by Paul J Croce
81. ERE; William James to Henry Bowditch, Aug[ust] 12, [18]69, CWJ, 4:383; and
“Address on the Medical Registration Bill,” ECR, 57.
Notes to Pages 134–141 297
Chapter 3 • The Ancient Art of Natu ral Grace
Epigraph. William to Henry James, April 13, 1868, in CWJ, 1:48.
1. “Nature,” Oxford En glish Dictionary, 1:1900. There has been limited attention to James’s interest in the ancients, especially for his early years, and the message has
generally been that he was merely dabbling in ancient culture, or even that he simply
dismissed its perspectives: John McDermott, introduction to William James,
Writings, xxx– xxxi; Levinson, The Religious Investigations of William James, 25;
Bjork, William James, 279; Gerald Myers, William James, 29, 468; Cotkin, William
James, 58; and Barnard, Exploring Unseen Worlds, 14. Sutton, “Marcus Aurelius,
William James and the ‘Science of Religions,’ ” offers more evaluation while main-
taining a focus on his mature works; and Stroud, “James and the Impetus of Stoic
Rhe toric,” shows the importance of Stoicism in the development of his persuasive
style of writing.
2. Abrams, Natu ral Supernaturalism, 68, 70; Aliotta, The Idealistic Reaction against Science; Chadwick, Secularization of the Eu ro pean Mind; Henry James, Se nior,
Substance and Shadow, 229, 249, 274–75; Eugene Taylor, “The Interior Landscape,” 4;
and Eclipse, 49–66.
3. [Diary 1], April 20–21, [1868], 30, 32, 31, 32, 34, 36, 37.
4. William to Henry James, Se nior, Jan[uar]y 22, [18]68; and to Thomas Ward,
Oct[tober] 9 [1868], CWJ, 4:255, 347 (my translation from the French).
5. Tillich, Systematic Theology, 1:10, 12, 36; Eric Mazur and Katie McCarthy,
“Finding Religion in American Popu lar Culture,” in God in the Details, 2; Hammond,
Sacred in a Secular Age; and Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street, xvii.
6. Swift, A Tale of a Tub; Joseph Levine, The Battle of the Books; DeJean, Ancients against Moderns; Joseph Levine, Between the Ancients and the Moderns; Gates, Loose
Canons; Graff, Beyond the Culture Wars; and Knox, The Oldest Dead White Eu ro pean
Males.
7. William to Henry James, [September 7, 1861]; April 6, 1873, in CWJ, 1:2, 196;
Henry James III, introduction to LWJ, 1:20; and Harding, The Boston Athenaeum
Collection, 2.
8. [Notebook 3], 35; William to Henry James, March 9 [1868], CWJ, 1:38.
9. [Diary 1], April 3 [1868], 7–8.
10. Middlekauff, Ancients and Axioms; Reinhold, Classica Americana, 24, 216; Richard, The Found ers and the Classics; Vance, Classical Rome; Shields, The American Aeneas, 9, 58–71, 217–50; and Winterer, The Culture of Classicism. Publius Vergilius
Maro, 70-19 BCE, has been popularly known as Vergil, and in En glish, Virgil.
11. Winterer, Culture of Classicism, 77–98, ix (referring to Stevenson), 110; Vance, Classical Rome, 256; Onians, Classical Art, 15, 33–35, 75, 59–60; James, “Social Value
of the College Bred,” ECR, 106–12; and Lycan, Stetson University, 177.
12. Winterer, Culture of Classicism, 84, 61; Reinhold, Classica Americana, 218–19; Eastlake, Hints on House hold Taste, 234–37; Wright, Building the American
Dream, 33; Gowans, Styles and Types of North American Architecture, 83–93;
Samuel Lewis, On Three Statuettes Found at Tanagra; and Higgins, Tanagra and
the Figurines.
13. Raizis and Papas, American Poets and the Greek Revolution; Flower and
Murphey, A History of Philosophy in Amer i ca, 463–508.
