Young William James Thinking Read online

  Young Wil iam James Thinking

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  Young

  William James

  Thinking

  Q

  Paul J. Croce

  Johns Hopkins University Press

  Baltimore

  © 2018 Johns Hopkins University Press

  All rights reserved. Published 2018

  Printed in the United States of Amer i ca on acid- free paper

  2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1

  Johns Hopkins University Press

  2715 North Charles Street

  Baltimore, Mary land 21218 - 4363

  www .press .jhu .edu

  Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data

  Names: Croce, Paul Jerome, author.

  Title: Young William James thinking / Paul J. Croce.

  Description: Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018. | Includes

  bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017004269 | ISBN 9781421423654 (hardcover : alk. paper) |

  ISBN 9781421423661 (electronic) | ISBN 1421423650 (hardcover : alk. paper) |

  ISBN 1421423669 (electronic)

  Subjects: LCSH: James, William, 1842–1910. | Philosophers— United

  States— Biography.

  Classification: LCC B945.J24 C76 2017 | DDC 191— dc23

  LC rec ord available at https:// lccn.loc .gov / 2017004269

  A cata log rec ord for this book is available from the British Library.

  Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book.

  For more information, please contact Special Sales at 410- 516- 6936 or

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  Johns Hopkins University Press uses environmentally friendly book

  materials, including recycled text paper that is composed of at least

  30 percent post- consumer waste, whenever pos si ble.

  To Peter and Elizabeth

  From these young trees, what fruits may grow?

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  Things take the time they take. . . . How many roads did

  St. Augustine follow before he became St. Augustine?Mary Oliver

  Portrait of the Young Scientist Thinking about Philosophy. William James papers,

  “William James in Brazil after the attack of small- pox,” portrait photo graph, 1865, bMS

  Am 1092.2 (1185). Courtesy of Bay James and the Houghton Library, Harvard University.

  Although William James looks rather hip by con temporary standards, styles have

  changed since this photo graph from the summer of 1865, when he was wearing

  glasses to protect his eyes which were still sensitive from a case of variola minor, a

  mild form of smallpox, while on a natu ral history expedition in the Brazilian

  Amazon. At first, illness gave his face “the appearance of an im mense ripe raspberry,”

  and closer to the time of the photo, he wrote to his sister Alice: “What would blessed

  mother say if she saw me now . . . in a frightfully dilapidated state, with shaven head &

  fuzzy chin . . . & cheeks bloated with the remains of my small pox” (CWJ, 4:105 and

  115). This image captures young James, trying on the field of natu ral history but

  beginning to doubt his appetite for a scientific vocation. He reported to his father that

  he had a “feeling that this work [is] not in my path” and that he had “a pining after

  books and study” (CWJ, 4:107). From the depths of the Amazon, he vowed to his

  brother Henry, “I’m going to study philosophy all my days” (CWJ, 1:8).

  Contents

  Chronology xi

  Acknowl edgments xvii

  An Invitation 1

  Introduction

  Almost a Phi los o pher 3

  1

  First Embrace of Science 27

  2

  Between Scientific and Sectarian Medicine 77

  3

  The Ancient Art of Natu ral Grace 134

  4

  Crises and Construction 187

  Conclusion

  An Earnestly Inquiring State 262

  Notes 279

  Bibliography 315

  Index 355

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  Chronology

  Unless identified differently, all references are to William James.

  1811

  Henry James, Se nior, born

  1821

  Mas sa chu setts General Hospital founded

  January 1842

  William James born

  1844

  American Institute of Homeopathy founded

  1844

  Henry James, Se nior, discovers homeopathy and the

  philosophy of Emanuel Swedenborg

  1847

  American Medical Association founded

  1847

  The Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard University

  founded and considers adding classical philology to its

  curriculum

  1857

  Attends first science class in Boulogne, France

  1860–61

  Studies art in Newport with William Morris Hunt

  April 1861

  The American Civil War begins

  Fall 1861

  Enters Lawrence Scientific School as student of

  chemistry with Charles Eliot

  September 1861

  Visits the Boston Athenæum to see the cast collection

  replicating ancient sculptures, con temporary work

  with similar style, and landscape paintings

  1862

  Meets “C. S. Pierce” [ sic] (Charles Sanders Peirce) and

  discusses science, philosophy, and belief

  Spring 1863

  Takes leave of absence from the science school; reads

  widely in science and other fields, with a par tic u lar

  interest in psy chol ogy

  Fall 1863

  Resumes at Lawrence Scientific School, now as student

  of physiology with Jeffries Wyman

  xii  Chronology

  December 1863

  Shows interest in the work of asylums for the insane

  1864

  Enrolls in Harvard Medical School; James family

  moves to Boston

  August 1864

  Reports “a feeling of desolation so dire that I have

  never had any experience at all approaching it”

