Part 1

Chapter 12,107 wordsPublic domain

THE LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES

EDITED BY HIS SON HENRY JAMES

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOLUME II

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS BOSTON

CONTENTS

XI. 1893-1899 1-52

_Turning to Philosophy--A Student's Impressions--Popular Lecturing--Chautauqua._

LETTERS:--

To Dickinson S. Miller 17

To Henry Holt 19

To Henry James 20

To Mrs. Henry Whitman 20

To G. H. Howison 22

To Theodore Flournoy 23

To his Daughter 25

To E. L. Godkin 28

To F. W. H. Myers 30

To F. W. H. Myers 32

To Henry Holt 33

To his Class at Radcliffe College 33

To Henry James 34

To Henry James 36

To Benjamin P. Blood 38

To Mrs. James 40

To Miss Rosina H. Emmet 44

To Charles Renouvier 44

To Theodore Flournoy 46

To Dickinson S. Miller 48

To Henry James 51

XII. 1893-1899 (Continued) 53-91

_The Will to Believe--Talks to Teachers--Defense of Mental Healers--Excessive Climbing in the Adirondacks._

LETTERS:--

To Theodore Flournoy 53

To Henry W. Rankin 56

To Benjamin P. Blood 58

To Henry James 60

To Miss Ellen Emmet 62

To E. L. Godkin 64

To F. C. S. Schiller 65

To James J. Putnam 66

To James J. Putnam 72

To François Pillon 73

To Mrs. James 75

To G. H. Howison 79

To Henry James 80

To his Son Alexander 81

To Miss Rosina H. Emmet 82

To Dickinson S. Miller 84

To Dickinson S. Miller 86

To Henry Rutgers Marshall 86

To Henry Rutgers Marshall 88

To Mrs. Henry Whitman 88

XIII. 1899-1902 92-170

_Two Years of Illness in Europe--Retirement from Active Duty at Harvard--The First and Second Series of the Gifford Lectures._

LETTERS:--

To Miss Pauline Goldmark 95

To Mrs. E. P. Gibbens 96

To William M. Salter 99

To Miss Frances R. Morse 102

To Mrs. Henry Whitman 103

To Thomas Davidson 106

To John C. Gray 108

To Miss Frances R. Morse 109

To Mrs. Glendower Evans 112

To Dickinson S. Miller 115

To Francis Boott 117

To Hugo Münsterberg 119

To G. H. Palmer 120

To Miss Frances R. Morse 124

To his Son Alexander 129

To his Daughter 130

To Miss Frances R. Morse 133

To Josiah Royce 135

To Miss Frances R. Morse 138

To James Sully 140

To Miss Frances R. Morse 142

To F. C. S. Schiller 142

To Miss Frances R. Morse 143

To Miss Frances R. Morse 146

To Henry W. Rankin 148

To Charles Eliot Norton 150

To N. S. Shaler 153

To Miss Frances R. Morse 155

To Henry James 159

To E. L. Godkin 159

To E. L. Godkin 161

To Miss Pauline Goldmark 162

To H. N. Gardiner 164

To F. C. S. Schiller 164

To Charles Eliot Norton 166

To Mrs. Henry Whitman 167

XIV. 1902-1905 171-218

_The Last Period (I)--Statements of Religious Belief--Philosophical Writing._

LETTERS:--

To Henry L. Higginson 173

To Miss Grace Norton 173

To Miss Frances R. Morse 175

To Henry L. Higginson 176

To Henri Bergson 178

To Mrs. Louis Agassiz 180

To Henry L. Higginson 182

To Henri Bergson 183

To Theodore Flournoy 185

To Henry James 188

To his Daughter 192

To Miss Frances R. Morse 193

To Henry James 195

To Henry W. Rankin 196

To Dickinson S. Miller 197

To Mrs. Henry Whitman 198

To Miss Frances R. Morse 200

To Mrs. Henry Whitman 201

To Henry James 202

To François Pillon 203

To Henry James 204

To Charles Eliot Norton 206

To L. T. Hobhouse 207

To Edwin D. Starbuck 209

To James Henry Leuba 211

Answers to the Pratt Questionnaire on Religious Belief 212

To Miss Pauline Goldmark 215

To F. C. S. Schiller 216

To F. J. E. Woodbridge 217

To Edwin D. Starbuck 217

To F. J. E. Woodbridge 218

XV. 1905-1907 219-282

_The Last Period (II)--Italy and Greece--Philosophical Congress in Rome--Stanford University--The Earthquake--Resignation of Professorship._

