The Letters of William James Volume Ii Part 23

W. J.

It will be recalled that the St. Louis Exposition had occurred shortly before the date of the last letter and had led a number of learned and scientific a.s.sociations to hold international congresses in America.

James kept away from St. Louis, but asked several foreign colleagues to visit him at Chocorua or in Cambridge before their return to Europe.

Among them were Dr. Pierre Janet of Paris and his wife, Professor C.

Lloyd Morgan of Bristol, and Professor Harold Hoffding of Copenhagen.

_To F. C. S. Schiller._

Cambridge, _Oct. 26, 1904_.

DEAR SCHILLER,-- ...Last night the Janets left us--a few days previous, Lloyd Morgan. I am glad to possess my soul for a while alone. Make much of dear old Hoffding, who is a good pluralist and irrationalist. I took to him immensely and so did everybody. Lecturing to my cla.s.s, he told against the Absolutists an anecdote of an "American" child who asked his mother if G.o.d made the world in six days. "Yes."--"The whole of it?"--"Yes."--"Then it is finished, all done?"--"Yes."--"Then in what business now is G.o.d?" If he tells it in Oxford you must reply: "Sitting for his portrait to Royce, Bradley, and Taylor."

Don't return the "McGill Quarterly"!--I have another copy. Good-bye!

W. J.

_To F. J. E. Woodbridge._

Cambridge, _Feb. 6, 1905_.

DEAR WOODBRIDGE,--I appear to be growing into a graphomaniac. Truth boils over from my organism as muddy water from a Yellowstone Geyser.

Here is another contribution to my radical empiricism, which I send hot on the heels of the last one. I promise that, with the possible exception of one post-scriptual thing, not more than eight pages of MS.

long, I shall do no more writing this academic year. So if you accept this,[56] you have not much more to fear.... I think, on the whole, that though the present article directly hitches on to the last words of my last article, "The Thing and Its Relations," the article called the "Essence of Humanism" had better appear before it.... Always truly yours

Wm. James.

_To Edwin D. Starbuck._

Cambridge, _Feb. 12, 1905_.

DEAR STARBUCK,--I have read your article in No. 2 of Hall's Journal with great interest and profit. It makes me eager for the book, but pray take great care of your style in that--it seems to me that this article is less well written than your "Psychology of Religion" was, less clear, more involved, more technical in language--probably the result of rapidity. Our American philosophic literature is dreadful from a literary point of view. Pierre Janet told me he thought it was much worse than German stuff--and I begin to believe so; technical and semi-technical language, half-clear thought, fluency, and no composition! Turn your face resolutely the other way! But I didn't start to say this. Your thought in this article is both important and original, and ought to be worked out in the clearest possible manner....

Your thesis needs to be worked out with great care, and as concretely as possible. It is a difficult one to put successfully, on account of the vague character of all its terms. One point you should drive home is that the anti-religious att.i.tudes (Leuba's, Huxley's, Clifford's), so far as there is any "pathos" in them, obey exactly the same logic. The real crux is when you come to define objectively the ideals to which feeling reacts. "G.o.d is a Spirit"--_darauf geht es an_--on the last available definition of the term Spirit. It may be very abstract.

Love to Mrs. Starbuck. Yours always truly,

Wm. James.

_To F. J. E. Woodbridge._

[_Feb. 22, 1905._]

DEAR WOODBRIDGE,--Here's another! But I solemnly swear to you that this shall be my very last offense for some months to come. This is the "postscriptual" article[57] of which I recently wrote you, and I have now cleaned up the pure-experience philosophy from all the objections immediately in sight.... Truly yours,

Wm. James.

XV

1905-1907

_The Last Period (II)--Italy and Greece--Philosophical Congress in Rome--Stanford University--The Earthquake--Resignation of Professors.h.i.+p_

In the spring of 1905 an escape from influenza, from Cambridge duties, and from correspondents, became imperative. James had long wanted to see Athens with his own eyes, and he sailed on April 3 for a short southern holiday. During the journey he wrote letters to almost no one except his wife. On his way back from Athens he stopped in Rome with the purpose of seeing certain young Italian philosophers. A Philosophical Congress was being held there at the time; and James, though he had originally declined the invitation to attend it, inevitably became involved in its proceedings and ended by seizing the occasion to discuss his theory of consciousness. It was obvious that the appropriate language in which to address a full meeting of the Congress would be French, and so he shut himself up in his hotel and composed "La Notion de Conscience." His experience in writing this paper threw an instructive sidelight on his process of composition. Ordinarily--when he was writing in English--twenty-five sheets of ma.n.u.script, written in a large hand and corrected, were a maximum achievement for one day. The address in Rome was not composed in English and then translated, but was written out in French. When he had finished the last lines of one day's work, James found to his astonishment that he had completed and corrected over forty pages of ma.n.u.script. The inhibitions which a habit of careful attention to points of style ordinarily called into play were largely inoperative when he wrote in a language which presented to his mind a smaller variety of possible expressions, and thus imposed limits upon his self-criticism.

