The Letters of William James, Vol. 1. William James

The Letters of William James, Vol. 1

a high degree thereof, and in this sense maintained that a materialist should not be an optimist, using the latter word to signify one whose philosophy authenticates, by guaranteeing the objective significance of, his most pleasurable feelings.

You have transferred the question of optimism to a wider field, where I can't well follow it now. The term would have to be defined first, and then I think it would take me ten or twelve years of hard study to form any opinion as to the truth of your second premise.—I send the above remarks on "materialism," because they were what I was groping for the other evening, but could not say till you were gone and I in bed. To conclude:

Corruptio optimistorum pessima!

V

1867-1868

Eighteen Months in Germany

IN the spring of 1867 James interrupted his course at the Medical School again. He was impelled to do this, partly by the pressure of a conviction that his health required him to stop work or continue elsewhere under different conditions, and partly by a desire to learn German and study physiology in the German laboratories. He knew a little German already, and it seemed reasonable to suppose that if he went abroad immediately he would have time to familiarize himself with the language during a pleasant and restful summer and would be ready to enter one of the universities in the autumn. He sailed in April and spent the summer in Dresden and Bohemia. But his health became worse instead of better.

It is unnecessary to detail the record of a long illness by selecting for this book the passages of his correspondence in which James sooner or later revealed what his condition was. It would also be idle to inquire closely about the causes of his illness, considering that, for one reason, James was completely puzzled and baffled himself. Insomnia, digestive disorders, eye-troubles, weakness of the back, and sometimes deep depression of spirits followed each other or afflicted him simultaneously. If his trouble was in part nervous, it was a reality none the less. A photograph that was taken of him at about this period recorded the aspect of a very ill man. If his introspective genius made things worse for him for a while, it probably did more to pull him through in the end than the—to our present-day understanding—harsh and unnecessary treatments, regimens, water-cures, courses of exercise, galvanisms, and blistering to which he subjected himself.

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1

Literary Remains of Henry James, p. 151.

2

See Literary Remains, p. 149.

3

1

Literary Remains of Henry James, p. 151.

2

See Literary Remains, p. 149.

3

If the reader were familiar, as he cannot be presumed to have been, with the elder Henry James or his writings, he would be in no danger of finding anything cold or qualifying in these words, but would discern a true adoration expressing itself in a way that was peculiarly characteristic of their writer. For Henry James, Senior, a spiritual democracy deeper than that of our political jargon was not a mere conception: it was an unquestioned reality. The outer wrappings in which people swathed their souls excited him to anger and ridicule more often than praise; but when men or women seemed to him beautiful or adorable he thought it was because they betrayed more naturally than others the inward possession of that humble "social" spirit which he wanted to think of as truly a common possession—God's equal gift to each and all. To say of his mother that that could be felt in her, that she was merely that, was his purest praise. The reader may find this habit of his thought expressing itself anew in William James by turning to a letter on page 210 below. That letter might have been written by Henry James, Senior.

4

The places of two of the eleven who died early were taken by their orphaned children.

5

According to the Rev. Hugh Walsh of Newburgh, who has worked out the Walsh genealogy. A Small Boy and Others (page 6) says "Killyleagh."

6

A Small Boy and Others, p. 8.

7

Literary Remains of Henry James, Introduction, p. 9.

8

See, further, Notes of a Son and Brother, pp. 181 et seq.

9

Society of the Redeemed Form of Man, quoted in the Introduction to Literary Remains, p. 57, et seq.

10

Letter to Shadworth H. Hodgson, p. 241 infra.

11

A Small Boy and Others, p. 216.

12

Vide also a passage in the Literary Remains, at p. 104.

13

Life of E. L. Godkin, vol. II, p. 218. New York, 1907.

14

Early Years of the Saturday Club; E. W. Emerson's chapter on Henry James, Senior, p. 328. There follows a delightful account of a "Conversation" at R. W. Emerson's house in Concord, at which Henry James, Senior, upset a prepared discourse of Alcott's and launched himself into an attack on "Morality." Whereupon Miss Mary Moody Emerson, "eighty-four years old and dressed underneath without doubt, in her shroud," seized him by the shoulders and shook him and rebuked him. "Mr. James beamed with delight and spoke with most chivalrous courtesy to this Deborah bending over him."

15

Some passages in William James's early letters to his family might seem labored. They should be read with this in mind. An especially high-sounding phrase or a flight into a grand style was understood as a signal meaning "fun," and such passages are never to be taken as serious.

16

A Small Boy and Others, p. 207.

17

For James's use of Touchstone's question, see p. 190 infra.

18

Cf. Henry James's Life of W. W. Story, vol. II, p. 204, where there is a passage which sounds reminiscent of the author's father and brother.

19

The following entries occur among some "notes on his students" which President Eliot made at the time—

20

The expression was undoubtedly recognized in Kay Street as borrowed from the Lincolnshire boor, in Fitzjames Stephen's Essay on Spirit-Rapping, who ended his life with the words, "What with faith, and what with the earth a-turning round the sun, and what with the railroads a-fuzzing and a-whizzing,

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The Letters of William James, Vol. 1. William James