Eighteen Months in Germany

IN the spring of 1867 James interrupted his course at the Medical School again. He was impelled to do this, partly by the pressure of a conviction that his health required him to stop work or continue elsewhere under different conditions, and partly by a desire to learn German and study physiology in the German laboratories. He knew a little German already, and it seemed reasonable to suppose that if he went abroad immediately he would have time to familiarize himself with the language during a pleasant and restful summer and would be ready to enter one of the universities in the autumn. He sailed in April and spent the summer in Dresden and Bohemia. But his health became worse instead of better.

It is unnecessary to detail the record of a long illness by selecting for this book the passages of his correspondence in which James sooner or later revealed what his condition was. It would also be idle to inquire closely about the causes of his illness, considering that, for one reason, James was completely puzzled and baffled himself. Insomnia, digestive disorders, eye-troubles, weakness of the back, and sometimes deep depression of spirits followed each other or afflicted him simultaneously. If his trouble was in part nervous, it was a reality none the less. A photograph that was taken of him at about this period recorded the aspect of a very ill man. If his introspective genius made things worse for him for a while, it probably did more to pull him through in the end than the—to our present-day understanding—harsh and unnecessary treatments, regimens, water-cures, courses of exercise, galvanisms, and blistering to which he subjected himself.

On the other hand, the illness which began in 1867, and which limited James's activities and occupations for several years, had another effect. It overtook him when he was only twenty-five years old, and threw him heavily upon his inner moral and intellectual resources. It caught him alone and among strangers, more or less prostrated him, and defeated his plans just at a time of life when he was beginning, with the eagerness of youth and philosophic genius combined, to reckon over each fresh experience into the terms of a possible answer to the riddles of life and death, predestination, freedom, and responsibility. It gave a personal intimacy and intensity to the deepest problems that philosophy and religion can present to man's understanding. This illness may perhaps have prevented James from becoming a physiological investigator. But clearly it developed and deepened the bed in which the stream of his philosophic life was to flow.

He sailed for Europe in April, and went almost directly to Dresden, where he found quarters in a pension presided over by an amiable Frau Spannenberg. He spent his mornings, and often his evenings, reading and studying German. He made an excursion to Bad-Teplitz in Bohemia, but the "cure" there did not greatly relieve his back, and the baths made him feel "as if his brain had been boiled,"[35] so he returned to Frau Spannenberg's. In the early autumn he moved to Berlin, attended a few lectures at the University there, and read a good deal on the physiology of the nervous system; but he was unable to work in the laboratories, and found it expedient to return to Teplitz at the end of January (1868). What he did thereafter will appear as the letters proceed.

To his Parents.

DRESDEN, May 27, 1867.

...Though I have been just a little over two weeks settled in Dresden, I hardly know anything about it or about Germany yet. Nothing but confused, vague and probably erroneous impressions of the people, owing chiefly to my imperfect knowledge of the language. In the first place there is not the slightest touch of the romantic, picturesque, or even foreign about living here. I think there is very little absolutely in the place to give such impressions, and I think I have outgrown my old susceptibility to them. Whereas in old times I used to notice every window, door-handle and smell as having a peculiar and exotic charm, every old street and house as filled with historic life and mystery, they are now to me streets and houses and nothing more. The heyday of youth is o'er! Alack the day! My traveling has been accompanied with hardly more astonishment or excitement than would accompany a journey to Chicago....

William James at twenty-five. From a Photograph
William James at twenty-five.
From a Photograph

The place which has most invited me to live in it is Strasburg. The people all speak both French and German, each with the other's accent, and the environs are ravishing. The Saxons are a very short and ill-favored race, both sexes, not light-haired as the Rhinelanders, and most eccentrically toothed. Many of the young officers, however, are very good-looking fellows. The poor people wear old greasy caps and black coats, and no collars, but black cravats as in England, and look very ugly. The great number of old men and women here has struck me very much. Can it be that we have so few at home? or do we keep them indoors? Or do the Germans show their age so much sooner? I know not. The Americans I have met have been a poor crowd. The English I have seen have been distinguished by their pure and clean appearance, and by an awkwardness which in a certain way appeals to your sympathies. They have the faculty of blushing which is denied to the French and comparatively to the Germans, and in spite of all my prejudices I feel more akin to them than to the others.

I have, since I wrote my last letter, led a perfectly monotonous life. Read all the morning, go out for a walk and a lounge in a concert garden in the afternoon, and read after tea. I am quite well satisfied with my progress in the noble German tongue, which has been steady, although, since the first day I wrote to you about [it], not brilliant. Its difficulties are I think quite unjustifiably great for a modern language—it is in fact without any of the modern improvements. I read the little newspapers, which Dr. Semler takes, carefully from beginning to end; and what with the other newspapers I see at a reading-room, the talk I hear, and a little other reading, I have a quite vague and confused but very wonderful impression of the strange difference between the whole German way of thinking and ours; and in my as yet crude fancy it seems to be connected with the grammatical structure of the sentences and the endless power of making new words by combination. I have just been reading Hegel's chapter on epic poetry in his "Aesthetik," and [the] truly monstrous sentences therein were quite a revelation to me. It seems to me that the expression corresponds much more closely to the spontaneous and impromptu mode of thought than in our Latinized tongues—that the language allows and invites speculation and expatiation without limit. As soon as the first glimmering of an idea has dawned upon you, there is no reason why you should not begin to inscribe, for you can wallow round and round as you proceed, affixing limitations, lugging in definitions and explanations as fast as they suggest each other, and need never go back to reshape your beginning. While with us you will, as a rule, come to grief if you begin your sentence without a pretty distinct idea of what the whole is going to be. Then the endless power of word-multiplication by composition, and of making adjectives of whole phrases must allow you to fix, and to fix in a most homely, pregnant form, a host of evanescent shades of meaning (most of which would with us be lost), as fast as they flash upon the mind. And from these successive approximations the final form of the thought may be more easily and surely distilled than if it had to be all formed in one's head before it could get even an approximate expression.

However, I don't pretend to say that these hasty impressions are correct. They may be the mere creations of a distempered fancy. At any rate, I am sure that German is the native tongue of all Wilky-isms, and that in Germany [Wilky] would be one of the first authors of the age for style. The mischief of it is that, instead of using these approximations as such, the people let them stand permanently, and as they can make them with so little trouble, there arises in literature and talk an entangled mass of crudity and barbarism that spoils everything. They get accustomed to such elephantine ways of saying things that they don't mind it at all, and I have had more amusement out of the newspaper than I ever derived from the text of "Punch." I wish I could remember some of the expressions. Yesterday, for instance, the paper said the Emperor of Austria's message was more atomistisch than dynamisch—this, in a peppery little political article, shows what scholastic expressions the people are accustomed to. The context gave no explanation. Then, a couple of days ago, in a review of some histories of German literature, the surprising depth of one author was praised, altho' it was granted "that here and there he had not succeeded in lighting up the ultimate life-spring (Lebensgrund) of the phenomena." Of another that "without entirely losing sight of what was human (menschlich) in the phenomena, he had accomplished a work of extraordinarily logical development and luminous procedure (Gang)." Imagine entirely leaving out the human in a history of literature!...

May 30.

The pleasant spinster from Hamburg I mentioned in my last letter as being so well read, has, I find, "drawn the line" of her information at geography and physical science. She comes out strong in Sanscrit and Greek literature (which she knows of course by translations), and in church history, but she drives me frantic by her endless talking about America, in the course of which she continually leaps without any warning from New York to Rio de Janeiro and thence to Valparaiso. She has friends in each of these localities, and it is apparently a fixed conviction of hers that they take tea together every evening. At first I tried to show her that these places were all far apart and that the ways of one were not those of the others, and from her apparent comprehension and submission I used to fancy I had succeeded; but it was only the elastic and transient bowing of the reed before the gale. A rather amusing incident occurred the other evening. I was speaking of the different classes of people that made up our population, and endeavoring to give a keen analysis of the Irish character, when she asked me to tell her something about a people we had with us called "Yankees," about whom she had heard such strange stories, and who seemed to be, if report were true, of all the peoples in the world the very worst (das allerschlimmste). What was their genesis and what were they? Imagine the feelings of the poor old lady, who had asked the question merely from a wish to please me by her intelligent interest in our affairs, when the truth was told her....

The other afternoon I fell into conversation with a tall and rather aristocratic-looking old gentleman with a gray moustache, who spoke very good French, at a beer garden, and found out afterwards that he was no less a person than the illustrious Kaulbach. Strangely enough, we quite accidentally got on the subject of the Gallery. He spoke of several of the pictures, but said nothing that was not commonplace. I have as yet only had a mere glimpse at the Gallery, but will do it thoroughly before I leave. I'd give anything if Harry could see some of the Venetian things there, and the Shepherds' Adoration of Correggio, which he probably knows, or rather mÉconnaÎt, by prints which give nought but the rather unpleasant and, unless you are let into the secret, motivelessly eccentric drawing. But it would take Victor Hugo to find the proper antithetic epithets to describe the combined gladness and solemnity of the painting, its innocence and its depth. I have always had, I don't know why, a prejudice against Correggio; but I never saw a painting before that breathed out so easily such a moral poetry. It seems to me to kill Rafael's celebrated Madonna right out. Although that too is a good "piece." I find myself in the Gallery much too disposed to exalt one thing at the expense of its neighbors, which is very unjust to them; but by taking it easily and letting the pictures do their own work I think it will all come right. Mr. Paul Veronese had eyes, anyhow. I am sure it would be the making of John La Farge to come abroad, alone, if no other way. Dis lui, Henry, que je lui Écrirai tantÔt À ce sujet.

