by Paul J Croce
on an honest assessment of his powers, with the call to “drop all wh. . . . is
not pos si ble.” While his reflections kept him only flirting with his attrac-
tions to Havens, he resolved to “try to kick and spur my sluggish senses by
contemplating the lives of Schiller & [Wolfgang von] Goethe”— study of
romantic writers as a reflective young man’s path to romance. 24
James’s intellect continued to intrude on romance. Right after reporting
his crisis about Havens and her music, he wrote an extended summary of
Agassiz’s Amazon theory. He may have been distracting himself from ro-
mantic frustration or simply recording to preserve his memories from Bra-
zil: he identified the layers of stratigraphy along the Amazon River laid bare
by the movement of the Ice Age glaciers Agassiz proposed, culminating in
the “denudations [of the] deposits” on the river banks. The verbal image and
its proximity to the previous entries suggest that “vulgar” sentiments may
have been piercing through his intellectual expressions with symbolically
erotic allure. He went on with more muted observations of “vorstellungen
[reflections, imaginings] disproportionate to the object, . . . in other words
ideas poorly suited to any practical application.” This could refer to his
teacher’s idealistic science, so out of step with recent practical professional
trends, and with abstractions that had already earned James’s disagree-
ment; and it could also readily apply to his own constant reflections without
romantic follow through. His diary words are akin to his thoughts on doubt-
filled Hamlet and his hope to learn from the ancients for bringing “ will and
per for mance” into alignment. 25 In his romantic attractions, as in the rest of
his life, he was taking aim, but still not leaping into action.
Per sis tently relying on his intellect, he went on to steel his frustration
with cold, hard words, but ironically, these were still abstractions about tak-
ing action— thus exhibiting his per sis tent awareness of the “ever not quite”
of philosophy, always one step behind experience; even pragmatism would
be a theory about action. But he was already detecting the significance of
action, first to enact the will, but also for practical applications that could
shape and sharpen his reflections and theories. So he urged himself boldly
to maintain that “ every good experience ought to be interpreted in prac-
tice,” even as his current lack of action left his will and per for mance in
stalled alignment, while he hoped for more decisive thought- shaping ac-
tions. While these ideas pointed forward to his pragmatism, in the 1860s his
impulses pointed back to his praise for the Greeks, who set examples for
Eloquent without Words.
[Diary 1], May 22, [1868], William James papers, bMS Am 1092.9 (4550), 55. Courtesy
of Bay James and the Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Although William James would gain fame for his fine phrases, he could also be
expressive in other ways. In 1865 he searched for words to describe the luscious
beauty of the Amazon jungle, but only “savage inarticulate cries” would do: “Houp
lala.” When on his honeymoon in 1878 with his wife, Alice Gibbens James, he simply
said, “Hey diddle diddle!” The intense swirls of 1868, both sweeping across his diary
page and dug into the paper, capture the tension between his impulses for reflective
“vorstellungen,” the German word for imaginings, and his urge to stay true to
“experience . . . in practice.” With no answers but a hunch that this tension expressed
a classic human dilemma, he resolved to “keep sinewy all the while.”
Crises and Construction 205
practical interpretations of their world through focus on natu ral experi-
ence unmediated by transcendent thoughts. He did not yet have the terms
to describe his pragmatist leanings, but he already felt impulses for the turn
away from abstraction and toward action and flexibility in the face of
changing experiences, which would become central features of this later
philosophy. His embryonic idea took on a bodily expression, well suited to
his mood of anticipation, and he even offered an informal description of the
pragmatic posture: “[K]eep sinewy all the while.” 26 Then he supplemented
his verbal prod with wordless swirls.
In anxious anticipation, James remained attracted to Havens, even as
his hesitations persisted. He was left with “emotions of a loving kind,” but
he added poignantly that these were emotions “indulged in where one can-
not expect to gain exclusive possession of the loved person.” His reference
to “possession” harks back to the gender hierarchies in the James family,
even as his father leavened his endorsement of traditional separate spheres
with hopes for love unfettered by convention, with each partner possessing
each other freely and equally. William’s feelings for Havens surged pri-
vately within him, but for reasons that neither of them explained, they went
unrequited—no willful per for mance, no possession of any kind. He resigned
himself to being a spectator with “mere delight” when the “lovable object is
displayed”; and he admitted with simple directness that when these feel-
ings are “born in the heart, and circumstances snub it, the reaction is pain-
ful.” He adopted a policy of retreat from romance, since the painful lack of
response “is apt to . . . make one recoil from the object altogether.” 27
So much intellectual wrestling may have been a major reason for James’s
romantic limitations, even as it provides a win dow into his early thinking.
