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

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СКАЧАТЬ the sensation of listening to for an hour." I then turned to O. W. Holmes's and wrangled with him for another hour.

      You may thank your stars that you are not in a place where you have to ride in such full horse-cars as these. I rode half way out with my "form" entirely out of the car overhanging the road, my feet alone being on the same vertical line as any part of the car, there being just room for them on the step. Aunt Kate may, and probably will, have shoot through her prolific mind the supposish: "How wrong in him to do sich! for if, while in that posish, he should have a sudden stroke of paralysis, or faint, his nerveless fingers relaxing their grasp of the rail, he would fall prostrate to the ground and bust." To which I reply that, when I go so far as to have a stroke of paralysis, I shall not mind going a step farther and getting bruised.

      Your next question probably is "how are and where are father and mother?"… I think father seems more lively for a few days past and cracks jokes with Harry, etc. Mother is recovering from one of her indispositions, which she bears like an angel, doing any amount of work at the same time, putting up cornices and raking out the garret-room like a little buffalo.

      Your next question is "wherever is Harry?" I answer: "He is to Ashburner's, to a tea-squall in favor of Miss Haggerty." I declined. He is well. We have had nothing but invitations (6) in 3 or 4 days. One, a painted one, from "Mrs. L–," whoever she may be. I replied that domestic affliction prevented me from going, but I would take a pecuniary equivalent instead, viz: To 1 oyster stew 30 cts., 1 chicken salad 0.50, 1 roll 0.02, 3 ice creams at 20 cts. 0.60, 6 small cakes at 0.05, 0.30, 1 pear $1.50, 1 lb. confectionery 0.50.

      I expect momentarily her reply with a check, and when it comes will take you and Aunt Kate on a tour in Europe and have you examined by the leading physicians and surgeons of that country. M– L– came out here and dined with us yesterday of her own accord. I no longer doubt what I always suspected, her penchant for me, and I don't blame her for it. Elly Temple staid here two days, too. She scratched, smote, beat, and kicked me so that I shall dread to meet her again. What an awful time Bob & Co. must have had at sea! and how anxious you must have been about them.

      With best love to Aunt Kate and yourself believe me your af. bro.

WM. JAMES.

      To O. W. Holmes, Jr

[A pencil memorandum, Winter of 1866-67?]

      Why I'm blest if I'm a Materialist:

      The materialist posits an X for his ultimate principle.

      Were he satisfied to inhabit this vacuous X, I should not at present try to disturb him.

      But that atmosphere is too rare; so he spends all his time on the road between it and sensible realities, engaged in the laudable pursuit of degrading every (sensibly) higher thing into a (sensibly) lower. He thus accomplishes an immensely great positively conceived and felt result, and it availeth little to naturalize the sensible impression of this that he should at the end put in his little caveat that, after all, the low denomination is as unreal as the unreduced higher ones were. In the confession of ignorance is nothing which the mind can close upon and clutch—it's a vanishing negation; while the pretension of knowledge is full of positive, massively-felt contents. The former kicks the beam. What balm is it, when instead of my High you have given me a Low, to tell me that the Low is good for nothing?

      If you take my $1000 gold and give me greenbacks, I feel unreconciled still, even when you have assured me that the greenbacks are counterfeit. Or what comfort is it to me now to be told that a billion years hence greenbacks and gold will have the same value? especially when that is explained to be zero? How anyone can say that this pennyworth of negation can so balance these tons of affirmation as to make the naturalist feel like anyone else—I confess it's a mystery to me.

      But as a man's happiness depends on his feeling, I think materialism inconsistent with 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

      If the reader were familiar, as he cannot be presumed to have been, with the elder Henry James or his writings, СКАЧАТЬ