Part 23

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"[81] 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_,[82] as well as the professors, consider it _oberflächliches Zeug_[83]--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"[84]) 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.

...I have been with Strong, who goes to Rome this month. Good, truth-loving man! and a very penetrating mind. I think he will write a great book. We greatly enjoyed seeing your friend Schwarz, the teacher. A fine fellow who will, I hope, succeed.

A happy New Year to you now, dear Flournoy, and loving regards from us all to you all. Yours as ever

Wm. James.

_To Norman Kemp Smith._

[Post-card]

Cambridge, _Jan._ 31, 1908.

I have only just "got round" to your singularly solid and compact study of Avenarius in "Mind." I find it clear and very clarifying, after the innumerable hours I have spent in trying to dishevel him. I have read the "Weltbegriff" three times, and have half expected to have to read both books over again to assimilate his immortal message to man, of which I have hitherto been able to make nothing. You set me free! I shall not re-read him! but leave him to his spiritual dryness and preposterous pedantry. His only really original idea seems to be that of the _Vitalreihe_, and that, so far as I can see, is quite false, certainly no improvement on the notion of adaptive reflex actions.

Wm. James.

_To his Daughter._

Cambridge, _Apr._ 2, 1908,

DARLING PEG,--You must have wondered at my silence since your dear mother returned. I hoped to write to you each day, but the strict routine of my hours now crowded it out. I write on my Oxford job till one, then lunch, then nap, then to my ... doctor at four daily, and from then till dinner-time making calls, and keeping "out" as much as possible. To bed as soon after 8 as possible--all my odd reading done between 3 and 5 A.M., an hour not favorable for letter-writing--so that my necessary business notes have to get in just before dinner (as now) or after dinner, which I hate and try to avoid. I think I see my way clear to go [to Oxford] now, if I don't get more fatigued than at present. Four and a quarter lectures are fully written, and the rest are down-hill work, much raw material being ready now....

_To Henry James._

Cambridge, _April_ 15, 1908.

DEAREST HENRY,--Your good letter to Harry has brought news of your play, of which I had only seen an enigmatic paragraph in the papers. I'm right glad it is a success, and that such good artists as the Robertsons are in it. I hope it will have a first-rate run in London. Your apologies for not writing are the most uncalled-for things--your assiduity and the length of your letters to this family are a standing marvel--especially considering the market-value of your "copy"! So waste no more in that direction. 'Tis I who should be prostrating myself--silent as I've been for months in spite of the fact that I'm so soon to descend upon you. The fact is I've been trying to compose the accursed lectures in a state of abominable brain-fatigue--a race between myself and time. I've got six now done out of the eight, so I'm safe, but sorry that the infernal nervous condition that with me always accompanies literary production must continue at Oxford and add itself to the other fatigues--a fixed habit of wakefulness, etc. I ought not to have accepted, but they've panned out good, so far, and if I get through them successfully, I shall be very glad that the opportunity came. They will be a good thing to _have done_. Previously, in such states of fatigue, I have had a break and got away, but this time no day without its half dozen pages--but the thing hangs on so long!...

_To Henry James._

R. M. S. IVERNIA, [Arriving at Liverpool], _Apr. 29, 1908_.

DEAR H.,--Your letter of the 26th, unstamped or post-marked, has just been wafted into our lap--I suppose mailed under another cover to the agent's care.

I'm glad you're not hurrying from Paris--I feared you might be awaiting us in London, and wrote you a letter yesterday to the Reform Club, which you will doubtless get ere you get this, telling you of our prosperous though tedious voyage in good condition.

We cut out London and go straight to Oxford, _via_ Chester. I have been sleeping like a top, and feel in good fighting trim again, eager for the scalp of the Absolute. My lectures will put his wretched clerical defenders fairly on the defensive. They begin on Monday. Since you'll have the whole months of May and June, if you urge it, to see us, I pray you not to hasten back from "gay Paree" for the purpose.... Up since two A.M.

W. J.

_To Miss Pauline Goldmark._

PATTERDALE, ENGLAND, _July 2, 1908_.

Your letter, beloved Pauline, greeted me on my arrival here three hours ago.... How I _do wish_ that I could be in Italy alongside of you now, now or any time! You could do me so much good, and your ardor of enjoyment of the country, the towns and the folk would warm up my cold soul. I might even learn to speak Italian by conversing in that tongue with you. But I fear that you'd find me betraying the coldness of my soul by complaining of the heat of my body--a most unworthy attitude to strike. Dear Paolina, never, never think of whether your body is hot or cold; live in the _objective_ world, above such miserable considerations. I have been up here eight days, Alice having gone down last Saturday, the 27th, to meet Peggy and Harry at London, after only two days of it. After all the social and other fever of the past six and a half weeks (save for the blessed nine days at Bibury), it looked like the beginning of a real vacation, and it would be such but for the extreme heat, and the accident of one of my recent malignant "colds" beginning. I have been riding about on stage-coaches for five days past, but the hills are so treeless that one gets little shade, and the sun's glare is tremendous. It is a lovely country, however, for pedestrianizing in cooler weather. Mountains and valleys compressed together as in the Adirondacks, great reaches of pink and green hillside and lovely lakes, the higher parts quite fully alpine in character but for the fact that no snow mountains form the distant background. A strong and noble region, well worthy of one's life-long devotion, if one were a Briton. And on the whole, what a magnificent land and race is this Britain! Every thing about them is of better quality than the corresponding thing in the U.S.--with but few exceptions, I imagine. And the equilibrium is so well achieved, and the human tone so cheery, blithe and manly! and the manners so delightfully good. Not one _unwholesome_-looking man or woman does one meet here for 250 that one meets in America. Yet I believe (or suspect) that ours is eventually the bigger destiny, if we can only succeed in living up to it, and thou in 22nd St. and I in Irving St. must do our respective strokes, which after 1000 years will help to have made the glorious collective resultant. Meanwhile, as my brother Henry once wrote, thank God for a world that holds so rich an England, so rare an Italy! Alice is entirely _aufgegangen_ in her idealization of it. And truly enough, the gardens, the manners, the manliness are an excuse.