In his frustrated emotional condition, he enlisted another tacitly pragmatic
idea with a blunt definition: “good (= ser viceability to us).” Then he justified
reeling back from the object of his desire because that pos si ble good “is so
partial.” He remained in his comfortable realm of theory and even pressed
his speculations further, thinking that “recoil of this excessive sort may be
found in vari ous religious modes of feeling”; he wondered if his reactions
were related to “original sin? antinomianism? Asceticism? ”28 These abrupt
moves from personal retreat during a romantic encounter to pragmatic as-
sessment of ser viceable good to theological reflection show his per sis tent
curiosity about the theoretical uses of his experiences. Reflections held him
back from romance, but they were also resources for his intellectual devel-
opment; but which theory to embrace— and what action to take? One of his
206 Young William James Thinking
religious references applies to the perennial human confusions and difficul-
ties about sexual coupling, which the religions of the Bible symbolize with
original sin, and another could serve as a label for his own de facto unmar-
ried asceticism.
James’s other religious reference, to antinomianism, applies to heavy
reliance on spontaneous grace rather than norms and rules. He had been
tacking far, in his reflections on the ancients, toward endorsement of grace,
so it is hard to make sense of his association of “excessive . . . recoil” f
rom
romance with too much spontaneity; if anything, he was weighing himself
down with second guessing rather than acting impulsively. There is a clue
to this paradox in James’s reference to a good “so partial,” an indication
that he was compromising with ideals, a move that antinomians decry. This
religious type stood out in his mind because it readily described his father,
who offered a dramatic and potent example of living out the antinomian
defiance of rules and conventions by following his spiritual ideals. William
James in 1868 was at home with antinomianism not only from his father but
also from his encounters with the ancients and with sectarian medicine;
they each supported a strong place for versions of grace, including the im-
material forces of spirituality and vitality, as potent factors in nature and
human life. This directly clashed with his scientific education with its em-
phasis on empirical facts and practical impacts. In the spring of 1868, his
ambivalence hampered his romantic life and sent him searching for theo-
retical direction.
James plunged into his ambivalence. He defined the “root of antinomian-
ism” as a “dissatisfaction with anything less than grace,” and he unabashedly
made this theoretical inquiry personal in calling it also “my old trou ble.” His
hesitations with Havens became representative of his ambivalence about so
many things. With her, “the good is uncertain,” and these shortcomings
seemed all the more glaring compared to the glowing world of grace. In
practice, this hampered any action, in romance or elsewhere in his life; so
he declared, “I must puzzle out the significance of all this.” So he burrowed
further into theory: “[T]he antinomian frame of mind” gains justification
from “Kantian talk about Ideals as the limit which phenomenal forms can
never reach.” This clashed with his hopes for “ser viceability” which his sci-
entific education was stoking. In his immediate situation with Havens, he
suspected such ideal thinking was a “mere vain abstraction,” because it sti-
fled effort, prodding him to romantic recoiling. Compared to grace, the
striving connected to “any finite pro gress,” including in this season of
Crises and Construction 207
small romantic steps, “would seem just as incommensurable with the Ideal
as the 0 of pro gress.” That’s how his reliance on a good “so partial” be-
comes impor tant in his mental wrestling. James was finding antinomianism,
including his attraction to grace, a posture that eroded effort for the
achievement of small steps. For those efforts in 1868, he would continue on
his scientific education, whose empirical inquiries allowed for “finite pro-
gress,” and in his Pluralistic Universe (1909), he would continue to insist on
“the legitimacy of some.” Back with his contemplations of Havens and elu-
sive grace, ironically, his turn away from idealism supported his hopes
for romance. Eventually, James would learn to mediate the spontaneity of
grace- filled antinomianism and the concrete practicalities of empirical
facts, without fully adopting the messages of religion or science, but taking
on parts of each; but first he would need to build up the strength of his will,
and that required living with constructive and practical habits so that he
could make his own willful choices about his own direction. Then he would
be his own antinomian, driven by his own free choices rather than by his
father or any august theory. Before he could become so “sinewy,” he needed
small steps, allowing him to begin aligning his will with more decisive
action. This work would be practical, but also action steps inspired by “a
mystical belief in . . . humanity.” He fully realized that this incongruous
combination still needed to be “interpreted somehow. ”29 In 1868 William
James was a work in pro gress. But most immediately, in the spring of that
year, he hadn’t given up on Catherine Havens.
