by Paul J Croce
ering marriage and having some health prob lems of his own. For people
with ill health, marriage and especially having children, the older brother
insisted, would be a “civic crime,” and he added fiercely, “I would undergo
anything myself to escape f[ro]m. the guilty feeling of having deliberately
put into the world . . . [ children] destined [with the] burden” of such sickly
inheritance. While urging Bob to wait, William admitted ominously that he
had once “made a mistake that seemed to annihilate my life for ever at the
time.” He said to his friend Tom Ward that the mistake resembled a “ great
risk” he experienced when “I once was led to escape from a mere physical
ner vous ness, into doing a somewhat similar act. The tho’t of what might
have been the result of it makes me shiver now. But I feel so to speak as if in
that re spect I had ‘come of age’ through the experience.” What was his
“ mistake”; and could it be a reference to masturbation or a visit to a prosti-
tute? His words are suggestive, especially for readers with later sexual sen-
sibilities, and because some theorists of the time connected masturbation
to the introspection that attracted James. However, this was not a universal
view; for example, George Beard who developed the neurasthenic diagnosis
was keen to keep from reducing the “study [of] neuro- pathology” to
“reference[s] to the reproductive system.” More to the point, the direct evi-
dence suggests the prospect of a hasty marriage, especially if based on a
210 Young William James Thinking
Voluptuous Venus.
Horatio Greenough, Venus Victrix,
1837–40. Courtesy of the Boston
Athenæum.
Horatio Greenough’s seductive
image of Venus was on display when
James wandered away from his
science studies to visit the Boston
Athenæum in the fall of 1861. He
effectively carried this image with him
through his young adulthood. When
worrying about his range of personal
and intellectual prob lems, he vowed
never to marry, fearing that he might
then pass his trou bles on to children,
even if a prospective mate would be “as
healthy as the Venus of Milo” (CWJ,
4:389).
poor choice, as the “similar act,” because these were the repeated topics of
his vehement warnings. Moreover, he consoled his brother, whom he was
trying to talk out of marriage, by saying that “ every one must make such
mistakes”; despite the temporary “blindness and frenzy, . . . one learns more
of life through them than through anything else.” In addition, when he re-
ferred to his “ great risk,” he concluded that the experience would leave
them “fortified by [the] experience” and “ready to embark on other similar
adventures.” These words were hardly things he would say so heartily about
masturbation or visiting a prostitute. With his vow to remain chaste and un-
wed, he said, with explicit use of the same elusive word: “[T]his mistake—of
Crises and Construction 211
getting engaged—is literally infinitely small compared with that of getting
married.” He maintained high standards for marital union, and the inten-
sity of his passion for maintaining those standards reinforced his awkward-
ness with women. 33
James had largely traditional views of marriage, sexual be hav ior, and so-
cial propriety. On gender relations, he was honestly torn between “reform-
ers and . . . conservatives”; in an 1869 review of books vigorously arguing
each position on women’s rights by John Stuart Mill and Horace Bushnell,
respectively, he saw merit in both the outrage over the “stunted condition of
single women on the one hand and the interests of order in the family on the
other.” He acknowledged that Bushnell’s argument for the essentially submis-
sive nature of women was the “almost universal . . . sense of mankind”— one
which he tentatively endorsed as a “strong position.” He warned, however,
that regarding women’s “suffering [as] . . . a higher vocation” has been taken
to levels of “unjust usage.” So he found John Stuart Mill’s brief for equality
of the sexes impor tant and even “revolutionary”; its contrast with his own
assumptions was actually a reason to read it, which brought some cracks in
his conventional views about women’s roles because it made him feel “stim-
ulated and enlarged,” and it appealed to his sense that there is “nothing
fixed in character.” And he was ready to consider Mill’s bold proposals as
the next progressive step in the “demo cratic flood” of con temporary social
change. His ideological commentary also included an autobiographical
confession: “[T]hree quarters of all men who are bachelors are so from
timidity. ”34
He further intertwined his personal issues with questions of women’s
rights in his ambivalent admiration for visiting family friend and painter
Elizabeth Boott. His brother Henry even played the wordsmith Aaron to
William as the shy Moses, saying, “[M]y brother . . . would like to express
without delay his great plea sure in hearing from you.” Despite her “charms,”
he did not attempt any romantic relations with her, preferring more com-
radely talk with her about her “good education,” language learning, and
“ great talent for drawing.” He heartily enthused over her paintings, even
taking her vocational commitments as seriously as he took his own; but he
added the patronizing ste reo type that “a good education . . . added to the
charms of a woman.” His brother Henry thought still more highly of Boott’s
abilities, suggesting she might be “appointed corresponding member” of
the Metaphysical Club. Even with all his admiration for her mind and abili-
ties, William never took up the idea. 35 So James’s readiness for intellectual
212 Young William James Thinking
inquiry opened his mind to women’s capacities but also reinforced his awk-
wardness with women and his traditionalism.
