by Paul J Croce
48. MT, 123–24.
Notes to Pages 221–227 307
49. William James to Henry James, Ju nior, Jan[uar]y 19, [18]70, CWJ, 1:140; MT,
123–24; PRG, 43; and to Alice Howe Gibbens, [October 6, 1876], CWJ, 4:547. Paul
Croce, “Between Spiritualism and Science,” 212, summarizes vari ous versions of this
distinction between “fighting faith” and “comforting faith” (TCJ, 2:324) as presented
by interpreters of James’s religious thought; none of these includes his first commitment
to this distinction in his 1869 diary.
50. Pomfret notes, in TCJ, 1:301–2.
51. William to Robertson James, [October 1869]; to Charles Ritter, 1 Decembre
[18]69 (my translation of the French original); and to Henry Bowditch, Dec[ember] 29,
[18]69, CWJ, 4:388, 393, 394, 399. In light of his comments relating mental state and
back pain, Simon, Genuine Real ity, calls “William’s back the barometer of his
emotional state” (115), which points toward the mingling of body and mind emerging
in his thought.
52. William to Robertson James, Jan[uar]y 2, [18]70, CWJ, 4:400; [Diary 1],
Jan[uar]y, 1, 1870, [77]; and to Henry James, Ju nior, Jan[uar]y 19, [18]70; May 7, [18]70,
CWJ, 1:140, 159.
53. [Diary 1], Feb[ruar]y 1, 1870, [79–80]. A portion of this entry is also in TCJ, 1:322.
54. Unpublished philosophical notes, [May 1873] (notes archived with William
James to Alice Gibbens, June 7, [18]77, CWJ, 4:570–72); portions of these notes are in
TCJ, 1:322–23, but without citation, and in Bjork, William James, 103, and the editors
of the Correspondence refer to them as “fragments” with “reflections on the mystery
of existence” (CWJ, 4:572); and James to Catherine Havens, Feb[ruar]y 24, [18]69,
CWJ, 4:369 (my translation of the French original).
55. William to Henry James, Jan[uar]y 19, [18]70, CWJ, 1:140; James, [Diary 1],
May 27, [1868]; and shortly before February 1869, 59, [72–73]; Moreau’s Du Haschisch
et de l’aliénation mentale, and La Psychologie morbide; Noll, “Jacques Moreau de
Tours”; Marianne Weber, J. J. Moreau de Tours; Eugene Taylor, William James on
Exceptional Mental States, 150–53; VRE, 22, 190–91; Taves, “Religious Experience and
the Divisible Self”; Boring, A History of Experimental Psy chol ogy, 707; and Kelly, The
Psy chol ogy of the Unconscious.
56. [Diary 1], March 9, 1870, [81] (Minny Temple actually died March 8); Henry
James, Ju nior, to William James, March 29, [1870]; and William to Henry James,
Ju nior, May 7, [18]70, CWJ, 1:153, 157, 153, 159.
57. [Diary 1], March 22, 1870, [82]; Habegger, “New Light”; The Upanishads, 133–34. Robert Richardson, William James, 112–13, 413–14, was the first to evaluate
the Vedic presence in James’s diary entry; he emphasizes the mystical side of James’s
insight, without relating it to his struggling impulses for moral effort. And David
Leary, “New Insights into William James’s Personal Crisis, . . . Part I,” points out that
James likely read the Vedic words in Arthur Schopenhauer (9, 13), who was another
resource for his alternative spiritual thinking.
58. William James to Thomas Ward, March 14, [18]70; and to Henry James,
Ju nior, May 7, [18]70, CWJ, 4:404; 1:159, 158. James continued to be outraged with
Milne- Edwards; [Notebook 26], c. 1870, in the entry “Edwards, H. Milne,” arranged
not by page but alphabetically by entry title.
308 Notes to Pages 228–234
59. [Diary 1], Ap[ri]l 30, [1870], [82]; Perry quotes much of this diary entry:
LWJ, 1:147–48; William to Henry James, Se nior, Oct[ober] 5, [18]68, CWJ, 4:342.
William James was particularly influenced by Renouvier’s first part (“L’Homme
et ses fonctions constituants”) of the second essay ( Traité de psychologie ratio-
nnelle d’après les princi ples du criticisme, tome premier) in Essais de critique
générale; see especially chap. 13, “La Liberté: État de la question; solution
provisoire,” 305–31. Also see Devaux, “Variétés: À propos du ‘Renouvierisme’ de
William James,” 396; J. Alexander Gunn, Modern French Philosophy; Wilbur Long,
“The Philosophy of Charles Renouvier”; Logue, Charles Renouvier; and Brooks,
The Eclectic Legacy.