I have been having a literary debauch to start in the language with, but am getting down again to medicine. The enthusiastic, oratorical and eloquent Schiller, the wise and exquisite Goethe, and the virile and human Lessing have in turn held me entranced by their Dramal. Je te recommande, Henry, "Emilia Galotti" comme Étude. C'est serrÉ comme du chÊne, rapide comme l'avalanche, toute la retenue et la vigueur de MerimÉe, et au fond un gros coeur dont la tendresse comprimÉe n'Échappe que par des phrases dont la sobriÉtÉ mÊme dÉchire, ou bien par du bitter irony. Lessing seems to have a religious feeling that people miss in Goethe, and seems to be a great deal deeper than Schiller, though, of course, he is a far more homespun character. I have been reading Goethe's "Italienische Reise." It is perfectly fascinating; but you can read very little of it at a time, it is so damnably tedious, and you can't bear to skip. Paradoxical as it may appear, there is a deal of naÏvetÉ in the old cuss. Attends donc un peu que mon grand article sur Goethe apparaisse dans "L'AmÉricain du Nord!"

I expect T. S. Perry here in a fortnight on his way from Venice. You may imagine with what joy. I have just been interrupted by the supper, which takes place at nine P.M. and consists of beer, eggs, herrings, ham, and bread and butter, and is not displeasing to the carnal man. I have been writing a most infernally long letter, for which I apologize. It will be the last time. The fact is I have so few resources here that I am driven to write. Tell Alice that there are two Miss Twomblys from Boylston Street living here, one exceedingly pretty. She doubtless, by her feminine system of espionage, knows who they are, though I know none of their friends and they none of mine. I got mother's letter and the "Nation" with great joy soon after my arrival. I read Father's article, but with much the old result. I am desirous of reading his article in the N. A. R. and hope he will not delay to send it when it appears. Heaps of love all round.

DRESDEN, June 12, 1867.

DEAREST MOTHER,—I have been reading a considerable deal of German, and in a very desultory way, as I want to get accustomed to a variety of styles, so as to be able to read any book at sight, skipping the useless; and I may say that I now begin to have that power whenever the book is writ in a style at all adapted to the requirements of the human, as distinguished from the German, mind. The profounder and more philosophical German requires, however, that you should bring all the resources of your nature, of every kind, to a focus, and hurl them again and again on the sentence, till at last you feel something give way, as it were, and the Idea begins to unravel itself. As for speaking, that is a very different matter and advances much more slowly....

Life is so monotonous in this place that unless I make some philosophical discoveries, or unless something happens, my letters will have to be both few and short. I get up and have breakfast, which means a big cup of cocoa and some bread and butter with an egg, if I want it, at eight. I read till half-past one, when dinner, which is generally quite a decent meal; after dinner a nap, more Germanorum and more read till the sun gets low enough to go out, when out I go—generally to the Grosser Garten, a lovely park outside the town where the sun slants over the greenest meadows and sends his shafts between the great trees in a most wholesome manner. There are some spots where the trees are close together, and in their classic gloom you find mossy statues, so that you feel as if you belonged to the last century. Often I go and sit on a terrace which overlooks the Elbe and, with my eyes bent upon the lordly cliffs far down the river on the other side, with strains of the sweetest music in my ear, and with pint after pint of beer successively finding their way into the fastnesses of my interior, I enjoy most delightful reveries, au nombre desquels those concerning my home and my sister are not the least frequent.

In the house (which stands on a corner) my great resource when time hangs heavy on my hands is to sit in the window and examine my neighbors. The houses are all four stories high and composed of separate flats, as in Paris. I live in the 3me. Diagonally opposite is a young ladies' boarding-school where the young ladies, very young they are, are wont to relax from their studies by kissing their hands, etc., etc., etc., to a young English lout, who has been here in the house, and myself. Said lout left for England yesterday, for which I heartily thank him, and I shall now monopolize the attention of the school. We rather had them, for we had a telescope to observe them by. Not one was good-looking. There has, however, lately arisen in the Christian Strasse, just under my window, a most ravishing apparition, and I begin to think my heart will not wither wholly away. About eighteen, hair like night, and such eyes! Their mute-appealing, love-lorn look goes through and through me. Every day for the last week, after dinner, have I sat in my window and she in hers. I with the telescope! she with those eyes! and we communing with each other!! I will try to make a likeness of her and send with this letter, but I may not succeed.[36] She has only one defect, which is the length of her nose. If that were only an inch and a half shorter, I should propose at once to her Mother for it; but religious difference might intervene, so it is better as it is.

I am expecting T. S. Perry any day now, you may imagine how impatiently.... Tell Harry I have been reading some essays by Fr. Theod. Vischer, the bedeutende Esthetiker, on Strauss, on Goethe's "Faust" and its critics, etc., etc., which have much interested me. He is a splendid writer for style and matter—as brilliant as any of the non-absolutely-harlequin Frenchmen. The foundation of the thought is, or at least appears to be to my untutored mind, Hegelian; but they were published in 1844 and he may have changed. His "Aesthetik" henceforward appears in the list of "books which I must some day read." Some of the commentaries there quoted on "Faust" are incredibly monstrous for ponderous imbecility and seeing everything in the universe and out of it, except the point. I read this morning an Essay of Kuno Fischer's on Lessing's "Nathan"—one of the parasitic and analytic sort on the whole, but still very readable. The way these cusses slip so fluently off into the "Ideal," the "Jenseitige," the "Inner," etc., etc., and undertake to give a logical explanation of everything which is so palpably trumped up after the facts, and the reasoning of which is so grotesquely incapable of going an inch into the future, is both disgusting and disheartening. You never saw such a mania for going deep into the bowels of truth, with such an absolute lack of intuition and perception of the skin thereof. To hear the grass grow from morn till night is their happy occupation. There is something that strikes me as corrupt, immodest in this incessant taste for explaining things in this mechanical way; but the era of it may be past now—I don't know. I speak only of Æsthetic matters, of course. The political moment both here and in Austria is extremely interesting to one who has a political sense, and even I am beginning to have an opinion—and one all in favor of Prussia's victory and supremacy as a great practical stride towards civilization. I think the French tone in the last quarrel deserved a degrading and stinging humiliation as much as anything in history ever did, and I'm very sorry they did not get it. Of course there's no end of bunkum and inflation here, too, but it is practically a healthy thing....

To his Father.

BERLIN, Sept. 5, 1867.

My beloved old Dad,—...I think it will be just as well for you not to say anything to any of the others about what I shall tell you of my condition hitherto, as it will only give them useless pain, and poor Harry especially (who evidently from his letters runs much into that utterly useless emotion, sympathy, with me) had better remain ignorant.... My confinement to my room and inability to indulge in any social intercourse drove me necessarily into reading a great deal, which in my half-starved and weak condition was very bad for me, making me irritable and tremulous in a way I have never before experienced. Two evenings which I spent out, one at Gerlach's, the other at Thies's, aggravated my dorsal symptoms very much, and as I still clung to the hope of amelioration from repose, I avoided going out to the houses where it was possible. Although I cannot exactly say that I got low-spirited, yet thoughts of the pistol, the dagger and the bowl began to usurp an unduly large part of my attention, and I began to think that some change, even if a hazardous one, was necessary. It was at that time that Dr. Carus advised Teplitz. While there, owing to the weakening effects of the baths, both back and stomach got worse if anything; but the beautiful country and a number of drives which I thought myself justified in taking made me happy as a king.... I have purposely hitherto written fallacious accounts of my state home, to produce a pleasant impression on you all—but you may rely on the present one as literally certain, and as it makes the others after all only premature, I don't see what will be the use of impairing the family confidence in my letters by saying anything about it to them. I have no doubt that you will consider the Teplitz expenditure justified, as I do. My sickness has added some other items in the way of medicine and cab hire to the expenses of my life in Dresden, but nothing very considerable. So much for biz.

I have read your article, which I got in Teplitz, several times carefully. I must confess that the darkness which to me has always hung over what you have written on these subjects is hardly at all cleared up. Every sentence seems written from a point of view which I nowhere get within range of, and on the other hand ignores all sorts of questions which are visible from my present view. My questions, I know, belong to the Understanding, and I suppose deal entirely with the "natural constitution" of things; but I find it impossible to step out from them into relation with "spiritual" facts, and the very language you use ontologically is also so extensively rooted in the finite and phenomenal that I cannot avoid accepting it as it were in its mechanical sense, when it becomes to me devoid of significance. I feel myself in fact more and more drifting towards the sensationalism closed in by skepticism—but the skepticism will keep bursting out in the very midst of it, too, from time to time; so that I cannot help thinking I may one day get a glimpse of things through the ontological window. At present it is walled up. I can understand now no more than ever the world-wide gulf you put between "Head" and "Heart"; to me they are inextricably entangled together, and seem to grow from a common stem—and no theory of creation seems to me to make things clearer. I cannot logically understand your theory. You posit first a phenomenal Nature in which the alienation is produced (but phenomenal to what? to the already unconsciously existing creature?), and from this effected alienation a real movement of return follows. But how can the real movement have its rise in the phenomenal? And if it does not, it seems to me the creation is the very arbitrary one you inveigh against; and the whole process is a mere circle of the creator described within his own being and returning to the starting-point. I cannot understand what you mean by the descent of the creator into nature; you don't explain it, and it seems to be the kernel of the whole.

You speak sometimes of our natural life as our whole conscious life; sometimes of our consciousness as composed of both elements, finite and infinite. If our real life is unconscious, I don't see how you can occupy in the final result a different place from the Stoics, for instance. These are points on which I have never understood your position, and they will doubtless make you smile at my stupidity; but I cannot help it. I ought not to write about them in such a hurry, for I have been expecting every moment to see Tom Dwight come in, with whom I promised to go to the theatre. I arrived here late last night. My back will prevent my studying physiology this winter at Leipsig, which I rather hoped to do. I shall stay here if I can. If unable to live here and cultivate the society of the natives without a greater moral and dorsal effort than my shattered frame will admit, I will retreat to Vienna where, knowing so many Americans, I shall find social relaxation without much expense of strength. Dwight has come. Much love from your affectionate,

WM. JAMES.

