The Letters of William James Volume Ii Part 27

I have just read your paper on Boston in the "North American Review." I am glad you threw away the scabbard and made your critical remarks so straight. What you say about "pay" here being the easily won "salve" for privations, in view of which we cease to "mind" them, is as true as it is strikingly pat. _Les intellectuels_, wedged between the millionaires and the handworkers, are the really pinched cla.s.s here. They feel the frustrations and they can't get the salve. _My_ attainment of so much pay in the past few years brings home to me what an all-benumbing salve it is. That whole article is of your best. We long to hear from W., Jr.

No word yet. Your ever loving,

W. J.

In "The Energies of Men" there is a long quotation from an unnamed European correspondent who had been subjecting himself to Yoga disciplinary exercise. What follows is a comment written upon the first receipt of the report quoted in the "Energies."

_To W. Lutoslawski._

Cambridge, _May 6, 1906_.

...Your long and beautiful letter about Yoga, etc., greets me on my return from California. It is a most precious human doc.u.ment, and some day, along with that sketch of your religious evolution and other shorter letters of yours, it must see the light of day. What strikes me first in it is the evidence of improved moral "tone"--a calm, firm, sustained joyousness, hard to describe, and striking a new note in your epistles--which is already a convincing argument of the genuineness of the improvement wrought in you by Yoga practices....

You are mistaken about my having tried Yoga discipline--I never meant to suggest that. I have read several books (A. B., by the way, used to be a student of mine, but in spite of many n.o.ble qualities, he always had an unbalanced mind--obsessed by certain morbid ideas, etc.), and in the slightest possible way tried breathing exercises. These go terribly against the grain with me, are extremely disagreeable, and, even when tried this winter (somewhat perseveringly), to put myself asleep, after lying awake at night, failed to have any soporific effect. What impresses me most in your narrative is the obstinate strength of will shown by yourself and your chela in your methodical abstentions and exercises. When could I hope for such will-power? I find, when my general energy is _in Anspruch genommen_ by hard lecturing and other professional work, that then particularly what little _ascetic_ energy I have has to be remitted, because the exertion of inhibitory and stimulative will required increases my general fatigue instead of "tonifying" me.

But your sober experience gives me new hopes. Your whole narrative suggests in me the wonder whether the Yoga discipline may not be, after all, in all its phases, simply a methodical way of _waking up deeper levels of will-power than are habitually used_, and thereby increasing the individual's vital tone and energy. I have no doubt whatever that most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They _make use_ of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed. Pierre Janet discussed lately some cases of pathological impulsion or obsession in what he has called the "psychasthenic" type of individual, bulimia, exaggerated walking, morbid love of feeling pain, and explains the phenomenon as based on the underlying _sentiment d'incompletude_, as he calls it, or _sentiment de l'irreel_ with which these patients are habitually afflicted, and which they find is abolished by the violent appeal to some exaggerated activity or other, discovered accidentally perhaps, and then used habitually. I was reminded of his article in reading your descriptions and prescriptions. May the Yoga practices not be, after all, methods of getting at our deeper functional levels? And thus only be subst.i.tutes for entirely different crises that may occur in other individuals, religious crises, indignation-crises, love-crises, etc.?

What you say of diet is in striking accordance with the views lately made popular by Horace Fletcher--I dare say you have heard of them. You see I am trying to generalize the Yoga idea, and redeem it from the pretension that, for example, there is something intrinsically holy in the various grotesque postures of Hatha Yoga. I have spoken with various Hindus, particularly with three last winter, one a Yogi and apostle of Vedanta; one a "Christian" of scientific training; one a Bramo-Somaj professor. The former made great claims of increase of "power," but admitted that those who had it could in no way demonstrate it _ad oculos_, to outsiders. The other two both said that Yoga was less and less frequently practised by the more intellectual, and that the old-fas.h.i.+oned _Guru_ was becoming quite a rarity.

I believe with you, fully, that the so-called "normal man" of commerce, so to speak, the healthy philistine, is a mere extract from the potentially realizable individual whom he represents, and that we all have reservoirs of life to draw upon, of which we do not dream. The practical problem is "how to get at them." And the answer varies with the individual. Most of us never can, or never do get at them. _You_ have indubitably got at your own deeper levels by the Yoga methods. I hope that what you have gained will never again be lost to you. You must keep there! _My_ deeper levels seem very hard to find--I am so rebellious at all formal and prescriptive methods--a dry and bony _individual_, repelling fusion, and avoiding voluntary exertion. No matter, art is long! and _qui vivra verra_. I shall try fasting and again try breathing--discovering perhaps some individual rhythm that is more tolerable....

