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
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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
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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
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
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