I dread the prospect of lecturing till mid-May, but the wine being ordered, I must drink it. I dislike lecturing more and more. Have just definitely withdrawn my candidacy for the Sorbonne job, with great internal relief, and wish I could withdraw from the whole business, and get at writing.[61] Not a line of writing possible this year--except of course occasional note-making. All the things that one is really concerned with are too nice and fine to use in lectures. You remember the definition of T. H. Greene's student: "The universe is a thick complexus of intelligible relations." Yesterday I got _my_ system similarly defined in an examination-book, by a student whom I appear to have converted to the view that "the Universe is a vague pulsating mass of next-to-next movement, always feeling its way along to a good purpose, or trying to." That is about as far as lectures can carry them. I particularly like the "trying to." I wish I could have been at your recent discussion. I am getting impatient with the awful abstract rigmarole in which our American philosophers obscure the truth. It will be fatal. It revives the palmy days of Hegelianism. It means utter relaxation of intellectual duty, and God will smite it. If there's anything he hates, it is that kind of oozy writing. I have just read Busse's book, in which I find a lot of reality by the way, but a pathetic waste of work on side issues--for against the Strong-Heymans view of things, it seems to me that he brings no solid objection whatever. Heymans's book is a wonder.[62] Good-bye, dear Miller. _Come to us_, if you can, as soon as your lectures are over. Your affectionate W. J. _To Dickinson S. Miller._ [Post-card] Cambridge, _Dec. 9. 1905_. "My idea of Algebra," says a non-mathematically-minded student, "is that it is a sort of form of low cunning." W. J. _To Daniel Merriman._ Cambridge, _Dec. 9, 1905_. No, dear Merriman, not "e'en for thy sake." After an unblemished record of declining to give addresses, successfully maintained for four years (I have certainly declined 100 in the past twelve-month), I am not going to break down now, for Abbot Academy, and go dishonored to my grave. It is better, as the "Bhagavat-Gita" says, to lead your own life, however bad, than to lead another's, however good. Emerson teaches the same doctrine, and I live by it as bad and congenial a life as I can. If there is anything that God despises more than a man who is constantly making speeches, it is another man who is constantly accepting invitations. What must he think, when they are both rolled into one? Get thee behind me, Merriman,--I 'm sure that your saintly partner would never have sent me such a request,--and believe me, as ever, fondly yours, Wm. James. _To Miss Pauline Goldmark._ EL TOVAR, GRAND CANYON, ARIZONA, _Jan. 3, 1906_.