The Letters of William James Volume Ii Part 31

_To F. C. S. Schiller._

[Post-card]

CHOCORUA, _June_ 13, 1907.

Yours of the 27th ult. received and highly appreciated. I'm glad you relish my book so well. You go on playing the Boreas and I shedding the sunbeams, and between us we'll get the cloak off the philosophic traveler! But _have_ you read Bergson's new book?[80]It seems to me that nothing is important in comparison with that divine apparition. All _our_ positions, real time, a growing world, a.s.serted magisterially, and the beast intellectualism killed absolutely _dead_! The whole flowed round by a style incomparable as it seems to me. Read it, and digest it if you can. Much of it I can't yet a.s.similate.

[_No signature._]

_To Henri Bergson._

CHOCORUA, _June 13, 1907_.

O my Bergson, you are a magician, and your book is a marvel, a real wonder in the history of philosophy, making, if I mistake not, an entirely new era in respect of matter, but unlike the works of genius of the "transcendentalist" movement (which are so obscurely and abominably and inaccessibly written), a pure cla.s.sic in point of form. You may be amused at the comparison, but in finis.h.i.+ng it I found the same after-taste remaining as after finis.h.i.+ng "Madame Bovary," such a flavor of persistent _euphony_, as of a rich river that never foamed or ran thin, but steadily and firmly proceeded with its banks full to the brim.

Then the aptness of your ill.u.s.trations, that never scratch or stand out at right angles, but invariably simplify the thought and help to pour it along! Oh, indeed you are a magician! And if your next book proves to be as great an advance on this one as this is on its two predecessors, your name will surely go down as one of the great creative names in philosophy.

There! have I praised you enough? What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is _praise_--although the philosophers generally call it "recognition"! If you want still more praise, let me know, and I will send it, for my features have been on a broad smile from the first page to the last, at the chain of felicities that never stopped. I feel rejuvenated.

As to the content of it, I am not in a mood at present to make any definite reaction. There is so much that is absolutely new that it will take a long time for your contemporaries to a.s.similate it, and I imagine that much of the development of detail will have to be performed by younger men whom your ideas will stimulate to coruscate in manners unexpected by yourself. To me at present the vital achievement of the book is that it inflicts an irrecoverable death-wound upon Intellectualism. It can never resuscitate! But it will die hard, for all the inertia of the past is in it, and the spirit of professionalism and pedantry as well as the aesthetic-intellectual delight of dealing with categories logically distinct yet logically connected, will rally for a desperate defense. The _elan vital_, all contentless and vague as you are obliged to leave it, will be an easy subst.i.tute to make fun of. But the beast _has_ its death-wound now, and the manner in which you have inflicted it (interval _versus_ temps d'arret, etc.) is masterly in the extreme. I don't know why this later _redaction_ of your critique of the mathematics of movement has seemed to me so much more telling than the early statement--I suppose it is because of the wider _use_ made of the principle in the book. You will be receiving my own little "pragmatism"

book simultaneously with this letter. How jejune and inconsiderable it seems in comparison with your great system! But it is so congruent with parts of your system, fits so well into interstices thereof, that you will easily understand why I am so enthusiastic. I feel that at bottom we are fighting the same fight, you a commander, I in the ranks. The position we are rescuing is "Tychism" and a really growing world. But whereas I have hitherto found no better way of defending Tychism than by affirming the spontaneous addition of _discrete_ elements of being (or their subtraction), thereby playing the game with intellectualist weapons, you set things straight at a single stroke by your fundamental conception of the continuously creative nature of reality. I think that one of your happiest strokes is your reduction of "finality," as usually taken, to its status alongside of efficient causality, as the twin-daughters of intellectualism. But this vaguer and truer finality restored to its rights will be a difficult thing to give content to.

