by Paul J Croce
to natu ral se lection prompted James’s sharp response: “[I]t really astounds
one to see such a man give such a burlesque misrepre sen ta tion of Darwin’s
book.” The young scientist clearly relished the chance to exercise his scien-
tific skills and take a stand for Darwinism. Also, it was spring, and he was
feeling the winter “yield to a time when nature seems to cooperate with
life”; this contributed to thinking in more optimistic terms again. By early
May 1870, he declared to his brother Henry, “I have I think at last begun to
rise out of the slough of the past 3 months, and I mean to try not to fall back
again.” As James strug gled through improvements and setbacks, and through
the temporary guidance, respectively, of strug gle and ac cep tance, he con-
ceived of a plan for action that would provide more stability. He solemnly
proposed: “[S]trive thou after order.” And he added with grim determina-
tion, “I at last see a certain order in the state I’m in,” indicating how far he
had already progressed toward achieving that goal in coping with his im-
mediate trou bles. 58 With the clarity of his most recent vow, James would
seek order as a platform for balancing his impulses and for motivating
action.
The Will to Order
James’s glimmer of order would come from a surprising quarter, not from faith
in fixity but instead from finding force in his will, an order not from founda-
tional security but from orienting coherence. He took his first step toward
this goal when he declared in an April 1870 diary entry, “I think that yester-
day was a crisis in my life.” With this crisis, he was not reporting trou bles
but excitement from reading the French phi los o pher Charles Renouvier.
Two years earlier, he had already read his work, noticing it was “so diff er ent
228 Young William James Thinking
fr[om]. the namby pamby diffuseness of most,” but the Frenchman’s words
about the will in par tic u lar now leaped out at him with urgency. He found
“no reason why [Renouvier’s] definition of free will— ‘the sustaining of a
thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts’— need be
the definition of an illusion.” Still, he could muster only a tentative prom-
ise to himself: “At any rate, I will assume for the pres ent— until next year—
that [a truly free will] is no illusion.” It was another vow, mere words
about the will, but his terse aphorism provided a clear blueprint: “My first
act of free will shall be to believe in free will.” 59 This outlook suggested a platform for order not from prior security, but in providing direction into
the future.
For all the bravery of James’s tone about his “first act of free will,” his
personal promise was not a first, and it was not an action, but it reinforced
his hope. He did not even fully agree with Renouvier, and even these inspi-
rational words on free will would not end his trou bles. He had made efforts
in this direction before: he had read and discussed philosophies of the will,
urged friends toward assertions of will, and tried it himself, but it was dif-
ficult to sustain. And he was not, in fact, engaging in action, but dwelling in
theory, even as his words served as a promise of action for the next few
months. Still, he had found a guideline for his impulses, which had previ-
ously been tamped down by his trou bles and by his needling sense that per-
haps the personal will was just an illusion compared with the forces of fate
and materialist factors ready to explain it away. While his reading of Renou-
vier was inspiring, James reported directly to the French phi los o pher that
“on other points of your philosophy I still have doubts.” In par tic u lar, James
could not adopt the more thoroughly secular outlook of the French phi los o-
pher; yet, despite Renouvier’s impatience with religion, he had directly bor-
rowed his outlook on freedom from the man he called “my master,” the more
obscure French Catholic mystic Jules Lequyer. While Lequyer endorsed free
will because of his belief that “God . . . created me creator of myself,” Renou-
vier took the idea in a more functional psychological direction as a way to
demote claims to certainty: “[T] here is no certitude; all there is is men who
are certain.” James accepted this voluntarism as a philosophical expression
of his impulse to think of each claim for “certitude” in science or religion as
“nothing but belief, . . . a moral attitude,” even as the pluralism of perspec-
tives prevents claims to ultimate certainty. And this would spur James’s con-
struction of his own theory with each “certainty” serving as a “Sentiment of
Rationality” (1879) shaping philosophical commitment.60
Crises and Construction 229
With these goals for science and religion in mind, James would spend
the next few years trying to fire up his will; his contrasts with most scien-
tific thinking and his own uncertainties filled his introspective scrutinizing
with so many shifts of personal reactions that his path would look like a
parody of zigzagging indecision. But he was actually applying a personal
version of his understanding of science: prior suggestive experiences
served as his research, the Renouvier- inspired assertion was his hypoth-
esis, and his motivational efforts were experiments on himself, now not
