CAMBRIDGE, Feb. 12, 1905.
Dear Starbuck,—I have read your article in No. 2 of Hall's Journal with great interest and profit. It makes me eager for the book, but pray take great care of your style in that—it seems to me that this article is less well written than your "Psychology of Religion" was, less clear, more involved, more technical in language—probably the result of rapidity. Our American philosophic literature is dreadful from a literary point of view. Pierre Janet told me he thought it was much worse than German stuff—and I begin to believe so; technical and semi-technical language, half-clear thought, fluency, and no composition! Turn your face resolutely the other way! But I didn't start to say this. Your thought in this article is both important and original, and ought to be worked out in the clearest possible manner.... Your thesis needs to be worked out with great care, and as concretely as possible. It is a difficult one to put successfully, on account of the vague character of all its terms. One point you should drive home is that the anti-religious attitudes (Leuba's, Huxley's, Clifford's), so far as there is any "pathos" in them, obey exactly the same logic. The real crux is when you come to define objectively the ideals to which feeling reacts. "God is a Spirit"—darauf geht es an—on the last available definition of the term Spirit. It may be very abstract.
Love to Mrs. Starbuck. Yours always truly,
WM. JAMES.
To F. J. E. Woodbridge.
[Feb. 22, 1905.]
Dear Woodbridge,—Here's another! But I solemnly swear to you that this shall be my very last offense for some months to come. This is the "postscriptual" article[57] of which I recently wrote you, and I have now cleaned up the pure-experience philosophy from all the objections immediately in sight.... Truly yours,
WM. JAMES.