166 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LIII. No. 1354 



animate my crude and Orson-like breast, mine 

 being to say a thing in one sentence as straiglit 

 and explicit as it can be made, and then to drop 

 it forever; yours being to avoid naming it straight, 

 but by dint of breathing .and sighing all round 

 and round it, to arouse in the reader vrho may have 

 had a similar perception already (Heaven help 

 him if he hasn't!) the illusion of a solid object, 

 made (like the "ghost" at the Polytechnic) 

 Wholly out of impalpable materials, air, and the 

 prismatic interferences of light, ingeniously 

 focused by mirrors upon empty space. But you 

 do it, that's the queerness! And the complication 

 of innuendo and associative reference on the enor- 

 mous scale to -which you give way to it does so 

 luild out the matter for the reader that the result 

 is to solidify, by the mere bulk of the process, the 

 like perception from which he has to start. As 

 air, by dint of its volume, will weigh like a cor- 

 poreal body; so his own poor little initial percep- 

 tion, swathed in this gigantic envelopment of sug- 

 gestive atmosphere, grows like a germ into some- 

 thing vastly bigger and more substantial. 



To this Henry James replied with un- 

 paralleled conciseness, 



. You shall have, after a little more patience, a 

 reply to your so rich and luminous reflections on 

 my book — a reply almost as interesting as, and 

 far more illuminating than, your letter itself. 



Of a nig-lit in the Adirondacks he writes : 



I was in a wakeful mood before starting, hav- 

 ing been awake since three, and I may have slept 

 a little during this night; but I was not aware of 

 sleeping at all. My companions, except Waldo 

 Adler, were all motionless. The guide had got a 

 magnificent provision of firewood, the sky swept 

 itself clear of every trace of cloud or vapor, the 

 wind entirely ceased, so that the fire-smoke rose 

 straight up to heaven. The temperature was per- 

 fect either inside or outside the cabin, the moon 

 rose and hung above the scene before midnight, 

 leaving only a few of the larger stars visible, and 

 I got into a state of spiritual alertness of the 

 most vital description. The influences of Nature, 

 the wholesomeness of the people round me, espe- 

 cially the good Pauline, the thought of you and 

 the children, dear Harry on the wave, the prob- 

 lem of the Edinburgh lectures, all fermented 

 within me till it became a regular Walpurgis 

 Nacht. I spent a good deal of it in the woods, 

 where the streaming moonlight lit up things in a 



magical checkered play, and it seemed as if the 

 Gods of all the nature-mythologies were holding an 

 indescribable meeting in my breast with the moral 

 G-ods of the inner life. . . . The intense signifi- 

 cance of some sort, of the whole scene, if one could 

 only tell the significance; the intense inhuman 

 remoteness of its inner life, and yet the intense 

 appeal of it; its everlasting freshness and its im- 

 memorial antiquity and decay; its utter American- 

 ism, and every sort of patriotic suggestiveness, and 

 you, and my relation to you part and parcel of it 

 all, and beaten up with it, so that memory and 

 sensation all whirled inexplicably together; it was 

 indeed worth coming for, and worth repeating 

 year by year, if repetition could only procure 

 what in its nature I suppose must be aU un- 

 planned for and unexpected. It was one of the 

 happiest lonesome nights of my existence, and I 

 understand now what a poet is. 



It would be unwise, within the limits of this 

 review, to discuss the " Letters " as evidence 

 concerning the forces which determine intel- 

 lectual production and moral zeal in men of 

 science. The readers of this journal will also 

 prefer to draw their own conclusions. I note 

 only a few matters which might not attract 

 attention. 



James writes apologetically of having' the 

 sole copy of the " Principles " insured for 

 $1,000 in transit! In 1896, being then fifty- 

 four, under the spell of Chicago, 



I tried a stenographer and typewriter with an 

 alleviation that seemed almost miraculous. I think 

 I shall have to go in for one some hours a week 

 at Cambridge. It just goes "Whiff" and six or 

 eight long letters are done. 



Apparently he had spent seven years in 

 Europe before ever going west of the Adiron- 

 dacks; and seems not to have visited Tale or 

 Princeton or Johns Hopkins or Columbia 

 until he was fifty. 



James's output seems to have been in- 

 fluenced greatly by outside pressure. Except 

 for the enterprise of a publisher and the 

 existence of the lecture foundations of 

 (3-ifford, LoweU and the Columbia Depart- 

 ment of Psychology, we might well have 

 gone without the "Principles," "Varieties," 

 and "Pragmatism," though we might, of 

 course, have had something better. In the 



