[Divonne?], Oct. 5, 1868.
DEAR FATHER,—...I have not been doing much studying lately, nor indeed for some time past, though I manage to keep something dribbling all the while. I began the other day Kant's "Kritik," which is written crabbedly enough, but which strikes me so far as almost the sturdiest and honestest piece of work I ever saw. Whether right or wrong (and it is pretty clearly wrong in a great many details of its Analytik part, however the rest may be), there it stands like a great snag or mark to which everything metaphysical or psychological must be referred. I wish I had read it earlier. It is very slow reading and I shall only give it a couple of hours daily.
I got a little book by a number of authors, "L'Année 1867 Philosophique," which may interest you if you have not got it already. The introduction, a review of the state of philosophy in France for some years back, is by one Charles Renouvier, of whom I never heard before but who, for vigor of style and compression, going to the core of half a dozen things in a single sentence, so different from the namby-pamby diffusiveness of most Frenchmen, is unequaled by anyone. He takes his stand on Kant. I have not read the rest of the book.
Here I stop and take my douche. I will be as economical as I can this winter in details, and next summer will see us together. I wish I had the inclination to write, or anything to write about, as Harry has. I feel ashamed of fattening on the common purse when all the other boys are working, but writing seems for me next to impossible. Lots of love to all. Yours,
W. J.
The "cure" at Divonne was as profitless as had been the similar experiments at Teplitz. So instead of staying abroad for the winter, James turned his face homeward almost immediately. After a fortnight's companionship with H. P. Bowditch in Paris, he embarked on November 7 for America, disappointed in the chief hopes with which he had landed in Europe eighteen months before, but much matured in character and thought, and resolved to seek his health and his career at home.
VI
1869-1872
Invalidism in Cambridge