The Letters of William James, Vol. 2

To begin with, it doesn't seem exactly like you, but rather like some quiet and conscientious old passive contemplator of life, not bristling as you are with "points," and vivac...

DEAREST HENRY,--Your long and excitingly interesting type-written letter about coming hither arrived yesterday, and I hasten to retract all my dampening remarks, now that I unde...

How much has happened since I last heard from you! To say nothing of the Zola trial, we now have the Cuban War! A curious episode of history, showing how a nation's ideals can b...

Next Monday we are expecting to move into the neighboring Château de Carqueiranne, which my friend Professor Richet of Paris has offered conjointly to us and the Fred Myerses, w...

I have been supposing, as one always does, that you "ran in" to the Putnams' every hour or so, and likewise they to No. 12. But your late allusion to the telephone and the rarit...

Moreover, it strikes me that no good will ever come to Art as such from the analytic study of Æsthetics--harm rather, if the abstractions could in any way be made the basis of p...

MY DEAR MILLER,--I have found the work of recommencing teaching unexpectedly formidable after our year of gentlemanly irresponsibility. I seem to have forgotten everything, espe...

BELOVED THOMAS, cher maître et confrère,--Your delightful letter about my Fechner article and about your having become a professional philosopher yourself came to hand duly, fou...

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 contemporari...

DEAR MILLER,-- ...You seem to take radical empiricism more simply than I can. What I mean by it is the thesis that there is no fact "not actually experienced to be such." In oth...

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 (thei...

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 e...

I rejoice immensely in the purchase [on our behalf] of the two pieces of land [near Chocorua], and pine for the day when I can get back to see them. If all the same to you, I wi...

Even a glance at this period tempts one to wonder whether this record would not have been richer if it had been different. Might-have-beens can never be measured or verified; an...

DEAREST H.-- ...I've been so overwhelmed with work, and the mountain of the _Unread_ has piled up so, that only in these days here have I really been able to settle down to your...

The astounding thing is the latent Anglophobia now revealed. It is most of it directly traceable to the diabolic machinations of the party of protection for the past twenty year...

DEAREST BROTHER AND SON,--Your cablegram of response was duly received, and we have been also "joyous" in the thought of your being together. I knew, of course, Henry, that you...

DEAR BROTHER AND SON,--I dare say that you will be together in Paris when you get this, but I address it to Lamb House all the same. You twain are more "blessed" than I, in the...

DEAR HENRY,--I am sorry to have given a wrong impression, and made you take the trouble of writing--nutritious though your letters be to receive. My motive in mentioning the God...

MY DEAR FLOURNOY,--You see the electric current of sympathy that binds the world together--I turn towards you, and the place I write from repeats the name of your Lake Leman. I...

DEAR MRS. WHITMAN,--We ought to be off Boston tonight. After a cold and wet voyage, including two days of head-gale and heavy sea, and one of unbroken fog with lugubriously moo-...

But profound as is my own moral respect and admiration, for a _vacation_ give me the Continent! The civilization here is too heavy, too _stodgy_, if one could use so unamiable a...

DEAR H.,--Alice wrote you (I think) a brief word after the crisis of last Monday. It took it out of me nervously a good deal, for it came at the end of the month of May, when I...

Pardon the familiarity of this epistle. I like and admire your theory of Knowledge so much, and you re-duplicate (I _don't_ mean _copy_) my views so beautifully in this article,...

Yes! H. Sidgwick is a sad loss, with all his remaining philosophic wisdom unwritten. I feel greatly F. W. H. Myers's loss also. He suffered terribly with suffocation, but bore i...

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 li...

James, Alice (=J.='s sister), her diary quoted, =1=, 16; in England with H. James, Jr., from 1885 on, 258; her illness, 258, 259, 284; her diary quoted, 259 _n._; quoted, on =J....

Psychology, =J.= begins to read on, =1=, 118, 119; =J.= gives course in, 179; =J.= helps to make it a modern science, 224, 225; "a nasty little subject," =2=, 2.

Agassiz, Louis, =J.= joins his Brazilian expedition, =1=, 54 _ff._, =J.= quoted on, 55; quoted, on =J.=, 56; on the Brazilian expedition, 56, 57, 59, 61, 67, 68, 69; described b...

[17] A full report of the speech made at the Legislative hearing was printed in the _Banner of Light_, Mar. 12, 1898. The letter to the Boston _Transcript_ in 1894 appeared in t...

When James returned from Europe, he was fifty-two years old. If he had been another man, he might have settled down to the intensive cultivation of the field in which he had alr...