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
the audience had to be asked to move to the large 'auditorium' I have
mentioned. But in it also the numbers grew, till on the last day it
presented much the same appearance as the other hall on the first."
_To Dickinson S. Miller._
Cambridge, _Nov._ 19, 1893.
MY DEAR MILLER,--I have found the work of recommencing teaching
unexpectedly formidable after our year of gentlemanly irresponsibility.
I seem to have forgotten everything, especially psychology, and the
subjects themselves have become so paltry and insignificant-seeming that
each lecture has appeared a ghastly farce. Of late things are getting
more real; but the experience brings startlingly near to one the wild
desert of old-age which lies ahead, and makes me feel like impressing on
all chicken-professors like you the paramount urgency of providing for
the time when you'll be old fogies, by laying by from your very first
year of service a fund on which you may be enabled to "retire" before
you're sixty and incapable of any cognitive operation that wasn't ground
into you twenty years before, or of any emotion save bewilderment and
jealousy of the thinkers of the rising generation.
I am glad to hear that you have more writings on the stocks. I read your
paper on "Truth and Error" with bewilderment and jealousy. Either it is
Dr. Johnson _redivivus_ striking the earth with his stick and saying,
"Matter exists and there's an end on 't," or it is a new David Hume,
reincarnated in your form, and so subtle in his simplicity that a
decaying mind like mine fails to seize any of the deeper import of his
words. The trouble is, I can't tell which it is. But with the help of
God I will go at it again this winter, when I settle down to my final
bout with Royce's theory, which must result in my either _actively_
becoming a propagator thereof, or actively its enemy and destroyer. It
is high time that this more decisive attitude were generated in me, and
it ought to take place this winter.
I hardly see more of my colleagues this winter than I did last year.
Each of us lies in his burrow, and we meet on the street. Münsterberg is
going really _splendidly_ and the Laboratory is a bower of delight. But
I do not work there. Royce is in powerful condition.... Yours ever,
W. J.
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