The fact that James began by teaching anatomy and physiology, passed thence to psychology, and last to philosophy, has been wrongly cited as if his interest in each successive subject of his college work had been the fruit of his experience in teaching the preceding subject. This inference from the mere sequence of events will appear strange to attentive readers of what has gone before. Indeed, if the fact that James devoted a good share of his time to physiology in the seventies calls for remark at all, it should be noted that his subject, from soon after the beginning, was really physiological psychology, and that--more interesting than anything else in this connection--one may discern a patient surrender to limitations imposed by the state of his health on the one hand, and on the other a sound sense of the value of physiology to psychological investigations and so to philosophy, as both underlying the sequence of events in his teaching. Whatever may have been the succession of his college "courses," psychology and philosophy were never divorced from each other in his thought or in his writings. Thus it is interesting to find, that at the very moment of his engagement to teach physiology,--at a date intermediate between the appointment and the commencement of the course in fact,--he wrote to his brother, "If I were well enough, now would be my chance to strike at Harvard College, for Peterson has just resigned his sub-professorship of philosophy, and I know of no very formidable opponent. But it's impossible. I keep up a small daily pegging at my physiology, whose duties don't begin till January, and which I shall find easy, I think." He had needed definite duties and responsibilities and more or less recognized his need; so he undertook to teach a subject which, though congenial and interesting, lay distinctly off the path of his deepest inclination. The first three fragments that follow refer to his preparation for the plunge into teaching. The course on Comparative Anatomy and Physiology was given by Dwight and James under the general head of Natural History and was an "elective" open to Juniors and Seniors. "As the course was experimental and a part of the new expansion of the Elective System," writes President Eliot, "the President and the Faculty were interested in the fact that the new course under these two young instructors attracted 28 Juniors and 25 Seniors." _To Henry James._ SCARBORO, _Aug. 24, 1872_. ...The appointment to teach physiology is a perfect God-send to me just now, an external motive to work, which yet does not strain me--a dealing with men instead of my own mind, and a diversion from those introspective studies which had bred a sort of philosophical hypochondria in me of late and which it will certainly do me good to drop for a year.... * * * * * CAMBRIDGE, _Nov. 24, 1872_.