with acid phosphate or chloral, but with philosophy. Diary entries with
hope for improvement— but also with examples of discouragement— were
his introspective laboratory reports on his most impor tant experiment: his
explorations of the possibilities for asserting free will to launch his mature
career. While Renouvier and, less directly, Lequyer were the immediate
contexts for his April 1870 resolution, his more substantial guides were in
his ongoing approaches to science and religion, with his hopes to under-
stand the role of freedom in each field of his early education. 61
Before Renouvier’s confirmation of his willful initiative, James had never
been able to sustain his efforts through water- cure treatments or the lessons
of the Stoics, or, most recently, when facing the death of Minny Temple. Re-
nouvier’s ideas added the sharpness of philosophical expression. His own
philosophizing about ac cep tance and strug gle had cleared the ground by
putting identifying labels on his contrasting outlooks during his trou bles;
his Renouvier- inspired theory provided an explanation, and with that a
game plan that focused the lessons of his prior efforts in support of his per-
sis tent hopes. The diary maxim was a confidence- building declaration for
justifying to himself that any one moment was a fresh beginning, built upon
the orderly platform of the will’s inner citadel and the sturdiness of a coherent
and persuasive theory; that guiding maxim could not eliminate the trou bles
that surrounded him, but it did offer a way to manage his discouragements—
and more: it suggested that with a fired-up will those trou bles would be-
come incidental to larger purposes, and even sources of insight. Still, theory
could be very insubstantial: its explanatio
ns were no substitute for experi-
ence. The April 1870 diary entry was exciting, but he wanted more than ab-
stractions. He even counseled himself to work “not in maxims”— the very
gist of his Renouvier- inspired insight. So his conceptual experimentation
would continue as he also vowed to “see to the sequel” of such theoretical
promise in actual action. He specified the combination of theory and action
that would give him direction— “not in Anschauungen [abstract intuitions
230 Young William James Thinking
or contemplative views], but in accumulated acts of thought lies salvation. ”62
With thought as with action, this was no idle inquiry or academic exercise;
this was philosophy for personal direction. His future was on the line.
James’s new philosophical position, culminating in riveting attention to
Renouvier’s words, addressed his years- long ambivalence about philoso-
phizing. For all his attraction to deep reflection through his reading, writ-
ing, and discussion with his friends, he was concerned about its tendency to
be another force that undercut the power of the will. He had been burned
by the very speculations that attracted him because their conflicting ab-
stractions blurred his choices. Renouvier’s idea appealed precisely because
it was a philosophy about willful action rather than a philosophy that would
only encourage further disconcerting reflection. James’s purpose in turn-
ing to philosophy, as with the Stoics, was for guidance through life. Now, to
help his new resolution, he promised himself to “abstain from the mere
speculation and contemplative Grüblei [deep, obsessive searching] in which
my nature takes most delight.” Instead, he would “voluntarily cultivate the
feeling of moral freedom, by reading books favorable to it, as well as by act-
ing.”63 He had tried to cultivate his free initiative before, but he had so often
fallen short. Now he was ready to be more systematic; Renouvier supported
his will to order.
After a few months of taking his own advice, James hoped “my callow
skin being somewhat fledged, I may perhaps return to metaphysical study
and skepticism without danger to my powers of action.” Until then, he
vowed, “care little for speculation; much for the form of my action.” Far
from being an invitation to the nondiscipline of believing anything he
willed, Renouvier’s philosophical sanction was a basis for gaining “habits of
order” and discipline, first steps— but only first steps— for dealing with his
nagging prob lems. He knew how difficult it was to sustain his free will, so
he was prepared to “accumulate grain on grain of willful choice.” In his
physiological and psychological study, James had read Alexander Bain’s
theories of neurophysiology and habit formation; in the Metaphysical Club,
he had heard Nicholas St. John Green and Charles Peirce discuss the sig-
nificance of habits and belief issuing in action; and he had even written
about the importance of habits as early as 1859 when he recorded in his
notebook that the development of intellect depends “more upon the early
habit of cultivating the attention than upon the disparity between the pow-
ers of individuals.” But merely reading and talking had not trained his hab-
its for development of a more forceful will; so, beyond his weaker previous
Crises and Construction 231
personal efforts, his new hypothesis “furnished the exceptionally passion-
ate initiative which Bain posits as needful for the acquisition of habits. ”64
Still, even such initiative for action was not enough.
