by Paul J Croce
an im mensely thick sand deposit, . . . and reddish beds with only traces of
stratification.” James dutifully reported the changes in the land, which could
58 Young William James Thinking
have been from the “first melting of the glacier,” but he showed reason to
doubt the theory: evidence for “deposits of pres ent river mud” would have
nothing to do with glaciers, and the “absence of fossils” meant limited evi-
dence for any grand theory. Fourteen years after the trip to Brazil, James
mentioned Agassiz as an example of a “ great man” who, like a Darwinian
variation, no less, “brings about a rearrangement . . . of the pre- existing so-
cial relations.” He even mocked Agassiz by equating his arrival in Amer i ca
to the adaptive prowess of the Eu ro pean rabbit in New Zealand. James side-
stepped the great man’s increasingly discredited theories in favor of
praising his titanic character and his “concrete method of learning” and
teaching.46
During the expedition itself, James did not openly disagree with Agas-
siz, but his Darwinian perspectives gradually emerged from careful obser-
vations of nature. His teacher Wyman would have been proud. In a jungle
habitat, James made an extended study of a certain active and curious spi-
der monkey, whose species was “much the most in ter est ing of the South
American quadrumana,” an early classification of monkeys and apes with
four prehensile limbs. James’s account reflects the evolution of his scientific
interests from biology to psy chol ogy: after a detailed account of the mon-
key’s gross anatomy, he paid more attention to its be hav ior and emotions. At
one point, this “best friend, was paying a little too much attention” to the
sympathetic naturalist, and so, “I wd. forcibly tear my self away.” This pro-
duced a “tragic- comic per for mance of despair.” He was tacitly supporting
Darwinian propositions for continuity of species, even in mental and emo-
tional life, and went on to describe not only the monkey’s physical agility
but also its emotional range. “I am convinced,” he concluded, “that the vul-
gar idea of a monkey being a merely ludicrous creature is all wrong.” With
all his thorough description of his fellow primate’s antics, James was most
interested in the way the monkey “suddenly stop[ped when] his attention
[was] called to something else.” Recalling his medical interest in psychiatry,
he reported that monkeys show an “utter inability to control their attention
or their emotions, so that they are as completely possessed as insane people”;
their attention follows “what ever feeling happens to be uppermost in them
at the time,” and this gives them, James added, “a helplessness . . . which
always recommends them to my pity.” Here James drew upon the prevail-
ing hierarchical view of mind, ranging from adult humans with reasoning
power to children, the insane, and animals with instincts; and he was tap-
ping the accompanying fear of dissolution when the higher could no longer
First Embrace of Science 59
control the lower; for example, George Beard, who developed the diagnosis
for “neurasthenia” that James would later apply to himself, said of insanity
that it “makes us children, . . . makes us animals.” James’s informal jungle
assessments provided an experiential prelude to his later theories about the
power of focused and selective consciousness, which gives the reasoning
primate an extra adaptive power.47 Louis Agassiz could appreciate James’s
careful observations, but he would not countenance these psychological ap-
plications of Darwinism.
A major feature of Agassiz’s anti- Darwinian mission was his eagerness to
promote his racist belief in the separate creation of the human races, with
amalgamation creating degeneration: God had created human races sepa-
rately, and humanity should maintain this segregation. Agassiz ordered
Brazilians of vari ous complexions to pose for his gallery of racial hierarchy.
James looked on in disbelief while vari ous “mocas [slang for Brazilians of
mixed race] . . . were induced to strip and pose naked” for maximum ana-
tomical analy sis. James had a completely diff er ent impression. He found
the Brazilians “very nicely dressed in white muslin and jewelry, . . . appar-
ently refined.” Describing “4 Indians” he had run into one day, he called one
“respectable [and] civilized but still a perfect indian”; and he called “2 others
excellent stout fellows and perfect gentlemen.” Where Agassiz searched for
their faults, James asked, “[What] makes these people so refined and well
bred?” In accord with Darwin, James pointed not only to continuities among
primates but also to commonalities across races within humanity. James so
thoroughly rejected Agassiz’s typologies and fear of miscegenation that,
just a few years after the trip, he supported the idea that “humanity as a
whole will have advanced” from “the mixture of races . . . taking place so
inevitably all over the world.” 48 James was progressive not only in his think-
ing about science and religion but also in his racial views.
