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
GLENWOOD SPRINGS,
COLORADO, _Aug. 13, 1895_.
MY DEAR FLOURNOY,--Ever since last January an envelope addressed to you
has been lying before my eyes on my library table. I mention this to
assure you that you have not been absent from my thoughts; but I will
waste no time or paper in making excuses. As the sage Emerson says, when
you visit a man do not degrade the occasion with apologies for not
having visited him before. Visit him now! Make him feel that the highest
truth has come to see him in you its lowliest organ. I don't know about
the highest truth transpiring through this letter, but I feel as if
there were plenty of affection and personal gossip to express
themselves. To begin with, your photograph and Mrs. Flournoy's were
splendid. What we need now is the photographs of those fair
_demoiselles_! I may say that one reason of my long silence has been the
hope that when I wrote I should have my wife's photograph to send you.
But alas! it has not been taken yet. She is well, very well, and is now
in our little New Hampshire country-place with the children, living very
quietly and happily. We have had a rather large _train de maison_
hitherto, and this summer we are shrunken to our bare essentials--a very
pleasant change.
I, you see, am farther away from home than I have ever been before on
this side of the Atlantic, namely, in the state of Colorado, and just
now in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. I have been giving a course of
six lectures on psychology "for teachers" at a so-called "summer-school"
in Colorado Springs. I had to remain for three nights and three days in
the train to get there, and it has made me understand the vastness of my
dear native land better than I ever did before.... The trouble with all
this new civilization is that it is based, not on saving, but on
borrowing; and when hard times come, as they did come three years ago,
everyone goes bankrupt. But the vision of the future, the dreams of the
possible, keep everyone enthusiastic, and so the work goes on. Such
conditions have never existed before on so enormous a scale. But I must
not write you a treatise on national economy!--I got through the year
very well in regard to health, and gave in the course of it, what I had
never done before, a number of lectures to teachers in Boston and New
York. I also repeated my course in Cosmology in the new woman's College
which has lately been established in connection with our University. The
consequence is that I laid by more than a thousand dollars, an
absolutely new and proportionately pleasant experience for me. To make
up for it, I haven't had an idea or written anything to speak of except
the "presidential address" which I sent you, and which really contained
nothing new....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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