Читать книгу The Letters of William James, Vol. 2 - William James - Страница 43

CAMBRIDGE, Feb. 8 [1899].

Dear Marshall,—Your invitation was perhaps the finest "tribute" the Jameses have ever received, but it is plumb impossible that either of us should accept. Pinned down, by ten thousand jobs and duties, like two Gullivers by the threads of the Lilliputians.

I should "admire" to see the Kiplings again, but it is no go. Now that by his song-making power he is the mightiest force in the formation of the "Anglo-Saxon" character, I wish he would hearken a bit more to his deeper human self and a bit less to his shallower jingo self. If the Anglo-Saxon race would drop its sniveling cant it would have a good deal less of a "burden" to carry. We're the most loathsomely canting crew that God ever made. Kipling knows perfectly well that our camps in the tropics are not college settlements or our armies bands of philanthropists, slumming it; and I think it a shame that he should represent us to ourselves in that light. I wish he would try a bit interpreting the savage soul to us, as he could, instead of using such official and conventional phrases as "half-devil and half-child," which leaves the whole insides out.

Heigh ho!

I have only had time to glance at the first ½ of your paper on Miller. I am delighted you are thus going for him. His whole paper is an ignoratio elenchi, and he doesn't touch a single one of my positions.

Believe me with great regrets and thanks, yours ever,

WM. JAMES.