DEAR M.,-- ...I am in good condition, but in somewhat of a funk about my lectures,[53] now that the audience draws near. I have got my mind working on the infernal old problem of mind and brain, and how to construct the world out of pure experiences, and feel foiled again and inwardly sick with the fever. But I verily believe that it is only work that makes one sick in that way that has any chance of breaking old shells and getting a step ahead. It is a sort of madness however when it is on you. The total result is to make me admire "Common Sense" as having done by far the biggest stroke of genius ever made in philosophy when it reduced the chaos of crude experience to order by its luminous _Denkmittel_ of the stable "thing," and its dualism of thought and matter. I find Strong's book charming and a wonderful piece of clear and thorough work--quite classical in fact, and surely destined to renown. The Clifford-Prince-Strong theory has now full rights to citizenship. Nevertheless, in spite of his so carefully blocking every avenue which leads sideways from his conclusion, he has not convinced me yet. But I can[not] say briefly why.... Yours in haste, W. J. _To Mrs. Henry Whitman._ HOTEL ----, PORT HENRY, N.Y., _Aug. 22, 1903_. DEAR FRIEND,--Obliged to "stop over" for the night at this loathsome spot, for lack of train connexion, what is more natural than that I should seek to escape the odious actual by turning to the distant Ideal--by which term you will easily recognize _Yourself_. I didn't write the conventional letter to you after leaving your house in June, preferring to wait till the tension should accumulate, and knowing your indulgence of my unfashionable ways. I haven't heard a word about you since that day, but I hope that the times have treated you kindly, and that you have not been "overdoing" in your usual naughty way. I, with the exception of six days lately with the Merrimans, have been sitting solidly at home, and have found myself in much better condition than I was in last summer, and consequently better than for several years. It is pleasant to find that one's organism has such reparative capacities even after sixty years have been told out. But I feel as if the remainder couldn't be very long, at least for "creative" purposes, and I find myself eager to get ahead with work which unfortunately won't allow itself to be done in too much of a hurry. I am convinced that the desire to formulate truths is a virulent disease. It has contracted an alliance lately in me with a feverish personal ambition, which I never had before, and which I recognize as an unholy thing in such a connexion. I actually dread to die until I have settled the Universe's hash in one more book, which shall be _epoch-machend_ at last, and a title of honor to my children! Childish idiot--as if formulas about the Universe could ruffle its majesty, and as if the common-sense world and its duties were