To Henry Adams
Bad-Nauheim, June 17, 1910.
Dear Henry Adams,—I have been so "slim" since seeing you, and the baths here have so weakened my brain, that I have been unable to do any reading except trash, and have only just got round to finishing your "letter," which I had but half-read when I was with you at Paris. To tell the truth, it doesn't impress me at all, save by its wit and erudition; and I ask you whether an old man soon about to meet his Maker can hope to save himself from the consequences of his life by pointing to the wit and learning he has shown in treating a tragic subject. No, sir, you can't do it, can't impress God in that way. So far as our scientific conceptions go, it may be admitted that your Creator (and mine) started the universe with a certain amount of "energy" latent in it, and decreed that everything that should happen thereafter should be a result of parts of that energy falling to lower levels; raising other parts higher, to be sure, in so doing, but never in equivalent amount, owing to the constant radiation of unrecoverable warmth incidental to the process. It is customary for gentlemen to pretend to believe one another, and until some one hits upon a newer revolutionary concept (which may be tomorrow) all physicists must play the game by holding religiously to the above doctrine. It involves of course the ultimate cessation of all perceptible happening, and the end of human history. With this general conception as surrounding everything you say in your "letter," no one can find any fault—in the present stage of scientific conventions and fashions. But I protest against your interpretation of some of the specifications of the great statistical drift downwards of the original high-level energy. If, instead of criticizing what you seem to me to say, I express my own interpretation dogmatically, and leave you to make the comparison, it will doubtless conduce to brevity and economize recrimination.
To begin with, the amount of cosmic energy it costs to buy a certain distribution of fact which humanly we regard as precious, seems to me to be an altogether secondary matter as regards the question of history and progress. Certain arrangements of matter on the same energy-level are, from the point of view of man's appreciation, superior, while others are inferior. Physically a dinosaur's brain may show as much intensity of energy-exchange as a man's, but it can do infinitely fewer things, because as a force of detent it can only unlock the dinosaur's muscles, while the man's brain, by unlocking far feebler muscles, indirectly can by their means issue proclamations, write books, describe Chartres Cathedral, etc., and guide the energies of the shrinking sun into channels which never would have been entered otherwise—in short, make history. Therefore the man's brain and muscles are, from the point of view of the historian, the more important place of energy-exchange, small as this may be when measured in absolute physical units.
The "second law" is wholly irrelevant to "history"—save that it sets a terminus—for history is the course of things before that terminus, and all that the second law says is that, whatever the history, it must invest itself between that initial maximum and that terminal minimum of difference in energy-level. As the great irrigation-reservoir empties itself, the whole question for us is that of the distribution of its effects, of which rills to guide it into; and the size of the rills has nothing to do with their significance. Human cerebration is the most important rill we know of, and both the "capacity" and the "intensity" factor thereof may be treated as infinitesimal. Yet the filling of such rills would be cheaply bought by the waste of whole sums spent in getting a little of the down-flowing torrent to enter them. Just so of human institutions—their value has in strict theory nothing whatever to do with their energy-budget—being wholly a question of the form the energy flows through. Though the ultimate state of the universe may be its vital and psychical extinction, there is nothing in physics to interfere with the hypothesis that the penultimate state might be the millennium—in other words a state in which a minimum of difference of energy-level might have its exchanges so skillfully canalisés that a maximum of happy and virtuous consciousness would be the only result. In short, the last expiring pulsation of the universe's life might be, "I am so happy and perfect that I can stand it no longer." You don't believe this and I don't say I do. But I can find nothing in "Energetik" to conflict with its possibility. You seem to me not to discriminate, but to treat quantity and distribution of energy as if they formed one question.
There! that's pretty good for a brain after 18 Nauheim baths—so I won't write another line, nor ask you to reply to me. In case you can't help doing so, however, I will gratify you now by saying that I probably won't jaw back.—It was pleasant at Paris to hear your identically unchanged and "undegraded" voice after so many years of loss of solar energy. Yours ever truly,
WM. JAMES.
