Читать книгу The Letters of William James, Vol. 2 - William James - Страница 42

CAMBRIDGE [Feb. 7, 1899?].

Dear Marshall,—I will hand your paper to Eliot, though I am sure that nothing will come of it in this University.

Moreover, it strikes me that no good will ever come to Art as such from the analytic study of Æsthetics—harm rather, if the abstractions could in any way be made the basis of practice. We should get stark things done on system with all the intangible personal je ne sçais quaw left out. The difference between the first-and second-best things in art absolutely seems to escape verbal definition—it is a matter of a hair, a shade, an inward quiver of some kind—yet what miles away in point of preciousness! Absolutely the same verbal formula applies to the supreme success and to the thing that just misses it, and yet verbal formulas are all that your aesthetics will give.

Surely imitation in the concrete is better for results than any amount of gabble in the abstract. Let the rest of us philosophers gabble, but don't mix us up with the interests of the art department as such! Them's my sentiments.

Thanks for the "cudgels" you are taking up for the "Will to Believe." Miller's article seems to be based solely on my little catchpenny title. Where would he have been if I had called my article "a critique of pure faith" or words to that effect? As it is, he doesn't touch a single one of my points, and slays a mere abstraction. I shall greedily read what you write.

I have been too lazy and hard pressed to write to you about your "Instinct and Reason," which contains many good things in the way of psychology and morals, but which—I tremble to say it before you—on the whole does disappoint me. The religious part especially seems to me to rest on too narrow a phenomenal base, and the formula to be too simple and abstract. But it is a good contribution to American scholarship all the same, and I hope the Philippine Islanders will be forced to study it.

Forgive my brevity and levity. Yours ever,

W. J.