Sharply denying his teacher’s crude moral hierarchies, James noted that
the people in front of him were, “at all events not sluttish.” He sounds like
Huck Finn feeling guilty for disagreeing with the racism surrounding
him; James maintained that even though “ these are peasants,” scorned
by Brazilian society and by his own expedition leader, “no gentleman of
Eu rope has better manners.” And he added that the Brazilians, “masters
and servants” alike, had “not a bit of our damned anglo saxon brutality and
vulgarity.” James even found that the people so readily regarded by most
Eu ro pean Americans as exotic primitives lived lives not unlike what he knew
back home. He recognized that “the amazonians have not the pleasures of
60 Young William James Thinking
[the] domestic hearth which are so dear to us, . . . but in the mosquito net,
hardly domestic, but personal they have a faint substitute for it.” While in
their house hold, you have the “feeling of . . . security” that you get with a
“big blazing fireside in our winters [when] you hear the icy storm at work
out of doors.” By contrast, to support his theory of racial hierarchy, Agassiz
regarded Brazil as a case study of his worst social fears since “all clearness
of type had been blurred, . . . leaving a mongrel nondescript type.” Yet even
Agassiz and his wife had to admire a “cafuzo” (with “a mixture of Indian
and black blood in her veins”), who worked for Elizabeth Agassiz. Young
Alexandrina had “keen perceptions” and was “a very efficient aid.” They
were, however, very ready to explain away her virtues by adding dismis-
sively that she was “a person whose only training has been through the
senses”; their conclusion resembled the patronizing racial theories of Henry
James, Se nior. Yet William’s view bore ironic resemblance to another of his
father’s theories, about the best way to raise his own very non- cafuzo
chil
dren: with a sensuous education. In sharp contrast with Agassiz’s ex-
ploitative portraits, young James sketched Alexandrina with individual
dignity, a hint of sadness, and even skeptical detachment; and her serene
look and knowing eyes suggest that her spontaneous encounters with nature,
as with the ancients he admired, would give her insights into nature that the
civilized scientists overlooked— just as young James had growing doubts
about scientific naturalism. Here was a very tangible version of a young prag-
matist finding intellectual merit and insight among indigenous people, out-
looks phi los o pher Scott Pratt has identified as “native pragmatism. ”49
Trying on Natu ral History
In addition to mea sur ing out his differences with Agassiz, James also con-
tinued puzzling about his career choices. On the day before he set sail to
Brazil, he wondered if Agassiz would give him a clue “about my fate.” James
earnestly resolved that the trip would be a voyage of self- discovery: “I said
to myself before I came away: ‘W.J., in this excursion you will learn to know
yourself and your resources somewhat more intimately than you do now,
and will come back with your character considerably evolved and estab-
lished.’ ” While he could not yet define a par tic u lar career, he was looking
for some vocational direction, at least by discovering what he did not want
to do. He found out that most of the work would be “mechanical, finding
objects & packing them,” with little time for “studying their structure.” To
make matters worse, in early May James developed a mild form of small-
William James’s Huck Finn Moment.
Agassiz and Agassiz, A Journey in Brazil (1868), 245, 246, and xviii.
Louis and Elizabeth Cary Agassiz included a drawing by William James of one
their local helpers, only identified as Alexandrina, in the account they wrote about
their natu ral history expedition to Brazil in 1865–66. Despite Louis Agassiz’s
eagerness to show that the nonwhites of Brazil were inferior to Eu ro pe ans, he relied
on many of these “inferior” people as vital resources for collecting local samples, and
young James drew a portrait of Alexandrina, one of their most reliable assistants. In
their account, the Agassizes treat her hair as an “extraordinary” natu ral find and
assured their readers that James’s drawing “is in no way exaggerated.” In fact, her
“wiry elasticity . . . stood six inches beyond the shoulders each way.” Their constant
search for racial inferiorities in Brazil, culminating with the image of Alexandrina
looking “as if electrified,” prompted Louis Menand’s elegant ridicule, “They found
hierarchy in hair” ( Metaphysical Club, 136). By contrast, in his portrait, James clearly
displays the native woman’s dignity and intelligence, with even some hints of sadness
or anger. It was a Huck Finn moment with James wordlessly defying his teacher’s
racist assumptions and Alexandrina’s knowing eyes defying the words surrounding
her in the Agassiz book.