[Post-card]
Nauheim, June 19, 1910.
P. S. Another illustration of my meaning: The clock of the universe is running down, and by so doing makes the hands move. The energy absorbed by the hands and the mechanical work they do is the same day after day, no matter how far the weights have descended from the position they were originally wound up to. The history which the hands perpetrate has nothing to do with the quantity of this work, but follows the significance of the figures which they cover on the dial. If they move from O to XII, there is "progress," if from XII to O, there is "decay," etc. etc.
W. J.
To Henry Adams
[Post-card]
Constance, June 26, [1910].
Yours of the 20th, just arriving, pleases me by its docility of spirit and passive subjection to philosophic opinion. Never, never pretend to an opinion of your own! that way lies every annoyance and madness! You tempt me to offer you another illustration—that of the hydraulic ram (thrown back to me in an exam, as a "hydraulic goat" by an insufficiently intelligent student). Let this arrangement of metal, placed in the course of a brook, symbolize the machine of human life. It works, clap, clap, clap, day and night, so long as the brook runs at all, and no matter how full the brook (which symbolizes the descending cosmic energy) may be, it works always to the same effect, of raising so many kilogrammeters of water. What the value of this work as history may be, depends on the uses to which the water is put in the house which the ram serves.
W. J.
To Benjamin Paul Blood
Constance, June 25, 1910.
My dear Blood,—About the time you will receive this, you will also be surprised by receiving the "Hibbert Journal" for July, with an article signed by me, but written mainly by yourself.89 Tired of waiting for your final synthetic pronunciamento, and fearing I might be cut off ere it came, I took time by the forelock, and at the risk of making ducks and drakes of your thoughts, I resolved to save at any rate some of your rhetoric, and the result is what you see. Forgive! forgive! forgive! It will at any rate have made you famous, for the circulation of the H. J. is choice, as well as large (12,000 or more, I'm told), and the print and paper the best ever yet, I seem to have lost the editor's letter, or I would send it to you. He wrote, in accepting the article in May, "I have already 40 articles accepted, and some of the writers threaten lawsuits for non-publication, yet such was the exquisite refreshment Blood's writing gave me, under the cataract of sawdust in which editorially I live, that I have this day sent the article to the printer. Actions speak louder than words! Blood is simply great, and you are to be thanked for having dug him out. L. P. Jacks." Of course I've used you for my own purposes, and probably misused you; but I'm sure you will feel more pleasure than pain, and perhaps write again in the "Hibbert" to set yourself right. You're sure of being printed, whatever you may send. How I wish that I too could write poetry, for pluralism is in its Sturm und Drang period, and verse is the only way to express certain things, I've just been taking the "cure" at Nauheim for my unlucky heart—no results so far!
Sail for home again on August 12th. Address always Cambridge, Mass.; things are forwarded. Warm regards, fellow pluralist. Yours ever,
WM. JAMES.
To Theodore Flournoy
Geneva, July 9, 1910.
Dearest Flournoy,—Your two letters, of yesterday, and of July 4th sent to Nauheim, came this morning. I am sorry that the Nauheim one was not written earlier, since you had the trouble of writing it at all. I thank you for all the considerateness you show—you understand entirely my situation. My dyspnœa gets worse at an accelerated rate, and all I care for now is to get home—doing nothing on the way. It is partly a spasmodic phenomenon I am sure, for the aeration of my tissues, judging by the color of my lips, seems to be sufficient. I will leave Geneva now without seeing you again—better not come, unless just to shake hands with my wife! Through all these years I have wished I might live nearer to you and see more of you and exchange more ideas, for we seem two men particularly well faits pour nous comprendre. Particularly, now, as my own intellectual house-keeping has seemed on the point of working out some good results, would it have been good to work out the less unworthy parts of it in your company. But that is impossible!—I doubt if I ever do any more writing of a serious sort; and as I am able to look upon my life rather lightly, I can truly say that "I don't care"—don't care in the least pathetically or tragically, at any rate.—I hope that Ragacz will be a success, or at any rate a wholesome way of passing the month, and that little by little you will reach your new equilibrium. Those dear daughters, at any rate, are something to live for—to show them Italy should be rejuvenating. I can write no more, my very dear old friend, but only ask you to think of me as ever lovingly yours,
