Selected Letters Classic Reprint William James Books
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The majority of the letters in this volume have been previously printed inT heL etters of William James, edited by his son, Henry James, or inT heT hought and Character of William James, by Ralph Barton Perry. Both of these large works came out of the most careful study of James scorrespondence and therefore the best of his letters will usually be found in one or the other. However, there are some letters here, taken from the Houghton Library collection at Harvard, not found in either of the two well-known collections. I cannot be sure they have not been printed or referred to in other studies of William James. When I first compared the letters in the two collections with the original manuscripts at Harvard, I was struck by the generous number of commas, dashes, periods and paragraphs that James sson, on the one hand, and Professor Perry, on the other, had added to the manuscript letters. I set about laboriously de-punctuating. I soon found that the pure originals by William James were written in such enthusiastic haste that the addition, here and there, of editorial punctuation is almost a necessity unless, of course, one were doing a facsimile reproduction of the letters. Rather than add a third unauthorized set of punctuation marks to James salmost unmarked pages, I returned to the punctuation used by previous editors.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)
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Selected Letters Classic Reprint William James Books
William James (1842-1910) was an American philosopher (noted for his influence on Pragmatism) and psychologist (the first educator to offer a psychology course in the U.S.; see his Principles of Psychology); he was also the brother of the novelist Henry James. He wrote many other books, such as Pragmatism and The Meaning of Truth,The Will to Believe,Essays in Radical Empiricism,The Varieties of Religious Experience,Moral Equivalent of War and Other Essays,Some Problems of Philosophy, etc.He admitted in a May 5, 1868 letter, ”I have by this time dropped all hope of doing anything at psychology, for I’m not fit for laboratory work, and even if that were not the only reputable way of cultivating the science at all (which it is), it would be for ME with my bad memory and slack interest in the details, the only practicable way of getting any honest knowledge of the subject.” (Pg. 57)
In a January 24-25 1869 letter, he says, “I have just been quit by Charles S. Peirce, with whom I have been talking about a couple of articles by him… which I have just read. They are exceedingly bold, subtle and incomprehensible and I can’t say that his vocal elucidations helped me a great deal to their understanding, but they nevertheless interest me strangely. The poor cuss sees no change of getting a professorship anywhere, and is likely to go into the Observatory for good. It seems a great pity that as original a man as he is, who is willing and able to devote the powers of his life to logic and metaphysics, should be starved out of a career, when there are lots of professorships of the sort to be given in the country, to ‘safe,’ orthodox men. He has had good reason, I know, to feel a little discouraged about the prospect, but I think he ought to hang on, as a German would do, till he grows gray…” (Pg. 77-78)
He reveals in a Jan. 1, 1886 letter, “I enjoy very much a new philosophic colleague, Josiah Royce, from California, who is just thirty years old and a perfect little Socrates for wisdom and humor.” (Pg. 125)
On March 3, 1895, he wrote to the President of Cambridge University, “I want to propose to you no less a person than Charles S. Peirce, whose name I don’t suppose will make you bound with eagerness at first, but you may think better of it after a short reflection… The better graduates would flock to hear him… and he would leave a wave of influence, tradition, gossip, etc. that wouldn’t die away for many years. I should learn a lot for his course. Everyone knows of Peirce’s personal uncomfortableness; and if I were President I shouldn’t hope for a harmonious wind-up to his connection with the University. But I should take that as part of the disagreeableness of the day’s work, and shut my eyes and go ahead, knowing that from the highest intellectual point of view it would be the best thing that could happen for the graduates of the Philosophical Department… and it would be a recognition of C.S.P.’s strength, which I am sure is but justice to the poor fellow.” (Pg. 146-147)
