAMESWilliam James enjoyed in his youth what are called advantages: he lived among cultivated people, travelled, had teachers of various nationalities. His father was one of those so...
1. CHAPTER I—THE MORAL BACKGROUNDAbout the middle of the nineteenth century, in the quiet sunshine of provincial prosperity, New England had an Indian summer of the mind; and an agreeable reflective literature...
2. CHAPTER II—THE ACADEMIC ENVIRONMENTDuring some twenty‐five years—from about 1885 to 1910—there was at Harvard College an interesting congregation of philosophers. Why at Harvard in particular? So long as philosop...
6. CHAPTER VI—MATERIALISM AND IDEALISM IN AMERICAN LIFEThe language and traditions common to England and America are like other family bonds: they draw kindred together at the greater crises in life, but they also occasion at times...
5. CHAPTER V—LATER SPECULATIONSA question which is curious in itself and may become important in the future is this: How has migration to the new world affected philosophical ideas? At first sight we might be...