July 14, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



37 



elaborate knowledge of his fellow-man than 

 was ever possible before. The results of 

 this disposition appear in the most widely 

 diverse sciences and arts. Archeology and 

 ethnology, history and the various social 

 sciences, dramatic art, the novel, as well 

 as what has been called psychical research 

 — in a word, all means, good and bad, that 

 have promised either a better knowledge 

 of what man is or a better way of portray- 

 ing what knowledge of man one may pos- 

 sess — have been tried and moulded in re- 

 cent times by the spirit of which recent 

 technical psychology is also an expression. 

 The psychological movement means then 

 something that far transcends the inter- 

 ests of the group of sciences to which the 

 name psychology now applies. And this 

 movement assumed some of its most im- 

 portant recent forms during the decade in 

 which James began to publish his work. 

 His own contributions to psychology re- 

 flect something of the manifoldness and 

 of the breadth of the general psychological 

 movement itself. If he published the two 

 great volumes entitled "Psychology" he 

 also wrote "The Varieties of Religious 

 Experience," and he played his part in 

 what is called "psychical research." 



These then are James's two principal 

 offices when you consider him merely in 

 his most general relations to the thought 

 of the world at large in his time. He 

 helped in the work of elaborating and 

 interpreting evolutionary thought. He 

 took a commanding part in the psycho- 

 logical movement. 



But now it is not of these aspects of 

 James's work, significant as they are, that 

 I have here especially to speak. I must 

 indeed thus name and emphasize these 

 wider relations of his thought to the 

 world's contemporary thought. But I do 



so in order to give the fitting frame to our 

 picture. I now have to call attention to 

 the features about James which make him, 

 with all his universality of interest, a 

 representative American thinker. Viewed 

 as an American, he belongs to the move- 

 ment which has been the consequence first, 

 of our civil war, and secondly, of the re- 

 cent expansion, enrichment, and entangle- 

 ment of our social life. He belongs to the 

 age in which our nation, rapidly trans- 

 formed by the occupation of new territory, 

 by economic growth, by immigration and 

 by education, has been attempting to find 

 itself anew, to redefine its ideals, to retain 

 its moral integrity, and yet to become a 

 world power. In this stage of our na- 

 tional consciousness we still live and shall 

 plainly have to live for a long time in the 

 future. The problems involved in such a 

 civilization we none of us well understand; 

 least of all do I myself understand them. 

 And James, scholar, thinker, teacher, 

 scientific and philosophical writer as he 

 was, has of course only such relation to 

 our national movement as is implied by 

 the office that he thus fulfills. Although 

 he followed with keen interest a great va- 

 riety of political and social controversies, 

 he avoided public life. Hence he was not 

 absorbed by the world of affairs, although 

 he was always ready to engage generously 

 in the discussion of practical reforms. His 

 main office with regard to such matters 

 was therefore that of philosophical inter- 

 preter. He helped to enlighten his fellows 

 as to the relations between the practical 

 problems of our civilization and those two 

 world-wide movements of thought of which 

 I have just spoken. 



Let me call attention to some of the re- 

 sists of James's work as interpreter of the 

 problems of the American people. I need 

 not say that this work was, to his own 

 mind, mainly incidental to his interest in 



