The Letters of William James Volume Ii Part 24

On board S.S. Orenogne, approaching PIRaeUS, GREECE, _Apr. 3, 1905_.

DARLING PEG,--Your loving Dad is surely in luck sailing over this almost oily sea, under the awning on deck, past the coast of Greece (whose snow-capped mountains can be seen on the horizon), towards the Piraeus, where we are due to arrive at about two. I had some misgivings about the steamer from Ma.r.s.eilles, but she has turned out splendid, and the voyage perfect. A 4000-ton boat, bran new as to all her surface equipment, stateroom all to myself, by a happy stroke of luck (the boat being full), clean absolutely, large open window, sea like Lake Champlain, with the color of Lake Leman, about a hundred and twenty first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers of the most interesting description, one sixth English archeologists, one sixth English tourists, one third French archeologists, etc.,--an international archeological congress opens at Athens this week,--the rest Dagoes _quelconques_, many distinguished men, almost all educated and p.r.o.nounced individualities, and so much acquaintance and sociability, that the somewhat small upper deck on which I write resounds with conversation like an afternoon tea. The meals are tip-top, and the whole thing almost absurdly ideal in its kind. I only wish your mother could be wafted here for one hour, to sit by my side and enjoy the scene. The best feature of the boat is little Miss Boyd, the Cretan excavatress, from Smith College, a perfect little trump of a thing, who has been through the Greco-Turkish war as nurse (as well as being nurse at Tampa during our Cuban war), and is the simplest, most generally intelligent little thing, who knows Greece by heart and can smooth one's path beautifully. Waldstein of Cambridge is on board, also M. Sylvain of the Theatre Francais, and his daughter--going to recite prologues or something at the representation of Sophocles's "Antigone," which is to take place--he looking just like your uncle Henry--both eminent comedians--I mean the two Sylvains. On the bench opposite me is the most beautiful woman on board, a sort of Mary Salter translated into French, though she is with rather common men. Well, now I will stop, and use my Zeiss gla.s.s on the land, which is getting nearer. My heart wells over with love and grat.i.tude at having such a family--meaning Alice, you, Harry, Bill, Aleck, and Mother-in-law--and resolutions to live so as to be more worthy of them.

I will finish this on land.

Well, dear family,--We got in duly in an indescribable _embrouillement_ of small boats (our boatman, by the way, when Miss Boyd asked him his name, replied "Dionysos"; our wine-bottle was labelled "John Solon and Co."), sailing past the Island of aegina and the Bay of Salamis, with the Parthenon visible ahead--a worthy termination to a delightful voyage. We drove the three miles from the Piraeus in a carriage, common and very dusty country road, also close by the Parthenon, through the cheap little town to this hotel, after which George Putnam and I, was.h.i.+ng our hands, strolled forth to see what we could, the first thing being Mrs.

Sam h.o.a.r at the theatre of Bacchus. Then the rest of the Acropolis, which is all and more than all the talk. There is a mystery of _rightness_ about that Parthenon that I cannot understand. It sets a standard for other human things, showing that absolute rightness is not out of reach. But I am not in descriptive mood, so I spare you. Suffice it that I couldn't keep the tears from welling into my eyes. "J'ai vu la beaute parfaite." Santayana is in a neighboring hotel, but we have missed each other thrice. The Forbeses are on the Peloponnesus, but expected back tomorrow. Well, dear ones all, good-night! Thus far, and no farther! Hence I turn westward again. The Greek lower orders seem far less avid and rapacious than the Southern Italians. G.o.d bless you all. I must get to another hotel, and be more to myself. Good and dear as the Putnams are and extremely helpful as they've been, it keeps me too much in company. Good-night again. Your loving father, _respective_ husband,

W. J.

_To Mrs. James._

ROME, _Apr. 25, 1905_.

...Strong telegraphed me yesterday from Lausanne that he ... expected to be at Cannes on the 4th of May. I was glad of this, for I had been feeling more and more as if I ought to stay here, and it makes everything square out well. This morning I went to the meeting-place of the Congress to inscribe myself definitely, and when I gave my name, the lady who was taking them almost fainted, saying that all Italy loved me, or words to that effect, and called in poor Professor de Sanctis, the Vice President or Secretary or whatever, who treated me in the same manner, and finally got me to consent to make an address at one of the general meetings, of which there are four, in place of Sully, Flournoy, Richet, Lipps, and Brentano, who were announced but are not to come. I fancy they have been pretty unscrupulous with their program here, printing conditional futures as categorical ones. So I'm in for it again, having no power to resist flattery. I shall try to express my "Does Consciousness Exist?" in twenty minutes--and possibly in the French tongue! Strange after the deep sense of nothingness that has been besetting me the last two weeks (mere fatigue symptom) to be told that _my_ name was attracting many of the young professors to the Congress!