On April 6, 1896, he sent a letter to his class, in which he admitted, “I now perceive on immense omission in my Psychology---the deepest principle of Human Nature is the craving to be appreciated, and I left it out altogether from the book, because I had never had it gratified till now.” (Pg. 152-153)
On June 11, 1896, he revealed, “I had two days spoiled by a psychological experiment with mescal, an intoxicant used by some of our Southwestern Indians in their religious ceremonies, a sort of cactus bud, of which the U.S. Government had distributed a supply to certain medical men, including Weir Mitchell who sent me some to try. He had himself been ‘in fairyland.’ It gives the most glorious visions of color---every object thought of appears in a jeweled splendor unknown to the natural world. It disturbs the stomach somewhat, but that, according to W.M., was a cheap price, etc. I took one bud three days ago, was violently sick for 24 hours, and had no other symptom whatever except that and the Katzenjammer the following day. I will take the visions on trust!” (Pg. 154)
He confessed in an August 30, 1896 letter, “I have definitely given up the laboratory, for which I am more and more unfit, and shall probably devote what little ability I may hereafter have to purely ‘speculative’ work.” (Pg. 161)
In a February 1,1897 letter, he explained, “As to true and false miracles, I don’t know that I can follow you so well, for in any case the notion of a miracle as a mere attestation of superior power is one that I cannot espouse. A miracle must in any case be an expression of personal purpose, but the demon-purpose of antagonizing God and winning away his adherents has never yet taken hold of my imagination. I prefer an open mind of inquiry, first ABOUT THE FACTS, in all these matters; and I believe that the [Society for Psychical Research] methods, if pertinaciously stuck to, will eventually do much to clear things up. You see that, although religion is the great interest of my life, I am rather hopelessly non-evangelical, and take the whole thing too impersonally.” (Pg. 166)
He said in an April 12, 1900 letter, “The problem I have set myself is a hard one: first, to defend (against all the prejudices of my ‘class’) ‘experience’ against ‘philosophy’ as being the real backbone of the world’s religious life---I mean prayer, guidance, and all that sort of thing immediately and privately felt, as against high and noble general views of our destiny and the world’s meaning; and second, to make the hearer or reader believe, what I myself invincibly do believe, that, although all the special manifestations of religion may have been absurd (I mean its creeds and theories), yet the life of it as a whole is mankind’s most important function. A task well-nigh impossible, I fear, and in which I shall fail; but to attempt it is my religious act.” (Pg. 187)
He summarizes in a June 12, 1904 letter, “My philosophy is what I call a radical empiricism, a pluralism… which represents order as being gradually won and always in the making. It is theistic, but not ESSENTIALLY so. It rejects all doctrines of the Absolute. It is finitist; but it does not attribute to the question of the Infinite the great methodological importance which you and Renouvier attribute to it. I fear that you may find my system TOO bottomless and romantic…” (Pg. 205)
He admits of his book Pragmatism, “It is a very ‘sincere’ and, from the point of view of ordinary philosophy-professional manners, a very unconventional utterance, not particularly original at any one point, yet, in the midst of the literature of the way of thinking which it represents, with just that amount of squeak or shrillness in the voice that enables one book to TELL, when others don’t, to supersede its brethren, and be treated later as ‘representative.’ I shouldn’t be surprised in ten years hence it should be rated as ‘epoch-making,’ for of the definitive triumph of that general way of thinking I can entertain no doubt whatever---I believe it to be something quite like the protestant reformation.” (Pg. 235)
This judicious and well-edited collection of letters provides a highly insightful view of James the man, and of his views. It will be most valuable to anyone studying James and his ideas.
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Selected Letters Classic Reprint William James Books Reviews
William James (1842-1910) was an American philosopher (noted for his influence on Pragmatism) and psychologist (the first educator to offer a psychology course in the U.S.; see his Principles of Psychology); he was also the brother of the novelist Henry James. He wrote many other books, such as Pragmatism and The Meaning of Truth,The Will to Believe,Essays in Radical Empiricism,The Varieties of Religious Experience,Moral Equivalent of War and Other Essays,Some Problems of Philosophy, etc.