He carried that ambivalence into his own mature life; in marriage, William
and Alice Gibbens James embodied traditional gender roles, resembling
those of his own parents, even as he also related to his wife as an intellec-
tual and emotional confidante with her religious convictions encouraging
many of his spiritual inquiries. His support of in de pen dent, intellectually
forceful women also often led to flirtation. His wife even sometimes “won-
dered if [William] . . . really could love me long,” although she found assur-
ance in his “habit of loyalty.” His friendly relations with other women and
his long absences from home for work and writing cast a shadow on their
deep emotional bond; and he seemed fully aware of his shortcomings, as
indicated in his suggestive comment, “I pity all wives . . . in light of my
wife’s example.” His portrait painter Sarah Whitman developed her deep
sympathy for his philosophy from reading chapters of his writings before
publication, starting with Princi ples of Psy chol ogy (1890). He gush
ed with
ideas and feelings in letters to young social worker and reformer Pauline
Goldmark, often signing them “yours affectionately.” He seemed to draw
energy from Goldmark and other women, but then, he did so with men as
well; he was engaging and joshing with a wide circle of friends and col-
leagues. In all his flirtations with women, he never indulged in any sexual
affairs, but he often played the “old and attached friend” and continued dis-
pensing advice as he had been doing with family and friends since his young
adulthood. With his frank and friendly social relations with women and
even more because of his avid commitment to his thinking and writing, he
went through phases of closeness and distance in his marriage, including
flashes of anger and even travel to get away from the family, followed by
regret and outpouring of affection, while he always maintained steadfast
loyalty to “Mrs. Alice. ”36 Even though so many of his be hav iors offended his
wife, they remained fiercely committed to each other with unstinting mu-
tual love.
Despite his mostly traditional views of gender, James did not shy away
from talking about sexual issues. He corresponded with his brother Bob
about his sibling’s marriage possibilities and his mental and physical health;
Bob had back pains, eye prob lems, and depression that were similar to his
own, and he also engaged in bouts of heavy drinking. William continually
spoke bluntly about his medical perspective on sexual prob lems, his own
view of the natu ral healthfulness of sex, and his opposition to sex before
Crises and Construction 213
marriage. In the months before his marriage in 1872, Bob wrote to his older
brother about a trou ble he was having with a “deposit in [his] urine”— which
was likely a reference to spermatorrhœa, an excess of acid or spermatozoa
in the urine. William regarded this as a troublesome but expected part of
sexual vitality, which was in keeping with the views of the time about this
condition as a ner vous disorder or even a cause of it. In the concern for main-
taining energy levels, spermatorrhœa was regarded as a “flowing away” of
vital energy, and it was a “frequent symptom in all kinds of neurasthenia,” a
diagnosis also used to explain Bob’s other symptoms. William regarded it as
a cause for concern but not alarm, as he noted, “The chief effect of this trou-
ble in the vast majority of cases is the depression of spirits it produces— a
depression entirely out of proportion to its cause.” Before marriage, when a
couple had “rarely snatched & passionate interviews,” he expected sexual
arousal and temptations, but warned that acting on them would be “ruinous
to peace of mind” and “certainly dangerous to chastity,” especially if lead-
ing to the “ mistake” of a poor marital choice. Bob was worried about im-
pairment of his sexual health, but William offered unfettered medical reas-
surance: “I don’t think you need be in the least degree anxious about
impotence,” and the condition would not continue “when sexual inter-
course begins regularly” in marriage. In the next few years, when he began
teaching psy chol ogy, the young professor emphasized the privacy of sexual
relations to the point of identifying an “anti- sexual instinct” related to the
“instinct of personal isolation” in shyness, but he also called sexual im-
pulses power ful tendencies to energy, which, he added with a Victorian-
accented bluntness, are “far from habitual, & which are . . . very pleasant. ”37
After Bob married in 1873, apparently his condition did improve, and he
thanked William for his advice, among his “many generosities to me.” And
the younger brother added his “regret and sorrow that you . . . are passing
thro’ the world without knowing the glorious experience of a good mar-
riage.” William wistfully agreed, responding that “I feel quite persuaded
that it [marriage] is the normal state both for men & women, and the health-
iest & best in every way,” and he felt “strong longings for all that it implies.”
