The other two books exhibit you in the character of the Tolstoy of the English world. A sunny and healthy-minded Tolstoy, as he is a pessimistic and morbid-minded Wells. Where the "higher synthesis" will be born, who shall combine the pair of you, Heaven only knows. But you are carrying on the same function, not only in that neither of your minds is boxed and boarded up like the mind of an ordinary human being, but all the contents down to the very bottom come out freely and unreservedly and simply, but in that you both have the power of contagious speech, and set the similar mood vibrating in the reader. Be happy in that such power has been put into your hands! This book is worth any 100 volumes on Metaphysics and any 200 of Ethics, of the ordinary sort.
Yours, with friendliest regards to Mrs. Wells, most sincerely,
WM. JAMES.
To Henry James.
CAMBRIDGE, Dec. 19, 1908.
Dearest H.,— ...I write this at 6.30 [A.M.], in the library, which the blessed hard-coal fire has kept warm all night. The night has been still, thermometer 20°, and the dawn is breaking in a pure red line behind Grace Norton's house, into a sky empty save for a big morning star and the crescent of the waning moon. Not a cloud—a true American winter effect. But somehow "le grand puits de l'aurore" doesn't appeal to my sense of life, or challenge my spirits as formerly. It suggests no more enterprises to the decrepitude of age, which vegetates along, drawing interest merely on the investment of its earlier enterprises. The accursed "thoracic symptom" is a killer of enterprise with me, and I dare say that it is little better with you. But the less said of it the better—it doesn't diminish!
My time has been consumed by interruptions almost totally, until a week ago, when I finally got down seriously to work upon my Hodgson report. It means much more labor than one would suppose, and very little result. I wish that I had never undertaken it. I am sending off a preliminary installment of it to be read at the S. P. R. meeting in January. That done, the rest will run off easily, and in a month I expect to actually begin the "Introduction to Philosophy," which has been postponed so long, and which I hope will add to income for a number of years to come. Your Volumes XIII and XIV arrived the other day—many thanks. We're subscribing to two copies of the work, sending them as wedding presents. I hope it will sell. Very enticing-looking, but I can't settle down to the prefaces as yet, the only thing I have been able to read lately being Lowes Dickinson's last book, "Justice and Liberty," which seems to me a decidedly big achievement from every point of view, and probably destined to have a considerable influence in moulding the opinion of the educated. Stroke upon stroke, from pens of genius, the competitive régime, so idolized 75 years ago, seems to be getting wounded to death. What will follow will be something better, but I never saw so clearly the slow effect of [the] accumulation of the influence of successive individuals in changing prevalent ideals. Wells and Dickinson will undoubtedly make the biggest steps of change....
Well dear brother! a merry Christmas to you—to you both, I trust, for I fancy Aleck will be with you when this arrives—and a happy New Year at its tail! Your loving
W. J.