298 Notes to Pages 142–151
14. Winckelmann, Writings on Art; James, [Diary 1], April 22, [1868], 42; Lovejoy,
“Schiller and the Genesis of German Romanticism,” 207, 23; William to Henry James,
Ap[ri]l 5, [18]68, CWJ, 1:41; Dennis Schmidt, On Germans and Other Greeks, 78; and
Marchand, Down from Olympus. On twentieth- century evaluations of the legacy of
the ancients in Western civilization, see Jaeger, Paideia; and Auerbach, Mimesis.
15. Everett, “The History of Grecian Art” (1821); Winterer, Culture of Classicism, 53; Flower and Murphey, A History of American Philosophy, 401–27, 463–508; Vance,
Classical Rome, 349; Reinhold, Classica Americana, 269, 272; and Hopper, The Early
Greeks, 91.
16. Richter, The Portraits of the Greeks, 14–15, 28, 31–33; Winterer, Culture of Classicism, 77–81, 127.
17. Quoted in Vance, Classical Rome, 204.
18. Winterer, Culture of Classicism, 128; Vance, Classical Rome, 203; Saunders, John Smibert, 67–68; Wallach, Exhibiting Contradictions, 38–56; Henry James, Ju nior,
The American Scene, 138; and Orvell, The Real Thing, xv.
19. Jones and Galison, Picturing Science, Producing Art; Crary, Techniques of the Observer; Davis, Circus Age; and Winterer, Culture of Classicism, 129.
20. William to Henry James, Dec[ember] 5, [18]69, CWJ, 1:128; PPS, 105; “The
Sentiment of Rationality,” EPH, 33.
21. [Diary 1], April 11, [1868], 14.
22. [Diary 1], April 1, [1868], 1; PPS, 126, 130.
23. [Diary 1], April 3 [1868], 7–8; Richard Smith, Mallarmé’s Children, 92; and Homer, The Odyssey, book 18, lines 99–101.
24. James, [Diary 1], April 11, April 3 [1868], 14–15, 9.
25. James, [Diary 1], April 10, [1868], 11; Vance, Classical Rome, 251; Symonds, Studies of the Greek Poets; Frank Turner, The Greek Heritage, 114–15; and Curtis,
Disarmed.
26. James, [Diary 1], April 14, [1868], 15, 24; Frank Turner, The Greek Heritage, 65–67.
27. James, [Diary 1], April 11, 16.
28. Oppermann, Rietschel, 129, 130, 123, 95, 65–66, 139–40; James, [Diary 1], April 11, [1868], 16–17.
29. James, [Diary 1], April 11 [1868], 15, 18; R. W. B. Lewis, The Jameses, 195; ERE, 18, 45. In his assessment of ancients’ simple and direct relations with nature, James
anticipates Erich Auerbach, who, in Mimesis, observes that Homer’s heroes “wake
every morning as if it were the first day of their lives: their emotions, though strong,
are simple” (12).
30. Vance, in Classical Rome, 274; Hadot, Veil of Isis, 64; and Jenkyns, Dignity and De cadence, 102–3, paraphrasing S. C. Hall. Novak, Voyages of the Self, 77–101,
compares Winslow Homer and William James.
31. [Diary 1], April 10, [1868], 10–11; Arnold, “Pagan and Mediæval Religious
Sentiment,” and “Marcus Aurelius,” Essays in Criticism, 262; Frank Turner, The Greek
Heritage, 19–27; and Anton, American Naturalism and Greek Philosophy. Barbara
Loerzer, “James, the French Tradition, and the Incomplete Transposition of the
Spiritual into the Aesthetic,” points to James’s discovery of the ancient Greek
Notes to Pages 151–159 299
“challenges to the basic assumptions of Chris tian ity”; in Halliwell and Rasmussen,
James and the Transatlantic Conversation, 72.