To O. W. Holmes, Jr.

BERLIN, Sept. 17, 1867.

My dear Wendle,—I was put in the possession, this morning, by a graceful and unusual attention on the part of the postman, of a letter from home containing, amongst other valuable matter, a precious specimen of manuscript signed "O. W. H. Jr." covering just one page of small note paper belonging to a letter written by Minny Temple!!!!! Now I myself am not proud,—poverty, misery and philosophy have together brought me to a pass where there are few actions so shabby that I would not commit them if thereby I could relieve in any measure my estate, or lighten the trouble of living,—but, by Jove, Sir! there is a point, sunt certi denique fines, down to which it seems to me hardly worth while to condescend—better give up altogether.—I do not intend any personal application. Men differ, thank Heaven! and there may be some constituted in such a fearful and wonderful manner, that to write to a friend after six months, in another person's letter, hail him as "one of the pillars on which life rests," and after twelve lines stop short, seems to them an action replete with beauty and credit. To me it is otherwise. And if perchance, O Wendy boy, there lurked in any cranny of thy breast a spark of consciousness, a germ of shame at the paltriness of thy procedure as thou inditedst that pitiful apology for a letter, I would fain fan it, nourish it, till thy whole being should become one incarnate blush, one crater of humiliation. Mind, I should not have found fault with you if you had not written at all. There would have been a fine brutality about that which would have commanded respect rather than otherwise—certainly not pity. 'Tis that, writing, THAT should be the result. Bah!

But I will change the subject, as I do not wish to provoke you to recrimination in your next letter. Let it be as substantial and succulent as the last, with its hollow hyperbolic expression of esteem, was the opposite, and I assure you that the past shall be forgotten.—I am, as you have probably been made aware, "a mere wreck," bodily. I left home without telling anyone about it, because, hoping I might get well, I wanted to keep it a secret from Alice and the boys till it was over. I thought of telling you "in confidence," but refrained, partly because walls have ears, partly from a morbid pride, mostly because of the habit of secrecy that had grown on me in six months. I dare say Harry has kept you supplied with information respecting my history up to the present time, and perhaps read you portions of my letters. My history, internal and external, since I have been in Germany, has been totally uneventful. The external, with the exception of three R. R. voyages (to and from Teplitz and to Berlin), resembles that of a sea anemone; and the internal, notwithstanding the stimulus of a new language and country, has contracted the same hue of stagnation. A tedious egotism seems to be the only mental plant that flourishes in sickness and solitude; and when the bodily condition is such that muscular and cerebral activity not only remain unexcited, but are solicited, by an idiotic hope of recovery, to crass indolence, the "elasticity" of one's spirits can't be expected to be very great. Since I have been here I have admired Harry's pluck more and more. Pain, however intense, is light and life, compared to a condition where hibernation would be the ideal of conduct, and where your "conscience," in the form of an aspiration towards recovery, rebukes every tendency towards motion, excitement or life as a culpable excess. The deadness of spirit thereby produced "must be felt to be appreciated."

I have been in this city ten days and hope to stay all winter. I have got a comfortable room near the University and will attempt to follow some of the lectures. My wish was to study physiology practically, but I shall not be able. The number of subjects and fractions of subjects on which courses of lectures are given here and at the other universities would make you stare. Berlin is a "live" place, with a fine, tall, intelligent-looking population, infinitely better-looking than that of Dresden. I like the Germans very much, so far (which is not far at all) as I have got to know them. The apophthegm, "a fat man consequently a good man," has much of truth in it. The Germans come out strong on their abdomens,—even when these are not vast in capacity, one feels that they are of mighty powerful construction, and play a much weightier part in the economy of the man than with us,—affording a massive, immovable background to the consciousness, over which, as on the surface of a deep and tranquil sea, the motley images contributed by the other senses to life's drama glide and play without raising more than a pleasant ripple,—while with us, who have no such voluminous background, they forever touch bottom, or come out on the other side, or kick up such a tempest and fury that we enjoy no repose. The Germans have leisure, kindness to strangers, a sort of square honesty, and an absence of false shame and damned pecuniary pretension that makes intercourse with them very agreeable. The language is infernal; and I seem to be making no progress beyond the stage in which one just begins to misunderstand and to make one's self misunderstood. The scientific literature is even richer than I thought. In literature proper, Goethe's "Faust" seems to me almost worth learning the language for.

I wish I could communicate to you some startling discoveries regarding our dilapidated old friend the Kosmos, made since I have been here. But I actually haven't had a fresh idea. And my reading until six weeks ago, having been all in German, covered very little ground. For the past six weeks I have, by medical order, been relaxing my brain on French fiction, and am just returning to the realities of life, German and Science. If you want to be consoled, refreshed, and reconciled to the Kosmos, the whole from a strictly abdominal point of view, read "L'Ami Fritz," and "Les Confessions d'un Joueur de Clarinette," etc., by Erckmann-Chatrian. They are books of gold, so don't read them till you are just in the mood and all other wisdom is of no avail. Then they will open the skies to you.

On looking back over this letter I perceive I have unwittingly been betrayed into a more gloomy tone than I intended, and than would convey a faithful impression of my usual mental condition—in which occur moments of keen enjoyment. The contemplation of my letter of credit alone makes me chuckle for hours. If I ever have leisure I will write an additional Bridgewater, illustrating the Beneficence and Ingenuity, etc., in providing me with a letter of credit when so many poor devils have none. There, I have again unintentionally fallen into a vein of irony—I do not mean it. I am full of hope in the future.

My back, etc., are far better since I have been in Teplitz; in fact I feel like a new man. I have several excellent letters to people here, and when they return from the country, when T. S. Perry arrives for the winter, when the lectures get a-going, and I get thinking again, when long letters from you and the rest of my "friends" (ha! ha!) arrive regularly at short intervals—I shall mock the state of kings. You had better believe I have thought of you with affection at intervals since I have been away, and prized your qualities of head, heart, and person, and my priceless luck in possessing your confidence and friendship in a way I never did at home; and cursed myself that I didn't make more of you when I was by you, but, like the base Indian, threw evening after evening away which I might have spent in your bosom, sitting in your whitely-lit-up room, drinking in your profound wisdom, your golden jibes, your costly imagery, listening to your shuddering laughter, baptizing myself afresh, in short, in your friendship—the thought of all this makes me even now forget your epistolary peculiarities. But pray, my dear old Wendell, let me have one letter from you—tell me how your law business gets on, of your adventures, thoughts, discoveries (even though but of mares' nests, they will be interesting to your Williams); books read, good stories heard, girls fallen in love with—nothing can fail to please me, except your failing to write. Please give my love to John Gray, Jim Higginson and Henry Bowditch. Tell H. B. I will write to him very soon; but that is no reason why he should not write to me without waiting, and tell me about himself and medicine in Boston. Give my very best regards also to your father, mother and sister. And believe me ever your friend,

WM. JAMES.

P. S. Why can't you write me the result of your study of the vis viva question? I have not thought of it since I left. I wish very much you would, if the trouble be not too great. Anyhow you could write the central formulas without explication, and oblige yours. Excuse the scrawliness of this too hurriedly written letter.

To Henry James.

BERLIN, Sept. 26, 1867.

Beloved 'Arry,—I hope you will not be severely disappointed on opening this fat envelope to find it is not all letter. I will first explain to you the nature of the enclosed document and then proceed to personal matters. The other day, as I was sitting alone with my deeply breached letter of credit, beweeping my outcast state, and wondering what I could possibly do for a living, it flashed across me that I might write a "notice" of H. Grimm's novel which I had just been reading. To conceive with me is to execute, as you well know. And after sweating fearfully for three days, erasing, tearing my hair, copying, recopying, etc., etc., I have just succeeded in finishing the enclosed. I want you to read it, and if, after correcting the style and thoughts, with the aid of Mother, Alice and Father, and rewriting it if possible, you judge it to be capable of interesting in any degree anyone in the world but H. Grimm, himself, to send it to the "Nation" or the "Round Table."

I feel that a living is hardly worth being gained at this price. Style is not my forte, and to strike the mean between pomposity and vulgar familiarity is indeed difficult. Still, an the rich guerdon accrue, an but ten beauteous dollars lie down on their green and glossy backs within the family treasury in consequence of my exertions, I shall feel glad that I have made them. I have not seen Grimm yet as he is in Switzerland. In his writings he is possessed of real imagination and eloquence, chiefly in an ethical line, and the novel is really distinguÉ, somewhat as Cherbuliez's are, only with rather a deficiency on the physical and animal side. He is, to my taste, too idealistic, and Father would scout him for his arrant moralism. Goethe seems to have mainly suckled him, and the manner of this book is precisely that of "Wilhelm Meister" or "Elective Affinities." There is something not exactly robust about him, but, per contra, great delicacy and an extreme belief in the existence and worth of truth and desire to attain it justly and impartially. In short, a rather painstaking liberality and want of careless animal spirits—which, by the bye, seem to be rather characteristics of the rising generation. But enough of him. The notice was mere taskwork. I could not get up a spark of interest in it, and I should not think it would be d'actualitÉ for the "Nation." Still, I could think of nothing else to do, and was bound to do something.[37] ...

