Part 10

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, who will soon arrive. A whole country house in splendid grounds and a perfect Godsend under the conditions. If I can only bear the talking to the Myerses without too much fatigue! But that also I am sure will come. Our present situation is enviable enough. A large bedroom with a balcony high up on the vast hotel façade; a terrace below it graveled with white pebbles containing beds of palms and oranges and roses; below that a downward sloping garden full of plants and winding walks and seats; then a wide hillside continuing southward to the plain below, with its gray-green olive groves bordered by great salt marshes with salt works on them, shut in from the sea by the causeways which lead to a long rocky island, perhaps three miles away, that limits the middle of our view due south, and beyond which to the East and West appears the boundless Mediterranean. But delightful as this is, there is no place like home; Otis Place is better than Languedoc and Irving Street than Provence. And I am sure, dear Bessie, that there is no maid, wife or widow in either of these countries that is half as good as you. But here I must absolutely stop; so with a good-night and a happy New Year to you, I am as ever, affectionately your friend,

Wm. James.

_To Dickinson S. Miller._

[Dictated to Mrs. James]

HOTEL D' ALBION, COSTEBELLE, HYÈRES, _Jan. 18, 1900_.

DARLING MILLER,--Last night arrived your pathetically sympathetic letter in comment on the news you had just received of my dropping out for the present from the active career. I want you to understand how deeply I value your unflagging feeling of friendship, and how much we have been touched by this new expression of it.... My strength and spirits are coming back to me with the open-air life, and I begin to feel quite differently towards the future. Even if this amelioration does not develop fast, it is a check to the deterioration, and shows that curative forces are still there. I look perfectly well at present, and that of itself is a very favorable sign. In a couple of weeks I mean to begin the Gifford lectures, writing, say, a page a day, and having all next year before me empty, am very likely to get, at any rate, the first course finished. A letter from Seth last night told me that the Committee [on the Gifford Lectureship] had refused my resignation and simply shoved my appointment forward by one year. So be of good cheer, Miller; we shall yet fight the good fight, sometimes side by side, sometimes agin one another, as merrily as if no interruption had occurred. Show this to Harry, to whom his mother will write today.

We enjoyed Royce's visit very much, and yesterday I finished reading his book, which I find perfectly charming as a composition, though as far as cogent reasoning goes, it leaks at every joint. It is, nevertheless, a big achievement in the line of philosophic fancy-work, perhaps the most important of all except religious fancy-work. He has got himself together far more intricately than ever before, and ought, after this, to be recognized by the world according to the measure of his real importance. To me, however, the book has brought about a curious settlement in my way of classing Royce. In spite of the great technical freight he carries, and his extraordinary mental vigor, he belongs essentially among the lighter skirmishers of philosophy. A sketcher and popularizer, not a pile-driver, foundation-layer, or wall-builder. Within his class, of course, he is simply magnificent. It all goes with his easy temperament and rare good-nature in discussion. The subject is not really vital to him, it is just fancy-work. All the same I do hope that this book and its successor will prove a great ferment in our philosophic schools. Only with schools and living masters can philosophy _bloom_ in a country, in a generation.

No more, dear Miller, but endless thanks. All you tell me of yourself deeply interests me. I am deeply sorry about the eyes. Are you sure it is not a matter for glasses? With much love from both of us. Your ever affectionate,

W. J.

_To Francis Boott._

[Dictated to Mrs. James]

CHÂTEAU DE CARQUEIRANNE, _Jan. 31, 1900_.

DEAR OLD FRIEND,--Every day for a month past I have said to Alice, "Today we must get off a letter to Mr. Boott"; but every day the available strength was less than the call upon it. Yours of the 28th December reached us duly at Rye and was read at the cheerful little breakfast table. I must say that you are the only person who has caught the proper tone for sympathizing with an invalid's feelings. Everyone else says, "We are glad to think that you are by this time in splendid condition, richly enjoying your rest, and having a great success at Edinburgh"--this, where what one craves is mere pity for one's unmerited sufferings! _You_ say, "it is a great disappointment, more I should think than you can well bear. I wish you could give up the whole affair and turn your prow toward home." That, dear Sir, is the proper note to strike--la voix du coeur qui seul au coeur arrive; and I thank you for recognizing that it is a case of agony and patience. I, for one, should be too glad to turn my prow homewards, in spite of all our present privileges in the way of simplified life, and glorious climate. What wouldn't I give at this moment to be partaking of one of your recherchés déjeuners à la fourchette, ministered to by the good Kate. From the bed on which I lie I can "sense" it as if present--the succulent roast pork, the apple sauce, the canned asparagus, the cranberry pie, the dates, the "To Kalon,"[29]--above all the _rire en barbe_ of the ever-youthful host. Will they ever come again?

