The Letters of William James, Vol. 1James, William
General
The Letters of William James, Vol. 1
James, William
Intellectuals -- United States; James, William, 1842-1910; Philosophers -- United States; Psychologists -- United States
The other requirement is hard theoretically, though practically not so
hard as the first. All I can tell you is the thought that with me
outlasts all others, and onto which, like a rock, I find myself washed
up when the waves of doubt are weltering over all the rest of the world;
and that is the thought of my having a will, and of my belonging to a
brotherhood of men possessed of a capacity for pleasure and pain of
different kinds. For even at one's lowest ebb of belief, the fact
remains empirically certain (and by our will we can, if not _absolutely_
refrain from looking beyond that empirical fact, at least practically
and _on the whole_ accept it and let it suffice us)--that men suffer and
enjoy. And if we have to give up all hope of seeing into the purposes of
God, or to give up theoretically the idea of final causes, and of God
anyhow as vain and leading to nothing for us, we can, by our will, make
the enjoyment of our brothers stand us in the stead of a final cause;
and through a knowledge of the fact that that enjoyment on the whole
depends on what individuals accomplish, lead a life so active, and so
sustained by a clean conscience as not to need to fret much. Individuals
can add to the welfare of the race in a variety of ways. You may delight
its senses or "taste" by some production of luxury or art, comfort it by
discovering some moral truth, relieve its pain by concocting a new
patent medicine, save its labor by a bit of machinery, or by some new
application of a natural product. You may open a road, help start some
social or business institution, contribute your mite in _any_ way to the
mass of the work which each generation subtracts from the task of the
next; and you will come into _real_ relations with your brothers--with
some of them at least.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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