Part 44

WM. JAMES.

To F. W. H. Myers.

NEWPORT, R.I., Jan. 30, 1891.

MY DEAR MYERS,--Your letter of the 12th came duly, but not till now have I had leisure to write you a line of reply. Verily you are the stuff of which world-changers are made! What a despot for Psychical Research! I always feel guilty in your presence, and am, on the whole, glad that the broad blue ocean rolls between us for most of the days of the year; although I should be glad to have it intermit occasionally, on days when I feel particularly larky and indifferent, when I might meet you without being bowed down with shame.

To speak seriously, however, I agree in what you say, that the position I am now in (Professorship, book published and all) does give me a very good pedestal for carrying on psychical research effectively, or rather for disseminating its results effectively. I find however that narratives are a weariness, and I must confess that the reading of narratives for which I have no personal responsibility is almost intolerable to me. Those that come to me at first-hand, incidentally to the Census, I get interested in. Others much less so; and I imagine my case is a very common case. One page of experimental thought-transference work will "carry" more than a hundred of "Phantasms of the Living." I shall stick to my share of the latter, however; and expect in the summer recess to work up the results already gained in an article for "Scribner's Magazine," which will be the basis for more publicity and advertising and bring in another bundle of Schedules to report on at the Congress. Of course I wholly agree with you in regard to the ultimate future of the business, and fame will be the portion of him who may succeed in naturalizing it as a branch of legitimate science. I think it quite on the cards that you, with your singular tenacity of purpose, and wide look at all the intellectual relations of the thing, may live to be the ultra-Darwin yourself. Only the facts are so discontinuous so far that possibly all our generation can do may be to get 'em called facts. I'm a bad fellow to investigate on account of my bad memory for anecdotes and other disjointed details. Teaching of students will have to fill most of my time, I foresee; but of course my weather eye will remain open upon the occult world.

Our "Branch," you see, has tided over its difficulties temporarily; and by raising its fee will enter upon the new year with a certain momentum. You'll have to bleed, though, ere the end, devoted creatures that you are, over there!

I thank you most heartily for your kind words about my book, and am touched by your faithful eye to the errata. The volumes were run through the press in less than seven weeks, and the proof-reading suffered. My friend G. Stanley Hall, leader of American Psychology, has written that the book is the most complete piece of self-evisceration since Marie Bashkirtseff's diary. Don't you think that's rather unkind? But in this age of nerves all philosophizing is really something of that sort. I finished yesterday the writing of an address on Ethics which I have to give at Yale College; and, on the way hither in the cars, I read the last half of Rudyard Kipling's "The Light that Failed"--finding the latter indecently true to nature, but recognizing after all that my ethics and his novel were the same sort of thing. All literary men are sacrifices. "Les festins humains qu'ils servent à leurs fêtes ressemblent la plupart à ceux des pélicans," etc., etc. Enough!...

To W. D. Howells.

CAMBRIDGE, Apr. 12, 1891.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--You made me what seemed at the time a most reckless invitation at the Childs' one day--you probably remember it. It seemed to me improper then to take it up. But it has lain rankling in my mind ever since; and now, as the spring weather makes a young man's fancy lightly turn away from the metaphysical husks on which he has fed exclusively all winter to some more human reading, I say to myself, Why shouldn't I have copies, from the Author himself, of "Silas Lapham" and of the "Minister's Charge"--which by this time are almost the only things of yours which I have never possessed? Take this as thou wilt!...

To W. D. Howells.

CAMBRIDGE, June 12, 1891.

MY DEAR HOWELLS,--You are a sublime and immortal genius! I have just read "Silas Lapham" and "Lemuel Barker"--strange that I should not have read them before, after hearing my wife rave about them so--and of all the perfect works of fiction they are the perfectest. The truth, in gross and in detail; the concreteness and solidity; the geniality, humanity, and unflagging humor; the steady way in which it keeps up without a dead paragraph; and especially the fidelity with which you stick to the ways of human nature, with the ideal and the un-ideal inseparably beaten up together so that you never give them "clear"--all make them a feast of delight, which, if I mistake not, will last for all future time, or as long as novels can last. Silas is the bigger total success because it deals with a more important story (I think you ought to have made young Corey angrier about Irene's mistake and its consequences); but the work on the much obstructed Lemuel surely was never surpassed. I hope his later life was happy!

Altogether you ought to be happy--you can fold your arms and write no more if you like. I've just got your "Criticism and Fiction," which shall speedily be read. And whilst in the midst of this note have received from the postman your clipping from Kate Field's "Washington," the author of which I can't divine, but she's a blessed creature whoever she is. Yours ever,

WM. JAMES.

