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
...What I really want to write about is Papini, the concluding chapter
of his "Crepuscolo dei Filosofi," and the February number of the
"Leonardo." Likewise Dewey's "Beliefs and Realities," in the
"Philosophical Review" for March. I must be very damp powder, slow to
burn, and I must be terribly respectful of other people, for I confess
that it is only after reading these things (in spite of all you have
written to the same effect, and in spite of your tone of announcing
judgment to a sinful world), that I seem to have grasped the full import
for life and regeneration, the _great_ perspective of the programme, and
the renovating character for _all things_, of Humanism; and the
outwornness as of a scarecrow's garments, simulating life by flapping in
the wind of nightfall, of all intellectualism, and the blindness and
deadness of all who worship intellectualist idols, the Royces and
Taylors, and, worse than all, their followers, who, with no inward
excuse of nature (being too unoriginal really to _prefer_ anything),
just blunder on to the wrong scent, when it is so easy to catch the
right one, and then stick to it with the fidelity of inorganic matter.
Ha! ha! would that I were young again with this inspiration! Papini is a
jewel! To think of that little Dago putting himself ahead of every one
of us (even of you, with his _Uomo-Dio_) at a single stride. And what a
writer! and what fecundity! and what courage (careless of nicknames, for
it is so easy to call him now the Cyrano de Bergerac of Philosophy)! and
what humor and what truth! Dewey's powerful stuff seems also to ring the
death-knell of a sentenced world. Yet none of _them_ will see it--Taylor
will still write his refutations, etc., etc., when the living world will
all be drifting after _us_. It is queer to be assisting at the
_éclosion_ of a great new mental epoch, life, religion, and philosophy
in one--I wish I didn't have to lecture, so that I might bear some part
of the burden of writing it all out, as we must do, pushing it into all
sort of details. But I must for one year longer. We don't get back till
June, but pray tell Wells (whose address _fehlt mir_) to make our house
his headquarters if he gets to Boston and finds it the least convenient
to do so. Our boys will hug him to their bosoms. Ever thine,
W. J.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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