Part 31

[14] The Address has been reprinted in _Memories and Studies_.

[15] For a short while MacMonnies's Bacchante stood in the court of the Boston Public Library.

[16] These words were not employed in public, but were once applied to a well-known professor in a private letter.

[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 the issue of Mar. 24.

[18] _James J. Putnam to William James_

BOSTON, _Mar. 9, 1898_.

DEAR WILLIAM,--We have thought and talked a good deal about the subject of your speech in the course of the last week. I prepared with infinite labor a letter intended for the _Transcript_ of last Saturday, but it was not a weighty contribution and I am rather glad it was too late to get in. I think it is generally felt among the best doctors that your position was the liberal one, and that it would be a mistake to try to exact an examination of the mind-healers and Christian Scientists. On the other hand, I am afraid most of the doctors, even including myself, do not have any great feeling of fondness for them, and we are more in the way of seeing the fanatical spirit in which they proceed and the harm that they sometimes do than you are. Of course they do also good things which would remain otherwise not done, and that is the important point, and sincere fanatics are almost always, and in this case I think certainly, of real value.

Always affectionately, JAMES J. P.

[19] That is, there was here no path to follow, only "blazes" on the trees.

[20] The housekeeper at the Putnam-Bowditch "shanty."

[21] Photograph of a boy and girl standing on a rock which hangs dizzily over a great precipice above the Yosemite Valley.

[22] G. E. Woodberry: _The Heart of Man_; 1899.

[23] James's house was number 95, his mother-in-law's number 107.

[24] Augusta was the house-maid; Dinah, a bull-terrier.

[25] It will be recalled that Davidson had a summer School of Philosophy at his place called Glenmore on East Hill, and that East Hill is at one end of Keene Valley. See also James's essay on Thomas Davidson, "A Knight Errant of the Intellectual Life," in _Memories and Studies_.

[26] A gift which provided for building the "Harvard Union."

[27] "You have never spent a night under our roof, or eaten a meal in our house!" This fictitious charge had become the recognized theme of frequent elaborations.

[28] _The World and the Individual_, vol. I. Mrs. Evans was inclined to contend for Royce's philosophy.

[29] The name of an American claret which his correspondent had "discovered" and in which it also pleased James to find merit.

[30] The second volume of _The World and the Individual_. (Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen.)

[31] _Interpretations of Poetry and Religion._ New York, 1900.

[32] _Memoiren einer Idealistin_, by Malwida von Meysenbug, Stuttgart, 1877.

[33] _Recollections of My Mother_ [Anne Jean Lyman], by Susan I. Lesley, Boston, 1886.

[34] Sister Nivedita.

[35] Booker T. Washington's _Up from Slavery_.

[36] "Frederick Myers's Services to Psychology." Reprinted in _Memories and Studies_.

[37] _The Individual, A Study of Life and Death_. New York, 1900. This letter is reproduced from the _Autobiography_ of N. S. Shaler, where it has already been published.

[38] Mrs. O. W. Holmes had used the following translation of an epitaph in the Greek Anthology:--

A shipwrecked sailor buried on this coast Bids thee take sail. Full many a gallant ship, when we were lost, Weathered the gale.

[39] "And base things of the world and things which are despised hath God chosen, yes, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are."

[40] Kitchen.

[41] Although James had received the usual hint that Harvard intended to confer an honorary degree upon him, he had absented himself from both the honors and fatigues of Commencement time. The next year he was present, and the LL.D. was conferred.

[42] "I have been re-reading Bergson's books, and nothing that I have read in years has so excited and stimulated my thought. Four years ago I couldn't understand him at all, though I felt his power. I am sure that that philosophy has a great future. It breaks through old _cadres_ and brings things into a solution from which new crystals can be got." (From a letter to Flournoy, Jan. 27, 1902.)

[43] The Ingersoll Lecture on Human Immortality.

[44] There had been a celebration of Mrs. Agassiz's eightieth birthday at Radcliffe College, of which she was President.

[45] On the Amazon in 1865-66.

[46] An 8-page _Syllabus_ printed for the use of his students in the course on the "Philosophy of Nature" which James was giving during the first half of the college year.

[47] _Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death_, by F. W. H. Myers.

[48] "The piles driven into the quicksand are too few for such a structure. But it is essential as a preliminary attempt at methodizing, and will doubtless keep a very honorable place in history." To F. C. S. Schiller, April 8, 1903.

[49] Eusapia Paladino, the Italian "medium." The physical manifestations which occurred during her trance had excited much discussion.

[50] The name of a student-society.

[51] The horse.

[52] W. E. B. Du Bois: _The Souls of Black Folk_.

[53] These five lectures were delivered at the summer school at "Glenmore," which Thomas Davidson had founded. Their subject was "Radical Empiricism as a Philosophy"; but they were neither written out nor reported.

[54] _Aristotelian Society Proceedings_, vol. IV, pp. 87-110.

[55] James's answers are printed in italics.

[56] "How Two Minds Can Know One Thing," _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods_, 1905, vol. II, p. 176.

[57] "Is Radical Empiricism Solipsistic?" _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods_, 1905, vol. II, p. 235.

[58] This address, "La Notion de Conscience," was printed first in the _Archives de Psychologie_, 1905, vol. V, p. 1. It will also be found in the _Essays in Radical Empiricism_.

[59] "My own desire to see Roosevelt president here for a limited term of years was quenched by a speech he made at the Harvard Union a couple of years ago." (To D. S. Miller, Jan. 2, 1908.)

[60] _The Life of Reason._ New York, 1905.

[61] He had been "sounded" regarding an appointment as Harvard Exchange Lecturer at the Sorbonne, and had at first been inclined to accept.