To Mrs. Henry Whitman.

CAMBRIDGE, June 20, 1891.

MY DEAR MRS. WHITMAN,--You are magnificent. Here comes your letter at 6 o'clock, just as I am looking wearily out of the window for a change, and makes me feel like an aspiring youth again. But I can't go to Beverly tomorrow, nor indeed leave my room, I fear; for I've had every kind of -itis that can afflict one's upper breathing channels, and although convalescent, am as weak as a blade of grass, and feel as antique as Methusalem. A fortnight hence I shall be like a young puppy-dog again, however, and shall turn up inevitably between two trains more than once ere the summer is over.

I've managed to get through Volume I of Scott's Journal in the last two days. The dear old boy! But who would not be "dear" who could have such a mass of doggerel running in his head all the time, and make a hundred thousand dollars a year just by letting his pen trickle? Bless his dear old "unenlightened" soul all the same! The Scotch are the finest race in the world--except the Baltimoreans and Jews--and I think I enjoyed my twenty-four hours of Edinburgh two summers ago more than any twenty-four hours a city ever gave me.

Good-bye! I'm describing W. S.'s character when I ought to be describing yours--but you never give me a chance. When I get that task performed, we shall settle down to a solid basis; though probably all that will be in "the dim future." Meanwhile my love to all the Youth and Beauty (including your own) and best wishes for their happiness and freedom from influenzas of every description till the end of time. Affectionately yours,

W. J.

To his Sister.

CHOCORUA, N.H., July 6, 1891.

DEAREST ALICE,--...Of course [this medical verdict on your case may mean] as all men know, a finite length of days; and then, good-bye to neurasthenia and neuralgia and headache, and weariness and palpitation and disgust all at one stroke--I should think you would be reconciled to the prospect with all its pluses and minuses! I know you've never cared for life, and to me, now at the age of nearly fifty, life and death seem singularly close together in all of us--and life a mere farce of frustration in all, so far as the realization of the innermost ideals go to which we are made respectively capable of feeling an affinity and responding. Your frustrations are only rather more flagrant than the rule; and you've been saved many forms of self-dissatisfaction and misery which appertain to such a multiplication of responsible relations to different people as I, for instance, have got into. Your fortitude, good spirits and unsentimentality have been simply unexampled in the midst of your physical woes; and when you're relieved from your post, just that bright note will remain behind, together with the inscrutable and mysterious character of the doom of nervous weakness which has chained you down for all these years. As for that, there's more in it than has ever been told to so-called science. These inhibitions, these split-up selves, all these new facts that are gradually coming to light about our organization, these enlargements of the self in trance, etc., are bringing me to turn for light in the direction of all sorts of despised spiritualistic and unscientific ideas. Father would find in me today a much more receptive listener--all that philosophy has got to be brought in. And what a queer contradiction comes to the ordinary scientific argument against immortality (based on body being mind's condition and mind going out when body is gone), when one must believe (as now, in these neurotic cases) that some infernality in the body prevents really existing parts of the mind from coming to their effective rights at all, suppresses them, and blots them out from participation in this world's experiences, although they are there all the time. When that which is you passes out of the body, I am sure that there will be an explosion of liberated force and life till then eclipsed and kept down. I can hardly imagine your transition without a great oscillation of both "worlds" as they regain their new equilibrium after the change! Everyone will feel the shock, but you yourself will be more surprised than anybody else.

It may seem odd for me to talk to you in this cool way about your end; but, my dear little sister, if one has things present to one's mind, and I know they are present enough to your mind, why not speak them out? I am sure you appreciate that best. How many times I have thought, in the past year, when my days were so full of strong and varied impression and activities, of the long unchanging hours in bed which those days stood for with you, and wondered how you bore the slow-paced monotony at all, as you did! You can't tell how I've pitied you. But you shall come to your rights erelong. Meanwhile take things gently. Look for the little good in each day as if life were to last a hundred years. Above all things, save yourself from bodily pain, if it can be done. You've had too much of that. Take all the morphia (or other forms of opium if that disagrees) you want, and don't be afraid of becoming an opium-drunkard. What was opium created for except for such times as this? Beg the good Katharine (to whom our debt can never be extinguished) to write me a line every week, just to keep the currents flowing, and so farewell until I write again. Your ever loving,

W. J.

* * * * *

The reader should not fail to realize, in reading the letter which follows, that it was written, not only while Münsterberg was still a remote young psychologist in Germany, with no claim on James's consideration, but before there was any question of calling him to Harvard.