32. James, [Diary 1], April 12, [1868], 17, 18; Scully, in The Earth, the Temple, and the Gods, 208. This orientation parallels James’s own emphasis on moral striving; see
chapter 4.
33. Burkert, Greek Religion, 35, 73, 86, 199; Ogilvie, The Romans and Their Gods, 13, 83; Nilsson, A History of Greek Religions; Otto, The Idea of the Holy; Vernant, Myth and Thought among the Greeks, xi– xii, 88; Simon Price, Religions of the Ancient Greeks; and Laskaris, The Art Is Long.
34. Richter, Portraits of the Greeks, 13; Stewart, Greek Sculpture, 3–4.
35.�
� Burkert, Greek Religion, 199, 183; Greene, Natu ral Knowledge, xviii, 46–88; Stewart, Greek Sculpture, 4; and Parker, On Greek Religions, x, 88–95.
36. Burkert, Greek Religion, 8; Veyne, Did the Greeks Believe Their Myths? , 17–21, 52–62, 92; Scarborough, Myth and Modernity, 4; Price, Religions of the Ancient Greeks;
Vernant, Myth and Thought among the Greeks; Hadot, Veil of Isis, 62; Hutchison, The
Modernist Impulse; and Frank Turner, Greek Heritage, 103.
37. Onians, Classical Art, xiii, 1–3; Scully, The Earth, the Temple, and the Gods, 208.
Jaeger, Paideia, argues that the ancient Greeks “did not see any part of [nature] as
separate and cut off from the rest, but always as an ele ment in a living whole” (1:xx).
38. Martin, Hellenistic Religions, 8, 47; Burkert, Greek Religion, 199–202; Frank Turner, The Greek Heritage, 123–27 (Harrison quoted, Turner, 123); Parker, On Greek
Religion, xi; and Bambach, Heidegger’s Roots, 46–56.
39. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic, 149, 105, 117, and “Science as Vocation,” 139, 148–49, 139; James Turner, Without God, Without Creed, 251–54; Vance, Classical
Rome, 364; Ratner- Rosenhagen, American Nietz sche; Febvre, The Prob lem of Unbelief; and Chadwick, The Secularization of the Eu ro pean Mind, 138–39.
40. Martin, Hellenistic Religions, 58–150; Millar, Rome, the Greek World, and the East; MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire, 50–101; and Parker, On Greek
Religion, 98, 246.
41. Dodds, Pagan and Christian, 37, 101–2, 113–15, 132–37; Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Chris tian ity; Fox, Pagans and Christians, 18, 33–35; Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, 458; and MacMullan, Christianizing the Roman Empire, 86–101.
42. James, [Diary 1], April 14, [1868], 24–25, 23–24.
43. James, [Diary 1], April 13, [1868], 22–23; William to Henry James, April 13,
[18]68, CWJ, 1:48, 47; Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow; Cotkin, William James, 40–72;
Leary, “The Influence of Lit er a ture in the Life and Work of William James”; and
Paulin, “Hamlet in Germany.”
44. James, [Diary 1], April 13, [1868], 22–23, 29; William to Henry James, April 13,
[18]68, CWJ, 1:48.
45. William James to Henry James, Se nior, Oct[ober] 5, [18]68; and to Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Ju nior, May 15, 1868, CWJ, 4:342, 298. Shusterman, Body Conscious-
ness, critiques James’s advice to friends and to himself for relying too much on the
will (168); and Erin McKenna, “ Women and William James,” in Tarver and Sullivan,
William James and Feminism, points to the patronizing qualities of his advice,
especially to his sister Alice James.
300 Notes to Pages 159–172
46. William James to Thomas Ward, Oct[tober] 9, [18]68; Dec[ember] 10, [18]68,
CWJ, 4:346 352.
47. William James to Thomas Ward, Jan[uar]y [7, 18]68; April 4, [1869]; and to
Henry Bowditch, Aug[ust] 12, [18]69, CWJ, 4:250–51, 371, 385; R. W. B. Lewis, The
Jameses, 190; WB, 29; and PPS, 131.