Almost four years into his vow not to marry because of his “health [and] the
uncertainty of my prospects,” he now added, “I don’t feel at all sure of being
able always to keep the resolution. ”38 At age thirty- one, his interest in
women was becoming increasingly less impulsive and more forlorn as he
went from flirting with Jesuina on the banks of the Amazon, to watching
Fräuleins through win dows in Dresden, to vowing to remain forever single.
214 Young William James Thinking
His impulse to give abundant consideration to his many options made him
increasingly hesitant and cautious; and his awkwardness with women made
him even more worried about excess philosophizing.
A Palsied Will and Some Brute Power of Re sis tance
Many of young James’s most earnest reflections were about the potential to
apply his will to his own prob lems, especially as spurred by examples
among the ancients, the counterexample of Hamlet, and his awkwardness
with women. He was reading about the importance of will in his physiologi-
cal studies and philosophical discussions, and he found that they generally
sought to explain psy chol ogy in physiological terms. An even more immedi-
ate theoretical resource for James was his enthusiasm for the Stoic view of
the mind’s inner citadel supplying the “discipline of assent” set against the
chancy challenges of fate. In February 1869, when he was sliding into his
worst trou bles, he spoke of the ability of impersonal destiny to knock down
our “pride” and “our dreams” like a “house of cards,” and yet he added in
words that Marcus Aurelius could appreciate: to someone with a strong
will, destiny could not “diminish the moral value” of life, because a “serene
[and] strong will” is beyond the control of destiny. The next month, he again
invoked Stoic thought in proposing that Reason is embedded in Nature, a
potential antidote to the scientific naturalism that he encountered in main-
stream medicine and physiology. The emphasis on material forces within
material nature made him feel “swamped in an empirical philosophy”; the
message he took from his studies was that “we are wholly conditioned, that
not a wiggle of our will happens save as the result of physical laws.” 39 This
position would simply crush his hope to rely on will both philosophically
and for his own well- being. He was intellectually persuaded about theories
of the active will, but he needed a way to make those ideas work tangibly
in his own life, as a firm hypothesis against the counterarguments in his
science, and as a robust practice to counter his sea of trou bles.
James in his psychological texts would make use of close introspective
evaluation of his own mind as a method for generalizing on human mental
traits; in December 1869, however, after years searching for health, with
sickness blocking his way to professional work, he referred to his theoreti-
cal reflections as a last- chance resource. His eye and back prob lems had re-
duced his ability to work;
he had earned his medical degree as a part of his
hope to learn nerve physiology, but he did not feel he could pursue this vo-
cation further; and he was still living at home with no prospects for ro-
Crises and Construction 215
mance or marriage. All these made him feel like a mere spectator, as if he
had to settle for “mere re spect for other forms of life as they pass.” Feeling
emotionally bleak from the intersection of all his prob lems, he asserted, “I
may not study, make, or enjoy— but I can will.” This was, of course, easier
said than done since, he added frankly, “my will is palsied.” Addressing his
simultaneous theoretical and personal challenge, he wrote in his diary that
“the difficulty: ‘to act without hope,’ must be solved.” As he had learned
about the bracing challenge of crises, he seemed to be reaping some insights
from his difficulties, since they had allowed him “to know the limits of one’s
individual faculties”; and following the Stoics, he realized that “to brood
over . . . personal feelings . . . is ‘morbid.’ ” 40 But he had so much to be mor-
bid about that he found it difficult to avoid these feelings.
The depression James strug gled with from 1869 had been building for
years. In the early to middle 1860s, he had felt dark moods occasionally, to
the point of worry about working in an asylum for fear of contagion from
the inmates. During his trip to Germany, his mood often darkened consid-
erably. At first, it emerged in brief asides, such as comments in his letters
home claiming with brittle humor, “I ain’t dead yet.” He could not rid him-
self of his physical symptoms, despite repeated treatment, and they nag-
gingly kept him from fulfilling his scientific goal of laboratory work— and
even drained his will to live. He tried to cling to “the hope of amelioration,”
but “thoughts of the pistol the dagger and the bowl began to usurp an undu-
ely [ sic] large part of my attention.” By the end of 1867, the long northern
Eu ro pean nights made him feel even worse since “ here winter means essen-
tially darkness.” In the next few months, he felt “on the continual verge of
suicide.” Throughout the season, he was disappointed that his health
was not improving, and these prob lems, combined with his isolation,