As to true and false miracles, I don't know that I can follow you so well, for in any case the notion of a miracle as a mere attestation of superior power is one that I cannot espouse. A miracle must in any case be an expression of personal purpose, but the demon-purpose of antagonizing God and winning away his adherents has never yet taken hold of my imagination. I prefer an open mind of inquiry, first _about the facts_, in all these matters; and I believe that the S. P. R. methods, if pertinaciously stuck to, will eventually do much to clear things up.--You see that, although religion is the great interest of my life, I am rather hopelessly non-evangelical, and take the whole thing too impersonally. But my College work is lightening in a way. Psychology is being handed over to others more and more, and I see a chance ahead for reading and study in other directions from those to which my very feeble powers in that line have hitherto been confined. I am going to give all the fragments of time I can get, after this year is over, to religious biography and philosophy. Shield's book, Steenstra's, Gratry's, and Harris's, I don't yet know, but can easily get at them. I hope your health is better in this beautiful winter which we are having. I am very well, and so is all my family. Believe me, with affectionate regards, truly yours, Wm. James. _To Benjamin Paul Blood._ Cambridge, _Apr. 28, 1897_. DEAR BLOOD,--Your letter is delectable. From your not having yet acknowledged the book,[13] I began to wonder whether you had got it, but this acknowledgment is almost too good. Your thought is obscure--lightning flashes darting gleams--but that's the way truth is. And altho' I "put pluralism in the place of philosophy," I do it only so far as philosophy means the articulate and the scientific. Life and mysticism exceed the articulable, and if there is a _One_ (and surely men will never be weaned from the idea of it), it must remain only mystically expressed. I have been roaring over and quoting some of the passages of your letter, in which my wife takes as much delight as I do. As for your strictures on my English, I accept them humbly. I have a tendency towards too great colloquiality, I know, and I trust your sense of English better than any man's in the country. I have a fearful job on hand just now: an address on the unveiling of a military statue. Three thousand people, governor and troops, etc. Why they fell upon me, God knows; but being challenged, I could not funk. The task is a mechanical one, and the result somewhat of a school-boy composition. If I thought it wouldn't bore you, I should send you a copy for you to go carefully over and correct or rewrite as to the English. I should probably adopt every one of your corrections. What do you say to this? Yours ever, Wm. James. _P.S._ Please don't betitle _me_! * * * * *