60. James to Charles Renouvier, 2 Nov[em]bre, [18]72, CWJ, 4:430 (translated in
TCJ, I:662); Viney, “William James on Free Will,” 34, 36, 47; James, review of Bain
and Renouvier, ECR, 325; and “Sentiment of Rationality,” EPH,32–64. Viney,
“William James on Free Will,” and “The American Reception of Jules Lequyer,”
shows the influence of Lequyer’s commitment to free will on Renouvier, which
contributed a dimension more spiritual than in the secular Renouvier to James’s
understanding; and see Paul Croce, “Mannered Memory,” for review of interpreta-
tions about Renouvier’s influence and its timing in relation to James’s “crisis,” and
Logue, Charles Renouvier, 31, for doubts about the extent of Lequyer’s influence on
Renouvier. Also see Viney, “Jules Lequyer and the Openness of God.”
61. As a child, James read Rodolphe Töpffer’s Voyages en Zigzag (1855), a whimsical adventure story, while he was traveling with his family many times across the
Atlantic; Robert Richardson, William James, notes that he “became everlastingly fond
of the term” (20); and Jeremy Carrette, in “Growing Up Zig- Zag,” in Halliwell and
Rasmussen, William James and the Transatlantic Conversation, uses the term as a
meta phor for both his transatlantic childhood and his attention to philosophical
relations in his mature theories. The term also applies to James’s youthful path
through times of strug gle and resignation, and the zigzag imagery also shows his
halting steps toward integration of dual contrast in realms material and immaterial
that would set the stage for his mature comprehension of philosophical relations.
62. [Diary 1], Ap[ri]l 30, [1870], [84].
63. Ibid., [83].
64. Ibid., [83–84]; also LWJ, 1:148; Bain, The Emotions and the Will, 568–70, 500–519; Rylance, Victorian Psy chol ogy, 147–202; O’Donnell, The Origins of Behaviorism, 80–83; Eclipse, 185, 152, 208–09; Menand, The Metaphysical Club, 201–32; and Dixon, “The Psy chol ogy of the Emotions,” 303. Since his own time, James has
per sis tently been charged with promoting unfounded beliefs; see Dickenson Miller,
“The Will to Believe and the Duty to Doubt”; and Bertrand Russell, The Duty to
Doubt.
65. [Diary 1], Ap[ri]l 30, [1870], [84–85].
66. [Notebook 1], [1859], 61; [Diary 1], Ap[ri]l 30, [1870], [83]; and for evaluation of his earlier youthful pledges, see Eclipse, 69–77.
67. William to Henry James, Ju nior, May 7, [18]70, CWJ, 1:159; and to Robertson
James, July 25, [18]70, CWJ, 4:410, 408.
68. William to Robertson James, July 25, [18]70, CWJ, 4:409; James, “The
Energies of Men,” ERM, 130; and Hadot, Inner Citadel, 101.
Notes to Pages 234–243 309
69. Henry James, Ju nior, to Elizabeth Boott, Jan[uary] 24, [1872], Complete Letters of Henry James, 2:431; William James to his family, May 30, [1872], CWJ, 4:422;
Eclipse, 171–72, 284–85, nn. 61–62; and Edward Madden, Chauncey Wright, 43–50,
which deals with one side o
f this sparring relationship, in his emphasis on Wright as a
check on James’s religious impulses. On the discussion group, see Menand, The
Metaphysical Club; and for earlier evaluations, see Eclipse, part III.
70. James, “Against Nihilism” (1873–75), MEN, 150–55; and see his other early
reflections on the relation of empiricism and idealism in “Miscellanea I: Mostly
Concerning Empiricism” (1870–73), MEN, 133–39; Polanyi and Prosch, Meaning,
162–63; see my chapter 3, note 84.
71. James, “Against Nihilism” (1873–75), MEN, 154; VRE, 170,190.
72. William James to his family, May 30, [1972]; and to Henry James, Ju nior,
Aug[ust] 24, [18]72; Oct[tober 10, 18]72, CWJ, 4:422; 1:165, 173, 174; and “ Great Men
and Their Environment,” WB, 171.
73. [Diary 1], April 10, [1873], [88–89], also quoted in TCJ, 1:343–44. On “The Rise of Secularism,” see Eclipse, 10–17.