LETTERS:--

To Mrs. James 221

To his Daughter 223

To Mrs. James 225

To George Santayana 228

To Mrs. James 229

To Mrs. James 230

To H. G. Wells 230

To Henry L. Higginson 231

To T. S. Perry 232

To Dickinson S. Miller 233

To Dickinson S. Miller 235

To Dickinson S. Miller 237

To Daniel Merriman 238

To Miss Pauline Goldmark 238

To Henry James 239

To Theodore Flournoy 241

To F. C. S. Schiller 245

To Miss Frances R. Morse 247

To Henry James and W. James, Jr. 250

To W. Lutoslawski 252

To John Jay Chapman 255

To Henry James 258

To H. G. Wells 259

To Miss Theodora Sedgwick 260

To his Daughter 262

To Henry James and W. James, Jr. 263

To Moorfield Storey 265

To Theodore Flournoy 266

To Charles A. Strong 268

To F. C. S. Schiller 270

To Clifford W. Beers 273

To William James, Jr. 275

To Henry James 277

To F. C. S. Schiller 280

XVI. 1907-1909 283-332

_The Last Period (III)--Hibbert Lectures in Oxford--The Hodgson Report._

LETTERS:--

To Charles Lewis Slattery 287

To Henry L. Higginson 288

To W. Cameron Forbes 288

To F. C. S. Schiller 290

To Henri Bergson 290

To T. S. Perry 294

To Dickinson S. Miller 295

To Miss Pauline Goldmark 296

To W. Jerusalem 297

To Henry James 298

To Theodore Flournoy 300

To Norman Kemp Smith 301

To his Daughter 301

To Henry James 302

To Henry James 303

To Miss Pauline Goldmark 303

To Charles Eliot Norton 306

To Henri Bergson 308

To John Dewey 310

To Theodore Flournoy 310

To Shadworth H. Hodgson 312

To Theodore Flournoy 313

To Henri Bergson 315

To H. G. Wells 316

To Henry James 317

To T. S. Perry 318

To Hugo Münsterberg 320

To John Jay Chapman 321

To G. H. Palmer 322

To Theodore Flournoy 322

To Miss Theodora Sedgwick 324

To F. C. S. Schiller 325

To Theodore Flournoy 326

To Shadworth H. Hodgson 328

To John Jay Chapman 329

To John Jay Chapman 330

To Dickinson S. Miller 331

XVII. 1910 333-350

_Final Months--The End._

LETTERS:--

To Henry L. Higginson 334

To Miss Frances R. Morse 335

To T. S. Perry 335

To François Pillon 336

To Theodore Flournoy 338

To his Daughter 338

To Henry P. Bowditch 341

To François Pillon 342

To Henry Adams 344

To Henry Adams 346

To Henry Adams 347

To Benjamin P. Blood 347

To Theodore Flournoy 349

APPENDIX I. 353

Three Criticisms for Students.

APPENDIX II. 357

Books by William James.

INDEX 363

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

William James in middle life _Frontispiece_

"Damn the Absolute": two snapshots of William James and Josiah Royce 135

William James and Henry James posing for a kodak in 1900 161

William James and Henry Clement at the "Putnam Shanty" in the Adirondacks (1907?) 315

Facsimile of Post-card addressed to Henry Adams 347

THE LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES

1893-1899

_Turning to Philosophy--A Student's Impressions--Popular Lecturing--Chautauqua_

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 already achieved renown and influence. He would then have spent the rest of his life in working out special problems in psychology, in deducing a few theories, in making particular applications of his conclusions, in administering a growing laboratory, in surrounding himself with assistants and disciples--in weeding and gathering where he had tilled. But the fact was that the publication of his two books on psychology operated for him as a welcome release from the subject.