I am a new man since I have been here, both from the ruddy hues of health which mantle on my back, and from the influence of this live city on my spirits. Dresden was a place in which it always seemed afternoon; and as I used to sit in my cool and darksome room, and see through the ancient window the long dusty sunbeams slanting past the roof angles opposite down into the deep well of a street, and hear the distant droning of the market and think of no reason why it should not thus continue in secula seculorum, I used to have the same sort of feeling as that which now comes over me when I remember days passed in Grandma's old house in Albany. Here, on the other hand, it is just like home. Berlin, I suppose, is the most American-looking city in Europe. In the quarter which I inhabit, the streets are all at right angles, very broad, with dusty trees growing in them, houses all new and flat-roofed, covered with stucco, and of every imaginable irregularity in height, bleak, ugly, unsettled-looking—werdend. Germany is, I find, as a whole (I hardly think more experience will change my opinion), very nearly related to our country, and the German nature and ours so akin in fundamental qualities, that to come here is not much of an experience. There is a general colorlessness and bleakness about the outside look of life, and in artistic matters a wide-spread manifestation of the very same creative spirit that designs our kerosene-lamp models, for instance, at home. Nothing in short that is worth making a pilgrimage to see. To travel in Italy, in Egypt, or in the Tropics, may make creation widen to one's view; but to one of our race all that is peculiar in Germany is mental, and that Germany can be brought to us....

(After dinner.) I have just been out to dine. I am gradually getting acquainted with all the different restaurants in the neighborhood, of which there are an endless number, and will presently choose one for good,—certainly not the one where I went today, where I paid 25 Groschen for a soup, chicken and potatoes, and was almost prevented from breathing by the damned condescension of the waiters. I fairly sigh for a home table. I used to find a rather pleasant excitement in dining "round," that is long since played out. Could I but find some of the honest, florid and ornate ministers that wait on you at the Parker House, here, I would stick to their establishment, no matter what the fare. These indifferent reptiles here, dressed in cast-off wedding-suits, insolent and disobliging and always trying to cheat you in the change, are the plague of my life. After dinner I took quite a long walk under the Linden and round by the Palace and Museum. There are great numbers of statues (a great many of them "equestrian") here, and you have no idea how they light up the place. What you say about the change of the seasons wakens an echo in my soul. Today is really a harbinger of winter, and felt like an October day at home, with a northwest wind, cold and crisp with a white light, and the red leaves falling and blowing everywhere. I expect T. S. Perry in a week. We shall have a very good large parlor and bedroom, together, in this house, and steer off in fine style right into the bowels of the winter. I expect it to be a stiff one, as everyone speaks of it here with a certain solemnity....

I wish you would articulately display to me in your future letters the names of all the books you have been reading. "A great many books, none but good ones," is provokingly vague. On looking back at what I have read since I left home, it shows exceeding small, owing in great part I suppose to its being in German. I have just got settled down again—after a nearly-two-months' debauch on French fiction, during which time Mrs. Sand, the fresh, the bright, the free; the somewhat shrill but doughty Balzac, who has risen considerably in my esteem or rather in my affection; ThÉophile Gautier the good, the golden-mouthed, in turn captivated my attention; not to speak of the peerless Erckmann-Chatrian, who renews one's belief in the succulent harmonies of creation—and a host of others. I lately read Diderot, "Œuvres Choisies," 2 vols., which are entertaining to the utmost from their animal spirits and the comic modes of thinking, speaking and behaving of the time. Think of meeting continually such delicious sentences as this,—he is speaking of the educability of beasts,—"Et peut-on savoir jusqu'oÙ l'usage des mains porterait les singes s'ils avaient le loisir comme la facultÉ d'inventer, et si la frayeur continuelle que leur inspirent les hommes ne les retenait dans l'abrutissement"!!! But I must pull up, as I have to write to Father still....

Adieu, lots of love from your aff.

WILHELM.

The preceding letter shows James as but recently arrived in Berlin and as arranging himself there for a winter of physiology at the University. He was soon joined by his young compatriot Thomas Sergeant Perry, an intimate friend of earlier Newport days and of the subsequent Boston and Cambridge years, and the two young Americans set up joint lodgings at Number 12 in the Mittelstrasse. Although James's main purpose was to work at the University, he was luckily not without social resources. George Bancroft, the historian and former Secretary of the Navy and Minister to England, was at this time representing the United States in Berlin and was an old family acquaintance. His and another hospitable family, the Louis Thieses, who had been Cambridge neighbors and whose house in Quincy Street the James parents had acquired upon Mr. Thies's return to his native land, were a link with home, and at the same time rendered hospitable services to James by helping him to a few German acquaintances. By far the most congenial and interesting of these was Herman Grimm, the son of the younger of the universally beloved brothers of the Fairy Tales. Herman Grimm had married Gisela von Arnim, the daughter of Goethe's Bettina, and was at this time a man of just past forty years. Professor of the History of Art in the University of Berlin, essayist, author of "The Life of Michael Angelo" and of Lectures on Goethe as well as of several works of fiction, Grimm was a versatile and charming specimen of that "learned" Germany which we now think of as flourishing most amiably during the generation that preceded the Franco-Prussian War. The easy and cordial way in which his household accepted James appears, as in the next letter, to have been richly appreciated.

To his Sister.

BERLIN, Oct. 17, 1867.

Your excellent long letter of September 5 reached me in due time. If about that time you felt yourself strongly hugged by some invisible spiritual agency, you may now know that it was me. What would not I give if you could pay me a visit here! Since I last wrote home the lingual Rubicon has been passed, and I find to my surprise that I can speak German—certainly not in an ornamental manner, but there is hardly anything which I would not dare to attempt to begin to say and be pretty sure that a kind providence would pull me through, somehow or other. I made the discovery at my first visit to Grimm a fortnight ago, and have confirmed it several times since. I can likewise understand educated people perfectly. I feel my German as old Moses used to feel his oats, and for ten days past have walked along the street dandling my head in a fatuous manner that rivets the attention of the public. The University lectures were to have begun this week, but the lazy professors have put it off to the last of the month.

Pencil Sketches from a Pocket Note-Book.
Pencil Sketches from a Pocket Note-Book.

I will describe to you the manner in which I spent yesterday. Ex uno disce omnes—(a German proverb). I awoke at half-past eight at the manly voice of T. S. Perry caroling his morning hymn from his neighboring bed—if the instrument of torture the Germans sleep in be worthy of that name. After some preliminary conversation we arose, performed our washing, each in a couple of tumblers full of water in a little basin of this shape [sketch], donned our clothes, and stepped into our SALON into which the morning sun was streaming and adding its genial warmth to that of the great porcelain stove, into which the maid had put the handful of fuel (which, when ignited, makes the stove radiate heat for twelve hours) the while we slumbered. T. S. P. found on the table a letter from [Moorfield] Storey, which the same vigilant maid had placed there, and I the morning paper, full of excitement about the Italian affairs and the diabolical designs of Napoleon on Germany. After a breakfast of cocoa, eggs and excellent rolls, I finished the paper, and took up my regular reading, while T. S. P. worked at his German lesson. I finished the chapter in a treatise on Galvanism which bears the neat and concise title of [not deciphered].

By 10 o'clock T. S. P. had gone to his German lesson, and it was about time for me to rig up to go to Grimm's to dine, having received a kind invitation the day before. As I passed through the pleasant wood called the "Thiergarten," which was filled with gay civil and military cavaliers, I looked hard for the imposing equestrian figure of the Hon. Geo. Bancroft; but he was not to be seen. I got safely to Grimm's, and in a moment the other guest arrived. Herr Professor——, whose name I could not catch,[38] a man of a type I have never met before. He is writing now a life of Schleiermacher of which one volume is published. A soft fat man with black hair (somewhat the type of the photographs of Renan), of a totally uncertain age between 25 and 40, with little bits of green eyes swimming in their fat-filled orbits, and the rest of his face quite "realizing one's idea" of the infant Bacchus. I, with my usual want of enterprise, have neglected hitherto to provide myself with a swallow-tailed coat; but I had a resplendent fresh-biled shirt and collar, while the Professor, who wore the "obligatory coat," etc., had an exceedingly grimy shirt and collar and a rusty old rag of a cravat. Which of us most violated the proprieties I know not, but your feminine nature will decide. Grimm wore a yellowish, greenish, brownish coat whose big collar and cuffs and enormous flaps made me strongly suspect it had been the property of the brothers Grimm, who had worn it on state occasions, and dying, bequeathed it to Herman. The dinner was very good. The Prof. was overflowing with information with regard to everything knowable and unknowable. He is the first man I have ever met of a class, which must be common here, of men to whom learning has become as natural as breathing. A learned man at home is in a measure isolated; his study is carried on in private, at reserved hours. To the public he appears as a citizen and neighbor, etc., and they know at most about him that he is addicted to this or that study; his intellectual occupation always has something of a put-on character, and remains external at least to some part of his being. Whereas this cuss seemed to me to be nothing if not a professor ... [line not deciphered] as if he were able to stand towards the rest of society merely in the relation of a man learned in this or that branch—and never for a moment forget the interests or put off the instincts of his specialty. If he should meet people or circumstances that could in no measure be dealt with on that ground, he would pass on and ignore them, instead of being obliged, like an American, to sink for the time the specialty. He talked and laughed incessantly at table, related the whole history of Buddhism to Mrs. Grimm, and I know not what other points of religious history. After dinner Mrs. Grimm went, at the suggestion of her husband, to take a nap ... [line not deciphered] while G. and the Professor engaged in a hot controversy about the natural primitive forms of religion, Grimm inclining to the view that the historically first form must have been monotheistic. I noticed the Professor's replies grow rather languid, when suddenly his fat head dropped forward, and G. cried out that he had better take a good square nap in the arm-chair. He eagerly snatched at the proposal. Grimm got him a clean handkerchief, which he threw over his face, and presently he seemed to slumber. Grimm woke him in ten minutes to take some coffee. He rose, refreshed like a giant, and proceeded to fight with Grimm about the identity of Homer. Grimm has just been studying the question and thinks that the poems of Homer must have been composed in a written language. From there through a discussion about the madness of Hamlet—G. being convinced that Shakespeare meant to mystify the reader, and intentionally constructed a riddle. The sun waned low and I took my leave in company with the Prof. We parted at the corner, without the Prof. telling me (as an honest, hospitable American would have done) that he would be happy to see me at his domicile, so that I know not whether I shall be able to continue acquainted with a man I would fain know more of.