W. J.
After leaving Geneva James rested at Lamb House for a few days before going to Liverpool to embark. Walking, talking and writing had all become impossible or painful. The short northern route to Quebec was chosen for the home voyage. When he and Mrs. James and his brother Henry landed there, they went straight to Chocorua. The afternoon light was fading from the familiar hills on August 19th, when the motor brought them to the little house, and James sank into a chair beside the fire, and sobbed, "It's so good to get home!"
A change for the worse occurred within forty-eight hours and the true situation became apparent. The effort by which he had kept up a certain interest in what was going on about him during the last weeks of his journey, and a certain semblance of strength, had spent itself. He had been clinging to life only in order to get home.
Death occurred without pain in the early afternoon of August 26th.
His body was taken to Cambridge, where there was a funeral service in the College Chapel. After cremation, his ashes were placed beside the graves of his parents in the Cambridge Cemetery.
THE END
APPENDIXES
APPENDIX I
Three Criticisms for Students
In his smaller classes, made up of advanced students, James found it possible to comment in detail on the work of individuals. Three letters have come into the hands of the editor, from which extracts may be taken to illustrate such comments. They were written for persons with whom he could communicate only by letter, and are extended enough to suggest the viva voce comments which many a student recalls, but of which there is no record. The first is from a letter to a former pupil and refers to work of Bertrand Russell and others which the pupil was studying at the time. The second and third comment on manuscripts that had been prepared as "theses" and had been submitted to James for unofficial criticism. They exhibit him, characteristically, as encouraging the student to formulate something more positive.
Jan. 26, 1908.
Those propositions or supposals which [Russell, Moore and Meinong] make the exclusive vehicles of truth are mongrel curs that have no real place between realities on the one hand and beliefs on the other. The negative, disjunctive and hypothetic truths which they so conveniently express can all, perfectly well (so far as I see), be translated into relations between beliefs and positive realities. "Propositions" are expressly devised for quibbling between realities and beliefs. They seem to have the objectivity of the one and the subjectivity of the other, and he who uses them can straddle as he likes, owing to the ambiguity of the word that, which is essential to them. "That Cæsar existed" is "true," sometimes means the fact that be existed is real, sometimes the belief that he existed is true. You can get no honest discussion out of such terms....
Aug. 15, 1908.
Dear K–, …[I have] read your thesis once through. I only finished it yesterday. It is a big effort, hard to grasp at a single reading, and I'm too lazy to go over it a second time in its present physically inconvenient shape. It is obvious that parts of it have been written rapidly and not boiled down; and my impression is that you have left over in it too much of the complication of form in which our ideas, our critical ideas especially, first come to us, and which has, with much rewriting, to be straightened out. You were dealing with dialecticians and logic-choppers, and you have met them on their own ground with a logic-chopping even more diseased than theirs. So far as I can see, you have met them, though your own expressions are often far from lucid (—result of haste?); but in some cases I doubt whether they themselves would think that they were met at all. I fear a little that both Bradley and Royce will think that your reductiones ad absurdum are too fine spun and ingenious to have real force. Too complicated, too complicated! is the verdict of my horse-like mind on much of this thesis. Your defense will be, of course, that it is a thesis, and as such, expected to be barbaric. But then I point to the careless, hasty writing of much of it. You must simplify yourself, if you hope to have any influence in print.
The writing becomes more careful and the style clearer, the moment you tackle Russell in the 6th part. And when you come to your own dogmatic statement of your vision of things in the last 30 pages or so, I think the thesis splendid, prophetic in tone and very felicitous, often, in expression. This is indeed the philosophie de l'avenir, and a dogmatic expression of it will be far more effective than critical demolition of its alternatives. It will render that unnecessary if able enough. One will simply feel them to be diseased. My total impression is that the critter K– has a really magnificent vision of the lay of the land in philosophy,—of the land of bondage, as well as of that of promise,—but that he has a tremendous lot of work to do yet in the way of getting himself into straight and effective literary shape. He has elements of extraordinary literary power, but they are buried in much sand and shingle....
