To F. C. S. Schiller

Hotel Del Monte,
Monterey, Cal., Apr. 7, 1906.

...What I really want to write about is Papini, the concluding chapter of his "Crepuscolo dei Filosofi," and the February number of the "Leonardo." Likewise Dewey's "Beliefs and Realities," in the "Philosophical Review" for March. I must be very damp powder, slow to burn, and I must be terribly respectful of other people, for I confess that it is only after reading these things (in spite of all you have written to the same effect, and in spite of your tone of announcing judgment to a sinful world), that I seem to have grasped the full import for life and regeneration, the great perspective of the programme, and the renovating character for all things, of Humanism; and the outwornness as of a scarecrow's garments, simulating life by flapping in the wind of nightfall, of all intellectualism, and the blindness and deadness of all who worship intellectualist idols, the Royces and Taylors, and, worse than all, their followers, who, with no inward excuse of nature (being too unoriginal really to prefer anything), just blunder on to the wrong scent, when it is so easy to catch the right one, and then stick to it with the fidelity of inorganic matter. Ha! ha! would that I were young again with this inspiration! Papini is a jewel! To think of that little Dago putting himself ahead of every one of us (even of you, with his Uomo-Dio) at a single stride. And what a writer! and what fecundity! and what courage (careless of nicknames, for it is so easy to call him now the Cyrano de Bergerac of Philosophy)! and what humor and what truth! Dewey's powerful stuff seems also to ring the death-knell of a sentenced world. Yet none of them will see it—Taylor will still write his refutations, etc., etc., when the living world will all be drifting after us. It is queer to be assisting at the éclosion of a great new mental epoch, life, religion, and philosophy in one—I wish I didn't have to lecture, so that I might bear some part of the burden of writing it all out, as we must do, pushing it into all sort of details. But I must for one year longer. We don't get back till June, but pray tell Wells (whose address fehlt mir) to make our house his headquarters if he gets to Boston and finds it the least convenient to do so. Our boys will hug him to their bosoms. Ever thine,

W. J.

The San Francisco earthquake occurred at about five o'clock in the morning on April 18. Rumors of the destruction wrought in the city reached Stanford within a couple of hours and were easily credited, for buildings had been shaken down at Stanford. Miss L. J. Martin, a member of the philosophical department, was thrown into great anxiety about relatives of hers who were in the city, and James offered to accompany her in a search for them, and left Stanford with her by an early morning train. He also promised Mrs. Wm. F. Snow to try to get her news of her husband. Miss Martin found her relatives, and James met Dr. Snow early in the afternoon, and then spent several hours in wandering about the stricken city. He subsequently wrote an account of the disaster, which may be found in "Memories and Studies."