To John Dewey

Rye, Sussex, Aug. 4, 1908.

Dear Dewey,—I don't know whether this will find you in the Adirondacks or elsewhere, but I hope 'twill be on East Hill. My own copy of the Essays in my "honor," which took me by complete surprise on the eve of my departure, was too handsome to take along, so I have but just got round to reading the book, which I find at my brother Henry's, where I have recently come. It is a masterly set of essays of which we may all be proud, distinguished by good style, direct dealing with the facts, and hot running on the trail of truth, regardless of previous conventions and categories. I am sure it hitches the subject of epistemology a good day's journey ahead, and proud indeed am I that it should be dedicated to my memory.

Your own contribution is to my mind the most weighty—unless perhaps Strong's should prove to be so. I rejoice exceedingly that you should have got it out. No one yet has succeeded, it seems to me, in jumping into the centre of your vision. Once there, all the perspectives are clear and open; and when you or some one else of us shall have spoken the exact word that opens the centre to everyone, mediating between it and the old categories and prejudices, people will wonder that there ever could have been any other philosophy. That it is the philosophy of the future, I'll bet my life. Admiringly and affectionately yours,

WM. JAMES.