To Charles Eliot Norton
Patterdale, England, July 6, 1908.
Dear Charles,—Going to Coniston Lake the other day and seeing the moving little Ruskin Museum at Coniston (admission a penny) made me think rather vividly of you, and make a resolution to write to you on the earliest opportunity. It was truly moving to see such a collection of R.'s busy handiwork, exquisite and loving, in the way of drawing, sketching, engraving and note-taking, and also such a varied lot of photographs of him, especially in his old age. Glorious old Don Quixote that he was! At Durham, where Alice and I spent three and a half delightful days at the house of F. B. Jevons, Principal of one of the two colleges of which the University is composed, I had a good deal of talk with the very remarkable octogenarian Dean of the Cathedral and Lord of the University, a thorough liberal, or rather radical, in his mind, with a voice like a bell, and an alertness to match, who had been a college friend of Ruskin's and known him intimately all his life, and loved him. He knew not of his correspondence with you, of which I have been happy to be able to order Kent of Harvard Square to send him a copy. His name is Kitchin.
The whole scene at Durham was tremendously impressive (though York Cathedral made the stronger impression on me). It was so unlike Oxford, so much more American in its personnel, in a way, yet nestling in the very bosom of those mediæval stage-properties and ecclesiastical-principality suggestions. Oxford is all spread out in length and breadth, Durham concentrated in depth and thickness. There is a great deal of flummery about Oxford, but I think if I were an Oxonian, in spite of my radicalism generally, I might vote against all change there. It is an absolutely unique fruit of human endeavor, and like the cathedrals, can never to the end of time be reproduced, when the conditions that once made it are changed. Let other places of learning go in for all the improvements! The world can afford to keep her one Oxford unreformed. I know that this is a superficial judgment in both ways, for Oxford does manage to keep pace with the utilitarian spirit, and at the same time preserve lots of her flummery unchanged. On the whole it is a thoroughly democratic place, so far as aristocracy in the strict sense goes. But I'm out of it, and doubt whether I want ever to put foot into it again....
England has changed in many respects. The West End of London, which used at this season to be so impressive from its splendor, is now a mixed and mongrel horde of straw hats and cads of every description. Motor-buses of the most brutal sort have replaced the old carriages, Bond and Regent Streets are cheap-jack shows, everything is tumultuous and confused and has run down in quality. I have been "motoring" a good deal through this "Lake District," owing to the kindness of some excellent people in the hotel, dissenters who rejoice in the name of Squance and inhabit the neighborhood of Durham. It is wondrous fine, but especially adapted to trampers, which I no longer am. Altogether England seems to have got itself into a magnificently fine state of civilization, especially in regard to the cheery and wholesome tone of manners of the people, improved as it is getting to be by the greater infusion of the democratic temper. Everything here seems about twice as good as the corresponding thing with us. But I suspect we have the bigger eventual destiny after all; and give us a thousand years and we may catch up in many details. I think of you as still at Cambridge, and I do hope that physical ills are bearing on more gently. Lily, too, I hope is her well self again. You mustn't think of answering this, which is only an ejaculation of friendship—I shall be home almost before you can get an answer over. Love to all your circle, including Theodora, whom I miss greatly. Affectionately yours,
WM. JAMES.
To Henri Bergson
Lamb House, July 28, 1908.
Dear Bergson,—(can't we cease "Professor"-ing each other?—that title establishes a "disjunctive relation" between man and man, and our relation should be "endosmotic" socially as well as intellectually, I think),—
Jacta est alea, I am not to go to Switzerland! I find, after a week or more here, that the monotony and simplification is doing my nervous centres so much good, that my wife has decided to go off with our daughter to Geneva, and to leave me alone with my brother here, for repairs. It is a great disappointment in other ways than in not seeing you, but I know that it is best. Perhaps later in the season the Zusammenkunft may take place, for nothing is decided beyond the next three weeks.
