WM. JAMES.
The "Principles of Psychology" appeared in the early autumn.
X
1890-1893
The "Briefer Course" and the Laboratory—A Sabbatical Year in Europe
THE publication of the "Principles" may be treated as making a date—at any rate in the story of James's life. Although conceived originally as a manual or textbook, it had gone far beyond that mere summary of a subject which it is the rôle of most textbooks to be, and had finally assumed the form of a philosophic survey. "It was a declaration of independence (defining the boundary lines of a new science with unapproachable genius.)"[94] In the scientific world it established James's already high reputation and greatly extended his influence.
Beyond scientific circles the book's style, its colloquial directness, its humor, and its moral depth and appeal, won it an instantaneous popularity. Even before it appeared, the compositor at the printing-press was reported as so enthralled by his "copy" that he was reading the manuscript out of hours. Passages, among which the chapter on Habit is the most widely known, "went home" with the force of eloquent sermons. "I can't tell you what the book has meant to me." Such was the burden of countless messages that began to come in from non-professional readers. During the course of the first winter after its appearance, it became clear that the only obstacle to its almost universal use in American colleges was its size. And so James spent the summer of 1891 in making an abridgment which appeared that autumn under the title "Briefer Course." In one form or the other, either in the two-volume edition or the one-volume abridgment,—either in "James" or in "Jimmy," as the two books were soon nicknamed,—James's "Psychology" was soon in use in most of the colleges. During the thirty years that have passed since then, the majority of the English-speaking students who have entered the field of psychology have entered by the door which James's pages threw wide to them.
But by this time the inclination of James's own mind was more and more strongly toward philosophy, and the experimental laboratory was becoming a burden to him. It is true that the laboratory with which he had thus far done his own work would not nowadays be reckoned as at all a big affair. But owing to advances which had been made in the science during the previous ten years, an enlarged laboratory was a necessity for further progress and for right teaching. It would then require more time and attention from its director; James wished to give less time than heretofore. "I naturally hate experimental work," he said, "and all my circumstances conspired (during the important years of my life) to prevent me from getting into a routine of it, so that now it is always the duty that gets postponed. There are plenty of others, to keep my time as fully employed as my working powers permit."[95] There appeared to be one solution for the difficulty, and in 1892 he set about to arrange it. He raised enough money to establish the Harvard Laboratory on such a basis that an able experimenter could be invited to make its direction his chief concern. He recommended the appointment of Hugo Münsterberg to take charge for three years. He had been much impressed by the originality and promise implied by some experimental work which Münsterberg had already done at Freiburg, and his conviction—in respect to all academic appointments—was that youth and originality should be sought rather than "safety"; that the way to organize a strong philosophical department was to get men of different schools into its faculty, and that they should expound dissimilar rather than harmonious points of view and doctrines.
When this appointment had been made, James saw his way clear to taking the sabbatical year of absence from college duties to which he was already more than entitled. For nine years he had allowed himself only the briefest interruptions of work, and by 1892 he was in a badly fatigued condition. He sailed for Antwerp in May, and took his family with him. He had no more definite purpose than to escape all literary and academic obligations and "lie fallow" in Europe for the next fifteen months. Letters will show that he accomplished this with fair success.
Meanwhile, those which immediately follow were written from Cambridge. The first of them was to a Boston neighbor and correspondent, one letter to whom has already been given and to whom there will be a number more. Sarah Whitman, who had lived in Baltimore before her marriage to Henry Whitman of Boston made her a resident of that city and of Beverly, was a person to whose charm and talents and taste it would be impossible to do justice here. She was a lover of every art, and worked, herself, at painting, and with more success and great distinction in stained glass. Eager and generous of spirit, she was constantly confided in and consulted by a small host of friends. She was, in an eminent degree, one of those happy mortals who possess a native gift for friendship and hospitality. At the date of the next letter she was, for a season, in England.