The Letters of William James, Vol. 2

by William James

The new subjects which he offered at Harvard during the nineties are indicative of the directions in which his mind was moving. In the first winter after his return he gave a course on Cosmology, which he had never taught before and which he described in the department announcement as "a study of the fundamental conceptions of natural science with especial reference to the theories of evolution and materialism," and for the first time announced that his graduate "seminar" would be wholly devoted to questions in mental pathology "embracing a review of the principal forms of abnormal or exceptional mental life." In 1895 the second half of his psychological seminar was announced as "a discussion of certain theoretic problems, as Consciousness, Knowledge, Self, the relations of Mind and Body." In 1896 he offered a course on the philosophy of Kant for the first time. In 1898 the announcement of his "elective" on Metaphysics explained that the class would consider "the unity or pluralism of the world ground, and its knowability or unknowability; realism and idealism, freedom, teleology and theism."[2]

But there is another aspect of the nineties which must be touched upon. After getting back "to harness" in 1893 James took up, not only his full college duties, but an amount of outside lecturing such as he had never done before. In so doing he overburdened himself and postponed the attainment of his true purpose; but the temptation to accept the requests which now poured in on him was made irresistible by practical considerations. He not only repeated some of his Harvard courses at Radcliffe College, and gave instruction in the Harvard Summer School in addition to the regular work of the term; but delivered lectures at teachers' meetings and before other special audiences in places as far from Cambridge as Colorado and California. A number of the papers that are included in "The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy" (1897) and "Talks to Teachers and Students on Some of Life's Ideals" (1897) were thus prepared as lectures. Some of them were read many times before they were published. When he stopped for a rest in 1899, he was exhausted to the verge of a formidable break-down.

Even a glance at this period tempts one to wonder whether this record would not have been richer if it had been different. Might-have-beens can never be measured or verified; and yet sometimes it cannot be doubted that possibilities never realized were actual possibilities once. By 1893 James was inwardly eager, as has already been said, to devote all his thought and working time to metaphysical and religious questions. More than that—he had already conceived the important terms of his own Welt-anschauung. "The Will to Believe" was written by 1896. In the preface to the "Talks to Teachers" he said of the essay called "A Certain Blindness in Human Beings," "it connects itself with a definite view of the World and our Moral relations to the same.... I mean the pluralistic or individualistic philosophy." This was no more than a statement of a general philosophic attitude which had for some years been familiar to his students and to readers of his occasional papers. The lecture on "Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results," delivered at the University of California in 1898, forecast "Pragmatism" and the "Meaning of Truth." If his time and energy had not been otherwise consumed, the nineties might well have witnessed the appearance of papers which were not written until the next decade. If he had been able to apply an undistracted attention to what his spirit was all the while straining toward, the disastrous breakdown of 1899-1902 might not have happened. But instead, these best years of his maturity were largely sacrificed to the practical business of supporting his family. His salary as a Harvard professor was insufficient to his needs. On his salary alone he could not educate his four children as he wanted to, and make provision for his old age and their future and his wife's, except by denying himself movement and social and professional contacts and by withdrawing into isolation that would have been utterly paralyzing and depressing to his genius. He possessed private means, to be sure; but, considering his family, these amounted to no more than a partial insurance against accident and a moderate supplement to his salary. His books had not yet begun to yield him a substantial increase of income. It is true that he made certain lecture engagements serve as the occasion for casting philosophical conceptions in more or less popular form, and that he frequently paid the expenses of refreshing travels by means of these lectures. But after he had economized in every direction,—as for instance, by giving up horse and hired man at Chocorua,—the bald fact remained that for six years he spent most of the time that he could spare from regular college duties, and about all his vacations, in carrying the fruits of the previous fifteen years of psychological work into the popular market. His public reputation was increased thereby. Teachers, audiences, and the "general reader" had reason to be thankful. But science and philosophy paid for the gain. His case was no worse than that of plenty of other men of productive genius who were enmeshed in an inadequately supported academic system. It would have been much more distressing under the conditions that prevail today. So James took the limitations of the situation as a matter of course and made no complaint. But when he died, the systematic statement of his philosophy had not been "rounded out" and he knew that he was leaving it "too much like an arch built only on one side."

James's appearance at this period is well shown by the frontispiece of this volume. Almost anyone who was at Harvard in the nineties can recall him as he went back and forth in Kirkland Street between the College and his Irving Street house, and can in memory see again that erect figure walking with a step that was somehow firm and light without being particularly rapid, two or three thick volumes and a note-book under one arm, and on his face a look of abstraction that used suddenly to give way to an expression of delighted and friendly curiosity. Sometimes it was an acquaintance who caught his eye and received a cordial word; sometimes it was an occurrence in the street that arrested him; sometimes the terrier dog, who had been roving along unwatched and forgotten, embroiled himself in an adventure or a fight and brought James out of his thoughts. One day he would have worn the Norfolk jacket that he usually worked in at home to his lecture-room; the next, he would have forgotten to change the black coat that he had put on for a formal occasion. At twenty minutes before nine in the morning he could usually be seen going to the College Chapel for the fifteen-minute service with which the College day began. If he was returning home for lunch, he was likely to be hurrying; for he had probably let himself be detained after a lecture to discuss some question with a few of his class. He was apt then to have some student with him whom he was bringing home to lunch and to finish the discussion at the family table, or merely for the purpose of establishing more personal relations than were possible in the class-room. At the end of the afternoon, or in the early evening, he would frequently be bicycling or walking again. He would then have been working until his head was tired, and would have laid his spectacles down on his desk and have started out again to get a breath of air and perhaps to drop in on a Cambridge neighbor.