I got into a droschke and, coming home, found T. S. P. in the room, and while telling him of the events of the dinner was interrupted by the entrance of the Rev. H. W. Foote of Stone Chapel.... The excellent little man had presented himself a few evenings before, bringing me from Dresden a very characteristic note from Elizabeth Peabody (in which among other things she says she is "on the wing for Italy"—she is as folÂtre a creature as your friend Mrs. W——), and we have dined together every day since, and had agreed to go to hear "Fidelio" together at the Opera that evening. Foote is really a good man and I shall prosecute his friendship every moment of his stay here; seems to have his mind open to every interest, and has a sweet modesty that endears him to the heart. He goes home next month. I advise Harry to call and see him; I know he will sympathize with him. T. S. P. never grows weary of repeating a pun of Ware's about him in Italy, who, when asked what had become of Foote (they traveled for a time together), replied: "I left him at the Hotel, hand in glove with the Bootts."

"Fidelio" was truly musical. After it, I went to Zennig's restaurant (it was over by quarter before nine), where I had made a rendez-vous with a young Doctor to whom Mr. Thies had given me a letter. Having been away from Berlin, I had seen him for the first time the day before yesterday. He is a very swell young Jew with a gorgeous cravat, blue-black whiskers and oily ringlets, not prepossessing; and we had made this appointment. I waited half an hour and, the faithless Israelite not appearing, came home, and after reading a few hours went to bed.

Two hours later. I have just come in from dinner, a ceremony which I perform at the aforesaid Zennig's, Unter den Linden. (By the bye, you must not be led by that name to imagine, as I always used to, an avenue over-shadowed by patriarchal lime trees, whose branches form a long arch. The "Linden" are two rows of small, scrubby, abortive horse-chestnuts, beeches, limes and others, planted like the trees in Commonwealth Avenue.) Zennig's is a table-d'hÔte, so-called notwithstanding the unities of hour and table are violated. You have soup, three courses, and dessert or coffee and cheese for 12½ Groschen if you buy 14 tickets, and I shall probably dine there all winter. We dined with Foote today, who spoke among other things of a new English novel whose heroine "had the bust and arms of the Venus of Milo." T. S. P. remarked that her having the arms might account for the Venus herself being without them.

I enclose you the photograph of an actress here with whom I am in love. A neat coiffure, is it not? I also send you a couple more of my own precious portraits. I got them taken to fulfill a promise I had made to a young Bohemian lady at Teplitz, the niece of the landlady. Sweet Anna Adamowiz! (pronounce—vitch), which means descendant of Adam.—She belongs consequently to one of the very first families in Bohemia. I used to drive dull care away by writing her short notes in the Bohemian tongue such as; "Navzdy budes v me mysli Irohm pamatkou," i.e., forever bloomest thou in my memory;—"dej mne tooji bodo biznu," give me your photograph; and isolated phrases as "Mlaxik, Dicka, pritel, pritelkyne," i.e., JÜngling, MÄdchen, Freund, Freundinn; "mi luja," I love, etc. These were carried to her by the chambermaid, and the style, a little more florid than was absolutely required by mere courtesy, was excused by her on the ground of my limited acquaintance with the subtleties of the language. Besides, the sentiments were on the whole good and the error, if any, in the right direction. When she gave me her photograph (which I regret to say she spelt "fotokraft"!!!!) she made me promise to send her mine. Hence mine.

I have been this afternoon to get a dress-coat measured, which will doubtless be a comfort to you to know. I must now stop. G—

I had got as far as the above G when the faithless Israelite of yesterday evening came in. He gave a satisfactory explanation of his absence and has been making a very pleasant visit. He is coming back at nine o'clock to take us (after the German mode of exercising hospitality) to a tavern to meet some of his boon companions. I reckon he is a better fellow than he seemed at first sight. I will leave this letter open till tomorrow to let you know what happens at the tavern, and whether the boon companions are old-clothes men, or Christian gentlemen. Good-night, my darling sister! Sei tausend mal von mir gekÜsst.[39] Give my best love to Father, Mother, Aunt Kate, the boys and everyone. Ever yr. loving bro.,

WM. JAMES.

11 P.M. Decidedly the Jew rises in my estimation. He treated us in the German fashion to a veal cutlet and a glass of beer which we paid for ourselves. His boon companions were apparently Christians of a half-baked sort. One who sat next to me was half drunk [and] insisted on talking the most hideous English. T. S. P., who necessarily took small part in the conversation, endeavored to explain to Selberg that he was a "skeleton at the banquet," but could not get through. I came to his assistance, but forgot, of course, the word "Skelett," and found nothing better to say than that he was a vertebral column at their banquet, which classical allusion I do not think was understood by the Jew. The young men did not behave with the politeness and attention to us which would have been shown to two Germans by a similar crowd at home. Selberg himself however improved every minute, and I have no doubt will turn out a capital fellow. Excuse these scraps of paper,

W. J. Good night.

To his Sister.

BERLIN, Nov. 19, 1867.

SÜss Balchen!—I stump wearily up the three flights of stairs after my dinner to this lone room where no human company but a ghastly lithograph of Johannes MÜller and a grinning skull are to cheer me. Out in the street the slaw and fine rain is falling as if it would never stop—the sky is low and murky, and the streets filled with water and that finely worked-up paste of mud which never is seen on our continent. For some time past I have thought with longing of the brightness and freshness of my home in New England—of the extraordinary, and in ordinary moments little appreciated, but sometimes-coming-across-you-and-striking-you-with-an-unexpected-sense-of-rich-privilege blessings of a mother's love (excuse my somewhat German style)—of the advantage of having a youthful-hearted though bald-headed father who looks at the Kosmos as if it had some life in it—of the delicious and respectable meals in the family circle with the aforesaid father telling touching horse-car anecdotes,[40] and the serene Harry dealing his snubs around—with a clean female handmaiden to wait, and an open fire to toast one's self at afterwards instead of one of these pallid porcelain monuments here,—with a whole country around you full of friends and acquaintances in whose company you can refresh your social nature, a library of books in the house and a still bigger one over the way,—and all the rest of it. The longer I live, the more inclined am I to value the domestic affections and to be satisfied with the domestic and citizenly virtues (probably only for the reason that I am temporarily debarred from exercising any of them, I blush to think). At any rate I feel now and here the absence of any object with which to start up some sympathy, and the feeling is real and unpleasant while it lasts.

I ought not, I confess, to sing in this tune today, for before dinner I made a call on a young lady here (named Frl. Bornemann) whom I had met at Mrs. Grimm's and whom Mrs. G. had advised me to go and see. She lives with her brother, an Advocat. They are rich orflings, and I had really a friendly visit there and hope it may ripen into familiarity. I got on tolerably well with the German—only making one laughable mistake, viz. in talking of the shower of meteors, Stern-schnuppen, the other night to speak of the "Stern-schnupfen" (Schnupfen = snuffles, catarrh). And this visit is the occasion of my writing this week to you. Frl. B. is intimate with Miss Thies, and hearing that we lived in their house, she was seized with an extremely German desire to have some ivy leaves or other leaves from the garden to surprise Miss Thies with on Christmas. Your young female heart will probably beat responsive to the project and infallibly by return mail send the leaves. She only wants one or two. You might also send a board from the flooring, some old grass and bits of hay from the front "lawn," or cut out an eye from the "gal" who is so much "struck with them babies"[41] in the parlor. They would all awaken tender memories, I have no doubt. Now do not delay even for one day to execute this, Alice! but set about it now with this letter in your hand. You see there is no time to lose, and I am very anxious not to disappoint the excellent young lady.

The few commissions and questions I have sent home have been so unnoticed and disregarded that I hardly hope for success this time. It has always been the way with me, however, from birth upwards, and Heaven forbid that I should now begin to complain! But lo! I here send another commission. I definitely appoint by name my father H. James, Senior, author of Substance & Shadder, etc., to perform it; and solemnly charge all the rest of you to be as lions in his path, as thorns upon his side, as lumps in his mashed potatoes, until he do it or write me Nay. 'Tis to send by post Cousin's lectures on Kant, and that other French translation of a German introduction to Kant, which he bought last winter! By return of mail! And if not convenient to send the books, to write me the name of the author of the last-mentioned one, which I have forgotten. It behooves me to learn something of the "Philosopher of KÖnigsberg," and I want these to ease the way. I sincerely hope that these words may not be utterly thrown away.

I got a letter from Mother the day after I wrote last week to Harry, without date, but written after the Tweedies' visit. I got this morning a "Nation" and the "advertisement" to Father's Essay on Swedenborg. In the latter the old lyre is twanged with a greater freshness and force than ever, so that even T. S. Perry was made to vibrate in unison with it. I wrote to Father three weeks ago respecting his former article. I hope the letter is by this time in his hands. I am very sorry the fat one went astray. It contained, inter alia, an account of my expenditure up to its time of writing. I would give a good deal to be able to enjoy as you are all doing the society of Venerable Brother Robertson. It is a great pity that we should get so estranged by separation from each other. I wish, now he's at home, he would once write to me. I have got tolerably well to work, and enjoy my lectures at the University intensely. Are the "Rainbows for Children" I see noticed in the "Nation" that old book by Mrs. Tappan? I hope Harry is not the person therein mentioned as having palmed off on Godkin a translation from the German as an original article on Thorwaldsen. You have not told me a word about the Tappans since I quit. I am very glad to hear of Aunt Kate's leg being so much better and staying so. Tell her I hope it has not been improving at the expense of her heart, as her long silence sometimes makes me shudderingly fear.