Meanwhile let me say how rarely delighted your letter made me. There are many points in your philosophy which I don't yet grasp, but I have seemed to myself to understand your anti-intellectualistic campaign very clearly, and that I have really done it so well in your opinion makes me proud. I am sending your letter to Strong, partly out of vanity, partly because of your reference to him. It does seem to me that philosophy is turning towards a new orientation. Are you a reader of Fechner? I wish that you would read his "Zend-Avesta," which in the second edition (1904, I think) is better printed and much easier to read than it looks at the first glance. He seems to me of the real race of prophets, and I cannot help thinking that you, in particular, if not already acquainted with this book, would find it very stimulating and suggestive. His day, I fancy, is yet to come. I will write no more now, but merely express my regret (and hope) and sign myself, yours most warmly and sincerely,
WM. JAMES.
The subject of the next letter was a volume of "Essays Philosophical and Psychological, in Honor of William James,"86 by nineteen contributors, which had been issued by Columbia University in the spring of 1908. A note at the beginning of the book said: "This volume is intended to mark in some degree its authors' sense of Professor James's memorable services in philosophy and psychology, the vitality he has added to those studies, and the encouragement that has flowed from him to colleagues without number. Early in 1907, at the invitation of Columbia University, he delivered a course of lectures there, and met the members of the Philosophical and Psychological Departments on several occasions for social discussion. They have an added motive for the present work in the recollections of this visit."
To John Dewey
Rye, Sussex, Aug. 4, 1908.
Dear Dewey,—I don't know whether this will find you in the Adirondacks or elsewhere, but I hope 'twill be on East Hill. My own copy of the Essays in my "honor," which took me by complete surprise on the eve of my departure, was too handsome to take along, so I have but just got round to reading the book, which I find at my brother Henry's, where I have recently come. It is a masterly set of essays of which we may all be proud, distinguished by good style, direct dealing with the facts, and hot running on the trail of truth, regardless of previous conventions and categories. I am sure it hitches the subject of epistemology a good day's journey ahead, and proud indeed am I that it should be dedicated to my memory.
Your own contribution is to my mind the most weighty—unless perhaps Strong's should prove to be so. I rejoice exceedingly that you should have got it out. No one yet has succeeded, it seems to me, in jumping into the centre of your vision. Once there, all the perspectives are clear and open; and when you or some one else of us shall have spoken the exact word that opens the centre to everyone, mediating between it and the old categories and prejudices, people will wonder that there ever could have been any other philosophy. That it is the philosophy of the future, I'll bet my life. Admiringly and affectionately yours,
WM. JAMES.
To Theodore Flournoy
Lamb House, Rye, Aug. 9, 1908.
Dear Flournoy,—I can't make out from my wife's letters whether she has seen you face to face, or only heard accounts of you from Madame Flournoy. She reports you very tired from the "Congress"—but I don't know what Congress has been meeting at Geneva just now. I don't suppose that you will go to the philosophical congress at Heidelberg—I certainly shall not. I doubt whether philosophers will gain so much by talking with each other as other classes of Gelehrten do. One needs to frequenter a colleague daily for a month before one can begin to understand him. It seems to me that the collective life of philosophers is little more than an organization of misunderstandings. I gave eight lectures at Oxford, but besides Schiller and one other tutor, only two persons ever mentioned them to me, and those were the two heads of Manchester College by whom I had been invited. Philosophical work it seems to me must go on in silence and in print exclusively.
You will have heard (either directly or indirectly) from my wife of my reasons for not accompanying them to Geneva. I have been for more than three weeks now at my brother's, and am much better for the simplification. I am very sorry not to have met with you, but I think I took the prudent course in staying away.
I have just read Miss Johnson's report in the last S. P. R. "Proceedings," and a good bit of the proofs of Piddington's on cross-correspondences between Mrs. Piper, Mrs. Verrall, and Mrs. Holland, which is to appear in the next number. You will be much interested, if you can gather the philosophical energy, to go through such an amount of tiresome detail. It seems to me that these reports open a new chapter in the history of automatism; and Piddington's and Johnson's ability is of the highest order. Evidently "automatism" is a word that covers an extraordinary variety of fact. I suppose that you have on the whole been gratified by the "vindication" of Eusapia [Paladino] at the hands of Morselli et al. in Italy. Physical phenomena also seem to be entering upon a new phase in their history.
Well, I will stop, this is only a word of greeting and regret at not seeing you. I got your letter of many weeks ago when we were at Oxford. Don't take the trouble to write now—my wife will bring me all the news of you and your family, and will have given you all mine. Love to Madame F. and all the young ones, too, please. Your ever affectionate
W. J.
To Shadworth H. Hodgson
Paignton, S. Devon, Oct. 3, 1908.