Recalling his years of strug gle, when his efforts to gain health, female
companionship, vocational and philosophical direction, and even freedom
from worry about insanity led to deep frustration, James bleakly remem-
bered that his only willful, “daring, . . . free initiative . . . [was] suicide”:
willful action full of passion, but end of experiment. However, the
Renouvier- inspired insight would allow him to “go a step further with my
will,” because he would then “not only act with it,” which he had been able
to do with repeated but only temporary successes, “but believe as well,”
with the clarification of purpose and direction that philosophy could pro-
vide. Theory and action had each brought him prob lems, but each had its
merits as well. Rather than choose between them, he integrated them, to
find the benefits of each: his theory asserting belief in free will would serve
as an action, a bold and emboldening “act . . . of thought”; the philosophiz-
ing in this experiment would avoid his trou bles from too much reflection by
providing direction- giving guidance to his actions. Then his theory of “be-
lief in free will” would serve as a platform, not for certainty, but for support
of “my . . . creative power” to work toward philanthropic goals. No matter
how many forces squash or overwhelm the will, he could still posit “the
self[-]governing re sis tance of the ego to the world.” All his trou bles had
pushed him down to this immovable rock. In the spirit of the Stoics, follow-
ing his reading of Bain, and with the support of his discussion partners and
Renouvier’s ideas, this would serve as a new starting point. René Descartes
launched his philosophy from doubting every thing until he realized he was
a thinking thing; James was shaping his philosophy from his awareness
that he was a willing creature. With his capacity for willful strug gle sup-
ported and ignited, he could plausibly maintain that “life . . .”— his own and
his view of life in general— “ shall [be built in] doing and suffering and cre-
ating.”65 In his exuberance, he named this path “salvation” because these
constructive actions offered a personal and philosophical equivalent of a
religious conversion— and an experimental plan.
These personal and philosophical resolutions forecast James’s later will
to believe and pragmatism, but at the time, they were the fruit of years of
inner debate and uncertainty. They echoed in more full form James’s
pledge from an early notebook that “nothing can be done without work”
and his repeated vows to find ways to contribute some good to the world.
232 Young William James Thinking
His experimentation would continue, however, since his trou bles were still
not solved at the time of his brave insight. He even made his April 1870 vow
with a provisional nine- month promise to himself, expecting some changes
only “ after the first of January. ”66 His declarations, however, were an impor-
tant step in the development of a philosophy of life in de pen dent of abso-
lutes, whether from materialist science, the idealism of his father, or any
other secular or spiritual commitment; and these words show his resolve to
build up the power of the will to affect experiences in this world— without
expecting full control of them. Final solutions repeatedly discouraged him
for their lack of flexibility and their inauthenticity to experience, but like
his search for absolutes within finite natu ral spheres as he had detected
among
the ancients, he still sought the idealism associated with absolutes
in his philanthropic hopes for improvement. Now he found ways to take
steps toward those hopes, from integration of philosophy, belief, and action;
no one of these would be sufficient, but with his will to order he would work
on bringing them together.
For the next few weeks in the spring of 1870, sustained by his new resolu-
tion and aided by the warming weather, James felt fairly strong. He was
determined to implement his will. In early May, he was bravely ready to
pledge his “brute power of re sis tance” to any prob lem. He chided the ac-
cepting posture of idealistic philosophies, so ready “to blink the evil out of
sight, and gloss it over.” There was no denying the severity of human prob-
lems and traumas, including his own: they are “as real as the good,” as the
ancients also emphasized. But he declared, at least from the comfort of his
writing desk, that “evil . . . must be accepted and hated and resisted while
there’s breath in our bodies.” By July, however, he sadly reported that “my . . .
symptoms of improvement 2 months ago have not amounted to anything.”
He apologized to his brother Bob in July 1870 for not writing earlier, but he
“hardly felt well enough” to do even that. He was already looking back on
his April declaration for the power of the free will with something like
nostalgia. It reminded him of “ those glorious flushes of excitement during
which one says— ‘let the truth, the internal good unrelated to consequences—
prevail for one hour,’ ” so, no matter what would happen next, “I shall have
lived!” Despite his resolution to continue without expecting results, his
per sis tent trou bles tried his patience; but still he maintained his diary plan.
Within a few months, he had grown weaker, and he even had some regret
about his bold resolution. It was a sound plan for action, but it was still an
Crises and Construction 233
abstraction, and as he had feared for years, “all thought, all emotion which
does not tend to action, is morbid & should be suppressed. ”67 His experi-
ment, so helpful for confirming direction and providing a framework, would
not be sufficient until he could sustain his action.
While James experimented with his philosophy of action, his vacillation