The Letters of William James Volume Ii Part 17

The Gifford Lectures were published as "The Varieties of Religious Experience, a Study in Human Nature," in June, 1902. The immediate "popularity" of this psychological survey of man's religious propensities was great; and the continued sales of the book contributed not a little to relieve James of financial anxiety during the last years of his life.

The cordiality with which theological journals and private correspondents of many creeds greeted the "Varieties," as containing a fair treatment of facts which other writers had approached with a sectarian or anti-theological bias, was striking. James was amused at being told that the book had "supplied the protestant pulpits with sermons for a twelve-month." Regarding himself as "a most protestant protestant," as he once said, he was especially pleased by the manner in which it was received by Roman Catholic reviewers.

Certain philosophical conclusions were indicated broadly in the "Varieties" without being elaborated. The book was a survey, an examination, of the facts. James had originally conceived of the Gifford appointment as giving him "an opportunity for a certain amount of psychology and a certain amount of metaphysics," and so had thought of making the first series of lectures descriptive of man's religious propensities and the second series a metaphysical study of their satisfaction through philosophy. The psychological material had grown to unforeseen dimensions, and it ended by filling the book. The metaphysical study remained to be elaborated; and to such work James now turned.

XIV

1902-1905

_The Last Period (I)--Philosophical Writing--Statements of Religious Relief_

JAMES now limited his teaching in Harvard University, as has been said, to half a course a year and tried to devote his working energies to formulating a statement of his philosophical conceptions. For two years he published almost nothing; then the essays which were subsequently collected in the volumes called "Pragmatism," "The Pluralistic Universe," "The Meaning of Truth," and "Essays in Radical Empiricism,"

began to appear in the philosophic journals, or were delivered as special lectures. Whenever he accepted invitations to lecture outside the College, as he still did occasionally, it was with the purpose of getting these conceptions expressed and of throwing them into the arena of discussion. But demands which correspondents and callers from all parts of the globe now made on his time and sympathy were formidable, for he could not rid himself of the habit of treating the most trivial of these with consideration, or acquire the habit of using a secretary.

In this way there continued to be a constant drain on his strength. "It is probably difficult [thus he wrote wearily to Mr. Lutoslawski, who had begged him to collaborate with him on a book in 1904] for a man whose cerebral machine works with such facility as yours does to imagine the kind of consciousness of men like Flournoy and myself. The background of my consciousness, so far as my own achievements go, is composed of a _sense of impossibility_--a sense well warranted by the facts. For instance, two years ago, the 'Varieties' being published, I decided that everything was cleared and that my duty was immediately to begin writing my metaphysical system. Up to last October, when the academic year began, I had written some 200 pages of _notes_, _i.e._ disconnected _brouillons_. I hoped this year to write 400 or 500 pages of straight composition, and could have done so without the interruptions. As a matter of fact, with the best will in the world, I have written exactly 32 pages! For an academic year's work, that is not brilliant! You see that, when I refuse your request, it is, after a fas.h.i.+on, in order to save my own life. My working day is anyhow, _at best_, only three hours long--by working I mean writing and reading philosophy." This estimate of his "notes" was, as always, self-deprecatory; but there was no denying a great measure of truth to the statement. Frequently his health made it necessary for him to escape from Cambridge and his desk. These incidents will be noted separately wherever the context requires.

Yet in spite of these difficulties and notwithstanding his complaints of constant frustration, the spirit with which James still did his work emerges from the essays of this time as well as from his letters. It was as if the years that had preceded had been years of preparation for just what he was now doing. At the age of sixty-three he turned to the formulation of his empirical philosophy with the eagerness of a schoolboy let out to play. Misunderstanding disturbed him only momentarily, opposition stimulated him, he rejoiced openly in the controversies which he provoked, and engaged in polemics with the good humor and vigor that were the essence of his genius. His "truth" must prevail! the Absolute should suffer its death-blow! Flournoy, Bergson, Schiller, Papini, and others too were "on his side." He made merry at the expense of his critics, or bewailed the perversity of their opposition; but he always encouraged them to "lay on." The imagery of contest and battle appeared in the letters which he threw off, and he expressed himself as freely as only a man can who has outgrown the reserves of his youth.