Dear Hodgson,—I have been five months in England (you have doubtless heard of my lecturing at Oxford) yet never given you a sign of life. The reason is that I have sedulously kept away from London, which I admire, but at my present time of life abhor, and only touched it two or three times for thirty-six hours to help my wife do her "shopping" (strange use for an elderly philosopher to be put to). The last time I was in London, about a month ago, I called at your affectionately remembered No. 45, only to find you gone to Yorkshire, as I feared I should. I go back in an hour, en route for Liverpool, whence, with wife and daughter, I sail for Boston in the Saxonia. I am literally enchanted with rural England, yet I doubt whether I ever return. I never had a fair chance of getting acquainted with the country here, and if I were a stout pedestrian, which I no longer am, I think I should frequent this land every summer. But in my decrepitude I must make the best of the more effortless relations which I enjoy with nature in my own country. I have seen many philosophers, at Oxford, especially, and James Ward at Cambridge; but, apart from very few conversations, didn't get at close quarters with any of them, and they probably gained as little from me as I from them. "We are columns left alone, of a temple once complete." The power of mutual misunderstanding in philosophy seems infinite, and grows discouraging. Schiller of course, and his pragmatic friend Captain Knox, James Ward, and McDougall, stand out as the most satisfactory talkers. But there is too much fencing and scoring of "points" at Oxford to make construction active.
Good-bye! dear Hodgson, and pray think of me with a little of the affection and intellectual interest with which I always think of you. My Oxford lectures won't appear till next April. Don't read the extracts which the "Hibbert Journal" is publishing. They are torn out of their natural setting. I have, as you probably know, ceased teaching and am enjoying a Carnegie pension. Yours ever fondly,
WM. JAMES.
To Theodore Flournoy
London, Oct. 4, 1908.
Dear Flournoy,—I got your delightful letter duly two weeks ago, or more. I always have a bad conscience on receiving a letter from you, because I feel as if I forced you to write it, and I know too well by your own confessions (as well as by my own far less extreme experience of reluctance to write) what a nuisance and an effort letters are apt to be. But no matter! this letter of yours was a good one indeed....
We sail from Liverpool the day after tomorrow, and tomorrow will be a busy day winding up our affairs and making some last purchases of small things. Alice has an insatiable desire (as Mrs. Flournoy may have noticed at Geneva) to increase her possessions, whilst I, like an American Tolstoy, wish to diminish them. The most convenient arrangement for a Tolstoy is to have an anti-Tolstoyan wife to "run the house" for him. We have been for three days in Devonshire, and for four days at Oxford previous to that. Extraordinary warm summer weather, with exquisite atmospheric effects. I am extremely glad to leave England with my last optical images so beautiful. In any case the harmony and softness of the landscape of rural England probably excels everything in the world in that line.
At Oxford I saw McDougall and Schiller quite intimately, also Schiller's friend, Capt. Knox, who, retired from the army, lives at Gründelwald, and is an extremely acute mind, and fine character, I should think. He is a militant "Pragmatist." Before that I spent three days at Cambridge, where again I saw James Ward intimately. I prophesy that if he gets his health again … he will become also a militant pluralist of some sort. I think he has worked out his original monistic-theistic vein and is steering straight towards a "critical point" where the umbrella will turn inside out, and not go back. I hope so! I made the acquaintance of Boutroux here last week. He came to the "Moral Education Congress" where he made a very fine address. I find him very simpatico.
But the best of all these meetings has been one of three hours this very morning with Bergson, who is here visiting his relatives. So modest and unpretending a man, but such a genius intellectually! We talked very easily together, or rather he talked easily, for he talked much more than I did, and although I can't say that I follow the folds of his system much more clearly than I did before, he has made some points much plainer. I have the strongest suspicions that the tendency which he has brought to a focus will end by prevailing, and that the present epoch will be a sort of turning-point in the history of philosophy. So many things converge towards an anti-rationalistic crystallization.
Qui vivra verra!
I am very glad indeed to go on board ship. For two months I have been more than ready to get back to my own habits, my own library and writing-table and bed.... I wish you, and all of you, a prosperous and healthy and resultful winter, and am, with old-time affection, your ever faithful friend,
Wm. James.
