As a philosopher, James had to use the terms peculiar to his craft,
but he so strongly sustained those terms in a structure of words which
can be found in a pocket-dictionary that the peculiar terms of the
craft become intelligible to simple literate men, and it may be that
thereby they become more intelligible as mere philosophic terms. Like
Bergson he is a poet and a humorist in his analogies and
illustrations. When we read that "the feeling of 'q' knows whatever
reality it resembles," many of us, including the philosophers, I
suspect, are lost in the dark. But when we read that "the Kilkenny
cats of fable could leave a residuum in the shape of their undevoured
tails, but the Kilkenny cats of existence as it appears in the pages
of Hegel are all-devouring, and leave no residuum"--then we begin to
believe that philosophy may be a human and amusing study and that to
be great in philosophy it is not necessary always to be thinking of
the other side of the moon.
BIOGRAPHIES OF POE
The biography of Poe got a wrong start immediately after his death
when Griswold slandered him or at least put a false emphasis on
certain aspects of his character. Since then, every book about Poe has
had an argumentative tone, a defensive spirit, which in a way is as
unfair to Poe as was the first misrepresentation. One sometimes feels
like crying: "For heaven's sake read his work and let the man alone!"
Yet it is not possible to let Poe alone if you have once looked into
his life; his story is one of the fascinating chapters of literary
history. Professor Smith says that his book, "Edgar Allen Poe, How to
Know Him," "is an attempt to substitute for the travesty the real Poe,
to suggest at least the diversity of his interests, his
future-mindedness, his sanity, and his humanity." On the whole,
Professor Smith's attempt is successful and he does help us to realize
Poe's personality, "that co-ordination of thought and mood and
conduct, of social action and reaction, of daily interest and aim,"
which Professor Smith justly says, "finds no portrayal in the
biographies of Poe."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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