May. 26, 1900.
Dear Miss S–, I am a caitiff! I have left your essay on my poor self unanswered.... It is a great compliment to me to be taken so philologically and importantly; and I must say that from the technical point of view you may be proud of your production. I like greatly the objective and dispassionate key in which you keep everything, and the number of subdivisions and articulations which you make gives me vertiginous admiration. Nevertheless, the tragic fact remains that I don't feel wounded at all by all that output of ability, and for reasons which I think I can set down briefly enough. It all comes, in my eyes, from too much philological method—as a Ph.D. thesis your essay is supreme, but why don't you go farther? You take utterances of mine written at different dates, for different audiences belonging to different universes of discourse, and string them together as the abstract elements of a total philosophy which you then show to be inwardly incoherent. This is splendid philology, but is it live criticism of anyone's Weltanschauung? Your use of the method only strengthens the impression I have got from reading criticisms of my "pragmatic" account of "truth," that the whole Ph.D. industry of building up an author's meaning out of separate texts leads nowhere, unless you have first grasped his centre of vision, by an act of imagination. That, it seems to me, you lack in my case.
For instance: [Seven examples are next dealt with in two and a half pages of type-writing. These pages are omitted.]
I have been unpardonably long; and if you were a man, I should assuredly not expect to influence you a jot by what I write. Being a woman, there may be yet a gleam of hope!—which may serve as the excuse for my prolixity. (It is not for the likes of you, however, to hurl accusations of prolixity!) Now if I may presume to give a word of advice to one so much more accomplished than myself in dialectic technique, may I urge, since you have shown what a superb mistress you are in that difficult art of discriminating abstractions and opposing them to each other one by one, since in short there is no university extant that wouldn't give you its summa cum laude,—I should certainly so reward your thesis at Harvard,—may I urge, I say, that you should now turn your back upon that academic sort of artificiality altogether, and devote your great talents to the study of reality in its concreteness? In other words, do some positive work at the problem of what truth signifies, substitute a definitive alternative for the humanism which I present, as the latter's substitute. Not by proving their inward incoherence does one refute philosophies—every human being is incoherent—but only by superseding them by other philosophies more satisfactory. Your wonderful technical skill ought to serve you in good stead if you would exchange the philological kind of criticism for constructive work. I fear however that you won't—the iron may have bitten too deeply into your soul!!
Have you seen Knox's paper on pragmatism in the "Quarterly Review" for April—perhaps the deepest-cutting thing yet written on the pragmatist side? On the other side read Bertrand Russell's paper in the "Edinburgh Review" just out. A thing after your own heart, but ruined in my eyes by the same kind of vicious abstractionism which your thesis shows. It is amusing to see the critics of the will to believe furnish such exquisite instances of it in their own persons. E.g., Russell's own splendid atheistic-titanic confession of faith in that volume of essays on "Ideals of Science and of Faith" edited by one Hand. X–, whom you quote, has recently worked himself up to the pass of being ordained in the Episcopal church.... I justify them both; for only by such experiments on the part of individuals will social man gain the evidence required. They meanwhile seem to think that the only "true" position to hold is that everything not imposed upon a will-less and non-coöperant intellect must count as false—a preposterous principle which no human being follows in real life.
Well! There! that is all! But, dear Madam, I should like to know where you come from, who you are, what your present "situation" is, etc., etc.—It is natural to have some personal curiosity about a lady who has taken such an extraordinary amount of pains for me!
Believe me, dear Miss S–, with renewed apologies for the extreme tardiness of this acknowledgment, yours with mingled admiration and abhorrence,
Wm. James.
APPENDIX II
Books by William James
The following chronological list includes books only, but it gives the essays and chapters contained in each.
