Pragmatism Goes Public

William James (1842-1910)

Grandfather – William (died 1832) - Irish immigrant peddler who became wealthy in upstate New York – investor in Erie Canal – owned the land upon which the city of Syracuse was built

Father – Henry (1811-1882) –Swedenborgian – rescued from Princeton Theological Seminary by the death of his father – never worked

Brother – Henry – famous novelist and literary critic – expatriate

Younger brothers served in Civil War (“Glory”)

Sister Alice was “trapped in a male-dominated family, her considerable literary talents found little room for public expression and she remained a victim throughout her life” (McDermott, in Stuhr, p. 141)

James, who did not have a good role model in his father in terms of resolving his identity-vocational crisis, was irresolute and depressed as a young man in his twenties.

From The Varieties of Religious Experience:

The worst kind of melancholy is that which takes the form of panic fear. Here is an excellent example, for permission to print which I have to thank the sufferer [=William James]. The original is in French, and though the subject was evidently in a bad nervous condition at the time of which he writes, his case has otherwise the merit of extreme simplicity. I translate freely.

"Whilst in this state of philosophic pessimism and general depression of spirits about my prospects, I went one evening into a dressing-room in the twilight to procure some article that was there; when suddenly there fell upon me without any warning, just as if it came out of the darkness, a horrible fear of my own existence. Simultaneously there arose in my mind the image of an epileptic patient whom I had seen in the asylum, a black-haired youth with greenish skin, entirely idiotic, who used to sit all day on one of the benches, or rather shelves against the wall, with his knees drawn up against his chin, and the coarse gray undershirt, which was his only garment, drawn over them inclosing his entire figure. He sat there like a sort of sculptured Egyptian cat or Peruvian mummy, moving nothing but his black eyes and looking absolutely non-human. This image and my fear entered into a species of combination with each other THAT SHAPE AM I, I felt, potentially. Nothing that I possess can defend me against that fate, if the hour for it should strike for me as it struck for him. There was such a horror of him, and such a perception of my own merely momentary discrepancy from him, that it was as if something hitherto solid within my breast gave way entirely, and I became a mass of quivering fear. After this the universe was changed for me altogether. I awoke morning after morning with a horrible dread at the pit of my stomach, and with a sense of the insecurity of life that I never knew before, and that I have never felt since. It was like a revelation; and although the immediate feelings passed away, the experience has made me sympathetic with the morbid feelings of others ever since. It gradually faded, but for months I was unable to go out into the dark alone.

"In general I dreaded to be left alone. I remember wondering how other people could live, how I myself had ever lived, so unconscious of that pit of insecurity beneath the surface of life. My mother in particular, a very cheerful person, seemed to me a perfect paradox in her unconsciousness of danger, which you may well believe I was very careful not to disturb by revelations of my own state of mind (I have always thought that this experience of melancholia of mine had a religious bearing."

On asking this correspondent to explain more fully what he meant by these last words, the answer he wrote was this:--

"I mean that the fear was so invasive and powerful that if I had not clung to scripture-texts like 'The eternal God is my refuge,' etc., 'Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden,' etc., 'I am the resurrection and the life,' etc., I think I should have grown reallyinsane."

April 30, 1870, notebook entry:

 I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life.  I finished the first part of Renouvier's second "Essais" and see no reason why his definition of Free Will--"the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts"--need be the definition of an illusion . . . My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will . . .