He had no illusion of finality about what he had written.[1] But he would have said that whatever original contribution he was capable of making to psychology had already been made; that he must pass on and leave addition and revision to others. He gradually disencumbered himself of responsibility for teaching the subject in the College. The laboratory had already been placed under Professor Münsterberg's charge. For one year, during which Münsterberg returned to Germany, James was compelled to direct its conduct; but he let it be known that he would resign his professorship rather than concern himself with it indefinitely.

Readers of this book will have seen that the centre of his interest had always been religious and philosophical. To be sure, the currents by which science was being carried forward during the sixties and seventies had supported him in his distrust of conclusions based largely on introspection and _a priori_ reasoning. As early as 1865 he had said, apropos of Agassiz, "No one sees farther into a generalization than his own knowledge of details extends." In the spirit of that remark he had spent years on brain-physiology, on the theory of the emotions, on the feeling of effort in mental processes, in studying the measurements and exact experiments by means of which the science of the mind was being brought into quickening relation with the physical and biological sciences. But all the while he had been driven on by a curiosity that embraced ulterior problems. In half of the field of his consciousness questions had been stirring which now held his attention completely. Does consciousness really exist? Could a radically empirical conception of the universe be formulated? What is knowledge? What truth? Where is freedom? and where is there room for faith? Metaphysical problems haunted his mind; discussions that ran in strictly psychological channels bored him. He called psychology "a nasty little subject," according to Professor Palmer, and added, "all one cares to know lies outside." He would not consider spending time on a revised edition of his textbook (the "Briefer Course") except for a bribe that was too great ever to be urged upon him. As time went on, he became more and more irritated at being addressed or referred to as a "psychologist." In June, 1903, when he became aware that Harvard was intending to confer an honorary degree on him, he went about for days before Commencement in a half-serious state of dread lest, at the fatal moment, he should hear President Eliot's voice naming him "Psychologist, psychical researcher, willer-to-believe, religious experiencer." He could not say whether the impossible last epithets would be less to his taste than "psychologist."

Only along the borderland between normal and pathological mental states, and particularly in the region of "religious experience," did he continue to collect psychological data and to explore them.

The new subjects which he offered at Harvard during the nineties are indicative of the directions in which his mind was moving. In the first winter after his return he gave a course on Cosmology, which he had never taught before and which he described in the department announcement as "a study of the fundamental conceptions of natural science with especial reference to the theories of evolution and materialism," and for the first time announced that his graduate "seminar" would be wholly devoted to questions in mental pathology "embracing a review of the principal forms of abnormal or exceptional mental life." In 1895 the second half of his psychological seminar was announced as "a discussion of certain theoretic problems, as Consciousness, Knowledge, Self, the relations of Mind and Body." In 1896 he offered a course on the philosophy of Kant for the first time. In 1898 the announcement of his "elective" on Metaphysics explained that the class would consider "the unity or pluralism of the world ground, and its knowability or unknowability; realism and idealism, freedom, teleology and theism."[2]

But there is another aspect of the nineties which must be touched upon. After getting back "to harness" in 1893 James took up, not only his full college duties, but an amount of outside lecturing such as he had never done before. In so doing he overburdened himself and postponed the attainment of his true purpose; but the temptation to accept the requests which now poured in on him was made irresistible by practical considerations. He not only repeated some of his Harvard courses at Radcliffe College, and gave instruction in the Harvard Summer School in addition to the regular work of the term; but delivered lectures at teachers' meetings and before other special audiences in places as far from Cambridge as Colorado and California. A number of the papers that are included in "The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy" (1897) and "Talks to Teachers and Students on Some of Life's Ideals" (1897) were thus prepared as lectures. Some of them were read many times before they were published. When he stopped for a rest in 1899, he was exhausted to the verge of a formidable break-down.