Don't understand me to be disparaging our present meals which, cooked by a broadbuilt sexagenarian Provençale, leave nothing to be desired. Especially is the fish good and the artichokes, and the stewed lettuce. Our _commensaux_, the Myerses, form a good combination. The house is vast and comfortable and the air just right for one in my condition, neither relaxing nor exciting, and floods of sunshine.

Do you care much about the war? For my part I think Jehovah has run the thing about right, so far; though on utilitarian grounds it will be very likely better if the English win. When we were at Rye an interminable controversy raged about a national day of humiliation and prayer. I wrote to the "Times" to suggest, in my character of traveling American, that both sides to the controversy might be satisfied by a service arranged on principles suggested by the anecdote of the Montana settler who met a grizzly so formidable that he fell on his knees, saying, "O Lord, I hain't never yet asked ye for help, and ain't agoin' to ask ye for none now. But for pity's sake, O Lord, don't help the bear." The solemn "Times" never printed my letter and thus the world lost an admirable epigram. You, I know, will appreciate it.

Mrs. Gibbens speaks with great pleasure of your friendly visits, and I should think you might find Mrs. Merriman good company. I hope you are getting through the winter without any bronchial trouble, and I hope that neither the influenza nor the bubonic plague has got to Cambridge yet. The former is devastating Europe. If you see dear Dr. Driver, give him our warmest regards. One ought to stay among one's own people. I seem to be mending--though very slowly, and the least thing knocks me down. This noon I am still in bed, a little too much talking with the Myerses yesterday giving me a strong pectoral distress which is not yet over. This dictation begins to hurt me, so I will stop. My spirits now are first-rate, which is a great point gained.

Good-bye, dear old man! We both send our warmest love and are, ever affectionately yours,

Wm. James.

_To Hugo Münsterberg._

CARQUEIANNE, _March 13, 1900_.

DEAR MÜNSTERBERG,--Your letter of the 7th "ult." was a most delightful surprise--all but the part of it which told of your being ill again--and of course the news of poor Solomons's death was a severe shock.... As regards Solomons, it is pathetically tragic, and I hope that you will send me full details. There was something so lonely and self-sustaining about poor little S., that to be snuffed out like this before he had fairly begun to live in the eyes of the world adds a sort of tragic dramatic unity to his young career. Certainly the _keenest_ intellect we ever had, and one of the loftiest characters! But there was always a mysterious side to me about his mind: he appeared so critical and destructive, and yet kept alluding all the while to ethical and religious ideals of his own which he wished to live for, and of which he never vouchsafed a glimpse to anyone else. He was the only student I have ever had of whose criticisms I felt afraid: and that was partly because I never quite understood the region from which they came, and with the authority of which he spoke. His surface thoughts, however, of a scientific order, were extraordinarily _treffend_ and clearly expressed; in fact, the way in which he went to the heart of a subject in a few words was masterly. Of course he must have left, apart from his thesis, a good deal of MS. fit for publication. I have not seen our philosophical periodicals since leaving home. Have any parts of his thesis already appeared? If not, the whole thing should be published as "Monograph Supplement" to the "Psychological Review," and his papers gone over to see what else there may be. An adequate obituary of him ought also to be written. Who knew him most intimately? I think the obituary and a portrait ought also to be posted in the laboratory. Can you send me the address of his mother?--I think his father is dead. I should also like to write a word about him to Miss S----, if you can give me her address. If we had foreseen this early end to poor little Solomons, how much more we should have made of him, and how considerate we should have been!

It pleases me much to think of so many other good young fellows, as you report them, in the laboratory this year. How many candidates for Ph.D.? How glad I am to be clear of those examinations, certainly the most disagreeable part of the year's work....

_To George H. Palmer._

CARQUEIRANNE, _Apr. 2, 1900_.

GLORIOUS OLD PALMER,--I had come to the point of feeling that my next letter _must_ be to you, when in comes your delightful "favor" of the 18th, with all its news, its convincing clipping, and its enclosures from Bakewell and Sheldon. I have had many impulses to write to Bakewell, but they have all aborted--my powers being so small and so much _in Anspruch genommen_ by correspondence already under way. I judge him to be well and happy. What think you of his wife? I suppose she is no relation of yours. I shouldn't think any of your three candidates would do for that conventional Bryn Mawr. She stoneth the prophets, and I wish she would get X---- and get stung. He made a _deplorable_ impression on me many years ago. The only comment _I_ heard when I gave my address there lately (the last one in my "Talks") was that A---- had hoped for something more technical and psychological! Nevertheless, some good girls seem to come out at Bryn Mawr. I am awfully sorry that Perry is out of place. Unless he gets something good, it seems to me that we ought to get him for a course in Kant. He is certainly the soundest, most normal all-round man of our recent production. Your list for next year interests me muchly. I am glad of Münsterberg's and Santayana's new courses, and hope they'll be good. I'm glad you're back in Ethics and glad that Royce has "Epistemology"--portentous name, and small result, in my opinion, but a substantive _discipline_ which ought, _par le temps qui court_, to be treated with due formality. I look forward with eagerness to his new volume.[30] What a colossal feat he has performed in these two years--all thrown in by the way, as it were.

