to me as the
deepest principle of all active and theoretic determination which I
possess....

Personal expression is, after all, what we long for in literature.
Cardinal Newman tells us, I think, in his "Idea of a University," that
it _is_ the very essence of literature. _Scientia_ is truth, or
conclusions stated as truths which stand irrespective of the personality
of the speaker or writer. But literature, to be literature, must be
personal. It is good literature when it is expressed plastically, and in
accordance with a good usage of its time. A reader like myself does not,
perhaps, trouble himself sufficiently with the philosophy of William
James as represented in these "Letters." One has a languid interest in
knowing what he thought of Bergson and Nietzsche or even of Hegel; but
for the constant reader his detachment or attachment to Aristotle and
St. Thomas Aquinas is not nearly so important as his personal
impressions of both the little things and the big things of our
contemporary life. Whether you are pragmatic or not, you must, if you
are at all in love with life, become a Jamesonian after you have read
the "Letters"! And his son, Mr. Henry James, who, we may hope, may
resemble his father in time, has arranged them so well, and kept himself
so tactfully in the background, that you feel, too, that whether young
Henry is a pragmatist or not, he is a most understanding human being.
The only way to read these "Letters" is to dip into them here and there,
as the only way to make a good salad is to pour the vinegar on drop by
drop. To use an oriental metaphor, the oil of appreciation is stimulated
by the acid of wit, the salt of wisdom, and the pepper of humour.
Frankly, since I discovered William James as a human being I have begun
to read him for the same reason that I read Pepys--for pure enjoyment!

A friend of mine, feeling that I had taken the "Letters of William
James" too frivolously, told me that I ought to go to Mr. Wells to
counteract my mediaeval philosophy and too cheerful view of life. Just as
if I had not struggled with Mr. Wells, and irritated myself into a
temperature in trying to get through his latest preachments! I am not
quite sure what I said of Mr. Wells, but I find, in an article by Mr.
Desmond MacCarthy in the "New Statesman," just what I ought to have
said.

This doctrine of the inspired priesthood of authors is exaggerated
and dangerous. Neither has it, you see, preve