[46] See, for example, the use made of Touchstone's question, in the Nation in 1876 (quoted on page 190 infra). James was certainly unconscious of the repetition when he wrote page 7 of Some Problems of Philosophy. Consider also, a few sentences from a notice of Morley's Voltaire (Atlantic Monthly, 1872, vol. XXX, p. 624). "As the opinions of average men are swayed more by examples and types than by mere reasons, so a personality so accomplished as Mr. Morley's cannot fail by its mere attractiveness to influence all who come within its reach and inspire them with a certain friendliness toward the faith that animates it. The standard example, Goethe, is ever at hand. But to be thus widely effective, a man must not be a specialist. Mr. John Mill, weighty and many-sided as he is by nature and culture, is yet deficient in the æsthetic direction; and the same is true of M. Littré in France. Their lances lack that final tipping with light that made Voltaire's so irresistible. What Henry IV's soldiers followed was his white plume; and that imponderable superfluity, grace, in some shape, seems one factor without which no awakening of men's sympathies on a large scale can take place."
[47] William James, by Theodore Flournoy (Geneva, 1911), p. 149 note.
[48] Grubbing among subtleties.
[49] Regardings, or contemplative views.
[50] MS. doubtful.
[51] "I made a discovery in sending in my credentials to the Dean which gratified me. It was that, adding in conscientiously every week in which I have had anything to do with medicine, I can't sum up more than three years and two or three months. Three years is the minimum with which one can go up for examination; but as I began away back in '63, I have been considering myself as having studied about five years, and have felt much humiliated by the greater readiness of so many younger men to answer questions and understand cases." To Henry James, June 12, 1869.
[52] Ephraim W. Gurney and T. S. Perry.
[53] It ought perhaps to be noted, even if only to dismiss the subject and prevent misapprehension, that at about this time a man whose philosophic ability was great and whose thought was vigorously materialistic was often at the house in Quincy Street. This was Chauncey Wright. He was twelve years James's senior; a man whose best work was done in conversation—who wrote little, and whose talents are now to be measured chiefly by the strong impression that he made on some of his contemporaries. "Of the two motives to which philosophic systems owe their being, the craving for consistency or unity in thought, and the desire for a solid outward warrant for our emotional ends, his mind was dominated only by the former. Never in a human head was contemplation more separated from desire." (Vide James's obituary notice of Wright, contributed to the Nation for Sept. 23, 1875.) It has been suggested that Wright influenced James's thinking. If so, his influence was not lasting and, in the opinion of the editor, can easily be overstated. James was not limited to any one philosophic companionship even at this time; and if he felt Wright's influence, it is remarkable that there should be no mention of him in any of the letters or memoranda that have survived and that there was never any acknowledgment in James's subsequent writings. He was ever inclined to make acknowledgment, even to his opponents.
[54] Cf. the description of Henry James, Senior's, home-comings in A Small Boy and Others, p. 72.
[55] The early history of experimental psychology in America once occasioned discussion. But the discussion seems to have arisen from its being assumed that some particular formality or event should be recognized as marking the coming into being, or the coming of age, of a "Department" or a "Laboratory." James has stated the facts as to the history of the Harvard Laboratory in his own words: "I, myself, 'founded' the instruction in experimental psychology at Harvard in 1874-5, or 1876, I forget which. For a long series of years the laboratory was in two rooms of the Scientific School building, which at last became choked with apparatus, so that a change was necessary. I then, in 1890, resolved on an altogether new departure, raised several thousand dollars, fitted up Dane Hall, and introduced laboratory exercises as a regular part of the undergraduate psychology course."—Vide Science, (N. S.) vol. II, pp. 626, 735. Also, p. 301 infra.