  January 1865

  Writes first publication: review of Thomas Henry

  Huxley

  April 1865

  Departs on Thayer Expedition for Brazil, led by Louis

  and Elizabeth Cary Agassiz; American Civil War ends

  May 1865

  Contracts mild form of smallpox, giving him visual

  sensitivity

  January 1866

  Returns from Brazil

  June 1866

  First reads Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations

  Fall 1866

  Reenrolls at medical school; serves as “acting

  house surgeon” at Mas sa chu setts General Hospital;

  physiologist Edouard Brown- Séquard begins teaching

  at Harvard

  April 1867

  Sails for Eu rope to pursue scientific study of

  physiology and psy chol ogy, as well as improved health

  August 1867

  First visit to water cure in Teplitz, Bohemia

  September 1867

  Moves to Berlin to attend lectures of physiologist Emil

/>   du Bois- Reymond, while hoping for laboratory work

  1868

  Publishes two reviews of Charles Darwin’s

  Domestication of Animal and Plants

  January and

  Returns to water cure in Teplitz

   April 1868

  March 1868

  Reads Darwin and Homer’s Odyssey and visits cast

  collection of ancient sculpture at the Zwinger

  Museum, Dresden, Germany

  April 1868

  First use of word positivist

  May 1868

  First use of the word crisis: “[M]y feelings came to a

  sort of crisis”

  July 1868

  Describes his inability to find lectures by Hermann von

  Helmholtz in Heidelberg as a “fiasco” and a “crisis”

  August–

  Visits water cure in Divonne, France

    September 1868

  October 1868

  First reads Charles Renouvier

  November 1868

  Returns from Eu rope to Cambridge

  Chronology  xiii

  December 1868

  Chooses medical thesis topic on the physiological

  effects of cold

  1869

  Charles Eliot becomes president of Harvard

  1869

  George Beard offers first detailed identification of

  “Neurasthenia, or Ner vous Exhaustion”

  June 1869

  Takes medical exams, earns M.D. from Harvard

  Medical School

  October 1869

  John James Garth Wilkinson, M.D., prescribes

  homeopathic remedies for William James

  November 1869

  Makes vow never to marry

  January 1870

  Writes in diary, “I about touched bottom,” with “a

  great dorsal collapse” and “a moral one”

  March 1870

  His cousin and good friend Mary (Minny) Temple dies

  April 1870

  Diary entry: “My first act of free will shall be to believe

  in free will. . . . Recollect that only when habits of order

  are formed can we advance to really in ter est ing fields

  of action”

  May 1870

  Uses term crisis as a welcome stage in water cure, in

  describing the health prob lems of his brother Henry as

  “a winding up crisis”

  May 1870

  Writes “I at last see a certain order in the state I’m in”

  July 1870

  Writes to Robertson James, “[O]ne thing is certain,

  that through abridgement & deprivation we learn of

  resources within us, of whose existence we should else

  have remained ignorant”

  1871

  James’s friend Henry Bowditch appointed by Harvard

  as first full- time, laboratory- based teacher of

  physiology in Amer i ca

  1872

  Working steadily in Henry Bowditch’s physiological

  laboratory; appointed instructor of physiology, to begin

  teaching the following spring

  Spring 1873

  Teaches his first course, in comparative physiology

  March 1873

  His father writes about William James to his brother,

  Henry: “He saw that the mind does act irrespectively

  of material coercion, and could be dealt with therefore

  at first hand”

  April 1873

  Notes in diary: “[M]y deepest interest will as ever lie

  with the most general prob lems. . . . the concrete facts

  xiv  Chronology

  in which a biologists’ responsibilities lie, form a fixed

  basis from which to aspire . . . to the mastery of the

  universal questions”

  May 1873

  Suffers a “pessimistic crisis” according to June 1877

  message to Alice Gibbens

  August 1873

  Writes on the importance of “Vacations” to counter the

  effects of ner vous exhaustion

  September 1873

  Appointed instructor in anatomy

  1874

  Appointed temporary director of the Laboratory and

  Museum of Comparative Anatomy at Harvard

  1874

  Endorses hydropathy ( water cure) in a review of a

  physiology book

  1874–75

  Teaches a course on the relations between physiology

  and psy chol ogy, the first psy chol ogy course taught in

  the United States, and this was likely the season of

  James’s founding of the first American psychological

  laboratory

  1876

  Appointed assistant professor of physiology

  October 1876

  Writes that “[m]y attitude toward Religion is one

  of deference rather than of adoption”

