William James Finds His Vocation (February/March 1983 | Volume: 34, Issue: 2)

William James Finds His Vocation

AH article image

Authors: Jacques Barzun

Historic Era:

Historic Theme:

Subject:

February/March 1983 | Volume 34, Issue 2

THE YEAR IS 1890 and the place Cambridge, Massachusetts. On one of the streets leading northeast along the Harvard Yard a man in early middle age—he is, in fact, fortyeight years old, of slight build and medium height but vigorous motion—is walking with a pair of students, boy and girl, who have followed him out of his class in experimental psychology. His face is bearded and his eyes bright blue, and his features reflect the rapidity of his thought. He is William James, the scientist and philosopher. The two who plan to do advanced work in his laboratory are pursuing him with questions, and he is replying as to equals and with his customary fullness of illustration. The girl is short, pretty, and very noticing, and it occurs to her, apropos of the point being discussed, to remark on the large, imposing figure coming toward them. His long, white beard blowing, cane swinging, he seems in a world of his own, talking to himself or else to some invisible listener. He will mow them down if they do not get off the narrow sidewalk. “Whoever he is,” says the girl, “he’s the epitome of the absentminded professor.”

“What you really mean,” says James, “is that he is present-minded somewhere else.” As usual, the Jamesian observation inspires silent thought, and at the next corner he leaves them to turn left. He has remembered that young What’s-His-Name, an uncommonly original undergraduate, lives in one of the dormitories nearby and is reported sick. The young fellow probably hasn’t bothered about a doctor, and his ailment may be something that should not be neglected.

The resolve to pay this visit is not prompted solely by professional feeling—that of a teacher who is also an M. D. True, the atmosphere of Harvard College is still family-like; the place is as yet a largely local institution, not the Olympus among universities to which academic demigods aspire. But the fact is that, at any time or place, William James behaves by nature and habit like no one else. He differs even from people who are out of the ordinary by not remembering that he is one of them. Spontaneous, unaffected, his character is to act on any full-fledged emotion, provided others’ feelings are not hurt. His conscience will approve, and conventions will not stop him. So independent a personality did not please everybody. George Santayana recalled in his memoirs of Harvard that although James’s “position was established,” it had seemed at first “questionable and irregular.” James “had had to be swallowed. ” Once this was done, he was seen as “a marvellous human being”—tolerant, generous, tender to others’ difficulties, and yet strongly affirmative, combative even. His spirit seemed all-embracing, though too secular to be called saintly. There is a name for such a character: it is that of the Magnanimous Man.

THE YEAR 1890 marked the midpoint in James’s creative life. Since the late 1870s, when his