Altogether your reality lurks so in the background, in this book, that I am wondering whether you _couldn't_ give it any more development _in concreto_ here, or whether you perhaps were holding back developments, already in your possession, for a future volume. They are sure to come to you later anyhow, and to make a new volume; and altogether, the clash of these ideas of yours with the traditional ones will be sure to make sparks fly that will illuminate all sorts of dark places and bring innumerable new considerations into view. But the process may be slow, for the ideas are so revolutionary. Were it not for your style, your book might last 100 years unnoticed; but your way of writing is so absolutely commanding that your theories have to be attended to immediately. I feel very much in the dark still about the relations of the progressive to the regressive movement, and this great precipitate of nature subject to static categories. With a frank pluralism of _beings_ endowed with vital impulses you can get oppositions and compromises easily enough, and a stagnant deposit; but after my one reading I don't exactly "catch on" to the way in which the continuum of reality resists itself so as to have to act, etc., etc.

The only part of the work which I felt like positively criticising was the discussion of the idea of nonent.i.ty, which seemed to me somewhat overelaborated, and yet didn't leave me with a sense that the last word had been said on the subject. But all these things must be very slowly digested by me. I can see that, when the tide turns in your favor, many previous tendencies in philosophy will start up, crying "This is nothing but what _we_ have contended for all along." Schopenhauer's blind will, Hartmann's unconscious, Fichte's aboriginal freedom (reedited at Harvard in the most "unreal" possible way by Munsterberg) will all be claimants for priority. But no matter--all the better if you are in some ancient lines of tendency. Mysticism also must make claims and doubtless just ones. I say nothing more now--this is just my first reaction; but I am so enthusiastic as to have said only two days ago, "I thank heaven that I have lived to this date--that I have witnessed the Russo-j.a.panese war, and seen Bergson's new book appear--the two great modern turning-points of history and of thought!" Best congratulations and cordialest regards!

Wm. James.

_To T. S. Perry._

SILVER LAKE, N.H., _June 24, 1907_.

DEAR THOS.,--Yours of the 11th is at hand, true philosopher that you are. No one but one bawn & bred in the philosophic briar-patch could appreciate Bergson as you do, without in the least understanding him. I am in an identical predicament. This last of his is the _divinest_ book that has appeared in _my_ life-time, and (unless I am the falsest prophet) it is destined to rank with the greatest works of all time. The style of it is as wonderful as the matter. By all means send it to Chas.

Peirce, but address him Prescott Hall, Cambridge. I am sending you my "Pragmatism," which Bergson's work makes seem like small potatoes enough.

Are you going to Russia to take Stolypin's place? or to head the Revolution? I would I were at Giverny to talk metaphysics with you, and enjoy a country where I am not responsible for the droughts and the garden. Have been here two weeks at Chocorua, getting our place ready for a tenant.

Affectionate regards to you all.

W. J.

_To d.i.c.kinson S. Miller._

LINCOLN, Ma.s.s., _Aug. 5, 1907_.

DEAR MILLER,--I got your letter about "Pragmatism," etc., some time ago.

I hear that you are booked to review it for the "Hibbert Journal." Lay on, Macduff! as hard as you can--I want to have the weak places pointed out. I sent you a week ago a "Journal of Philosophy"[81] with a word more about Truth in it, written _at_ you mainly; but I hardly dare hope that I have cleared up my position. A letter from Strong, two days ago, written after receiving a proof of that paper, still thinks that I deny the existence of realities outside of the thinker; and [R. B.] Perry, who seems to me to have written far and away the most important critical remarks on Pragmatism (possibly the _only_ important ones), accused Pragmatists (though he doesn't name _me_) of ignoring or denying that the real object plays any part in deciding what ideas are true. I confess that such misunderstandings seem to me hardly credible, and cast a "lurid light" on the mutual understandings of philosophers generally.

Apparently it all comes from the _word_ Pragmatism--and a most unlucky word it may prove to have been. I am a natural realist. The world _per se_ may be likened to a cast of beans on a table. By themselves they spell nothing. An onlooker may group them as he likes. He may simply count them all and map them. He may select groups and name these capriciously, or name them to suit certain extrinsic purposes of his.