_To John Jay Chapman._

Cambridge, _May 18, 1906_.

DEAR OLD JACK C.,--Having this minute come into the possession of a new type-writer, what can I do better than express my pride in the same by writing to you?[66]

I spent last night at George Dorr's and he read me several letters from you, telling me also of your visit, and of how well you seemed. For years past I have been on the point of writing to you to a.s.sure [you] of my continued love and to express my commiseration for your poor wife, who has had so long to bear the brunt of your temper--you see I have been there already and I know how one's irritability is exasperated by conditions of nervous prostration--but now I can write and congratulate you on having recovered, temper and all. (As I write, it bethinks me that in a previous letter I have made identical jokes about your temper which, I fear, will give Mrs. Chapman a very low opinion of my humoristic resources, and in sooth they are small; but we are as G.o.d makes us and must not try to be anything else, so pray condone the silliness and let it pa.s.s.) The main thing is that you seem practically to have recovered, in spite of everything; and I am heartily glad.

I too am well enough for all practical purposes, but I have to go slow and not try to do too many things in a day. Simplification of life and consciousness I find to be the great thing, but a hard thing to compa.s.s when one lives in city conditions. How our dear Sarah Whitman lived in the sort of railroad station she made of her life--I confess it's a mystery to me. If I lived at a place called Barrytown, it would probably go better--don't you ever go back to New York to live!

Alice and I had a jovial time at sweet little Stanford University. It was the simple life in the best sense of the term. I am glad for once to have been part of the working machine of California, and a pretty deep part too, as it afterwards turned out. The earthquake also was a memorable bit of experience, and altogether we have found it mind-enlarging and are very glad we ben there. But the whole intermediate West is awful--a sort of penal doom to have to live there; and in general the result with me of having lived 65 years in America is to make me feel as if I had at least bought the right to a certain capriciousness, and were free now to live for the remainder of my days wherever I prefer and can make my wife and children consent--it is more likely to be in rural than in urban surroundings, and in the maturer than in the _rawrer_ parts of the world. But the first thing is to get out of the treadmill of teaching, which I hate and shall resign from next year. After that, I can use my small available store of energy in writing, which is not only a much more economical way of working it, but more satisfactory in point of quality, and more lucrative as well.

Now, J. C., when are you going to get at writing again? The world is hungry for your wares. No one touches certain deep notes of moral truth as you do, and your humor is _kostlich_ and _impayable_. You ought to join the band of "pragmatistic" or "humanistic" philosophers. I almost fear that Barrytown may not yet have begun to be disturbed by the rumor of their achievements, the which are of the greatest, and seriously I du think that the world of thought is on the eve of a renovation no less important than that contributed by Locke. The leaders of the new movement are Dewey, Schiller of Oxford, in a sense Bergson of Paris, a young Florentine named Papini, and last and least worthy, W. J. H. G.

Wells ought to be counted in, and if I mistake not G. K. Chesterton as well.[67] I hope you know and love the last-named writer, who seems to me a great teller of the truth. His systematic preference for contradictions and paradoxical forms of statement seems to me a mannerism somewhat to be regretted in so wealthy a mind; but that is a blemish from which some of our very greatest intellects are not altogether free--the philosopher of Barrytown himself being not wholly exempt. Join us, O Jack, and in the historic and perspective sense your fame will be secure. All future Histories of Philosophy will print your name.

But although my love for you is not exhausted, my type-writing energy is. It communicates stiffness and cramps, both to the body and the mind.

Nevertheless I think I have been doing pretty well for a first attempt, don't you? If you return me a good long letter telling me more particularly about the process of your recovery, I will write again, even if I have to take a pen to do it, and in any case I will do it much better than this time.

Believe me, dear old J. C., with hearty affection and delight at your recovery--all these months I have been on the brink of writing to find out how you were--and with very best regards to your wife, whom some day I wish we may be permitted to know better. Yours very truly,

Wm. James.

Everyone dead! Hodgson, Shaler, James Peirce this winter--to go no further afield! _Resserrons les rangs!_

_To Henry James._

Cambridge, _Sept. 10, 1906_.

DEAREST H.,--I got back from the Adirondacks, where I had spent a fortnight, the night before last, and in three or four hours Alice, Aleck and I will be spinning towards Chocorua, it being now five A.M.

