in the Horace Mann Auditorium in New York, being assailed with questions by people who came up to the edge of the platform, he ended by sitting on that edge himself, all in his frock-coat as he was, his feet hanging down, with his usual complete absorption in the subject, and the look of human and mellow consideration which distinguished him at such moments, meeting the thoughts of the inquirers, whose attention also was entirely riveted. If this suggests a lack of dignity, it misleads, for dignity never forsook him, such was the inherent strength of tone and bearing. In one respect these particular lectures (afterwards published as his book on Pragmatism) stand alone in my recollection. An audience may easily be large the first time, but if there is a change it usually falls away more or less on the subsequent occasions. These lectures were announced for one of the larger lecture-halls. This was so crowded before the lecture began, some not being able to gain admittance, that the audience had to be asked to move to the large 'auditorium' I have mentioned. But in it also the numbers grew, till on the last day it presented much the same appearance as the other hall on the first."
To Dickinson S. Miller
My dear Miller,—I have found the work of recommencing teaching unexpectedly formidable after our year of gentlemanly irresponsibility. I seem to have forgotten everything, especially psychology, and the subjects themselves have become so paltry and insignificant-seeming that each lecture has appeared a ghastly farce. Of late things are getting more real; but the experience brings startlingly near to one the wild desert of old-age which lies ahead, and makes me feel like impressing on all chicken-professors like you the paramount urgency of providing for the time when you'll be old fogies, by laying by from your very first year of service a fund on which you may be enabled to "retire" before you're sixty and incapable of any cognitive operation that wasn't ground into you twenty years before, or of any emotion save bewilderment and jealousy of the thinkers of the rising generation.
I am glad to hear that you have more writings on the stocks. I read your paper on "Truth and Error" with bewilderment and jealousy. Either it is Dr. Johnson redivivus striking the earth with his stick and saying, "Matter exists and there's an end on 't," or it is a new David Hume, reincarnated in your form, and so subtle in his simplicity that a decaying mind like mine fails to seize any of the deeper import of his words. The trouble is, I can't tell which it is. But with the help of God I will go at it again this winter, when I settle down to my final bout with Royce's theory, which must result in my either actively becoming a propagator thereof, or actively its enemy and destroyer. It is high time that this more decisive attitude were generated in me, and it ought to take place this winter.
I hardly see more of my colleagues this winter than I did last year. Each of us lies in his burrow, and we meet on the street. Münsterberg is going really splendidly and the Laboratory is a bower of delight. But I do not work there. Royce is in powerful condition.... Yours ever,
Although, in the next letter, James poked fun at reformed spelling, he was really in sympathy with the movement to which his correspondent was giving an outspoken support—as Mr. Holt of course understood. "Isn't it abominable"—Professor Palmer has quoted James as exclaiming—"that everybody is expected to spell the same way!" He lent his name to Mr. Carnegie's simplified spelling program, and used to wax honestly indignant when people opposed spelling reform with purely conservative arguments. He cared little about etymology, and saw clearly enough that mere accident and fashion have helped to determine orthography. But in his own writing he never put himself to great pains to reëducate his reflexes. He let his hand write through as often as thro' or thru, and only occasionally bethought him to write 'filosofy' and 'telefone.' When he published, the text of his books showed very few reforms.
To Henry Holt
Autographically written, and spelt spontaneously.
Dear Holt,—The Introduction to filosofy is what I ment—I dont no the other book.
I will try Nordau's Entartung this summer—as a rule however it duzn't profit me to read Jeremiads against evil—the example of a little good has more effect.
A propo of kitchen ranges, I wish you wood remoov your recommendation from that Boynton Furnace Company's affair. We have struggld with it for five years—lost 2 cooks in consequens—burnt countless tons of extra coal, never had anything decently baikt, and now, having got rid of it for 15 dollars, are having a happy kitchen for the 1st time in our experience—all through your unprinsipld recommendation! You ought to hear my wife sware when she hears your name!
I will try about a translator for Nordau—though the only man I can think of needs munny more than fame, and coodn't do the job for pure love of the publisher or author, or on an unsertainty.
To Henry James
Dear H.,—I have been here for three days at my co-psychologist Baldwin's house, presiding over a meeting of the American Association of Psychologists, which has proved a very solid and successful affair.3 Strange to say, we are getting to be veterans, and the brunt of the discussions was borne by former students of mine. It is a very healthy movement. Alice is with me, the weather is frosty clear and cold, touching zero this A.M. and the country robed in snow. Princeton is a beautiful place....
To Henry James
I have been reading Balfour's "Foundations of Belief" with immense gusto. It almost makes me a Liberal-Unionist! If I mistake not, it will have a profound effect eventually, and it is a pleasure to see old England coming to the fore every time with some big stroke. There is more real philosophy in such a book than in fifty German ones of which the eminence consists in heaping up subtleties and technicalities about the subject. The English genius makes the vitals plain by scuffing the technicalities away. B. is a great man....
To Mrs. Henry Whitman
My dear Friend,—About the 22nd! I will come if you command it; but reflect on my situation ere you do so. Just reviving from the addled and corrupted condition in which the Cambridge year has left me; just at the portals of that Adirondack wilderness for the breath of which I have sighed for years, unable to escape the cares of domesticity and get there; just about to get a little health into me, a little simplification and solidification and purification and sanification—things which will never come again if this one chance be lost; just filled to satiety with all the simpering conventions and vacuous excitements of so-called civilization; hungering for their opposite, the smell of the spruce, the feel of the moss, the sound of the cataract, the bath in its waters, the divine outlook from the cliff or hill-top over the unbroken forest—oh, Madam, Madam! do you know what medicinal things you ask me to give up? Alas!
I aspire downwards, and really am nothing, not becoming a savage as I would be, and failing to be the civilizee that I really ought to be content with being! But I wish that you also aspired to the wilderness. There are some nooks and summits in that Adirondack region where one can really "recline on one's divine composure," and, as long as one stays up there, seem for a while to enjoy one's birth-right of freedom and relief from every fever and falsity. Stretched out on such a shelf,—with thee beside me singing in the wilderness,—what babblings might go on, what judgment-day discourse!
Command me to give it up and return, if you will, by telegram addressed "Adirondack Lodge, North Elba, N.Y." In any case I shall return before the end of the month, and later shall be hanging about Cambridge some
At this meeting he delivered a presidential address "On the Knowing of Things Together," a part of which is reprinted in