74. [Diary 1], April 10, [1873], [90], [88], [83], [84], [85]; William James to Henry James, Ju nior, May 7, [18]70; to Robertson James, July 25, [18]70; to Daniel Coit
Gilman, May 4, [1878]; and to Charles Eliot Norton, Nov[ember] 14, [1864], CWJ, 1:159,
4:409, 5:4, 4:94. James’s approach to free will as a position needing faith shows his
awareness of skeptical and scientific challenges to its plausibility. From Spencer, such
as in his Princi ples of Psy chol ogy, to Sam Harris, in Free Will, as an example in our time, science- oriented theorists with naturalistic philosophies have maintained that
apparent free will can be understood in terms of physical factors and explained with
sufficient natu ral knowledge; James perceived that these scientific ambitions
themselves rested on faith in pro gress and that natu ral complexities surpass human
capacities.
75. [Notebook 2], 20.
76. [Diary 1], April 10, [1873], [87–88], [88–89], [89–90]. Leary, “New Insights into William James’s Personal Crisis, . . . Part I,” calls James’s 1870 “return to Renouvier’s
texts . . . booster shots” (23), and the same could be said of James’s 1873 verbal
reinforcements of his hopes for injecting freedom into his convictions.
77. [Diary 1], Ap[ri]l 30, [1870], [88]; “The Dilemma of Determinism” (1884), WB,
139, 140. On James’s “third path” approach to teleology, see my introduction, note 22;
chapter 3, note 84; and notes 70–71 in this chapter. On pragmatism as an alternative
and third way, see Bern stein, The Pragmatic Turn, 106–24, and Beyond Objectivism
and Relativism, 223; Haack, Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate, 23–25; and Kloppen-
berg, Uncertain Victory, 3–63. Charles Taylor portrays James in this spirit, as a
“phi los o pher of the cusp”; see my introduction, note 25.
78. [Diary 1], Ap[ri]l 30, [1870], [85]; WB, 18.
79. Winslow, On Obscure Diseases, 267, 281, and see my chapter 1, note 37; Huxley,
“Physical Basis of Life” (1868), and “The Hypothesis That Animals Are Automata”
(1874), in Methods and Results, 130–65. On du Bois- Reymond, see my chapter 2, notes
21–23, 30; Eclipse, 10–17; and Bowler, Monkey Trials and Gorilla Sermons, 30–78.
80. “Are We Automata?” (1879), EPS, 38–61; ECR, 296; review of Wundt, ECR,
300; Araujo, Wundt and the Philosophical Foundations of Psy chol ogy, 127, 161; Steffens,
310 Notes to Pages 243–248
Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens, 149–50. Also see Ribot, German Psy chol ogy of
To- day, 188–248; Boring, A History, 316–44, 505–17; Woodward and Ash, The
Problematic Science, especially 1–14, 167–97; essays in Koch and Leary, A Century of
Psy chol ogy, especially Sigmund Koch, “Wundt’s Creature,” 8–18, Stephen Toulmin
and David Leary, “The Culture of Empiricism in Psy chol ogy, and Beyond,” 594–617;
O’Donnell, The Origins of Behaviorism, especially 29–41; Danziger, Constructing the
Subject, especially 34–48; Rieber and Robinson, Wilhelm Wundt in History; and Paul
Croce, “Physiology as the Antechamber to Metaphysics.”
81. Jackson, “On the Anatomical and Physiological Localisation of Movements in
the Brain” (1873), in Selected Writings, 1:49; Laycock, Mind and Brain; Roger Smith,
Inhibition, 35, 79; Gregory, Scientific Materialism, 102; and Eclipse, 270, 108, 137. Years later, novelist Caleb Carr even gave a cameo appearance to James advocating free will
in his novel, The Alienist, 56–59, in debate with the main character, Laszlo Kreizler,
who supports the insanity defense based on cutting- edge scientific skepticism about
free will because of bodily and social “contexts” shaping personal choices.
82. Henry James, Se nior, to Henry James, Ju nior, Mar[ch] 18, 1873, LWJ, 1:170;
William James, teaching “Psy chol ogy,” Phil[osophy]. 5 (1880–81), reported by student
George Albert Burdett, “Notes in Philosophy 5,” 122.
83. Charles Peirce, “The Fixation of Belief” (1877) and “How to Make Our Ideas
Clear” (1878), Popu lar Science Monthly, in Writings of Peirce, 3:242–57, 257–76; EPH,
7–22, 32–64; and William to Henry James, Ju nior, Nov[ember] 24, [18]72, CWJ, 1:177.
On Peirce’s essays, see Eclipse, 204–22; and the recent collection, Charles Peirce,
Illustrations of the Logic of Science. On the origins of pragmatism, see Eclipse, 207–15; Thayer, Meaning and Action, 143–45; John Smith, Purpose and Thought, 195–97;
William James, The Writings of William James, 817; and Gerald Myers, William James,
89, 270, 294.