In his own house it seemed as if he was always at work; all the more, perhaps, because it was obvious that he possessed no instinct for arranging his day and protecting himself from interruptions. He managed reasonably well to keep his mornings clear; or rather he allowed his wife to stand guard over them with fair success. But soon after he had taken an essential after-lunch nap, he was pretty sure to be "caught" by callers and visitors. From six o'clock on, he usually had one or two of the children sitting, more or less subdued, in the library, while he himself read or dashed off letters, or (if his eyes were tired) dictated them to Mrs. James. He always had letters and post-cards to write. At any odd time—with his overcoat on and during a last moment before hurrying off to an appointment or a train—he would sit down at his desk and do one more note or card—always in the beautiful and flowing hand that hardly changed between his eighteenth and his sixty-eighth years. He seemed to feel no need of solitude except when he was reading technical literature or writing philosophy. If other members of the household were talking and laughing in the room that adjoined his study, he used to keep the door open and occasionally pop in for a word, or to talk for a quarter of an hour. It was with the greatest difficulty that Mrs. James finally persuaded him to let the door be closed up. He never struck an equilibrium between wishing to see his students and neighbors freely and often, and wishing not to be interrupted by even the most agreeable reminder of the existence of anyone or anything outside the matter in which he was absorbed.

It was customary for each member of the Harvard Faculty to announce in the college catalogue at what hour of the day he could be consulted by students. Year after year James assigned the hour of his evening meal for such calls. Sometimes he left the table to deal with the caller in private; sometimes a student, who had pretty certainly eaten already and was visibly abashed at finding himself walking in on a second dinner, would be brought into the dining-room and made to talk about other things than his business.

He allowed his conscience to be constantly burdened with a sense of obligation to all sorts of people. The list of neighbors, students, strangers visiting Cambridge, to whom he and Mrs. James felt responsible for civilities, was never closed, and the cordiality which animated his intentions kept him reminded of every one on it.

And yet, whenever his wife wisely prepared for a suitable time and made engagements for some sort of hospitality otherwise than by hap-hazard, it was perversely likely to be the case, when the appointed hour arrived, that James was "going on his nerves" and in no mood for "being entertaining." The most comradely of men, nothing galled him like having to be sociable. The "hollow mockery of our social conventions" would then be described in furious and lurid speech. Luckily the guests were not yet there to hear him. But they did not always get away without catching a glimpse of his state of mind. On one such occasion,—an evening reception for his graduate class had been arranged,—Mrs. James encountered a young man in the hall whose expression was so perturbed that she asked him what had happened to him. "I've come in again," he replied, "to get my hat. I was trying to find my way to the dining-room when Mr. James swooped at me and said, 'Here, Smith, you want to get out of this Hell, don't you? I'll show you how. There!' And before I could answer, he'd popped me out through a back-door. But, really, I do not want to go!"

The dinners of a club to which allusions will occur in this volume, (in letters to Henry L. Higginson, T. S. Perry, and John C. Gray) were occasions apart from all others; for James could go to them at the last moment, without any sense of responsibility and knowing that he would find congenial company and old friends. So he continued to go to these dinners, even after he had stopped accepting all invitations to dine. The Club (for it never had any name) had been started in 1870. James had been one of the original group who agreed to dine together once a month during the winter. Among the other early members had been his brother Henry, W. D. Howells, O. W. Holmes, Jr., John Fiske, John C. Gray, Henry Adams, T. S. Perry, John C. Ropes, A. G. Sedgwick, and F. Parkman. The more faithful diners, who constituted the nucleus of the Club during the later years, included Henry L. Higginson, Sturgis Bigelow, John C. Ropes, John T. Morse, Charles Grinnell, James Ford Rhodes, Moorfield Storey, James W. Crafts, and H. P. Walcott.

Every little while James's sleep would "go to pieces," and he would go off to Newport, the Adirondacks, or elsewhere, for a few days. This happened both summer and winter. It was not the effect of the place or climate in which he was living, but simply that his dangerously high average of nervous tension had been momentarily raised to the snapping point. Writing was almost certain to bring on this result. When he had an essay or a lecture to prepare, he could not do it by bits. In order to begin such a task, he tried to seize upon a free day—more often a Sunday than any other. Then he would shut himself into his library, or disappear into a room at the top of the house, and remain hidden all day. If things went well, twenty or thirty sheets of much-corrected manuscript (about twenty-five hundred words in his free hand) might result from such a day. As many more would have gone into the waste-basket. Two or three successive days of such writing "took it out of him" visibly.