Certainly Gifford lectures are a good institution for stimulating production. They have stimulated me so far to produce two lectures of wishy-washy generalities. What is that for a "showing" in six months of absolute leisure? The second lecture used me up so that I must be off a good while again.

No! dear Palmer, the best I can possibly hope for at Cambridge after my return is to be able to carry one half-course. So make all calculations accordingly. As for Windelband, how can I ascertain anything except by writing to him? I shall see no one, nor go to any University environment. My impression is that we must go in for budding genius, if we seek a European. If an American, we can get a _sommité_! But who? in either case? Verily there is room at the top. S---- seems to be the only Britisher worth thinking of. I imagine we had better train up our own men. A----, B----, C----, either would no doubt do, especially A---- if his health improves. D---- is our last card, from the point of view of policy, no doubt, but from that of inner organization it seems to me that he may have too many points of coalescence with both Münsterberg and Royce, especially the latter.

The great event in my life recently has been the reading of Santayana's book.[31] Although I absolutely reject the platonism of it, I have literally squealed with delight at the imperturbable perfection with which the position is laid down on page after page; and grunted with delight at such a thickening up of our Harvard atmosphere. If our students now could begin really to understand what Royce means with his voluntaristic-pluralistic monism, what Münsterberg means with his dualistic scientificism and platonism, what Santayana means by his pessimistic platonism (I wonder if he and Mg. have had any close mutually encouraging intercourse in this line?), what I mean by my crass pluralism, what you mean by your ethereal idealism, that these are so many religions, ways of fronting life, and worth fighting for, we should have a genuine philosophic universe at Harvard. The best condition of it would be an open conflict and rivalry of the diverse systems. (Alas! that I should be out of it, just as my chance begins!) The world might ring with the struggle, if we devoted ourselves exclusively to belaboring each other.

I now understand Santayana, the man. I never understood him before. But what a perfection of rottenness in a philosophy! I don't think I ever knew the anti-realistic view to be propounded with so impudently superior an air. It is refreshing to see a representative of moribund Latinity rise up and administer such reproof to us barbarians in the hour of our triumph. I imagine Santayana's _style_ to be entirely spontaneous. But it has curious classic echoes. Whole pages of pure Hume in style; others of pure Renan. Nevertheless, how fantastic a philosophy!--as if the "world of values" _were_ independent of existence. It is only as _being_, that one thing is better than another. The idea of darkness is as good as that of light, as ideas. There is more value in light's _being_. And the exquisite consolation, when you have ascertained the badness of all fact, in knowing that badness is inferior to goodness, to the end--it only rubs the pessimism in. A man whose egg at breakfast turns out always bad says to himself, "Well, bad and good are not the same, anyhow." That is just the trouble! Moreover, when you come down to the facts, what do your harmonious and integral ideal systems prove to be? in the concrete? Always things burst by the growing content of experience. Dramatic unities; laws of versification; ecclesiastical systems; scholastic doctrines. Bah! Give me Walt Whitman and Browning ten times over, much as the perverse ugliness of the latter at times irritates me, and intensely as I have enjoyed Santayana's attack. The barbarians are in the line of mental growth, and those who do insist that the ideal and the real are dynamically continuous are those by whom the world is to be saved. But I'm nevertheless delighted that the other view, always existing in the world, should at last have found so splendidly impertinent an expression among ourselves. I have meant to write to Santayana; but on second thoughts, and to save myself, I will just ask you to send him this. It saves him from what might be the nuisance of having to reply, and on my part it has the advantage of being more free-spoken and direct. He is certainly an _extraordinarily distingué_ writer. Thank him for existing!

As a contrast, read Jack Chapman's "Practical Agitation." The other pole of thought, and a style all splinters--but a gospel for our rising generation--I hope it will have its effect.

Send me your Noble lectures. I don't see how you could risk it without a MS. If you did fail (which I doubt) you deserved to. Anyhow the printed page makes everything good.

I can no more! Adieu! How is Mrs. Palmer this winter? I hope entirely herself again. You are impartially silent of her and of my wife! The "Transcript" continues to bless us. We move from this hospitable roof to the hotel at Costebelle today. Thence after a fortnight to Geneva, and in May to Nauheim once more, to be reëxamined and sentenced by Schott. Affectionately yours,

W. J.

_To Miss Frances R. Morse._

COSTEBELLE, _Apr. 12, 1900_.