62 Young William James Thinking
pox, which dampened what ever enthusiasm flourished at the start. Although
he would feel better by mid- June, the disease gave him “red tubercles,” which
left his face with “the appearance of an im mense ripe raspberry,” and an
ongoing sensitivity in his eyes. He thought of his attending doctor as “a per-
fect brick,” which did not raise his confidence about the diagnosis or about
mainstream medicine in general. In the near term, however, the most direct
impact was on his mood. He wrote glumly to his family that “my coming
was a mistake. ”50
James’s mood and health mingled with his vocational questions, as the
field work convinced him that “I am cut out for a speculative rather than an
active life.” Remembering his discussions at home, especially with Charles
Peirce and other friends, and his wide reading back in Cambridge, he even
specified, for the first time in so many words, that “when I get home I’m
going to study philosophy all my days.” And he also recalled his 1858 worry
about “working in the wrong direction”: he now pledged to avoid work
that was “not in my path and was so much waste of life.” Still, he realized
that some edification could come in a hard- won way, even “through some
great mistake”; prob lems, after all, could be learning opportunities— learning
“through . . . individual experience.” 51 He would have plenty more opportu-
nities to learn from his trou bles in the next few years, and experience would
continue to be a teacher to his own development and his philosophical
speculations.
James’s feelings about the trip also sharpened his vocational thinking: “I
shall learn next to nothing of natu ral history as I care about learning it.”
Like his father, James had high hopes with the study of nature, but in Bra-
zil, by contrast, “the affair reduces itself thus to so many months spent in
physical exercise.” He vented his frustrations with Agassiz’s directives to
collect Amazonian creatures in encyclopedic abundance by mockingly pro-
claiming that they had gathered “4,00000000000 new species [of] fish.” He
portrayed this ballooned number, 40 trillion, on a banner in a cartoon sketch
that also included “new and hitherto unknown genera of animals,” each one
specially created. James was spoofing Agassiz’s tendency to “split” or group
subtle variations into distinct species in contrast with Darwinians, who gen-
erally regarded diff er ent individuals as va ri e ties within species, and thus as
indicators of stages in evolution. Despite his disagreements with Agassiz,
James was still interested in natu ral science, but he wanted more reflec-
tions on methods and implications rather than the “mechanical . . . work” of
First Embrace of Science 63
a field naturalist.52 It was just these reflections on methods that would be-
come impor tant for his philosophy.
Despite his prob lems with day- to- day natu ral history, James stayed with
the expedition, and after his recovery from smallpox, he hoped that “I shall
have materially a better time.” In addition to working regularly in the field,
he wrote notes and letters back home full of reports about Brazilian society,
the luxuriant Amazonian landscape, and the “several billion mosquitoes
and flies” that followed them everywhere in the tropics. For example, he
observed that despite the “fertility of the country,” the residents often lived
without a “sufficient stock of food.” And yet, they poured out generosity; at
a missionary settlement, the “ mother cooked our dinners,” and he comple-
mented the “handsome family of nearly white god children,” so called, he
added slyly, “from courtesy to the cloth.” By the last months, he was genuinely
enjoying the trip, both because he was “ doing and gaining so much” practical
scientific study and because it was a genuinely exotic adventure. Still, for all
his excitement about the landscape and culture, he largely remained a specta-
tor. In his frustration, he would grow depressed, such as when he opened
; one letter with the words, “Woe is me.” But he did not dwell there, going on
to explain “I have gone through a good deal of blueness so far produced by
my sickness.” Once feeling better, he was “beginning to see that the voyage
has been an excellent thing for me & [I] enjoy it more and more every
day.” His mood also received a boost after meeting a group of Spanish ex-
plorers; James said, “[N]ever had I seen a more shaggy, stained, weather-
beaten, jaundiced set of men. . . . Besides their travels our expedition seemed
like a holiday picnic.” Through his ups and downs, he kept writing letters
and taking notes of his observations, and he even scolded himself for falling
“ behind . . . 4 days” in his work. Still, he was convinced that “collecting [is
not] suited to my genius at all,” but even that insight made the “exercise . . .
better for me.” 53 Through the drudgery, he was gaining an intimate feel for
the practice and methods of scientific research and, more broadly, was com-
ing to appreciate the constructive aspects of even negative experiences.
Scientific research and reflective speculation were not the only fields that
beckoned on this expedition; lush and colorful jungle settings reminded
him of his earlier interest in painting. He noted the beauty around him with
a paint er’s eye and an artist’s sense of the limits of verbal expression— quite
literally, as he blurted out, “No words, but only savage inarticulate cries,
can express the gorgeous loveliness of the walk I have been taking. Houp
A Staggering Number of New Species in Brazil.
[The Winding Caravan of New Species in Brazil], William James papers, bMS Am
1092.9 (4498). Courtesy of Bay James and Houghton Library, Harvard University.
During his travel with Louis Agassiz’s natu ral history expedition to Brazil in
1865–66, William James not only gained a deep appreciation for the importance of
fact gathering but also spoofed his teacher’s anti- Darwinian tendency to identify
new species in every new variety and in each distinct landscape. By contrast,
Charles Darwin, in his theory of species development, first publicly explained in 1859,
depicted va ri e ties as stages in evolutionary development. In this sketch, James