Professor R. B. Perry's "Bibliography" (see below) lists a great number of contributions to periodicals, which have never been reprinted, and includes notes indicative of the matter of each.
(No attempt has been made to compile a list of references to literature about William James, but the following may be mentioned as easily obtainable: William James, by Émile Boutroux. Paris, 1911. Translation: Longmans, Green & Co., New York and London, 1912. La Philosophie de William James, by Theodore Flournoy. St. Blaise, 1911. Translation: The Philosophy of William James. Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1917.)
Literary Remains of Henry James, Sr., with an Introduction by William James. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1884.
The Principles of Psychology. New York: Henry Holt & Co.; London: Macmillan & Co., 1890.
Volume I. Scope of Psychology—Functions of the Brain—Conditions of Brain Activity—Habit—The Automaton Theory—The Mind-Stuff Theory—Methods and Snares of Psychology—Relations of Minds to Other Things—The Stream of Thought—The Consciousness of Self—Attention—Conception—Discrimination and Comparison—Association—The Perception of Time—Memory.
Volume II. Sensation—Imagination—Perception of Things—The Perception of Space—The Perception of Reality—Reasoning—The Production of Movement—Instinct—The Emotions—Will—Hypnotism—Necessary Truth and the Effects of Experience.
A Text-Book of Psychology. Briefer Course. New York: Henry Holt & Co.; London: Macmillan & Co., 1892.
Introductory—Sensation—Sight—Hearing—Touch—Sensations of Motion—Structure of the Brain—Functions of the Brain—Some General Conditions of Neural Activity—Habit—Stream of Consciousness—The Self—Attention—Conception—Discrimination—Association—Sense of Time—Memory—Imagination—Perception—The Perception of Space—Reasoning—Consciousness and Movement—Emotion—Instinct—Will—Psychology and Philosophy.
The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1897.
The Will to Believe—Is Life Worth Living?—The Sentiment of Rationality—Reflex Action and Theism—The Dilemma of Determinism—The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life—Great Men and their Environment—The Importance of Individuals—On Some Hegelisms—What Psychical Research has Accomplished.
Human Immortality, Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine. London: Constable & Co., also Dent & Sons; Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1898.
The Same. A New Edition with Preface in Reply to His Critics. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1899.
Talks to Teachers on Psychology, and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals. New York: Henry Holt & Co.; London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899.
Psychology and the Teaching Art—The Stream of Consciousness—The Child as a Behaving Organism—Education and Behavior—The Necessity of Reactions—Native and Acquired Reactions—What the Native Reactions Are—The Laws of Habit—Association of Ideas—Interest—Attention—Memory—Acquisition of Ideas—Apperception—The Will.
Talks to Students: The Gospel of Relaxation—On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings—What Makes Life Significant?
The Varieties of Religious Experience. A Study in Human Nature. The Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion, Edinburgh, 1901-1902. New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1902.
Religion and Neurology—Circumscription of the Topic—The Reality of the Unseen—The Religion of Healthy-Mindedness—The Sick Soul—The Divided Self, and the Process of its Unification—Conversion—Saintliness—The Value of Saintliness—Mysticism—Philosophy—Other Characteristics—Conclusions—Postscript.
Pragmatism. A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1907.
The Present Dilemma in Philosophy—What Pragmatism Means—Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered—The One and the Many—Pragmatism and Common Sense—Pragmatism's Conception of Truth—Pragmatism and Humanism—Pragmatism and Religion.
A Pluralistic Universe. Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College. New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1909.
The Types of Philosophic Thinking—Monistic Idealism—Hegel and his Method—Concerning Fechner—Compounding of Consciousness—Bergson and his Critique of Intellectualism—The Continuity of Experience—Conclusions– Appendixes: A. The Thing and its Relations. B. The Experience of Activity. C. On the Notion of Reality as Changing.
The Meaning of Truth. A Sequel to Pragmatism. New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1909.