Elly [Temple] Hunter will join us, with Grenville, in a few days; but for the most part, thank Heaven, we shall be alone till the end of the month. I found two letters from you awaiting me, and two from Bill. They all breathed a spirit of happiness, and brought a waft of the beautiful European summer with them. It has been a beautiful summer here too; and now, sad to say, it is counting the last beads of its chaplet of hot days out--the hot days which are really the absolutely friendly ones to man--you wish they would get cooler when you have them, and when they are departed, you wish you could have their exquisite gentleness again.

I have just been reading in the volume by Richard Jefferies called the "Life of the Fields" a wonderful rhapsody, "The Pageant of Summer." It needs to be read twice over and very attentively, being nothing but an enumeration of all the details visible in the corner of an old field with a hedge and ditch. But rightly taken in, it is probably the highest flight of human genius in the direction of nature-wors.h.i.+p. I don't see why it should not count as an immortal thing. You missed it, when here, in not getting to Keene Valley, where I have just been, and of which the sylvan beauty, especially by moonlight, is probably unlike aught that Europe has to show. Imperishable freshness!...

This is definitely my last year of lecturing, but I wish it were my first of non-lecturing. Simplification of the field of duties I find more and more to be the _summum bonum_ for me; and I live in apprehension lest the Avenger should cut me off before I get my message out. Not that the message is particularly needed by the human race, which can live along perfectly well without any one philosopher; but objectively I hate to leave the volumes I have already published without their logical complement. It is an esthetic tragedy to have a bridge begun, and stopped in the middle of an arch.

But I hear Alice stirring upstairs, so I must go up and finish packing.

I hope that you and W. J., Jr., will again form a harmonious combination. I hope also that he will stop painting for a time. He will do all the better, when he gets home, for having had a fallow interval.

Good-bye! and my blessing upon both of you. Your ever loving,

W. J.

_To H. G. Wells._

CHOCORUA, _Sept. 11, 1906_.

DEAR MR. WELLS,--I've read your "Two Studies in Disappointment" in "Harper's Weekly," and must thank you from the bottom of my heart. _Rem acu tetegisti!_ Exactly that callousness to abstract justice is _the_ sinister feature and, to me as well as to you, the incomprehensible feature, of our U. S. civilization. How you hit upon it so neatly and singled it out so truly (and talked of it so tactfully!) G.o.d only knows: He evidently created you to do such things! I never heard of the MacQueen case before, but I've known of plenty of others. When the ordinary American hears of them, instead of the idealist within him beginning to "see red" with the higher indignation, instead of the spirit of English history growing alive in his breast, he begins to pooh-pooh and minimize and tone down the thing, and breed excuses from his general fund of optimism and respect for expediency. "It's probably right enough"; "Scoundrelly, as you say," but understandable, "from the point of view of parties interested"--but understandable in onlooking citizens only as a symptom of the moral flabbiness born of the exclusive wors.h.i.+p of the b.i.t.c.h-G.o.ddess SUCCESS. That--with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success--is our national disease. Hit it hard! Your book _must_ have a great effect. Do you remember the glorious remarks about success in Chesterton's "Heretics"? You will undoubtedly have written _the_ medicinal book about America. And what good humor!

and what tact! Sincerely yours,

Wm. James.

_To Miss Theodora Sedgwick._

CHOCORUA, _Sept. 13, 1906_.

DEAR THEODORA,--Here we are in this sweet delicate little place, after a pretty agitated summer, and the quiet seems very nice. Likewise the stillness. I have thought often of you, and _almost_ written; but there never seemed exactly to be time or place for it, so I let the sally of the heart to-you-ward suffice. A week ago, I spent a night with H. L.

Higginson, whom I found all alone at his house by the Lake, and he told me your improvement had been continuous and great, which I heartily hope has really been the case. I don't see why it should not have been the case, under such delightful conditions. What good things friends are!

And what better thing than lend it, can one do with one's house? I was struck by Henry Higginson's high level of mental tension, so to call it, which made him talk, incessantly and pa.s.sionately about one subject after another, never running dry, and reminding me more of myself when I was twenty years old. It isn't so much a man's eminence of elementary faculties that pulls him through. They may be rare, and he do nothing.

It is the steam pressure to the square inch behind that moves the machine. The amount of that is what makes the great difference between us. Henry has it high. Previous to seeing him I had spent ten days in beautiful Keene Valley, dividing them between the two ends. The St.