In the following year (1906), James took leave of absence from Harvard in January and accepted an invitation from Stanford University to give a course during its spring term. He planned the course as a general introduction to Philosophy. Had he not been interrupted by the San Francisco earthquake, he would have rehea.r.s.ed much of the projected "Introductory Textbook of Philosophy," in which he meant to outline his metaphysical system. But the earthquake put an end to the Stanford lectures in April, as the reader will learn more fully. In the ensuing autumn and winter (1907), James made the same material the basis of a half-year's work with his last Harvard cla.s.s.

In November, 1906, the lectures which compose the volume called "Pragmatism" were written out and delivered in November at the Lowell Inst.i.tute in Boston. In January, 1907, they were repeated at Columbia University, and then James published them in the spring.

The time had now come for him to stop regular teaching altogether. He had been continuing to teach, partly in deference to the wishes of the College; but it had become evident that he must have complete freedom to use his strength and time for writing when he could write, for special lectures, like the series on Pragmatism, when such might serve his ends, and for rest and change when recuperation became necessary. So, in February, 1907, he sent his resignation to the Harvard Corporation. The last meeting of his cla.s.s ended in a way for which he was quite unprepared. His undergraduate students presented him with a silver loving-cup, the graduate students and a.s.sistants with an inkwell. There were a couple of short speeches, and words were spoken by which he was very much moved. Unfortunately there was no record of what was said.

_To Mrs. James._

AMALFI, _Mar. 30, 1905_.

...It is good to get something in full measure, without haggling or stint, and today I have had the picturesque ladled out in buckets full, heaped up and running over. I never realized the beauties of this sh.o.r.e, and forget (in my habit of never noticing proper names till I have been there) whether you have ever told me of the drive from Sorrento to this place. Anyhow, I wish that you could have taken it with me this day.

"Thank G.o.d for this day!" We came to Sorrento by steamer, and at 10:30 got away in a carriage, lunching at the half-way village of Positano; and proceeding through Amalfi to Ravello, high up on the mountain side, whence back here in time for a 7:15 o'clock dinner. Practically six hours driving through a scenery of which I had never realized the beauty, or rather the interest, from previous descriptions. The lime-stone mountains are as _strong_ as anything in Switzerland, though of course much smaller. The road, a _Cornice_ affair cut for the most part on the face of cliffs, and crossing little ravines (with beaches) on the side of which nestle hamlets, is positively ferocious in its grandeur, and on the side of it the azure sea, dreaming and blooming like a bed of violets. I didn't look for such Swiss strength, having heard of naught but beauty. It seems as if this were a race such that, when anyone wished to express an emotion of any kind, he went and built a bit of stone-wall and limed it onto the rock, so that now, when they have acc.u.mulated, the works of G.o.d and man are inextricably mixed, and it is as if mankind had been a kind of immemorial coral insect. Every possible square yard is terraced up, reclaimed and planted, and the human dwellings are the fiercest examples of cliff-building, cave-habitation, staircase and foot-path you can imagine. How I do wish that you could have been along today....

_Mar. 31, 1905_.

From half-past four to half-past six I walked alone through the _old_ Naples, hilly streets, paved from house to house and swarming with the very poor, vocal with them too (their voices carry so that every child seems to be calling to the whole street, goats, donkeys, chickens, and an occasional cow mixed in), and no light of heaven getting indoors. The street floor composed of cave-like shops, the people doing their work on chairs in the street for the sake of light, and in the black inside, beds and a stove visible among the implements of trade. Such light and shade, and grease and grime, and swarm, and apparent amiability would be hard to match. I have come here too late in life, when the picturesque has lost its serious reality. Time was when hunger for it haunted me like a pa.s.sion, and such sights would have then been the solidest of mental food. I put up then with such inferior subst.i.tutional suggestions as Geneva and Paris afforded--but these black old Naples streets are not suggestions, they are the reality itself--full orchestra. I have got such an impression of the essential sociability of this race, especially in the country. A smile will go so far with them--even without the accompanying copper. And the children are so sweet. Tell Aleck to drop his other studies, learn _Italian_ (real Italian, not the awful gibberish I try to speak), cultivate his beautiful smile, learn a sentimental song or two, bring a tambourine or banjo, and come down here and fraternize with the common people along the coast--he can go far, and make friends, and be a social success, even if he should go back to a clean hotel of some sort for sleep every night....

_To his Daughter._