To Theodore Flournoy

Lamb House, Rye, Aug. 9, 1908.

Dear Flournoy,—I can't make out from my wife's letters whether she has seen you face to face, or only heard accounts of you from Madame Flournoy. She reports you very tired from the "Congress"—but I don't know what Congress has been meeting at Geneva just now. I don't suppose that you will go to the philosophical congress at Heidelberg—I certainly shall not. I doubt whether philosophers will gain so much by talking with each other as other classes of Gelehrten do. One needs to frequenter a colleague daily for a month before one can begin to understand him. It seems to me that the collective life of philosophers is little more than an organization of misunderstandings. I gave eight lectures at Oxford, but besides Schiller and one other tutor, only two persons ever mentioned them to me, and those were the two heads of Manchester College by whom I had been invited. Philosophical work it seems to me must go on in silence and in print exclusively.

You will have heard (either directly or indirectly) from my wife of my reasons for not accompanying them to Geneva. I have been for more than three weeks now at my brother's, and am much better for the simplification. I am very sorry not to have met with you, but I think I took the prudent course in staying away.

I have just read Miss Johnson's report in the last S. P. R. "Proceedings," and a good bit of the proofs of Piddington's on cross-correspondences between Mrs. Piper, Mrs. Verrall, and Mrs. Holland, which is to appear in the next number. You will be much interested, if you can gather the philosophical energy, to go through such an amount of tiresome detail. It seems to me that these reports open a new chapter in the history of automatism; and Piddington's and Johnson's ability is of the highest order. Evidently "automatism" is a word that covers an extraordinary variety of fact. I suppose that you have on the whole been gratified by the "vindication" of Eusapia [Paladino] at the hands of Morselli et al. in Italy. Physical phenomena also seem to be entering upon a new phase in their history.

Well, I will stop, this is only a word of greeting and regret at not seeing you. I got your letter of many weeks ago when we were at Oxford. Don't take the trouble to write now—my wife will bring me all the news of you and your family, and will have given you all mine. Love to Madame F. and all the young ones, too, please. Your ever affectionate

W. J.