Then I went to the Museum in the baths of Diocletian or whatever it is, off there by the R. R., then to the Capitol, and then to lunch off the Corso, at a restaurant, after buying a French book whose author says in his preface that Sully, W. J., and Bergson are his masters. And I am absolute 0 in my own home!...

_Apr. 30, 1905._ 7 P.M.

...If you never had a tired husband, at least you've got one now! The _ideer_ of being in such delightful conditions and interesting surroundings, and being conscious of nothing but one's preposterous physical distress, is too ridiculous! I have just said good-bye to my circle of admirers, relatively youthful, at the hotel door, under the pretext (a truth until this morning) that I had to get ready to go to Lausanne tonight, and I taper off my activity by subsiding upon you.

Yesterday till three, and the day before till five, I was writing my address, which this morning I gave--in French. I wrote it carefully and surprised myself by the ease with which I slung the Gallic accent and intonation, being excited by the occasion.[58] Janet expressed himself as _stupefait_, from the linguistic point of view. The thing lasted 40 minutes, and was followed by a discussion which showed that the critics with one exception had wholly failed to catch the point of view; but that was quite _en regle_, so I don't care; and I have given the thing to Claparede to print in Flournoy's "Archives." The Congress was far too vast, but filled with strange and interesting creatures of all sorts, and socially _very_ nutritious to anyone who can stand sociability without distress. A fete of some sort every day--this P.M. I have just returned from a great afternoon tea given us by some "Minister" at the Borghese Palace--in the Museum. (The King, you know, has bought the splendid Borghese park and given it to the City of Rome as a democratic possession _in perpetuo_. A splendid gift.) The pictures too! Tonight there is a great banquet with speeches, to which of course I can't go. I lunched at the da Vitis,--a big table full, she very simple and nice,--and I have been having this afternoon a very good and rather intimate talk with the little band of "pragmatists," Papini, Vailati, Calderoni, Amendola, etc., most of whom inhabit Florence, publish the monthly journal "Leonardo" at their own expense, and carry on a very serious philosophic movement, apparently _really_ inspired by Schiller and myself (I never could believe it before, although Ferrari had a.s.sured me), and show an enthusiasm, and also a literary swing and activity that I know nothing of in our own land, and that probably our d.a.m.ned academic technics and Ph.D.-machinery and university organization prevents from ever coming to a birth. These men, of whom Ferrari is one, are none of them _Fach-philosophers_, and few of them teachers at all.

It has given me a certain new idea of the way in which truth ought to find its way into the world.

I have seen such a lot of _important_-looking faces,--probably everything in the stock in the shop-window,--and witnessed such charmingly gracious manners, that it is a lesson. The woodenness of our Anglo-Saxon social ways! I had a really splendid audience for quality this A.M. (about 200), even though they didn't understand....

_To George Santayana._

ORVIETO, _May 2, 1905_.

DEAR SANTAYANA,--I came here yesterday from Rome and have been enjoying the solitude. I stayed at the exquisite Albergo de Russie, and didn't s.h.i.+rk the Congress--in fact they stuck me for a "general" address, to fill the vacuum left by Flournoy and Sully, who had been announced and came not (I spoke _agin_ "consciousness," but n.o.body understood) and I got _fearfully tired_. On the whole it was an agreeable nightmare--agreeable on account of the perfectly charming _gentillezza_ of the b.l.o.o.d.y Dagoes, the way they caress and flatter you--"il piu grand psicologo del mondo," etc., and of the elaborate provisions for general entertainment--nightmare, because of my absurd bodily fatigue. However, these things are "neither here nor there." What I really write to you for is to tell you to send (if not sent already) your "Life of Reason"

to the "Revue de Philosophie," or rather to its editor, M. Peillaube, Rue des Revues 160, and to the editor of "Leonardo" (the great little Florentine philosophical journal), Sig. Giovanni Papini, 14 Borgo Albizi, Florence. The most interesting, and in fact genuinely edifying, part of my trip has been meeting this little _cenacle_, who have taken my own writings, _entre autres, au grand serieux_, but who are carrying on their philosophical mission in anything but a technically serious way, inasmuch as "Leonardo" (of which I have hitherto only known a few odd numbers) is devoted to good and lively literary form. The sight of their belligerent young enthusiasm has given me a queer sense of the gray-plaster temperament of our bald-headed young Ph.D.'s, boring each other at seminaries, writing those direful reports of literature in the "Philosophical Review" and elsewhere, fed on "books of reference," and never confounding "aesthetik" with "Erkentnisstheorie." Faugh! I shall never deal with them again--on _those_ terms! Can't you and I, who in spite of such divergence have yet so much in common in our _Weltanschauung_, start a systematic movement at Harvard against the desiccating and pedantifying process? I have been cracking you up greatly to both Peillaube and Papini, and quoted you twice in my speech, which was in French and will be published in Flournoy's "Archives de Psychologie." I hope you're enjoying the Eastern Empire to the full, and that you had some Grecian "country life." Munsterberg has been called to Koenigsberg and has refused. Better be America's ancestor than Kant's successor! Ostwald, to my great delight, is coming to us next year, not as your replacer, but in exchange with Germany for F. G. Peabody. I go now to Cannes, to meet Strong, back from his operation. Ever truly yours,

Wm. James.