For these practical goals, James still sought intellectual guidance. He
found Goethe’s words inspiring: “Cling to the Good through thick and thin;
such as it is it is positive; the bad that it is associated with does not subtract
from it; thus will nothing be wasted in the world.” This message gave James
hope that with enough “patience and enduring courage,” he could “gradu-
ally mould & forge the rest”— even the setbacks, even the “bad”— “into harmony
with . . . all the good points.” He was still hoping to achieve the harmony
promised by grace- filled positions but through diff er ent means; and at this
moment, he was coping with his truncated romantic feelings in the same
way that he was treating his other prob lems and the illnesses of his family
and friends— namely, as issues that required Stoic determination, personal
effort, and firmness of will. As with his later support for “meliorism” in his
pragmatism, James could not yet be optimistic about achieving his goals,
but he staked a “claim” to possibilities—as he put it in 1868, “something for
the future.” 30 Genuinely hurt by his failures with women, he found solace in
208 Young William James Thinking
his intellectual life, which provided plenty of plans for action, but not much
action— yet. He would continue to cultivate his theories despite his setbacks.
James felt some hope that he was “just beginning to break through the
skin” of Goethe’s work and “grasp it as an unity,” with integration of ab-
stract and practical parts of life, as both he and Goethe admired in the an-
cients. His own first practical step in this direction had such simplicity but
was actually a bold move for the shy young man: going for a ride with Ha-
vens. Although “the young Lady has many foibles,” he reported bluntly to
Tom Ward, he had taken this potentially romantic step with her in “the
spirit of Goethe which still re’echoes through my being [and] forbids any
impatient rejection of a whole on account of defectiveness in the parts.”
Now expressed with romantic impulses, this posture would be a key ingre-
dient of his intellectual conciliations. He would look beyond the negatives
to pay attention to positives that he may have been blind to before, and that
may become apparent only in the doing—an early version of what he would
later call “precursive faith.” Even with all this preparation, the ride with
Havens did not produce closer relations, but he did keep in touch. He wrote
her numerous letters, even taking the correspondence up again nine years
later, just eight months before his marriage to Alice Howe Gibbens in
1878— perhaps he was exploring alternatives. He sometimes gushed with
longing for Havens, such as when he said shortly before leaving Germany
later in 1868, “I would give anything to see you if only for half an hour.” De-
spite all those deep feelings, he prob ably did not ever see her again. 31 James’s
shy romantic encounters with Havens, and with other women in the 1860s,
not only provided valuable personal experiences but also enabled him to
experiment with the significance of experience for com
prehending the
plausibility of competing theories, and to consider the power of theories as
guides to life. These experiments still needed more life and more theorizing
for sorting out his own direction.
Back in Cambridge from 1868, James often mentioned women who fasci-
nated him. And he talked frankly with his male friends about their compa-
rable hopes; for example, his physiology colleague Henry Bowditch urged
him to “keep your eye open on my account.” But James’s “painful recoiling”
from romance had become a firm doubt about his prospects for ever finding
a mate. Moving beyond discouragement or shyness, he had developed
strong reasons for not marrying because of his health and mental state.
These seemed to intrude on his ability to do laboratory work, which, as a
scientist, could keep him from steady employment; and his indecision was
Crises and Construction 209
preventing any vocational commitment. So he resigned himself, with sour
grapes, to “the prospective burden of a wife and family being taken off my
shoulders.” Although he could not imagine the later active forms of eugen-
ics, with brutal elimination of the socially defined unfit, James imposed a
tacit eugenics ban on himself because of the perceived poor quality of his
own potential children: “I account it as a true crime against humanity for
anyone to run the probable risk of generating unhealthy offspring,” he de-
clared, expressing his vow as a version of his philanthropy. Better, he thought,
“that what ever evil I was born with I kept to my self”; and so, he felt “fully
determined never to marry with anyone”— adding a reference to his ideal-
ization of the ancient Greeks— even if she were “as healthy as the Venus of
Milo.” Still, he predicted, “I may fail in keeping such a resolve” because
“passion will overthrow strong reason, . . . but I mean not to fail.” 32 He
showed a bodily comprehension of the sentiments of rationality before ar-
ticulating that theory; and as in the other parts of his life, he tried to apply
his will stoically.
James elaborated on his personal vow to “abstain from marriage” in a
letter to his youn gest brother Bob who was, during the same period, consid-