The Function of Cognition—The Tigers in India—Humanism and Truth—The Relation between Knower and Known—The Essence of Humanism—A Word More about Truth—Professor Pratt on Truth—The Pragmatist Account of Truth and its Misunderstanders—The Meaning of the Word Truth—The Existence of Julius Cæsar—The Absolute and the Strenuous Life—Hébert on Pragmatism—Abstractionism and "Relativismus"—Two English Critics—A Dialogue.
Some Problems of Philosophy. A Beginning of an Introduction to Philosophy. New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1911.
Philosophy and its Critics—The Problems of Metaphysics—The Problem of Being—Percept and Concept—The One and the Many—The Problem of Novelty—Novelty and the Infinite—Novelty and Causation– Appendix: Faith and the Right to Believe.
Memories and Studies. New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1911.
Louis Agassiz—Address at the Emerson Centenary in Concord—Robert Gould Shaw—Francis Boott—Thomas Davidson—Herbert Spencer's Autobiography—Frederick Myers's Services to Psychology—Final Impressions of a Psychical Researcher—On Some Mental Effects of the Earthquake—The Energies of Men—The Moral Equivalent of War—Remarks at the Peace Banquet—The Social Value of the College-bred—The Ph.D. Octopus—The True Harvard—Stanford's Ideal Destiny—A Pluralistic Mystic (B. P. Blood).
Essays in Radical Empiricism. Edited by Ralph Barton Perry. New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1912.
Introduction—Does Consciousness Exist?—A World of Pure Experience—The Thing and its Relations—How Two Minds can Know One Thing—The Place of Affectional Facts in a World of Pure Experience—The Experience of Activity—The Essence of Humanism—La Notion de Conscience—Is Radical Empiricism Solipsistic?—Mr. Pitkin's Refutation of Radical Empiricism—Humanism and Truth Once More—Absolutism and Empiricism.
Collected Essays and Reviews. Edited by Ralph Barton Perry. New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1920.
Review of E. Sargent's Planchette (1869)—Review of G. H. Lewes's Problems of Life and Mind (1875)—Review entitled "German Pessimism" (1875)—Chauncey Wright (1875)—Review of "Bain and Renouvier" (1876)—Review of Renan's Dialogues (1876)—Review of G. H. Lewes's Physical Basis of Mind (1877)—Remarks on Spencer's Definition of Mind as Correspondence (1878)—Quelques Considérations sur la Méthode Subjective (1878)—The Sentiment of Rationality (1879)—Review (unsigned) of W. K. Clifford's Lectures and Essays (1879)—Review of Herbert Spencer's Data of Ethics (1879)—The Feeling of Effort (1880)—The Sense of Dizziness in Deaf Mutes (1882)—What is an Emotion? (1884)—Review of Royce's The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885)—The Consciousness of Lost Limbs (1887)—Réponse de W. James aux Remarques de M. Renouvier sur sa théorie de la volonté (1888)—The Psychological Theory of Extension (1889)—A Plea for Psychology as a Natural Science (1892)—The Original Datum of Space Consciousness (1893)—Mr. Bradley on Immediate Resemblance (1893)—Immediate Resemblance—Review of G. T. Ladd's Psychology (1894)—The Physical Basis of Emotion (1894)—The Knowing of Things Together (1895)—Review of W. Hirsch's Genie und Entartung (1895)—Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results (1898)—Review of R. Hodgson's A Further Record of Observations of Certain Phenomena of Trance (1898)—Review of Sturt's Personal Idealism (1903)—The Chicago School (1904)—Review of F. C. S. Schiller's Humanism (1904)—Laura Bridgman (1904)—G. Papini and the Pragmatist Movement in Italy (1906)—The Mad Absolute (1906)—Controversy about Truth with John E. Russell (1907)—Report on Mrs. Piper's Hodgson Control; Conclusion (1909)—Bradley or Bergson? (1910)—A Suggestion about Mysticism (1910).
A List of the Published Writings of William James, with notes, and an index; by Ralph Barton Perry. New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1920.