If the duty of writing weighs so heavily on you, why obey it? Why, for example, write any more reviews? I absolutely refuse to, and find that one great alleviation.
To Henri Bergson
London, Oct. 4, 1908.
Dear Bergson,—My brother was sorry that you couldn't come. He wishes me to say that he is returning to Rye the day after tomorrow and is so engaged tomorrow that he will postpone the pleasure of meeting you to some future opportunity.
I need hardly repeat how much I enjoyed our talk today. You must take care of yourself and economize all your energies for your own creative work. I want very much to see what you will have to say on the Substanzbegriff! Why should life be so short? I wish that you and I and Strong and Flournoy and McDougall and Ward could live on some mountain-top for a month, together, and whenever we got tired of philosophizing, calm our minds by taking refuge in the scenery.
Always truly yours,
WM. JAMES.
To H. G. Wells
CAMBRIDGE, Nov. 28, 1908.
Dear Wells,—"First and Last Things" is a great achievement. The first two "books" should be entitled "philosophy without humbug" and used as a textbook in all the colleges of the world. You have put your finger accurately on the true emphases, and—in the main—on what seem to me the true solutions (you are more monistic in your faith than I should be, but as long as you only call it "faith," that's your right and privilege), and the simplicity of your statements ought to make us "professionals" blush. I have been 35 years on the way to similar conclusions—simply because I started as a professional and had to débrouiller them from all the traditional school rubbish.
The other two books exhibit you in the character of the Tolstoy of the English world. A sunny and healthy-minded Tolstoy, as he is a pessimistic and morbid-minded Wells. Where the "higher synthesis" will be born, who shall combine the pair of you, Heaven only knows. But you are carrying on the same function, not only in that neither of your minds is boxed and boarded up like the mind of an ordinary human being, but all the contents down to the very bottom come out freely and unreservedly and simply, but in that you both have the power of contagious speech, and set the similar mood vibrating in the reader. Be happy in that such power has been put into your hands! This book is worth any 100 volumes on Metaphysics and any 200 of Ethics, of the ordinary sort.
Yours, with friendliest regards to Mrs. Wells, most sincerely,
WM. JAMES.
To Henry James
CAMBRIDGE, Dec. 19, 1908.
Dearest H.,– …I write this at 6.30 [A.M.], in the library, which the blessed hard-coal fire has kept warm all night. The night has been still, thermometer 20°, and the dawn is breaking in a pure red line behind Grace Norton's house, into a sky empty save for a big morning star and the crescent of the waning moon. Not a cloud—a true American winter effect. But somehow "le grand puits de l'aurore" doesn't appeal to my sense of life, or challenge my spirits as formerly. It suggests no more enterprises to the decrepitude of age, which vegetates along, drawing interest merely on the investment of its earlier enterprises. The accursed "thoracic symptom" is a killer of enterprise with me, and I dare say that it is little better with you. But the less said of it the better—it doesn't diminish!
My time has been consumed by interruptions almost totally, until a week ago, when I finally got down seriously to work upon my Hodgson report. It means much more labor than one would suppose, and very little result. I wish that I had never undertaken it. I am sending off a preliminary installment of it to be read at the S. P. R. meeting in January. That done, the rest will run off easily, and in a month I expect to actually begin the "Introduction to Philosophy," which has been postponed so long, and which I hope will add to income for a number of years to come. Your Volumes XIII and XIV arrived the other day—many thanks. We're subscribing to two copies of the work, sending them as wedding presents. I hope it will sell. Very enticing-looking, but I can't settle down to the prefaces as yet, the only thing I have been able to read lately being Lowes Dickinson's last book, "Justice and Liberty," which seems to me a decidedly big achievement from every point of view, and probably destined to have a considerable influence in moulding the opinion of the educated. Stroke upon stroke, from pens of genius, the competitive régime, so idolized 75 years ago, seems to be getting wounded to death. What will follow will be something better, but I never saw so clearly the slow effect of [the] accumulation of the influence of successive individuals in changing prevalent ideals. Wells and Dickinson will undoubtedly make the biggest steps of change....
Well dear brother! a merry Christmas to you—to you both, I trust, for I fancy Aleck will be with you when this arrives—and a happy New Year at its tail! Your loving
W. J.