The Letters of William James, Vol. 2James, William
Philosophy
The Letters of William James, Vol. 2
James, William
Intellectuals -- United States; James, William, 1842-1910; Philosophers -- United States; Psychologists -- United States
I have seen such a lot of _important_-looking faces,--probably
everything in the stock in the shop-window,--and witnessed such
charmingly gracious manners, that it is a lesson. The woodenness of our
Anglo-Saxon social ways! I had a really splendid audience for quality
this A.M. (about 200), even though they didn't understand....
_To George Santayana._
ORVIETO, _May 2, 1905_.
DEAR SANTAYANA,--I came here yesterday from Rome and have been enjoying
the solitude. I stayed at the exquisite Albergo de Russie, and didn't
shirk the Congress--in fact they stuck me for a "general" address, to
fill the vacuum left by Flournoy and Sully, who had been announced and
came not (I spoke _agin_ "consciousness," but nobody understood) and I
got _fearfully tired_. On the whole it was an agreeable
nightmare--agreeable on account of the perfectly charming _gentillezza_
of the bloody Dagoes, the way they caress and flatter you--"il piu grand
psicologo del mondo," etc., and of the elaborate provisions for general
entertainment--nightmare, because of my absurd bodily fatigue. However,
these things are "neither here nor there." What I really write to you
for is to tell you to send (if not sent already) your "Life of Reason"
to the "Revue de Philosophie," or rather to its editor, M. Peillaube,
Rue des Revues 160, and to the editor of "Leonardo" (the great little
Florentine philosophical journal), Sig. Giovanni Papini, 14 Borgo
Albizi, Florence. The most interesting, and in fact genuinely edifying,
part of my trip has been meeting this little _cénacle_, who have taken
my own writings, _entre autres, au grand sérieux_, but who are carrying
on their philosophical mission in anything but a technically serious
way, inasmuch as "Leonardo" (of which I have hitherto only known a few
odd numbers) is devoted to good and lively literary form. The sight of
their belligerent young enthusiasm has given me a queer sense of the
gray-plaster temperament of our bald-headed young Ph.D.'s, boring each
other at seminaries, writing those direful reports of literature in the
"Philosophical Review" and elsewhere, fed on "books of reference," and
never confounding "Æsthetik" with "Erkentnisstheorie." Faugh! I shall
never deal with them again--on _those_ terms! Can't you and I, who in
spite of such divergence have yet so much in common in our
_Weltanschauung_, start a systematic movement at Harvard against the
desiccating and pedantifying process? I have been cracking you up
greatly to both Peillaube and Papini, and quoted you twice in my speech,
which was in French and will be published in Flournoy's "Archives de
Psychologie." I hope you're enjoying the Eastern Empire to the full, and
that you had some Grecian "country life." Münsterberg has been called to
Koenigsberg and has refused. Better be America's ancestor than Kant's
successor! Ostwald, to my great delight, is coming to us next year, not
as your replacer, but in exchange with Germany for F. G. Peabody. I go
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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