84. Notes for Philosophy 9: Metaphysics (1905–6), ML, 347, 366–67; PRG, 117
(quoting F. C. S. Schiller); WB, 6; PRG, 258; PU, 145, 20; and PRG, 97.
85. James to Thomas Ward, Dec[ember] 30, [18]76; to Alice Gibbens [July 20, 1877]; and to Henry James, Ju nior, May 25, [18]73, CWJ, 4:552, 577–78, and 1:209.
86. James to Daniel Coit Gilman, April 23, [1877]; and to Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Ju nior, May 15, 1868, CWJ, 4:558, 4:302; Cope, “William James’s Correspondence
with Daniel Coit Gilman”; Johns Hopkins and Lowell Lectures, ML, 3–16, 16–43; and
Robert Richardson, William James, 141–47, 168–76. Also see O’Donnell, Origins of
Behaviorism, 91–105; Feinstein, Becoming William James, 316–29; Paul Croce,
“Physiology as the Antechamber to Metaphysics”; Daniel Wilson, Science, Commu-
nity, and the Transformation of American Philosophy; and Bordogna, William James at
the Bound aries.
87. William to Henry James, Ju nior, May 25, [18]73; Sept[ember] 2, [18]73;
Dec[ember] 12, [18]75, CWJ, 1:209, 219, 247.
88. William to Alice Gibbens James, May 13, 1888; [October 9, 1876], CWJ, 4:547;
Simon, Genuine Real ity, 155; and Henry James, Ju nior, to William, May 29, [1878],
CWJ, 1:303. Perry, TCJ, 1:375, says Thomas Davidson introduced Alice to William in
1876; and Gunter, in Alice in Jamesland, 45, suggests he may have met her himself; and
see note 36 in this chapter.
Notes to Pages 249–253 311
89. William James, [Fragments of Early Courses], 1875–85, ML, 125–26; Chapman,
Memories and Milestones, 26; James to James Leuba, Apr[il] 17, 1904, LWJ, 2:212; and
to Alice Gibbens James, July 9, 1898, CWJ, 8:390. On James’s later crises, see Myers,
William James, 51; Seigfried, James’s Radical Reconstruction; Oliver, William James’s
“Springs of Delight,” 88; Barnard, Explori
ng Unseen Worlds, 18–66; and Paul Croce,
“Spilt Mysticism.”
90. William to Henry James, Ju nior, July 14, [1873]; Nov[ember] 14, [18]75 CWJ,
1:215, 243.
91. William to Henry James, Ju nior, July 5, [1876]; Henry to William James, CWJ,
1:268, 169; and Henry James, The American, 69–70.
92. Eugene Taylor, James on Exceptional Mental States, 15; VRE, 134, 135; and Paul Croce, “Mannered Memory.”
93. James, VRE, 135, 134, 135n; Henry James, Se nior, Society the Redeemed Form of Man, 43–54. James was also likely referring to his father in a case culminating in a
strong “sense of guilt,” which he described with reference to Swedenborg; VRE, 164n.
For more comparisons of the “crises” of father and son, see Warren, The Elder Henry
James, 59–86; Young, The Philosophy of Henry James, Se nior, 29–65; Feinstein,
Becoming William James, 241–45; Henry James, Se nior, Society the Redeemed Form of
Man, quoted in Henry James, Se nior: A Se lection, 56; Latham, “Henry James Se nior’s
Mrs. Chichester”; Habegger, The Father, 227–40; King, Iron of Melancholy, 140; Robert
Richardson, William James, 117–18; Fisher, House of Wits, 81–84, 225, 270–71; and
Eclipse, 32, 49–53.
94. James, VRE, 134; and to Frank Abauzit, June 1, 1904, VRE, 508. James’s letter
admitting the identity of the French correspondent first appeared in Théodore
Flournoy’s La Philosophie de William James, 149.
95. William to Henry James, Ju nior, Dec[ember] 5, [18]69, CWJ, 1:128; VRE, 163,
134, 164. The conventional wisdom is that the story is an actual account of James at
some par tic u lar time between 1869 and 1873: for example, Lewis, The Jameses, 201–2,
states that “it occurred in fact in” 1870 and in a par tic u lar place, the second- floor
dressing room of the James house in Cambridge; in correspondence, David Leary has
suggested that the story is from James’s diary itself, but later torn out, and in fact the
diary entry for Ap[ri]l 30, [1870] has a torn page where it “ends” (see those last extant
words referenced in note 65 in this chapter). And in “New Insights into William
James’s Personal Crisis,” Leary argues for the specificity of the crisis with careful
evaluation of James’s reading of Arthur Schopenhauer and John Bunyan, which has