438 



NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



me both to allow of a warmer sort of loyalty to our past helpers, and to 

 tally more exactly with the mixed condition in which we find the world as to 

 its ideals. What if we did come where we are by chance, or by mere fact, 

 with no one general design? What is gained, is gained, all the same. As to 

 what may have been lost, who knows of it, in any case? or whether it might 

 not have been much better than what came? But if it might, that need not 

 prevent us from building on what we have. 



There are lots of impressive passages in the book, which certainly will live 

 and be an influence of a high order. Chaps. 8, 10, 14, 15, have struck me 

 most particularly. 



I gave at Edinburgh two lectures on " The Religion of Healthy-Minded- 

 ness," contrasting it with that of " the sick-soul." I shall soon have to quote 

 your book as a healthy-minded document of the first importance, though 

 I believe myself that the sick soul must have its say, and probably carries 

 authority too. . . . 



Ever yours, WM. JAMES. 



Late 'in life there was a resurgence of the poetic impulse, so 

 well fulfilling itself that one is tempted to ask what might have 

 been the result, if, in the fashion of a Wordsworth or a Tennyson, 

 Mr. Shaler had set himself in youth deliberately to develop the 

 talent. But to such painstaking care as they lavished upon their 

 work he was altogether averse. Once when I repeated to him 

 Dorothy Wordsworth's answer to an inquiry concerning her 

 brother's health : "William is not at all well, he has been labor- 

 ing all day to find an adjective to go with 'cuckoo,'" he laugh- 

 ingly exclaimed, "What a galoot ! He deserved to have his head 

 punched." There are passages in the "Elizabeth" and other 

 poems which give rise to the belief that if, instead of using 

 the gift merely as a pastime, he had employed it with serious 

 intent, a very great name might have been added to the list of 

 American poets. 



But vain as are these speculations now, the fact remains that 

 the return to the poetic exaltations that beguiled the golden 

 hours of his youth gave him infinite delight. In " The Individ- 

 ual" there is a paragraph which may be construed as personal. 

 Writing of the latent capacities in people which in mature life 