Whatever he does, so long as he _takes account_ of them, his account is neither false nor irrelevant. If neither, why not call it true? It _fits_ the beans-_minus_-him, and _expresses_ the _total_ fact, of beans-_plus_-him. Truth in this total sense is partially ambiguous, then. If he simply counts or maps, he obeys a subjective interest as much as if he traces figures. Let that stand for pure "intellectual"

treatment of the beans, while grouping them variously stands for non-intellectual interests. All that Schiller and I contend for is that there is _no_ "truth" without _some_ interest, and that non-intellectual interests play a part as well as intellectual ones. Whereupon we are accused of denying the beans, or denying being in anyway constrained by them! It's too silly!...

_To Miss Pauline Goldmark._

PUTNAM SHANTY, KEENE VALLEY, _Sept. 14, 1907_.

DEAR PAULINE,-- ...No "camping" for me this side the grave! A party of fourteen left here yesterday for Panther Gorge, meaning to return by the Range, as they call your "summit trail." Apparently it is easier than when on that to me memorable day we took it, for Charley Putnam swears he has done it in five and a half hours. I don't well understand the difference, except that they don't reach Haystack over Marcy as we did, and there is now a good trail. Past and future play such a part in the way one feels the present. To these youngsters, as to me long ago, and to you today, the rapture of the connexion with these hills is partly made of the sense of future power over them and their like. That being removed from me, I can only mix memories of past power over them with the present. But I have always observed a curious _fading_ in what Tennyson calls the "pa.s.sion" of the past. Memories awaken little or no sentiment when they are too old; and I have taken everything here so prosily this summer that I find myself wondering whether the time-limit has been exceeded, and whether for emotional purpose I am a new self.

We know not what we shall become; and that is what makes life so interesting. Always a turn of the kaleidoscope; and when one is utterly maimed for action, then the glorious time for _reading_ other men's lives! I fairly revel in that prospect, which in its full richness has to be postponed, for I'm not sufficiently maimed-for-action yet. By going slowly and alone, I find I can compa.s.s such things as the Giant's Washbowl, Beaver Meadow Falls, etc., and they make me feel very good. I have even been dallying with the temptation to visit Cameron Forbes at Manila; but I have put it behind me for this year at least. I think I shall probably give some more lectures (of a much less "popular" sort) at Columbia next winter--so you see there's life in the old dog yet.

Nevertheless, how different from the life that courses through _your_ arteries and capillaries! Today is the first honestly fine day there has been since I arrived here on the 2nd. (They must have been heavily rained on at Panther Gorge yesterday evening.) After writing a couple more letters I will take a book and repair to "Mosso's Ledge" for the enjoyment of the prospect....

_To W. Jerusalem_ (Vienna).

ST. HUBERT'S, N.Y. _Sept._ 15, 1907.

DEAR PROFESSOR JERUSALEM,--Your letter of the 1st of September, forwarded from Cambridge, reaches me here in the Adirondack Mountains today. I am glad the publisher is found, and that you are enjoying the drudgery of translating ["Pragmatism"]. Also that you find the book more and more in agreement with your own philosophy. I fear that its untechnicality of style--or rather its deliberate _anti_-technicality--will make the German _Gelehrtes Publik.u.m_,[82] as well as the professors, consider it _oberflachliches Zeug_[83]--which it a.s.suredly is not, although, being only a sketch, it ought to be followed by something _tighter_ and abounding in discriminations.

Pragmatism is an unlucky word in some respects, and the two meanings I give for it are somewhat heterogeneous. But it was already in vogue in France and Italy as well as in England and America, and it was _tactically_ advantageous to use it....

_To Henry James._

STONEHURST, INTERVALE, N.H., _Oct._ 6, 1907.

DEAREST BROTHER,--I write this at the [James] Bryces', who have taken the Merrimans' house for the summer, and whither I came the day before yesterday, after closing our Chocorua house, and seeing Alice leave for home. We had been there a fortnight, trying to get some work done, and having to do most of it with our own hands, or rather with Alice's heroic hands, for mine are worth almost nothing in these degenerate days. It is enough to make your heart break to see the scarcity of "labor," and the whole country tells the same story. Our future at Chocorua is a somewhat problematic one, though I think we shall manage to pa.s.s next summer there and get it into better shape for good renting, thereafter, at any cost (not the renting but the shaping). After that what _I_ want is a free foot, and the children are now not dependent on a family summer any longer....