  1876–77

  Henry James, Ju nior, publishes The American, with

  depiction of a minister, Rev. Benjamin Babcock;

  William James’s response: “I was not a little amused to

  find some of my own attributes in . . . the morbid little

  clergyman”

  April 1877

  Informs Daniel Coit Gilman, president of Johns

  Hopkins University, of his availability to teach

  psy chol ogy there

  June 1877

  Writes to Alice Gibbens about a “characteristic attitude

  in me [that] always involves an ele ment of active

  tension. . . . Take away the guarantee, and I feel

  (provided I am . . . in vigorous condition) a sort of deep

  enthusiastic bliss, of bitter willingness to do and suffer

  anything”

  September 1877

  Peirce calls James “deeply read in the old

  Philosophies” and “thoroughly a scientific man”

  1877–78

  Peirce publishes “Illustrations of the Logic of Science”

  series

  Chronology  xv

  January 1878

  Publishes “Remarks on Spencer’s Definition of Mind

  as Correspondence”

  February 1878

  Delivers Johns Hopkins Lectures in Baltimore, “The

  Senses and the Brain and Their Relation to Thought”

  June 1878

  Accepts proposal from publisher Henry Holt to write a

  psy chol ogy text for the American Science Series,

  which would become Princi ples of Psy chol ogy and

  Psy chol ogy: Briefer Course

  July 1878

  Marries Alice Howe Gibbens; publishes “Brute and

  Human Intellect”

  October–

  Delivers Lowell Lectures in Boston, “The Brain and

   November 1878 the Mind”

  July 1879

  Publishes “The Sentiment of Rationality”

  1880

  Appointed assistant professor of philosophy

  1882

  Henry James, Se nior, dies

  1885

  Appointed professor of philosophy

  1889

  Appointed professor of psy chol ogy

  1890 Publishes

  The Princi ples of Psy chol ogy

  1892 Publishes

  Psy chol ogy: Briefer Course

  1894

  Writes critique of a Mas sa chu setts law restricting the

  practice of medicine to mainstream doctors

  June 1896

  Publishes “The Will to Believe,” the first essay in

  The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popu lar

  Philosophy, 1897

  1897

  Appointed professor of philosophy

  1898


  Appears before Mas sa chu setts legislature to oppose a

  law to create a board of medical registration to oversee

  the practice of medicine

  August 1898

  Delivers the lecture in Berkeley, Calif., “Philosophical

  Conceptions and Practical Results,” which made the

  first public use of the word pragmatism

  1899 Publishes

  Talks to Teachers on Psy chol ogy and to

  Students on Some of Life’s Ideals

  1899

  Declined appointment to Gifford Lecturer, due to heart

  condition

  1901–2

  Delivers Gifford Lectures in Scotland, published as

  The Va ri e ties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human

  Nature, 1902

  xvi  Chronology

  1903

  Declares, “I know homeopathic remedies are not inert,

  as orthodox medicine insists they neccessarily [ sic]

  must be”

  June 1904

  Writes to Frank Abauzit, the French translator of

  The Va ri e ties: “The document [depicting a French

  correspondent’s “panic fear”] is my own case— acute

  neurasthenic attack with phobia”

  September–

  Publishes “Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist?” and “A World

   October 1904

  of Pure Experience,” the first essays in Essays in

  Radical Empiricism, 1912

  1907

  Retires from full- time teaching

  1907 Publishes

  Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways

  of Thinking

  May 1908

  Delivers the Hibbert Lectures at Oxford, England, on

  the “Pres ent Situation in Philosophy,” published as

  A Pluralistic Universe, 1909

  1908–9

  Praises lymph-compound hormone supplement for

  boosting his energy since about 1900.

  1909 Publishes

  The Meaning of Truth: A Sequel to

  “Pragmatism”

  1909

  Makes frequent visits to homeopathic doctors James

  Taylor and John Madison Taylor (no relation to each

  other)

  September 1909

  Meets Sigmund Freud at Clark University conference

  1910

  William James dies

  1911

  Some Prob lems of Philosophy published

  1912

  Essays in Radical Empiricism published

  Acknowl edgments

  Uncle William James— that is the familiar image of Amer i ca’s most popu lar

  phi los o pher. He is widely admired as a genial presence across many disciplines

  and among many folks without such academic disciplining. But he often re-

  mains only a charming figure, eminently quotable, with his words tapped for

  spicing up an article or the beginning of a book—or a greeting card— before