Adieu. 1000 kisses to all, not forgetting Ellen.[42]

Ever your Bruder, W. J.

To Thomas W. Ward.

[Fragment of a letter from Berlin,
circa Nov. 1867?]

...I have begun going to the physiological lectures at the University. There are in all seven courses and four lectures. I take five courses and three lectures. There is a bully physiological laboratory, the sight of which, inaccessible as it is to me in my present condition, gave me a sharp pang. I have blocked out some reading in physiology and psychology which I hope to execute this winter—though reading German is still disgustingly slow.... It seems to me that perhaps the time has come for psychology to begin to be a science—some measurements have already been made in the region lying between the physical changes in the nerves and the appearance of consciousness-at (in the shape of sense perceptions), and more may come of it. I am going on to study what is already known, and perhaps may be able to do some work at it. Helmholtz and a man named Wundt at Heidelberg are working at it, and I hope I live through this winter to go to them in the summer. From all this talk you probably think I am working straight ahead—towards a definite aim. Alas, no! I finger book-covers as ineffectually as ever. The fact is, this sickness takes all the spring, physical and mental, out of a man....

To Thomas W. Ward.

BERLIN, Nov. 7, 1867.

...If six years ago I could have felt the same satisfied belief in the worthiness of a life devoted to simple, patient, monotonous, scientific labor day after day (without reference to its results) and at the same time have had some inkling of the importance and nature of education (i.e., getting orderly habits of thought, and by intense exercise in a variety of different subjects, getting the mind supple and delicate and firm), I might be now on the path to accomplishing something some day, even if my health had turned out no better than it is. But my habits of mind have been so bad that I feel as if the greater part of the last ten years had been worse than wasted, and now have so little surplus of physical vigor as to shrink from trying to retrieve them. Too late! too late! If I had been drilled further in mathematics, physics, chemistry, logic, and the history of metaphysics, and had established, even if only in my memory, a firm and thoroughly familiar basis of knowledge in all these sciences (like the basis of human anatomy one gets in studying medicine), to which I should involuntarily refer all subsequently acquired facts and thoughts,—instead of having now to keep going back and picking up loose ends of these elements, and wasting whole hours in looking to see how the new facts are related to them, or whether they are related to them at all,—I might be steadily advancing.—But enough! Excuse the damned whine of this letter; I had no idea whatever of writing it when I sat down, but I am in a mood of indigestion and blueness. I would not send you the letter at all, were it not that I thought it might tempt you soon to write to me. You have no idea, my dear old Tom, how I long to hear a word about you....

To Henry P. Bowditch.

BERLIN, Dec. 12, 1867.

BESTER HEINRICH,—I have arrived safely on this side of the ocean and hasten to inform you of the fact.—What a fine pair of young men we are to write so punctually and constantly to each other!—I will not gall you by any sarcasms, however (I naturally think you are more to blame than myself), because (as you naturally are of a similar way of thinking) you might recriminate at great length in your next and much other to-me-more-agreeable matter be crowded out of your letter. Suffice [it] to say that I have thought of you continually, and with undiminished affection, since that bright April morn when we parted; but I am of such an invincibly inert nature as regards letter-writing that it takes a combination of outward and inward circumstances and motives that hardly ever happens, to start me. I wrote you a letter last summer, but destroyed it because I was in such doleful dumps while writing it that it would have given you too unpleasant an impression....

I live near the University, and attend all the lectures on physiology that are given there, but am unable to do anything in the Laboratory, or to attend the cliniques or Virchow's lectures and demonstrations, etc. Du Bois-Raymond, an irascible man of about forty-five, gives a very good and clear, yea, brilliant, series of five lectures a week, and two ambitious young Jews give six more between them which are almost as instructive. The opportunities for study here are superb, it seems to me. Whatever they may be in Paris, they cannot be better. The physiological laboratory, with its endless array of machinery, frogs, dogs, etc., etc., almost "bursts my gizzard," when I go by it, with vexation. The German language is not child's play. I have lately begun to understand almost everything I hear said around me; but I still speak "with a slight foreign accent," as you may suppose—and, with all my practice in reading, do not think I can read more than half as fast as in English. It is very discouraging to get over so little ground. But a steady boring away is bound to fetch it, I suppose; and it seems to me it is worth the trouble.

The general level of thoroughness and exactness in scientific work here is beyond praise; and the abundance of books on every division of every subject something we English have no idea of. It all comes from the thorough mode of educating the people from childhood up. The Staats Examina, before passing which no doctor can practise here in Prussia, exact an amount of physiological, and what we at home call "merely theoretical" knowledge of the candidate, which a young doctor at home would claim and receive especial distinction for having made himself master of. But the men here think it but fair; gird about their loins and set about working their way through. The general impression the Germans make on me is not at all that of a remarkably intellectually gifted people; and if they are not so, their eminence must come solely from their habits of conscientious and plodding work. It may be that their expressionless faces do their minds injustice. I don't know enough of them to decide. But I know the work is a large factor in the result. It makes one repine at the way he has been brought up, to come here. Unhappily most of us come too late to profit by what we see. Bad habits are formed, and life hurries us on too much to stop and drill. But it seems to me that the fact of so many American students being here of late years (they outnumber greatly all other foreign students) ought to have a good influence on the training of the succeeding generation with us. Tuck, Dwight, Dick Derby, Quincy, Townsend, and Heaven knows how many more are in Vienna. Tuck and Dwight write me that they are getting on remarkably well. I saw them both here in September and think T. D. improves a good deal as he grows older.

Berlin is a bleak and unfriendly place. The inhabitants are rude and graceless, but must conceal a solid worth beneath it. I only know seven of them, and they are of the Élite. It is very hard getting acquainted with them, as you have to make all the advances yourself; and your antagonist shifts so between friendliness and a drill sergeant's formal politeness that you never know exactly on what footing you stand with him. These Prussians bow in the most amusing way you ever saw,—as if an invisible hand suddenly punched them in the abdomen and an equally invisible foot forthwith kicked them in the rear,—one time and two motions, and they do it 100 times a day.

But enough of national gossip—let us return to that about individuals. Oh! that I could see thy prominent nose and thy sagacious eyes at this moment relieved against the back of that empty arm-chair that stands opposite this table. Oh! that we might once again sit apart from the fretful and insipid herd of our congeners, and take counsel together concerning the world and life—our lives in particular, and all life in general. How the shy goddess would tremble in her hiding-places at the sound of our unerringly approaching voices. And how you would pour into my astonished ear all that is new and wonderful about pathology and microscopical research, all that is sound and neat about operative surgery, while I would recite the most thrilling chapters of Kolliker's "Entwickelungs-geschichte," or Helmholtz's "Innervationsfortpflanzungsgeschwindigkeitsbestimmungen"! I suppose you have been rolling on like a great growing snowball through the vast fields of medical knowledge and are fairly out of the long tunnel of low spirits that leads there by this time. It is only three months since I have taken up medical reading, as I made all sorts of excursions into the language when I came here, and, owing to the slowness of progression I spoke of above, I have not got over much ground. Of course I can never hope to practise; but I shall graduate on my return, and perhaps pick up a precarious and needy living by doing work for medical periodicals or something of that kind—though I hate writing as I do the foul fiend. But I don't want to break off connexion with biological science. I can't be a teacher of physiology, pathology, or anatomy; for I can't do laboratory work, much less microscopical or anatomical. I may get better, but hardly before it will be too late for me to begin school again.

I'll tell you what let's do! Set up a partnership, you to run around and attend to the patients while I will stay at home and, reading everything imaginable in English, German, and French, distil it in a concentrated form into your mind. This division of labor will give the firm an immense advantage over all of our wooden-headed contemporaries. For, in your person, it will have more experience than any one else has time to acquire; and in mine, more learning. We will divide the profits equally, of course; and he who survives the other (you, probably) will inherit the whole. Does not the idea tempt you? If you don't like it, I'll go you halves in the profits in any other feasible way. Seriously, you see I have no very definite plans for the future; but I have enough to keep body and soul together for some years to come, and I see no need of providing for more. This talk of course is only for your "private ear." I want you to write immediately on receipt of this,—for if you don't then, you never will,—and tell me all about what you've been doing and learning and what your future plans are. Also, gossip about the School and Hospital. I have not had a chance to talk medicine with any one but Dwight and Tuck (for a week), and hunger thereafter.... Believe me, ever til deth, your friend

WM. JAMES.

T. S. Perry of '66, who lives with me here, reminds me of a story to tell you. He lived with Architect Ware in Paris, and Ware received a visit from Dr. Bowditch and Mr. Dixwell last summer. The concierge woman was terribly impressed by the personal majesty of your uncles, particularly of Dr. Bowditch, of whom she said: "Il a le grand air, tout À fait comme Christophe Colomb!" It would be curious to understand exactly who and what she thought C. C. was, or whether she would have thought Mr. Dixwell like Americus Vespucius if she had known him.

To O. W. Holmes, Jr.

BERLIN, Jan. 3, 1868.