_To Henry L. Higginson._

CHOCORUA, _July 3, 1902_.

DEAR HENRY,--Thanks for your letter of the other day, etc. Alice tells me of a queer conversation you and she had upon the cars. I am not anxious about money, beyond wis.h.i.+ng not to live on capital.... As I have frequently said, I mean to support you in your old age. In fact the hope of that is about all that I now live for, being surfeited with the glory of academic degrees just escaped, like this last one which, in the friendliness of its heart, your [Harvard] Corporation designed sponging upon me at Commencement.[41] Boil it and solder it up from the microbes, and it may do for another year, if I am not in prison! The friendliness of such recognition is a delightful thing to a man about to graduate from the season of his usefulness. "La renomme vient," as I have heard John La Farge quote, "a ceux qui ont la patience d'attendre, et s'accroit a raison de leur imbecillite." Best wishes to you all. Yours ever,

Wm. James.

_To Miss Grace Norton._

CHOCORUA, _Aug. 29, 1902_.

MY DEAR GRACE,--Will you kindly let me know, by the method of effacement, on the accompanying post-card, whether the box from Germany of which I wrote you some time ago has or has not yet been left at your house. I paid the express, over twenty dollars, on it three weeks ago, directing it to be left with you.

The ice being thus broken, let me ramble on! How do-ist thou? And how is the moist and cool summer suiting thee? I hope, well! It has certainly been a boon to most people. Our house has been full of company of which tomorrow the last boys will leave, and I confess I shall enjoy the change to no responsibility. The scourge of life is _responsibility_--always there with its scowling face, and when it ceases to someone else, it begins to yourself, or to your G.o.d, if you have one. Consider the lilies, how free they are from it, and yet how beautiful the expression of their face. Especially should those emerging from "nervous prostration" be suffered to be without it--they have trouble enough in any case. I am getting on famously, but for that drawback, on which my temper is liable to break; but I _walk_ somewhat as in old times, and that is the main corner to have turned. The country seems as beautiful as ever--it is good that, when age takes away the zest from so many things, it seems to make no difference at all in one's capacity for enjoying landscape and the aspects of Nature. We are all well, and shall very soon be buzzing about Irving Street as of yore. Keep well yourself, dear Grace; and believe me ever your friend,

Wm. James.

To this word about enjoying the aspects of nature may be added a few lines from a letter to his son William, which James wrote from Europe in 1900:--

"Scenery seems to wear in one's consciousness better than any other element in life. In this year of much solemn and idle meditation, I have often been surprised to find what a predominant part in my own spiritual experience it has played, and how it stands out as almost the only thing the memory of which I should like to carry over with me beyond the veil, unamended and unaltered. From the midst of every thing else, almost, _surgit amari aliquid_; but from the days in the open air, never any bitter whiff, save that they are gone forever."

_To Miss Frances R. Morse._

STONEHURST, INTERVALE, N. H., _Sept. 18, 1902_.

DEAREST f.a.n.n.y,--How long it is since we have exchanged salutations and reported progress! Happy the country which is without a history! _I_ have had no history to communicate, and I hope that you have had none either, and that the summer has glided away as happily for you as it has for us. Now it begins to fade towards the horizon over which so many ancient summers have slipped, and our household is on the point of "breaking up" just when the season invites one most imperiously to stay.

_Dang_ all schools and colleges, say I. Alice goes down tomorrow (I being up here with the Merrimans only for one day) to start Billy for Europe--he will spend the winter at Geneva University--and to get "the house" ready for our general reception on the 26th. I may possibly make out to stay up here till the Monday following, and spend the interval of a few days by myself among the mountains, having stuck to the domestic hearth unusually tight all summer....