48. [Diary 1], April 22 and May 2, [1868], 39, 52–53; William to Henry James,
Ju nior, April 12, [18]68, CWJ, 1:48; James, [Notebook 3], 35, and [Notebook 26], c. 1869,
entry on “Duty,” arranged not by page but alphabetically by entry title.
49. James to Thomas Ward, J, June 8, [18]66, CWJ, 4:140–41.
50. Epictetus, Discourses, 33; James, [Notebook 3], 1863, 35; A. A. Long, Epictetus; and Hard, The Discourses of Epictetus.
51. James, [Notebook 3], 1863, 35; and Paul Croce, “Calming the Screaming Ea gle.”
52. Henry James, Ju nior, review of The Works of Epictetus, 601, 605; William James to Thomas Ward, June 8, [18]66; Jan[uar]y, [7, 18]68; and to Edgar Van Winkle,
March 1, 1858, CWJ, 4:250, 140–41, 14.
53. Sambursky, Physics of the Stoics; A. A. Long, Hellenistic Philosophy, 107–248; Hahm, The Origins of Stoic Cosmology; Sellars, Stoicism; and Kennedy, A New History
of Classical Rhe toric.
54. Hadot, The Inner Citadel, 156–58; Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire, 12; and Arnold, “Marcus Aurelius,” in Essays in Criticism, 282–83.
55. Hadot, The Inner Citadel, 166; Aurelius, Meditations, V:8, IV:40, V:27; Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire, 333; and Epictetus, Discourses, 20.
56. Hadot, The Inner Citadel, 118. Doyle, Free Will, 74, pres ents Stoic philosophy in two layers, pointing out that the physics and logic of the Stoics, with their focus on
overarching Reason, was deterministic, while their ethics emphasized free will.
57. Hadot, The Inner Citadel, 84; Aurelius, Meditations, VI:13; and Epictetus, quoted in Hadot, 167. Also see Meditations, IX:24.
58. Epictetus, Discourses, 61; Hadot, The Inner Citadel, 55, 58; and Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire, 497–99, 9–12, 363, 430.
59. Nussbaum, The Therapy of Desire, 7, 33, 353, 316; Hadot, The Inner Citadel, 48–52, 101, 30–32, 23–24; Herodian, History of the Roman Empire, book 1, chapter 2,
line 4; Jaeger, Paideia, 3:3–7; Rutherford, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius; ; and Sutton, “Marcus Aurelius, William James and the ‘Science of Religions.’ ”
60. William to Robertson James, July 25, [18]70, CWJ, 4:409.
61. William to Henry James, [December 1867]; James to Henry Pickering
Bowditch, May 22, [18]69; William to Henry James, Jan[uar]y 1, [1876]; William James
to Pauline Goldmark, Dec[ember] 28, [1905]; and Henry James, Ju nior, to William
James, Oct[ober] 23, [1876], CWJ, 1:26; 4:378; 1:250; 11:130–31, 1:273.
62. William to Alice James, Dec[ember] 24, [18]73; and to Alice Howe Gibbens
James, [October 9, 1876], CWJ, 4:475, 547; Bradley to James, May 14, 1909, TCJ, 2:353,
640.
63. PPS, 169–70; PBC, 169; and VRE, 77–78, 121, 71–138.
64. James to Alice Howe Gibbens, [October 9, 1876], CWJ, 4:547; James, notes on
Schiller’s “On the Naïve and Sentimental” and “On Grace and Dignity,” [Diary 1],
April 20, [1868], 30–38; Mary Temple to John Chipman Gray, August 29, [1869];
January 25–27, 1870; Temple to William James, [January 15, 1870], CWJ, 4:401;
Notes to Pages 172–179 301
William James, review of Huxley, ECR, 203; and Henry James, Ju nior, Notes of a Son
and Brother, 455.
