Читать книгу The Letters of William James, Vol. 2 - William James - Страница 2

CAMBRIDGE, Nov. 19, 1893.

My dear Miller,—I have found the work of recommencing teaching unexpectedly formidable after our year of gentlemanly irresponsibility. I seem to have forgotten everything, especially psychology, and the subjects themselves have become so paltry and insignificant-seeming that each lecture has appeared a ghastly farce. Of late things are getting more real; but the experience brings startlingly near to one the wild desert of old-age which lies ahead, and makes me feel like impressing on all chicken-professors like you the paramount urgency of providing for the time when you'll be old fogies, by laying by from your very first year of service a fund on which you may be enabled to "retire" before you're sixty and incapable of any cognitive operation that wasn't ground into you twenty years before, or of any emotion save bewilderment and jealousy of the thinkers of the rising generation.

I am glad to hear that you have more writings on the stocks. I read your paper on "Truth and Error" with bewilderment and jealousy. Either it is Dr. Johnson redivivus striking the earth with his stick and saying, "Matter exists and there's an end on 't," or it is a new David Hume, reincarnated in your form, and so subtle in his simplicity that a decaying mind like mine fails to seize any of the deeper import of his words. The trouble is, I can't tell which it is. But with the help of God I will go at it again this winter, when I settle down to my final bout with Royce's theory, which must result in my either actively becoming a propagator thereof, or actively its enemy and destroyer. It is high time that this more decisive attitude were generated in me, and it ought to take place this winter.

I hardly see more of my colleagues this winter than I did last year. Each of us lies in his burrow, and we meet on the street. Münsterberg is going really splendidly and the Laboratory is a bower of delight. But I do not work there. Royce is in powerful condition.... Yours ever,

W. J.

Although, in the next letter, James poked fun at reformed spelling, he was really in sympathy with the movement to which his correspondent was giving an outspoken support—as Mr. Holt of course understood. "Isn't it abominable"—Professor Palmer has quoted James as exclaiming—"that everybody is expected to spell the same way!" He lent his name to Mr. Carnegie's simplified spelling program, and used to wax honestly indignant when people opposed spelling reform with purely conservative arguments. He cared little about etymology, and saw clearly enough that mere accident and fashion have helped to determine orthography. But in his own writing he never put himself to great pains to reëducate his reflexes. He let his hand write through as often as thro' or thru, and only occasionally bethought him to write 'filosofy' and 'telefone.' When he published, the text of his books showed very few reforms.