He admitted in a May 5, 1868 letter, ”I have by this time dropped all hope of doing anything at psychology, for I’m not fit for laboratory work, and even if that were not the only reputable way of cultivating the science at all (which it is), it would be for ME with my bad memory and slack interest in the details, the only practicable way of getting any honest knowledge of the subject.” (Pg. 57)
In a January 24-25 1869 letter, he says, “I have just been quit by Charles S. Peirce, with whom I have been talking about a couple of articles by him… which I have just read. They are exceedingly bold, subtle and incomprehensible and I can’t say that his vocal elucidations helped me a great deal to their understanding, but they nevertheless interest me strangely. The poor cuss sees no change of getting a professorship anywhere, and is likely to go into the Observatory for good. It seems a great pity that as original a man as he is, who is willing and able to devote the powers of his life to logic and metaphysics, should be starved out of a career, when there are lots of professorships of the sort to be given in the country, to ‘safe,’ orthodox men. He has had good reason, I know, to feel a little discouraged about the prospect, but I think he ought to hang on, as a German would do, till he grows gray…” (Pg. 77-78)
He reveals in a Jan. 1, 1886 letter, “I enjoy very much a new philosophic colleague, Josiah Royce, from California, who is just thirty years old and a perfect little Socrates for wisdom and humor.” (Pg. 125)
On March 3, 1895, he wrote to the President of Cambridge University, “I want to propose to you no less a person than Charles S. Peirce, whose name I don’t suppose will make you bound with eagerness at first, but you may think better of it after a short reflection… The better graduates would flock to hear him… and he would leave a wave of influence, tradition, gossip, etc. that wouldn’t die away for many years. I should learn a lot for his course. Everyone knows of Peirce’s personal uncomfortableness; and if I were President I shouldn’t hope for a harmonious wind-up to his connection with the University. But I should take that as part of the disagreeableness of the day’s work, and shut my eyes and go ahead, knowing that from the highest intellectual point of view it would be the best thing that could happen for the graduates of the Philosophical Department… and it would be a recognition of C.S.P.’s strength, which I am sure is but justice to the poor fellow.” (Pg. 146-147)
On April 6, 1896, he sent a letter to his class, in which he admitted, “I now perceive on immense omission in my Psychology---the deepest principle of Human Nature is the craving to be appreciated, and I left it out altogether from the book, because I had never had it gratified till now.” (Pg. 152-153)
On June 11, 1896, he revealed, “I had two days spoiled by a psychological experiment with mescal, an intoxicant used by some of our Southwestern Indians in their religious ceremonies, a sort of cactus bud, of which the U.S. Government had distributed a supply to certain medical men, including Weir Mitchell who sent me some to try. He had himself been ‘in fairyland.’ It gives the most glorious visions of color---every object thought of appears in a jeweled splendor unknown to the natural world. It disturbs the stomach somewhat, but that, according to W.M., was a cheap price, etc. I took one bud three days ago, was violently sick for 24 hours, and had no other symptom whatever except that and the Katzenjammer the following day. I will take the visions on trust!” (Pg. 154)
He confessed in an August 30, 1896 letter, “I have definitely given up the laboratory, for which I am more and more unfit, and shall probably devote what little ability I may hereafter have to purely ‘speculative’ work.” (Pg. 161)
In a February 1,1897 letter, he explained, “As to true and false miracles, I don’t know that I can follow you so well, for in any case the notion of a miracle as a mere attestation of superior power is one that I cannot espouse. A miracle must in any case be an expression of personal purpose, but the demon-purpose of antagonizing God and winning away his adherents has never yet taken hold of my imagination. I prefer an open mind of inquiry, first ABOUT THE FACTS, in all these matters; and I believe that the [Society for Psychical Research] methods, if pertinaciously stuck to, will eventually do much to clear things up. You see that, although religion is the great interest of my life, I am rather hopelessly non-evangelical, and take the whole thing too impersonally.” (Pg. 166)
He said in an April 12, 1900 letter, “The problem I have set myself is a hard one first, to defend (against all the prejudices of my ‘class’) ‘experience’ against ‘philosophy’ as being the real backbone of the world’s religious life---I mean prayer, guidance, and all that sort of thing immediately and privately felt, as against high and noble general views of our destiny and the world’s meaning; and second, to make the hearer or reader believe, what I myself invincibly do believe, that, although all the special manifestations of religion may have been absurd (I mean its creeds and theories), yet the life of it as a whole is mankind’s most important function. A task well-nigh impossible, I fear, and in which I shall fail; but to attempt it is my religious act.” (Pg. 187)
He summarizes in a June 12, 1904 letter, “My philosophy is what I call a radical empiricism, a pluralism… which represents order as being gradually won and always in the making. It is theistic, but not ESSENTIALLY so. It rejects all doctrines of the Absolute. It is finitist; but it does not attribute to the question of the Infinite the great methodological importance which you and Renouvier attribute to it. I fear that you may find my system TOO bottomless and romantic…” (Pg. 205)
He admits of his book Pragmatism, “It is a very ‘sincere’ and, from the point of view of ordinary philosophy-professional manners, a very unconventional utterance, not particularly original at any one point, yet, in the midst of the literature of the way of thinking which it represents, with just that amount of squeak or shrillness in the voice that enables one book to TELL, when others don’t, to supersede its brethren, and be treated later as ‘representative.’ I shouldn’t be surprised in ten years hence it should be rated as ‘epoch-making,’ for of the definitive triumph of that general way of thinking I can entertain no doubt whatever---I believe it to be something quite like the protestant reformation.” (Pg. 235)
This judicious and well-edited collection of letters provides a highly insightful view of James the man, and of his views. It will be most valuable to anyone studying James and his ideas.
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