[62] Busse, _Leib und Seele, Geist und Körper_; Heymans, _Einführung in die Metaphysik_.

[63] _Vide Letters of Henry James_, vol. II, p. 43.

[64] "Also outside 'addresses,' impossible to refuse. Damn them! Four in this Hotel [in San Francisco] where I was one of four orators who spoke for two hours on 'Reason and Faith,' before a Unitarian Association of Pacific Coasters. Consequence: _gout_ on waking this morning! _Unitarian gout_--was such a thing ever heard of?" (To T. S. Perry, Feb. 6, 1906.)

[65] Dr. Snow kindly wrote an account of the afternoon that he spent in James's company in the city and it may here be given in part.

"When I met Professor James in San Francisco early in the afternoon of the day of the earthquake, he was full of questions about my personal feelings and reactions and my observations concerning the conduct and evidences of self-control and fear or other emotions of individuals with whom I had been closely thrown, not only in the medical work which I did, but in the experiences I had on the fire-lines in dragging hose and clearing buildings in advance of the dynamiting squads.

"I described to him an incident concerning a great crowd of people who desired to make a short cut to the open space of a park at a time when there was danger of all of them not getting across before certain buildings were dynamited. Several of the city's police had stretched a rope across this street and were volubly and vigorously combating the onrush of the crowd, using their clubs rather freely. Some one cut the rope. At that instant, a lieutenant of the regular army with three privates appeared to take up guard duty. The lieutenant placed his guard and passed on. The three soldiers immediately began their beat, dividing the width of the street among themselves. The crowd waited, breathless, to see what the leaders of the charge upon the police would now do. One man started to run across the street and was knocked down cleverly by the sentry, with the butt of his gun. This sentry coolly continued his patrol and the man sat up, apparently thinking himself wounded, then scuttled back into the crowd, drawing from every one a laugh which was evidently with the soldiers. Immediately, the crowd began to melt away and proceed up a side street in the direction laid out for them.

"In connection with this story Professor James casually mentioned that not long before, where there were no soldiers or police, he had run on to a crowd stringing a man to a lamp-post because of his endeavor to rob the body of a woman of some rings. At the time, I did not learn other details of this particular incident, us Professor James was so full of the many scenes he had witnessed and was particularly intent on gathering from me impressions of what I had seen. I suppose he had similarly been gathering observations from others whom he met,

"An incident which struck me as humorous at the time was that he should have gathered up a box of "Zu-zu gingersnaps," and, as I recall it, some small pieces of cheese. I do not now recall his comment on where he had obtained these, but there was some humorous incident connected with the transaction, and he was quite happy and of opinion that he was enjoying a nourishing meal.

"Professor James told me vividly and in a few words the circumstances of the damage done by the earthquake at Stanford University, and I left him to make arrangements for going down to the University that night to provide for my family. As it turned out, Professor James returned to the campus before I did, and true to his promise thoughtfully hunted up Mrs. Snow and told her that he had seen me and that I was alive and well."

[66] James had not used a type-writer since the time when his eyes troubled him in the seventies. The machine now had the fascination of a strange toy again.

[67] He did mistake, as Mr. Chesterton's subsequent utterances showed.

[68] As to "Jimmy," _vide_ vol. I, p. 301 _supra_.

[69] _Cf._ pp. 16, 17, and 220 _supra_.

[70] Dr. Miller writes: "These four evenings at the Faculty Club were singularly interesting occasions. One was a meeting of the Philosophical Club of New York, whose members, about a dozen in number, were of different institutions. The others were impromptu meetings arranged either by members of the Department of Philosophy at Columbia or a wider group. At one of them Mr. James sat in a literal circle of chairs, with professors of Biology, Mathematics, etc., as well as Philosophy, and answered in a particularly friendly and charming way the frank objections of a group that were by no means all opponents. At the close, when he was thanked for his patience, he remarked in his humorously disclaiming manner that he was not accustomed to be taken so seriously. Privately he remarked how pleasantly such an unaffected, easy meeting contrasted with a certain formal and august dinner club, the exaggerated amusement of the diners at each other's jokes, etc."

[71] His resignation did not take effect until the end of the Academic year, although his last meeting with the class to which he was giving a "half-course," occurred at the mid-year.

[72] "La Notion de Conscience," _Archives de Psychologie_, vol. V, No. 17, June, 1905. Later included in _Essays in Radical Empiricism_.

[73] "Pragmatism's Conception of Truth." Included in _Selected Essays and Reviews_.

[74] The story of the Committee for Mental Hygiene is interestingly told in Part V of the 4th Edition of C. W. Beers's _A Mind that Found Itself_. Several letters from James are incorporated in the story. _Vide_ pp. 339 and 340; also pp. 320, 352.

[75] Mrs. James's niece, Rosamund Gregor, age 6.

[76] _Memories and Studies_, pp. 286 _et seq._

[77] The reader need hardly be reminded that new meanings and associations have attached themselves to this word in particular.

[78] _Talks to Teachers_, p. 265.

[79] Proceedings of (English) S.P.R., vol. XXIII, pp. 1-121. Also, Proc. American S.P.R., vol. III, p. 470.

[80] _L'Évolution Créatrice._

[81] "A Word More about Truth," reprinted in _Collected Essays and Reviews_.

[82] Learned public.

[83] Superficial stuff.

[84] The lectures were published as _A Pluralistic Universe_.

[85] New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1908.

[86] "The Confidences of a Psychical Researcher," reprinted in _Memories and Studies_ under the title "Final Impressions of a Psychical Researcher."

[87] By Frank Harris; New York: 1909.

[88] See the footnote on p. 39 _supra_.