We have had guests--too many of them, rather, at one time, for me--and a little reading has been done, mostly philosophical technics, which, by the strange curse laid upon Adam, certain of his descendants have been doomed to invent and others, still more d.a.m.ned, to learn. But I've also read Stevenson's letters, which everybody ought to read just to know how charming a human being can be, and I've read a good part of Goethe's _Gedichte_ once again, which are also to be read, so that one may realize how absolutely healthy an organization may every now and then eventuate into this world. To have such a lyrical gift and to treat it with so little solemnity, so that most of the output consists of mere escape of the over-tension into bits of occasional verse, irresponsible, unchained, like smoke-wreaths!--it _du_ give one a great impression of personal power. In general, though I'm a traitor for saying so, it seems to me that the German race has been a more ma.s.sive organ of expression for the travail of the Almighty than the Anglo-Saxon, though we did seem to have something more like it in Elizabethan times. Or are clearness and dapperness the absolutely final shape of creation? Good-bye! dear f.a.n.n.y--you see how mouldy I am temporarily become. The moment I take my pen, I can write in no other way. Write thou, and let me know that things are greener and more vernal where you are. Alice would send much love to you, were she here. Give mine to your mother, brother, and sister-in-law, and all. Your loving,

W. J.

_To Henry L. Higginson._

CAMBRIDGE, Ma.s.s., _Nov. 1, 1902_.

DEAR HENRY,--I am emboldened to the step I am taking by the consciousness that though we are both at least sixty years old and have known each other from the cradle, I have never but once (or possibly twice) traded on your well-known lavishness of disposition to swell any "subscription" which I was trying to raise.

Now the doomful hour has struck. The altar is ready, and I take the victim by the ear. I choose you for a victim because you still have some undesiccated human feeling about you and can think in terms of pure charity--for the love of G.o.d, without ulterior hopes of returns from the investment.

The subject is a man of fifty who can be recommended to no other kind of a benefactor. His story is a long one, but it amounts to this, that Heaven made him with no other power than that of thinking and writing, and he has proved by this time a truly pathological inability to keep body and soul together. He is abstemious to an incredible degree, is the most innocent and harmless of human beings, isn't propagating his kind, has never had a dime to spend except for vital necessities, and never has had in his life an hour of what such as _we_ call freedom from care or of "pleasure" in the ordinary exuberant sense of the term. He is refinement itself mentally and morally; and his writings have all been printed in first-rate periodicals, but are too scanty to "pay." There's no excuse for him, I admit. But G.o.d made him; and after kicking and cuffing and prodding him for twenty years, I have now come to believe that he ought to be treated in charity pure and simple (even though that be a vice) and I want to guarantee him $350 a year as a pension to be paid to the Mills Hotel in Bleecker Street, New York, for board and lodging and a few cents weekly over and above. I will put in $150. I have secured $100 more. Can I squeeze 50 a year out of you for such a non-public cause? If not, don't reply and forget this letter. If "ja"

and you think you really can afford it, and it isn't wicked, let me know, and I will dun you regularly every year for the $50. Yours as ever,

Wm. James.

It is a great compliment that I address you. Most men say of such a case, "Is the man deserving?" Whereas the real point is, "Does he need us?" What is deserving nowadays?

The beneficiary of this appeal was that same unfulfilled promise of a metaphysician who appeared as "X" on page 292 of the first volume--a man upon whom, in Cicero's phrase, none but a philosopher could look without a groan. There were more parallels to X's case than it would be permissible to cite here. James did not often appeal to others to help such men with money, but he did things for them himself, even after it had become evident that they could give nothing to the world in return, and even when they had exhausted his patience. "d.a.m.n your half-successes, your imperfect geniuses!" he exclaimed of another who shall be called Z. "I'm tired of making allowances for them and propping them up.... Z has never constrained himself in his life. Selfish, conceited, affected, a monster of desultory intellect, he has become now a seedy, almost sordid, old man without even any intellectual residuum from his work that can be called a finished construction; only 'suggestions' and a begging old age." But Z, too, was helped to the end.

_To Henri Bergson._

Cambridge, _Dec. 14, 1902_.

MY DEAR SIR,--I read the copy of your "Matiere et Memoire" which you so kindly sent me, immediately on receiving it, four years ago or more. I saw its great originality, but found your ideas so new and vast that I could not be sure that I fully understood them, although the _style_, Heaven knows, was lucid enough. So I laid the book aside for a second reading, which I have just accomplished, slowly and carefully, along with that of the "Donnees Immediates," etc.