NOVEMBEE 11, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



659 



Unclassified 



International Association of Academies. Third 

 meeting: Vienna, 1907; fourth meeting: Rome, 

 1910. 



L'Aoademie Internationale des Sciences, des Arts 

 et Manufactures. Paris, 1860. 



International Patent Congress. Vienna, 1873; 

 Paris, 1878. 



International American Scientific Congress. Bue- 

 nos Ayres, 1910. 



International Conference on Scientific Literature. 

 Third meeting: London, 1900. 



International Association of Leather-Trades Chem- 

 ists. London, 1897. 



Women's International Congress. London, 1899. 



International Groups of Esperanto. Brussels, 

 1910. 



International Prison Congress. Eighth congress: 

 Washington, 1910. 



Charles Baskekville 

 College of the City of New York 



WILLIAM JAMES 



The follcwing minute on the life and ser- 

 vices of Professor William James was placed 

 upon the records of the faculty of Arts and 

 Sciences, of Harvard University, at the meet- 

 ing of October 18, 1910. 



By the death of William James this uni- 

 versity loses one who brought it high honor 

 in many lands. As a man of science he left 

 his mark on several departments of knowledge, 

 while as a literary man he charmed all who 

 read his lucid and picturesque pages. In him 

 science and humanism were singularly com- 

 bined. Learned as he was, he had none of the 

 pedantrj' of the scholar. His books, besides 

 illuminating their subjects, were creative of 

 character, and through them he became one of 

 the chief spiritual forces of our time. 



He was born in New York, on January 11, 

 1842, of devout and independent parentage. 

 Throughout life his studies were much dis- 

 turbed by ill health, to which his dauntless 

 spirit refused to bow. But a somewhat irreg- 

 ular education suited well a nature which was 

 always fretted by routine and profited by 

 whatever was unusual, diverse and expressive 

 of individual character. In his youth he at- 

 tended a Lycee in France and afterwards the 



University of Geneva, there gaining an un- 

 usual command of French. His German he 

 acquired a few years later at the University of 

 Berlin. In 1862-64 he was in the Lawrence 

 Scientific School; then for four years in the 

 Harvard Medical School, from which, two 

 years later, he received the degree of M.D. 

 He studied with Agassiz in the Cambridge 

 Museum, and accompanied a scientific expe- 

 dition to Brazil. He worked at painting under 

 William Hunt, with John La Farge as a fel- 

 low pupil. His home training gave him power 

 of expression, for in that home brilliant con- 

 versation and literary skill were traditional; 

 while philosophy was at the same time set 

 before him, on the one hand by his theological 

 father, and on the other, by his rationalistic 

 friend, Chauneey Wright. He early showed 

 a strong distaste for such idealistic modes of 

 thought as he believed obscured the concrete 

 realities of experience. 



The progress of his mind can be traced in 

 the successive topics of his teaching. In 1873 he 

 became an instructor in anatomy at Harvard; 

 but soon, finding greater interest in physiol- 

 ogy, he accepted an assistant professorship in 

 that subject, in 18Y6. For the next three 

 years, in addition to teaching physiology, he 

 ofFered a course on the theory of evolution in 

 the department of philosophy. In 1880 he 

 abandoned physiology altogether, becoming in 

 that year assistant professor, and in 1885 pro- 

 fessor, of philosophy. He now gave himself 

 enthusiastically to psychology, and under his 

 energetic guidance a psychological laboratory 

 was established here. But after the publica- 

 tion of his treatise on psychology, in 1890, his 

 interest in it declined, and he turned more 

 toward the history of philosophy and the 

 theory of knowledge. In 1892 he resigned the 

 directorship of the laboratory, and after 1897 

 was never willing to offer a psychologic course. 

 Religion and metaphysics claimed him, and 

 his last years were devoted to the elaboration 

 of a comprehensive philosophy in which the 

 portion known as pragmatism has occasioned 

 wide discussion. 



While unusually successful as a teacher. 



