Читать книгу The Letters of William James, Vol. 2 - William James - Страница 20
XI
To Charles Renouvier
ОглавлениеBurlington, Vt., Aug. 4, 1896.
Dear Mr. Renouvier,—My wife announces to me from Cambridge the reception of two immense volumes from you on the Philosophy of History. I thank you most heartily for the gift, and am more and more amazed at your intellectual and moral power—physical power, too, for the nervous energy required for your work has to be extremely great.
My own nervous energy is a small teacup-full, and is more than consumed by my duties of teaching, so that almost none is left over for writing. I sent you a "New World" the other day, however, with an article in it called "The Will to Believe," in which (if you took the trouble to glance at it) you probably recognized how completely I am still your disciple. In this point perhaps more fully than in any other; and this point is central!
I have to lecture on general "psychology" and "morbid psychology," "the philosophy of nature" and the "philosophy of Kant," thirteen lectures a week for half the year and eight for the rest. Our University moreover inflicts a monstrous amount of routine business on one, faculty meetings and committees of every sort,10 so that during term-time one can do no continuous reading at all—reading of books, I mean. When vacation comes, my brain is so tired that I can read nothing serious for a month. During the past month I have only read Tolstoy's two great novels, which, strange to say, I had never attacked before. I don't like his fatalism and semi-pessimism, but for infallible veracity concerning human nature, and absolute simplicity of method, he makes all the other writers of novels and plays seem like children.
All this proves that I shall be slow in attaining to the reading of your book. I have not yet read Pillon's last Année except some of the book notices and Danriac's article. How admirably clear P. is in style, and what a power of reading he possesses.
I hope, dear Mr. Renouvier, that the years are not weighing heavily upon you, and that this letter will find you well in body and in mind. Yours gratefully and faithfully,
WM. JAMES.
10
James always did a reasonable share of college committee work, especially for the committee of his own department. But although he had exercised a determining influence in the selection of every member of the Philosophical Department who contributed to its fame in his time (except Professor Palmer, who was his senior in service), he never consented to be chairman of the Department. He attended the weekly meetings of the whole Faculty for any business in which he was concerned; otherwise irregularly. He spoke seldom in Faculty. Occasionally he served on special committees. He usually formed an opinion of his own quite quickly, but his habitual tolerance in matters of judgment showed itself in good-natured patience with discussion—this despite the fact that he often chafed at the amount of time consumed. "Now although I happen accidentally to have been on all the committees which have had to do with the proposed reform, and have listened to the interminable Faculty debates last winter, I disclaim all powers or right to speak in the name of the majority. Members of our dear Faculty have a way of discovering reasons fitted exclusively for their idiosyncratic use, and though voting with their neighbors, will often do so on incommunicable grounds. This is doubtless the effect of much learning upon originally ingenious minds; and the result is that the abundance of different points and aspects which a simple question ends by presenting, after a long Faculty discussion, beggars both calculation beforehand and enumeration after the fact."—"The Proposed Shortening of the College Course." Harvard Monthly, Jan., 1891.