65. James to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ju nior, May 15, 1868; and to Thomas
Sergeant Perry, Feb[ruary] 4, 1865, CWJ, 4: 303, 96.
66. James to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ju nior, May 15, 1868; and to Thomas Ward,
Oct[ober] 9, [1868], CWJ, 4: 303, 347. James’s spiritual ideas resemble the liberal turn
in modern American religion; see Kittelstrom, The Religion of Democracy.
67. James to Charles Ritter, January 21, [18]69, CWJ, 4:360 (original letter in
French; TCJ, 1:292 for En glish translation); Notes for Philosophy 9, ML, 367; and PU,
142.
68. WB, 8; ERE, 43; James to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ju nior, May 15, 1868, CWJ,
4:303; VRE, 400, 403, 170, 190; and Paul Croce, “Spilt Mysticism.” Thomas Berry, The
Dream of the Earth, 207–8, introduced the term inscendence to refer to his call for an
invention of “a sustainable culture by a descent into our . . . instinctive resources.” On
the relation of James’s mature philosophy and his experiential approach to religion,
see the works on his philosophy of religion cited in my introduction, toward the end
of note 14.
69. VRE, 403 (emphasis in original); PRG, 44; Taves, Fits, Trances, and Visions, 269–95, 255–60; and Aostre Johnson, “James’s Concept of Mystica
l Consciousness,”
in Jim Garrison et al., William James and Education, 151–71; and in critique of James’s
religious views, see Oppenheim, Reverence for the Relations of Life, 79.
70. VRE, 20, 384; PRG, 144; Notes for Philosophy 9 (1905–6), ML, 367; William to
Henry James, [Ju nior], April 13, [18]68, CWJ, 1:48; and James, review of Morley, ECR,
263–64.
71. James to Thomas Ward, Jan[uar]y [7, 18]68; Dec[ember] 30, [18]76, CWJ, 4:249,
552; [Notebook 26], c. 1869, in the entry on “Faith,” arranged not by page but alpha-
betically by entry title; VRE, 1, 33, 400–403; and WB, 19.
72. James to Alice Howe Gibbens, [October 9, 1876]; and to Thomas Ward, March
[18]69, CWJ, 4:547, 370; VRE, 396; Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science, 85; [Diary 1],
April 10, [1873], [88]; and Leary, “New Insights into William James’s Personal Crisis:
Part I. Arthur Schopenhauer.” On James’s own studies, see Eugene Taylor, “Psy chol-
ogy of Religion and Asian Studies,” 69–70; [Notebook 3], which includes James’s
notes on Max Müller, Sacred Books of the East; Cox, My thol ogy of the Aryan Nations;
Baldwin, Pre- historic Nations; and Constant, Du polythéisme romain. Also see Frank
Turner, The Greek Heritage, 103–10; and Marchand, “Philhellenism and the Furor
Orientalis,” 351.
73. James to Thomas Ward, March [18]69; Ward to James, April 4, [1869];] and
James to Charles Ritter, January 21, [18]69, CWJ, 4: 370, 372–73, 359 (original letter in
French; see TCJ, 1: 292 for En glish translation); and Snow, The Two Cultures.
74. Ward to James, April 4, [1869]; and James to Charles Ritter, January 21, [18]69, CWJ, 4:372–73, 359; Alter, Darwinism and the Linguistic Image; Goodrick- Clarke, The
Occult Roots of Nazism; Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny, especially 25–61, 116–86;
Mallowy, “The Aryan Myth,” in In Search of the Indo- Europeans, 266–70; Irmscher,
The Poetics of Natu ral History, 236–81; and Menand, The Metaphysical Club, 117–48.
75. [Notebook 8], “Cause Philosophizing,” 1876–77; William James to Alice Howe
Gibbens, June 7, [18]77, CWJ, 4:571; PRG, 123; PU, 153; and see introduction, note 14.
302 Notes to Pages 180–187