MY DEAR GODKIN,--Your cry of remorse or regret is so "whole-souled" and complete that I should not be human were I not melted almost to tears by it, and sorry I "ever spoke to you as I did." I felt pretty sure that you had no positive oversight of the thing in this case, but I addressed you as the official head. And my _emotion_ was less that of filial injury than of irritation at what seemed to me editorial stupidity in giving out the book to the wrong _sort_ of person altogether--a Theist of some sort being the only proper reviewer. I am heartily sorry that the thing should have distressed you so much more than it did me. You can take your consolation in the fact that it has now afforded you an opportunity for the display of those admirable qualities of the heart which your friends know, but which the ordinary readers of the "Nation" probably do not suspect to slumber beneath the gory surface of that savage sheet. I hear that you are soon coming to give us some political economy. I am very glad on every account, and suppose Mrs. Godkin will come _mit_. Always truly yours WM. JAMES. _To Shadworth H. Hodgson._ CAMBRIDGE, _20 Feb., 1885_. MY DEAR HODGSON,--Your letter of the 7th was most welcome. Anything responsive about my poor old father's writing falls most gratefully upon my heart. For I fear he found _me_ pretty unresponsive during his lifetime; and that through my means any post-mortem response should come seems a sort of atonement. You would have enjoyed knowing him. I know of no one except Carlyle who had such a smiting _Ursprünglichkeit_ of intuition, and such a deep sort of humor where human nature was concerned. He bowled one over in such a careless way. He was like Carlyle in being no _reasoner_ at all, in the sense in which philosophers are reasoners. Reasoning was only an unfortunate necessity of exposition for them both. His _ideas_, however, were the exact inversion of Carlyle's; and he had nothing to correspond to Carlyle's insatiable learning of historic facts and memory. As you say, the world of his thought had a few elements and no others ever troubled him. _Those_ elements were very deep ones, and had theological names. Under "Man" he would willingly have included all flesh, even that resident in Sirius or ethereal worlds. But he felt no need of positively looking so far. He was the humanest and most genial being in his impulses whom I have ever personally known, and had a bigness and power of nature that everybody felt. I thank you heartily for your interest. I wish that somebody could _take up_ something from his system into a system more articulately scientific. As it is, most people will feel the _presence_ of something real and true for the while they read, and go away and presently, unable to dovetail [it] into their own framework, forget it altogether.