The Letters of William James, Vol. 1. William James
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the spur of the moment, with all my dullness thick upon me.
I have just read your letter over again, and am grieved afresh at your melancholy tone about yourself. You ask why I am quiet, while you are so restless. Partly from the original constitution of things, I suppose; partly because I am less quiet than you suppose; only I once heard a proverb about a man consuming his own smoke, and I do so particularly in your presence because you, being so much more turbid, produce a reaction in me; partly because I am a few years older than you, and have not solved, but grown callous (I hear your sneer) to, many of the problems that now torture you. The chief reason is the original constitution of things, which generated me with fewer sympathies and wants than you, and also perhaps with a certain tranquil confidence in the right ordering of the Whole, which makes me indifferent in some circumstances where you would fret. Yours the nobler, mine the happier part! I think, too, that much of your uneasiness comes from that to which you allude in your letter—your oscillatoriness, and your regarding each oscillation as something final as long as it lasts. There is nothing more certain than that every man's life (except perhaps Harry Quincy's) is a line that continuously oscillates on every side of its direction; and if you would be more confident that any state of tension you may at any time find yourself in will inevitably relieve itself, sooner or later, you would spare yourself much anxiety. I myself have felt in the last six months more and more certain that each man's constitution limits him to a certain amount of emotion and action, and that, if he insists on going under a higher pressure than normal for three months, for instance, he will pay for it by passing the next three months below par. So the best way is to keep moving steadily and regularly, as your mind becomes thus deliciously appeased (as you imagine mine to be; ah! Tom, what damned fools we are!). If you feel below par now, don't think your life is deserting you forever. You are just as sure to be up again as you are, when elated, sure to be down again. Six months, or any given cycle of time, is sure to see you produce a certain amount, and your fretful anxiety when in a stagnant mood is frivolous. The good time will come again, as it has come; and go too. I think we ought to be independent of our moods, look on them as external, for they come to us unbidden, and feel if possible neither elated nor depressed, but keep our eyes upon our work and, if we have done the best we could in that given condition, be satisfied.
I don't know whether all this solemn wisdom of mine seems to you anything better than conceited irrelevance. I began the other day to read the thoughts of Marcus Aurelius, translated by Long, published by Ticknor, which, if you have not read, I advise you to read, slowly. I only read two or three pages a day, and am only half through the book. He certainly had an invincible soul; and it seems to me that any man who can, like him, grasp the love of a "life according to nature," i.e., a life in which your individual will becomes so harmonized to nature's will as cheerfully to acquiesce in whatever she assigns to you, knowing that you serve some purpose in her vast machinery which will never be revealed to you—any man who can do this will, I say, be a pleasing spectacle, no matter what his lot in life. I think old Mark's perpetual yearnings for patience and equanimity and kindliness would do your heart good.—I have come to feel lately, more and more (I can't tell though whether it will be permanent) like paying my footing in the world in a very humble way, (driving my physicking trade like any other tenth-rate man), and then living my free life in my leisure hours entirely within my own breast as a thing the world has nothing to do with; and living it easily and patiently, without feeling responsible for its future.
I will now, my dear old Tom, stop my crudities. Although these notions and others have of late led me to a pretty practical contentment, I cannot help feeling as if I were insulting Heaven by offering them about as if they had an absolute worth. Still, as I am willing to take them all back whenever it seems right, you will excuse my apparent conceit. Besides, they may suggest some practical point of view to you.
The family is at Swampscott. I have a room in Bowdoin Street for the secular part of the week. We have a very nice house in Swampscott.... I am anxiously waiting your arrival on Class Day. I expect you to spend all your time with me either here or in Swampscott, when we shall, I trust, patch up the Kosmos satisfactorily and rescue it from its present fragmentary condition....
To his Sister
Chérie de Jeune Balle,—I am just in from town in the keen, cold and eke beauteous moonlight, which by the above qualities makes me think of thee, to whom, nor to whose aunt, have I (not) yet written. (I don't understand the grammar of the not.)
Your first question is, "where have I been?" "To C. S. Peirce's lecture, which I could not understand a word of, but rather enjoyed the sensation of listening to for an hour." I then turned to O. W. Holmes's and wrangled with him for another hour.
You may thank your stars that you are not in a place where you have to ride in such full horse-cars as these. I rode half way out with my "form" entirely out of the car overhanging the road, my feet alone being on the same vertical line as any part of the car, there being just room for them on the step. Aunt Kate may, and probably will, have shoot through her prolific mind the supposish: "How wrong in him to do sich! for if, while in that posish, he should have a sudden stroke of paralysis, or faint, his nerveless fingers relaxing their grasp of the rail, he would fall prostrate to the ground and bust." To which I reply that, when I go so far as to have a stroke of paralysis, I shall not mind going a step farther and getting bruised.
Your next question probably is "how are and where are father and mother?"… I think father seems more lively for a few days past and cracks jokes with Harry, etc. Mother is recovering from one of her indispositions, which she bears like an angel, doing any amount of work at the same time, putting up cornices and raking out the garret-room like a little buffalo.
Your next question is "wherever is Harry?" I answer: "He is to Ashburner's, to a tea-squall in favor of Miss Haggerty." I declined. He is well. We have had nothing but invitations (6) in 3 or 4 days. One, a painted one, from "Mrs. L–," whoever she may be. I replied that domestic affliction prevented me from going, but I would take a pecuniary equivalent instead, viz: To 1 oyster stew 30 cts., 1 chicken salad 0.50, 1 roll 0.02, 3 ice creams at 20 cts. 0.60, 6 small cakes at 0.05, 0.30, 1 pear $1.50, 1 lb. confectionery 0.50.
I expect momentarily her reply with a check, and when it comes will take you and Aunt Kate on a tour in Europe and have you examined by the leading physicians and surgeons of that country. M– L– came out here and dined with us yesterday of her own accord. I no longer doubt what I always suspected, her penchant for me, and I don't blame her for it. Elly Temple staid here two days, too. She scratched, smote, beat, and kicked me so that I shall dread to meet her again. What an awful time Bob & Co. must have had at sea! and how anxious you must have been about them.
With best love to Aunt Kate and yourself believe me your af. bro.
To O. W. Holmes, Jr
Why I'm blest if I'm a Materialist:
The materialist posits an X for his ultimate principle.
Were he satisfied to inhabit this vacuous X, I should not at present try to disturb him.
But that atmosphere is too rare; so he spends all his time on the road between it and sensible realities, engaged in the laudable pursuit of degrading every (sensibly) higher thing into a (sensibly) lower. He thus accomplishes an immensely great positively conceived and felt result, and it availeth little to naturalize the sensible impression of this that he should at the end put in his little caveat that, after all, the low denomination is as unreal as the unreduced higher ones were. In the confession of ignorance is nothing which the mind can close upon and clutch—it's a vanishing negation; while the pretension of knowledge is full of positive, massively-felt contents. The former kicks the beam. What balm is it, when instead of my High you have given me a Low, to tell me that the Low is good for nothing?
If you take my $1000 gold and give me greenbacks, I feel unreconciled still, even when you have assured me that the greenbacks are counterfeit. Or what comfort is it to me now to be told that a billion years hence greenbacks and gold will have the same value? especially when that is explained to be zero? How anyone