DEAREST FANNY,--Your letters continue to rain down upon us with a fidelity which makes me sure that, however it may once have been, _now_, on the principle of the immortal Monsieur Perrichon, we must be firmly rooted in your affections. You can never "throw over" anybody for whom you have made such sacrifices. All qualms which I might have in the abstract about the injury we must be inflicting on so busy a Being by making her, through our complaints of poverty, agony, and exile, keep us so much "on her mind" as to tune us up every two or three days by a long letter to which she sacrifices all her duties to the family and state, disappear, moreover, when I consider the character of the letters themselves. They are so easy, the facts are so much the immediate out-bubblings of the moment, and the delicious philosophical reflexions so much like the spontaneous breathings of the soul, that the _effort_ is manifestly at the zero-point, and into the complex state of affection which necessarily arises in you for the objects of so much loving care, there enter none of those curious momentary arrows of impatience and vengefulness which might make others say, if they were doing what you do for us, that they wished we were dead or in some way put beyond reach, so that our eternal "appeal" might stop. No, Fanny! we have no repinings and feel no responsibilities towards you, but accept you and your letters as the gifts you are. The infrequency of our answering proves this fact; to which you in turn must furnish the correlative, if the occasion comes. On the day when you temporarily hate us, or don't "feel like" the usual letter, don't let any thought of inconsistency with your past acts worry you about not taking up the pen. Let us go; though it be for weeks and months--I shall know you will come round again. "Neither heat nor frost nor thunder shall ever do away, I ween, the marks of that which once hath been." And to think that you should never have spent a night, and only once taken a meal, in our house! When we get back, we must see each other daily, and may the days of both of us be right long in the State of Massachusetts! Bless her!

I got a letter from J. J. Chapman praising her strongly the other day. And sooth to say the "Transcript" and the "Springfield Republican," the reception of whose "weeklies" has become one of the solaces of my life, do make a first-rate showing for her civilization. One can't just say what "tone" consists in, but these papers hold their own excellently in comparison with the English papers. There is far less alertness of mind in the general make-up of the latter; and the "respectability" of the English editorial columns, though it shows a correcter literary drill, is apt to be due to a remorseless longitude of commonplace conventionality that makes them deadly dull. (The "Spectator" appears to be the only paper with a nervous system, in England--that of a _carnassier_ at present!) The English people seem to have positively a passionate hunger for this mass of prosy stupidity, never less than a column and a quarter long. The Continental papers of course are "nowhere." As for our yellow papers--every country has its criminal classes, and with us and in France, they have simply got into journalism as part of their professional evolution, and they must be got out. Mr. Bosanquet somewhere says that so far from the "dark ages" being over, we are just at the beginning of a new dark-age period. He means that ignorance and unculture, which then were merely brutal, are now articulate and possessed of a literary voice, and the fight is transferred from fields and castles and town walls to "organs of publicity"; but it is the same fight, of reason and goodness against stupidity and passions; and it must be fought through to the same kind of success. But it means the reëducating of perhaps twenty more generations; and by that time some altogether new kind of institutional opportunity for the Devil will have been evolved.

_April_ 13th. I had to stop yesterday.... Six months ago, I shouldn't have thought it possible that a life deliberately founded on pottering about and dawdling through the day would be endurable or even possible. I have attained such skill that I doubt if my days ever at any time seemed to glide by so fast. But it corrodes one's soul nevertheless. I scribble a little in bed every morning, and have reached page 48 of my third Gifford lecture--though Lecture II, alas! must be rewritten entirely. The conditions don't conduce to an energetic grip of the subject, and I am afraid that what I write is pretty slack and not what it would be if my vital tone were different. The problem I have set myself is a hard one: _first_, to defend (against all the prejudices of my "class") "experience" against "philosophy" as being the real backbone of the world's religious life--I mean prayer, guidance, and all that sort of thing immediately and privately felt, as against high and noble general views of our destiny and the world's meaning; and _second_, to make the hearer or reader believe, what I myself invincibly do believe, that, although all the special manifestations of religion may have been absurd (I mean its creeds and theories), yet the life of it as a whole is mankind's most important function. A task well-nigh impossible, I fear, and in which I shall fail; but to attempt it is _my_ religious act.

We got a visit the other day from [a Scottish couple here who have heard that I am to give the Gifford lectures]; and two days ago went to afternoon tea with them at their hotel, next door. _She_ enclosed a tract (by herself) in the invitation, and proved to be a [mass] of holy egotism and conceit based on professional invalidism and self-worship. I wish my sister Alice were there to "react" on her with a description! Her husband, apparently weak, and the slave of her. No talk but evangelical talk. It seemed assumed that a Gifford lecturer must be one of Moody's partners, and it gave me rather a foretaste of what the Edinburgh atmosphere may be like. Well, I shall enjoy sticking a knife into its gizzard--if atmospheres have gizzards? Blessed be Boston--probably the freest place on earth, that isn't merely heathen and sensual.