Pray be happy this summer. I see nothing more of Rosina's in the papers. How is that sort of thing going on?... As for your mother, give her my old-fashioned love. For some unexplained reason, I find it very hard to write to her--probably it is the same reason that makes it hard for her to write to me--so we can sympathize over so strange a mystery. Anyhow, give her my best love, and with plenty for yourself, old Bay, and for Rosina, believe me, yours ever, Wm. James. _To E. L. Godkin._ CHOCORUA, _Aug. 17, 1897_. DEAR GODKIN,--Thanks for your kind note _in re_ "Will to Believe." I suppose you expect as little a reply to it as I expected one from you to the book; but since you ask what I _du_ mean by Religion, and add that until I define that word my essay cannot be effective, I can't forbear sending you a word to clear up that point. I mean by religion for a man _anything_ that for _him_ is a live hypothesis in that line, altho' it may be a dead one for anyone else. And what I try to show is that whether the man believes, disbelieves, or doubts his hypothesis, the moment he does either, on principle and methodically, he runs a risk of one sort or the other from his own point of view. There is no escaping the risk; why not then admit that one's human function is to run it? By settling down on that basis, and respecting each other's choice of risk to run, it seems to me that we should be in a clearer-headed condition than we now are in, postulating as most all of us do a rational certitude which doesn't exist and disowning the semi-voluntary mental action by which we continue in our own severally characteristic attitudes of belief. Since our willing natures are active here, why not face squarely the fact without humbug and get the benefits of the admission? I passed a day lately with the [James] Bryces at Bar Harbor, and we spoke--not altogether unkindly--of you. I hope you are enjoying, both of you, the summer. All goes well with us. Yours always truly, Wm. James. _To F. C. S. Schiller_ [Corpus Christi, Oxford]. Cambridge, _Oct. 23, 1897_.