_To Mrs. James._

CANNES, _May 13, 1905_.

...I came Sunday night, and this is Sat.u.r.day. The six days have been busy ones in one sense, but have rested me very much in another. No sight-seeing fatigues, but more usual, and therefore more normal occupations.... I have written some 25 letters, long and short, to European correspondents since being here, have walked and driven with Strong, and have had philosophy hot and heavy with him almost all the time. I never knew such an unremitting, untiring, monotonous addiction as that of his mind to truth. He goes by points, pinning each one definitely, and has, I think, the very clearest mind I ever knew. Add to it his absolute sincerity and candor and it is no wonder that he is a "growing" man. I suspect that he will outgrow us all, for his rate accelerates, and he never stands still. He is an admirable philosophic figure, and I am glad to say that in most things he and I are fully in accord. He gains a great deal from such talks, noting every point down afterwards, and I gain great stimulation, though in a vaguer way. I shall be glad, however, on Monday afternoon, to relax....

_To Mrs. James._

[Post-card]

GENEVA, _May 17, 1905_.

So far, thank Heaven, on my way towards home! A rather useful time with the superior, but sticky X----, at Ma.r.s.eilles, and as far as Lyons in the train, into which an hour beyond Lyons there came (till then I was alone in my compartment) a Spanish bishop, canon and "familar," an aged holy woman, sister of the bishop, a lay-brother and sister, a dog, and more baggage than I ever saw before, including a feather-bed. They spoke no French--the bishop about as much Italian as I, and the lay-sister as much of English as I of Spanish. They took out their rosaries and began mumbling their litanies forthwith, whereon I took off my hat, which seemed to touch them so, when they discovered I was a Protestant, that we all grew very affectionate and I soon felt ashamed of the way in which I had at first regarded their black and superst.i.tious invasion of my privacy. Good, saintly people on their way to Rome. I go now to our old haunts and to the Flournoys'....

W.

_To H. G. Wells._

S. S. CEDRIC, _June 6, 1905_.

MY DEAR MR. WELLS,--I have just read your "Utopia" (given me by F. C. S.

Schiller on the one day that I spent in Oxford on my way back to Cambridge, Ma.s.s., after a few weeks on the Continent), and "Antic.i.p.ations," and "Mankind in the Making" having duly preceded, together with numerous other lighter volumes of yours, the "summation of stimuli" reaches the threshold of discharge and I can't help overflowing in a note of grat.i.tude. You "have your faults, as who has not?" but your virtues are unparalleled and transcendent, and I believe that you will prove to have given a shove to the practical thought of the next generation that will be amongst the greatest of its influences for good.

All in the line of the English genius too, no wire-drawn French doctrines, and no German shop technicalities inflicted in an _unerbittlich consequent_ manner, but everywhere the sense of the full concrete, and the air of freedom playing through all the joints of your argument. You have a tri-dimensional human heart, and to use your own metaphor, don't see different levels projected on one plane. In this last book you beautifully soften c.o.c.ksureness by the penumbra of the outlines--in fact you're a trump and a jewel, and for human perception you beat Kipling, and for hitting off a thing with the right word, you are unique. Heaven bless and preserve you!--You are now an eccentric; perhaps 50 years hence you will figure as a cla.s.sic! Your Samurai chapter is magnificent, though I find myself wondering what developments in the way of partisan politics those same Samurai would develop, when it came to questions of appointment and running this or that man in.

_That_ I believe to be human nature's ruling pa.s.sion. Live long! and keep writing; and believe me, yours admiringly and sincerely,

Wm. James.

_To Henry L. Higginson._

Cambridge, _July 18 [1905]_.

DEAR H.,--You asked me how rich I was getting by my own (as distinguished from _your_) exertions....

I find on reaching home today a letter from Longmans, Green & Co. with a check ... which I have mailed to your house in State Street....

This ought to please you slightly; but don't reply! Instead, think of the virtues of Roosevelt, either as permanent sovereign of this great country, or as President of Harvard University. I've been having a discussion with f.a.n.n.y Morse about him, which has resulted in making me his faithful henchman for life, f.a.n.n.y was so violent. Think of the mighty good-will of him, of his enjoyment of his post, of his power as a preacher, of the number of things to which he gives his attention, of the safety of his second thoughts, of the increased courage he is showing, and above all of the fact that he is an open, instead of an underground leader, whom the voters can control once in four years, when he runs away, whose heart is in the right place, who is an enemy of red tape and quibbling and everything that in general the word "politician"