The Letters of William James, Vol. 2

THE LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES

EDITED BY HIS SON HENRY JAMES IN TWO VOLUMES VOLUME II
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS BOSTON
Copyright, 1920, by HENRY JAMES

1893-1899
Turning to Philosophy—A Student's Impressions—Popular Lecturing—Chautauqua
When James returned from Europe, he was fifty-two years old. If he had been another man, he might have settled down to the intensive cultivation of the field in which he had already achieved renown and influence. He would then have spent the rest of his life in working out special problems in psychology, in deducing a few theories, in making particular applications of his conclusions, in administering a growing laboratory, in surrounding himself with assistants and disciples—in weeding and gathering where he had tilled. But the fact was that the publication of his two books on psychology operated for him as a welcome release from the subject.
Readers of this book will have seen that the centre of his interest had always been religious and philosophical. To be sure, the currents by which science was being carried forward during the sixties and seventies had supported him in his distrust of conclusions based largely on introspection and a priori reasoning. As early as 1865 he had said, apropos of Agassiz, No one sees farther into a generalization than his own knowledge of details extends. In the spirit of that remark he had spent years on brain-physiology, on the theory of the emotions, on the feeling of effort in mental processes, in studying the measurements and exact experiments by means of which the science of the mind was being brought into quickening relation with the physical and biological sciences. But all the while he had been driven on by a curiosity that embraced ulterior problems. In half of the field of his consciousness questions had been stirring which now held his attention completely. Does consciousness really exist? Could a radically empirical conception of the universe be formulated? What is knowledge? What truth? Where is freedom? and where is there room for faith? Metaphysical problems haunted his mind; discussions that ran in strictly psychological channels bored him. He called psychology a nasty little subject, according to Professor Palmer, and added, all one cares to know lies outside. He would not consider spending time on a revised edition of his textbook (the Briefer Course ) except for a bribe that was too great ever to be urged upon him. As time went on, he became more and more irritated at being addressed or referred to as a psychologist. In June, 1903, when he became aware that Harvard was intending to confer an honorary degree on him, he went about for days before Commencement in a half-serious state of dread lest, at the fatal moment, he should hear President Eliot's voice naming him Psychologist, psychical researcher, willer-to-believe, religious experiencer. He could not say whether the impossible last epithets would be less to his taste than psychologist.