To Shadworth H. Hodgson

Paignton, S. Devon, Oct. 3, 1908.

Dear Hodgson,—I have been five months in England (you have doubtless heard of my lecturing at Oxford) yet never given you a sign of life. The reason is that I have sedulously kept away from London, which I admire, but at my present time of life abhor, and only touched it two or three times for thirty-six hours to help my wife do her "shopping" (strange use for an elderly philosopher to be put to). The last time I was in London, about a month ago, I called at your affectionately remembered No. 45, only to find you gone to Yorkshire, as I feared I should. I go back in an hour, en route for Liverpool, whence, with wife and daughter, I sail for Boston in the Saxonia. I am literally enchanted with rural England, yet I doubt whether I ever return. I never had a fair chance of getting acquainted with the country here, and if I were a stout pedestrian, which I no longer am, I think I should frequent this land every summer. But in my decrepitude I must make the best of the more effortless relations which I enjoy with nature in my own country. I have seen many philosophers, at Oxford, especially, and James Ward at Cambridge; but, apart from very few conversations, didn't get at close quarters with any of them, and they probably gained as little from me as I from them. "We are columns left alone, of a temple once complete." The power of mutual misunderstanding in philosophy seems infinite, and grows discouraging. Schiller of course, and his pragmatic friend Captain Knox, James Ward, and McDougall, stand out as the most satisfactory talkers. But there is too much fencing and scoring of "points" at Oxford to make construction active.

Good-bye! dear Hodgson, and pray think of me with a little of the affection and intellectual interest with which I always think of you. My Oxford lectures won't appear till next April. Don't read the extracts which the "Hibbert Journal" is publishing. They are torn out of their natural setting. I have, as you probably know, ceased teaching and am enjoying a Carnegie pension. Yours ever fondly,

WM. JAMES.