Volume 2

The letters of William James / edited by his son, Henry James.

  • William James
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The letters of William James / edited by his son, Henry James. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of responsibility for teaching the subject in the College. The laboratory had already been placed under Professor Miinsterberg’s charge. For one year, during which Miin- sterberg returned to Germany, James was compelled to direct its conduct; but he let it be known that he would resign his professorship rather than concern himself with it indefinitely. Readers of this book will have seen that the centre of his interest had always been religious and philosophical. To be sure, the currents by which science was being carried forward during the sixties and seventies had supported him in his distrust of conclusions based largely on introspection and a priori reasoning. As early as 1865 he had said, apropos of Agassiz, “No one sees farther into a generaliza¬ tion than his own knowledge of details extends/’ In the spirit of that remark he had spent years on brain-physiology, on the theory of the emotions, on the feeling of effort in mental processes, in studying the measurements and exact experiments by means of which the science of the mind was being brought into quickening relation with the physical and biological sciences. But all the while he had been driven on by a curiosity that embraced ulterior problems. In half of tlie field of his consciousness questions had been stirring which now held his attention completely. Does consciousness really exist? Could a radically empirical con¬ ception of the universe be formulated? What is knowledge? What truth? Where is freedom? and where is there room for faith? Metaphysical problems haunted his mind; dis¬ cussions that ran in strictly psychological channels bored him. He called psychology “a nasty little subject,” ac¬ cording to Professor Palmer, and added, “all one cares to know lies outside.” He would not consider spending time on a revised edition of his textbook (the “Briefer Course”)
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