My dear Wendle,—Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten, dass ich so traurig bin, tonight. The ghosts of the past all start from their unquiet graves and keep dancing a senseless whirligig around me so that, after trying in vain to read three books, to sleep, or to think, I clutch the pen and ink and resolve to work off the fit by a few lines to one of the most obtrusive ghosts of all—namely the tall and lank one of Charles Street. Good golly! how I would prefer to have about twenty-four hours talk with you up in that whitely lit-up room—without the sun rising or the firmament revolving so as to put the gas out, without sleep, food, clothing or shelter except your whiskey bottle, of which, or the like of which, I have not partaken since I have been in these longitudes! I should like to have you opposite me in any mood, whether the facetiously excursive, the metaphysically discursive, the personally confidential, or the jadedly cursive and argumentative—so that the oyster-shells which enclose my being might slowly turn open on their rigid hinges under the radiation, and the critter within loll out his dried-up gills into the circumfused ichor of life, till they grew so fat as not to know themselves again. I feel as if a talk with you of any kind could not fail to set me on my legs again for three weeks at least. I have been chewing on two or three dried-up old cuds of ideas I brought from America with me, till they have disappeared, and the nudity of the Kosmos has got beyond anything I have as yet experienced. I have not succeeded in finding any companion yet, and I feel the want of some outward stimulus to my Soul. There is a man named Grimm here whom my soul loves, but in the way Emerson speaks of, i.e. like those people we meet on staircases, etc., and who always ignore our feelings towards them. I don't think we shall ever be able to establish a straight line of communication between us.

I don't know how it is I am able to take so little interest in reading this winter. I marked out a number of books when I first came here, to finish. What with their heaviness and the damnable slowness with which the Dutch still goes, they weigh on me like a haystack. I loathe the thought of them; and yet they have poisoned my slave of a conscience so that I can't enjoy anything else. I have reached an age when practical work of some kind clamors to be done—and I must still wait!

There! Having worked off that pent-up gall of six weeks' accumulation I feel more genial. I wish I could have some news of you—now that the postage is lowered to such a ridiculous figure (and no letter is double) there remains no shadow of an excuse for not writing—but, still, I don't expect anything from you. I suppose you are sinking ever deeper into the sloughs of the law—yet I ween the Eternal Mystery still from time to time gives her goad another turn in the raw she once established between your ribs. Don't let it heal over yet. When I get home let's establish a philosophical society to have regular meetings and discuss none but the very tallest and broadest questions—to be composed of none but the very topmost cream of Boston manhood. It will give each one a chance to air his own opinion in a grammatical form, and to sneer and chuckle when he goes home at what damned fools all the other members are—and may grow into something very important after a sufficient number of years.

The German character is without mountains or valleys; its favorite food is roast veal; and in other lines it prefers whatever may be the analogue thereof—all which gives life here a certain flatness to the high-tuned American taste. I don't think any one need care much about coming here unless he wants to dig very deeply into some exclusive specialty. I have been reading nothing of any interest but some chapters of physiology. There has a good deal been doing here of late on the physiology of the senses, overlapping perception, and consequently, in a measure, the psychological field. I am wading my way towards it, and if in course of time I strike on anything exhilarating, I'll let you know.

I'll now pull up. I don't know whether you take it as a compliment that I should only write to you when in the dismalest of dumps—perhaps you ought to—you, the one emergent peak, to which I cling when all the rest of the world has sunk beneath the wave. Believe me, my Wendly boy, what poor possibility of friendship abides in the crazy frame of W. J. meanders about thy neighborhood. Good-bye! Keep the same bold front as ever to the Common Enemy—and don't forget your ally,

W. J.

That is, after all, all I wanted to write you and it may float the rest of the letter. Pray give my warm regards to your father, mother and sister; and my love to the honest Gray and to Jim Higginson.

[Written on the outside of the envelope.]

Jan. 4. By a strange coincidence, after writing this last night, I received yours this morning. Not to sacrifice the postage-stamps which are already on the envelope (Economical W!) I don't reopen it. But I will write you again soon. Meanwhile, bless your heart! thank you! Vide Shakespeare: sonnet XXLX.

To Thomas W. Ward.

BERLIN, Jan. —, 1868.

...It made me feel quite sad to hear you talk about the inward deadness and listlessness into which you had again fallen in New York. Bate not a jot of heart nor hope, but steer right onward. Take for granted that you've got a temperament from which you must make up your mind to expect twenty times as much anguish as other people need to get along with. Regard it as something as external to you as possible, like the curl of your hair. Remember when old December's darkness is everywhere about you, that the world is really in every minutest point as full of life as in the most joyous morning you ever lived through; that the sun is whanging down, and the waves dancing, and the gulls skimming down at the mouth of the Amazon, for instance, as freshly as in the first morning of creation; and the hour is just as fit as any hour that ever was for a new gospel of cheer to be preached. I am sure that one can, by merely thinking of these matters of fact, limit the power of one's evil moods over one's way of looking at the Kosmos.

I am very glad that you think the methodical habits you must stick to in book-keeping are going to be good discipline to you. I confess to having had a little feeling of spite when I heard you had gone back on science; for I had always thought you would one day emerge into deep and clear water there—by keeping on long enough. But I really don't think it so all-important what our occupation is, so long as we do respectably and keep a clean bosom. Whatever we are not doing is pretty sure to come to us at intervals, in the midst of our toil, and fill us with pungent regrets that it is lost to us. I have felt so about zoÖlogy whenever I was not studying it, about anthropology when studying physiology, about practical medicine lately, now that I am cut off from it, etc., etc., etc.; and I conclude that that sort of nostalgia is a necessary incident of our having imaginations, and we must expect it more or less whatever we are about. I don't mean to say that in some occupations we should not have less of it though.

My dear old Thomas, you have always sardonically greeted me as the man of calm and clockwork feelings. The reason is that your own vehemence and irregularity was so much greater, that it involuntarily, no matter what my private mood might have been, threw me into an outwardly antagonistic one in which I endeavored to be a clog to your mobility, as it were. So I fancy you have always given me credit for less sympathy with you and understanding of your feelings than I really have had. All last winter, for instance, when I was on the continual verge of suicide, it used to amuse me to hear you chaff my animal contentment. The appearance of it arose from my reaction against what seemed to me your unduly noisy and demonstrative despair. The fact is, I think, that we have both gone through a good deal of similar trouble; we resemble each other in being both persons of rather wide sympathies, not particularly logical in the processes of our minds, and of mobile temperament; though your physical temperament being so much more tremendous than mine makes a great quantitative difference both in your favor, and against you, as the case may be.

Well, neither of us wishes to be a mere loafer; each wishes a work which shall by its mere exercise interest him and at the same time allow him to feel that through it he takes hold of the reality of things—whatever that may be—in some measure. Now the first requisite is hard for us to fill, by reason of our wide sympathy and mobility; we can only choose a business in which the evil of feeling restless shall be at a minimum, and then go ahead and make the best of it. That minimum will grow less every year.—In this connection I will again refer to a poem you probably know: "A Grammarian's Funeral," by R. Browning, in "Men and Women." It always strengthens my backbone to read it, and I think the feeling it expresses of throwing upon eternity the responsibility of making good your one-sidedness somehow or other ("Leave now for dogs and apes, Man has forever") is a gallant one, and fit to be trusted if one-sided activity is in itself at all respectable.

The other requirement is hard theoretically, though practically not so hard as the first. All I can tell you is the thought that with me outlasts all others, and onto which, like a rock, I find myself washed up when the waves of doubt are weltering over all the rest of the world; and that is the thought of my having a will, and of my belonging to a brotherhood of men possessed of a capacity for pleasure and pain of different kinds. For even at one's lowest ebb of belief, the fact remains empirically certain (and by our will we can, if not absolutely refrain from looking beyond that empirical fact, at least practically and on the whole accept it and let it suffice us)—that men suffer and enjoy. And if we have to give up all hope of seeing into the purposes of God, or to give up theoretically the idea of final causes, and of God anyhow as vain and leading to nothing for us, we can, by our will, make the enjoyment of our brothers stand us in the stead of a final cause; and through a knowledge of the fact that that enjoyment on the whole depends on what individuals accomplish, lead a life so active, and so sustained by a clean conscience as not to need to fret much. Individuals can add to the welfare of the race in a variety of ways. You may delight its senses or "taste" by some production of luxury or art, comfort it by discovering some moral truth, relieve its pain by concocting a new patent medicine, save its labor by a bit of machinery, or by some new application of a natural product. You may open a road, help start some social or business institution, contribute your mite in any way to the mass of the work which each generation subtracts from the task of the next; and you will come into real relations with your brothers—with some of them at least.

I know that in a certain point of view, and the most popular one, this seems a cold activity for our affections, a stone instead of bread. We long for sympathy, for a purely personal communication, first with the soul of the world, and then with the soul of our fellows. And happy are they who think, or know, that they have got them! But to those who must confess with bitter anguish that they are perfectly isolated from the soul of the world, and that the closest human love encloses a potential germ of estrangement or hatred, that all personal relation is finite, conditional, mixed (vide in Dana's "Household Book of Poetry," stanzas by C. P. Cranch, "Thought is deeper than speech," etc., etc.), it may not prove such an unfruitful substitute. At least, when you have added to the property of the race, even if no one knows your name, yet it is certain that, without what you have done, some individuals must needs be acting now in a somewhat different manner. You have modified their life; you are in real relation with them; you have in so far forth entered into their being. And is that such an unworthy stake to set up for our good, after all? Who are these men anyhow? Our predecessors, even apart from the physical link of generation, have made us what we are. Every thought you now have and every act and intention owes its complexion to the acts of your dead and living brothers. Everything we know and are is through men. We have no revelation but through man. Every sentiment that warms your gizzard, every brave act that ever made your pulse bound and your nostril open to a confident breath was a man's act. However mean a man may be, man is the best we know; and your loathing as you turn from what you probably call the vulgarity of human life—your homesick yearning for a Better, somewhere—is furnished by your manhood; your ideal is made up of traits suggested by past men's words and actions. Your manhood shuts you in forever, bounds all your thoughts like an overarching sky—and all the Good and True and High and Dear that you know by virtue of your sharing in it. They are the Natural Product of our Race. So that it seems to me that a sympathy with men as such, and a desire to contribute to the weal of a species, which, whatever may be said of it, contains All that we acknowledge as good, may very well form an external interest sufficient to keep one's moral pot boiling in a very lively manner to a good old age. The idea, in short, of becoming an accomplice in a sort of "Mankind its own God or Providence" scheme is a practical one.

I don't mean, by any means, to affirm that we must come to that, I only say it is a mode of envisaging life; which is capable of affording moral support—and may at any rate help to bridge over the despair of skeptical intervals. I confess that, in the lonesome gloom which beset me for a couple of months last summer, the only feeling that kept me from giving up was that by waiting and living, by hook or crook, long enough, I might make my nick, however small a one, in the raw stuff the race has got to shape, and so assert my reality. The stoic feeling of being a sentinel obeying orders without knowing the general's plans is a noble one. And so is the divine enthusiasm of moral culture (Channing, etc.), and I think that, successively, they may all help to ballast the same man.

What a preacher I'm getting to be! I had no idea when I sat down to begin this long letter that I was going to be carried away so far. I feel like a humbug whenever I endeavor to enunciate moral truths, because I am at bottom so skeptical. But I resolved to throw off "views" to you, because I know how stimulated you are likely to be by any accidental point of view or formula which you may not exactly have struck on before (e.g., what you write me of the effect of that sentence of your mother's about marrying). I had no idea this morning that I had so many of the elements of a Pascal in me. Excuse the presumption.—But to go back. I think that in business as well as in science one can have this philanthropic aspiration satisfied. I have been growing lately to feel that a great mistake of my past life—which has been prejudicial to my education, and by telling me which, and by making me understand it some years ago, some one might have conferred a great benefit on me—is an impatience of results. Inexperience of life is the cause of it, and I imagine it is generally an American characteristic. I think you suffer from it. Results should not be too voluntarily aimed at or too busily thought of. They are sure to float up of their own accord, from a long enough daily work at a given matter; and I think the work as a mere occupation ought to be the primary interest with us. At least, I am sure this is so in the intellectual realm, and I strongly suspect it is the secret of German prowess therein. Have confidence, even when you seem to yourself to be making no progress, that, if you but go on in your own uninteresting way, they must bloom out in their good time. Ouf, my dear old Tom! I think I must pull up. I have no time or energy left to gossip to thee of our life here....

TEPLITZ, Jan. 22, 1868.

My dear Dad,—Don't allow yourself to be shocked with surprise on reading the above date till you hear the reasons which have brought me here at this singular season. They are grounded in the increasing wear and tear of my life in Berlin, and in my growing impatience to get well enough to be able to do some work in the summer.... I find myself getting more interested in physiology and nourishing a hope that I may be able to make its study (and perhaps its teaching) my profession; and, joining the thought that if I came to Teplitz now for three weeks I could have still another turn at it, if necessary, in April,—before the summer semester at Heidelberg began,—to the consciousness that in my present condition I was doing worse than wasting time at Berlin, I took advantage of a fine sunshiny morning four days ago, packed my trunk, said good-bye to T. S. Perry, and took the railroad for this place. I hope you won't think from seeing me back here that my loudly trumpeted improvement in the autumn was fallacious. On the contrary, I feel more than ever, now that I am back in presence of my old measures of strength (distances, etc.), how substantial that improvement was—only it has not yet bridged the way up to complete soundness.

I have been feeling for a month past that I ought to come here, but an effeminate shrinking from loneliness and so forth, and the inhuman blackness of the weather kept me from it. Now that I am here, I am only sorry I deferred it so long. I found the FÜrstenbad open, and with four other "cure-guests" in it. All its varletry, male and female, fat as wood-chucks from their winter's repose; a theatre (!) going in town three times a week; the head waiter of the restaurant where in the summer I used, for the price of a glass of milk, to read the "Times" and the "Independence Belge," no longer wearing the pallid look of stern and desperate business with which he used to scud around among the crowded tables, and which used to make me stand in mortal fear of him, but appearing as a comfortable and red-cheeked human being with even greater conversational gifts than usual; every one moreover glad to see me, etc., etc. The veil of winter has been lifted for a week and the buried spring [has] peeped out and taken a-breathing before her time. Today everything is a-dripping, the earth has a moving smell, and the sky is full of spots of melting blue. If such weather but lasts, the time will pass here very quickly. I have brought a lot of good books, and if their interest wanes have the whole circulating library to fall back on. So much for Teplitz.

Sunday before last Mrs. Bancroft told me that the most beautiful woman in Berlin had asked after me with affection and expressed a desire to see me. After making me guess in vain she told me that it was Mrs. Lieutenant Pertz, nÉe Emma Wilkinson.[43] I went to see her and found her looking hardly a day older or different, and certainly very good-looking, though probably Mrs. B.'s description was exaggerated. She had the sweetest and simplest of manners and asked all about the family, to whom she sends her love. She told me nothing particular about her own family which we did not know, except that Jamie had an aquiline nose. She has three fine children, much more of the British than the German type, and it was right pleasant to see her. She has very handsome brown eyes. Nice manners are a very charming thing, and some of the ladies here might set a good example to some other young ladies I might mention (who do not live 100 miles from Quincy Street); FrÄulein Borneman, for example. Let Alice cultivate a manner clinging yet self-sustained, reserved yet confidential; let her face beam with serious beauty, and glow with quiet delight at having you speak to her; let her exhibit short glimpses of a soul with wings, as it were (but very short ones); let her voice be musical and the tones of her voice full of caressing, and every movement of her full of grace, and you have no idea how lovely she will become.... I am sorry Wilky has had a relapse of his fever. He and Bob are still the working ones of the family (Harry too, though!), but I hope my day will yet come. Give him and Bob a great deal of love for me. Life in Teplitz is favorable to letter-writing and I will write to Bob next week. Love to every one else, from yours ever,

WM. JAMES.

To Henry James.

FÜrstenbad, Teplitz, Mar. 4, 1868.

...I have been admitted to the intimacy of a family here named G——, who keep a hotel and restaurant. Immense, bulky, garrulous, kind-hearted woman, father with thick red face, little eyes and snow-white hair, two daughters of about twenty. The whole conversation and tea-taking there reminded me so exactly of Erckmann-Chatrian's stories that I wanted to get a stenographer and a photographer to take them down. The great, thick remarks, all about housekeeping and domestic economy of some sort or other; the jokes; the masses of eatables, from the awful swine soup (tasting of nothing I could think of but the perspiration of the animal and which the terrible mother forced me to gulp down by accusing me, whenever I grew pale and faltered, of not relishing their food), through the sausages (liver sausages, blood sausages, and more), to the beer and wine; then the masses of odoriferous cheese, which I refused in spite of all attacks, entreaties and accusations, and then heard, oh, horrors! with somewhat the feeling I suppose with which a criminal hears the judge pass sentence of death upon him,—then heard an order given for some more sausages to be brought in to me instead; the air of religious earnestness with which the eating of the father was talked about, how the mother told the daughter not to give him so much wine, because he never enjoyed his beer so much after it, while he with his silver spectacles and pointing with his pudgy forefinger to the lines, read out of the newspaper half aloud to himself; the immense long room with walls of dark wood, the big old-fashioned china stove at each end of it, etc., etc.,—all brought up the Taverne du Jambon de Mayence into my mind....

[W. J.]

The water-cure at Teplitz worked no cure; but James repaired to Heidelberg in the spring, to hear Helmholtz lecture and with the hope of following the medical courses during the summer semester. Once more he had to stop work, and for a while he returned to Berlin. From there he traveled by way of Geneva, stopping characteristically for only the very briefest of glances at the familiar scenes of his school-days, and hurrying on to spend the latter part of the summer at another watering-place, Divonne in Savoy. The following brief letter seems to have been written there, and is interesting as a first reference to Charles Renouvier, a French philosopher who later exercised an important influence on James's thinking.

To his Father.

[Divonne?], Oct. 5, 1868.

DEAR FATHER,—...I have not been doing much studying lately, nor indeed for some time past, though I manage to keep something dribbling all the while. I began the other day Kant's "Kritik," which is written crabbedly enough, but which strikes me so far as almost the sturdiest and honestest piece of work I ever saw. Whether right or wrong (and it is pretty clearly wrong in a great many details of its Analytik part, however the rest may be), there it stands like a great snag or mark to which everything metaphysical or psychological must be referred. I wish I had read it earlier. It is very slow reading and I shall only give it a couple of hours daily.

I got a little book by a number of authors, "L'AnnÉe 1867 Philosophique," which may interest you if you have not got it already. The introduction, a review of the state of philosophy in France for some years back, is by one Charles Renouvier, of whom I never heard before but who, for vigor of style and compression, going to the core of half a dozen things in a single sentence, so different from the namby-pamby diffusiveness of most Frenchmen, is unequaled by anyone. He takes his stand on Kant. I have not read the rest of the book.

Here I stop and take my douche. I will be as economical as I can this winter in details, and next summer will see us together. I wish I had the inclination to write, or anything to write about, as Harry has. I feel ashamed of fattening on the common purse when all the other boys are working, but writing seems for me next to impossible. Lots of love to all. Yours,

W. J.

The "cure" at Divonne was as profitless as had been the similar experiments at Teplitz. So instead of staying abroad for the winter, James turned his face homeward almost immediately. After a fortnight's companionship with H. P. Bowditch in Paris, he embarked on November 7 for America, disappointed in the chief hopes with which he had landed in Europe eighteen months before, but much matured in character and thought, and resolved to seek his health and his career at home.

Pencil Sketch from a Pocket Note-Book.
Pencil Sketch from a Pocket Note-Book.