To George H. Palmer

Carqueiranne, Apr. 2, 1900.

Glorious old Palmer,—I had come to the point of feeling that my next letter must be to you, when in comes your delightful "favor" of the 18th, with all its news, its convincing clipping, and its enclosures from Bakewell and Sheldon. I have had many impulses to write to Bakewell, but they have all aborted—my powers being so small and so much in Anspruch genommen by correspondence already under way. I judge him to be well and happy. What think you of his wife? I suppose she is no relation of yours. I shouldn't think any of your three candidates would do for that conventional Bryn Mawr. She stoneth the prophets, and I wish she would get X—— and get stung. He made a deplorable impression on me many years ago. The only comment I heard when I gave my address there lately (the last one in my "Talks") was that A—— had hoped for something more technical and psychological! Nevertheless, some good girls seem to come out at Bryn Mawr. I am awfully sorry that Perry is out of place. Unless he gets something good, it seems to me that we ought to get him for a course in Kant. He is certainly the soundest, most normal all-round man of our recent production. Your list for next year interests me muchly. I am glad of Münsterberg's and Santayana's new courses, and hope they'll be good. I'm glad you're back in Ethics and glad that Royce has "Epistemology"—portentous name, and small result, in my opinion, but a substantive discipline which ought, par le temps qui court, to be treated with due formality. I look forward with eagerness to his new volume. What a colossal feat he has performed in these two years—all thrown in by the way, as it were.

Certainly Gifford lectures are a good institution for stimulating production. They have stimulated me so far to produce two lectures of wishy-washy generalities. What is that for a "showing" in six months of absolute leisure? The second lecture used me up so that I must be off a good while again.

No! dear Palmer, the best I can possibly hope for at Cambridge after my return is to be able to carry one half-course. So make all calculations accordingly. As for Windelband, how can I ascertain anything except by writing to him? I shall see no one, nor go to any University environment. My impression is that we must go in for budding genius, if we seek a European. If an American, we can get a sommité! But who? in either case? Verily there is room at the top. S—— seems to be the only Britisher worth thinking of. I imagine we had better train up our own men. A——, B——, C——, either would no doubt do, especially A—— if his health improves. D—— is our last card, from the point of view of policy, no doubt, but from that of inner organization it seems to me that he may have too many points of coalescence with both Münsterberg and Royce, especially the latter.

The great event in my life recently has been the reading of Santayana's book. Although I absolutely reject the platonism of it, I have literally squealed with delight at the imperturbable perfection with which the position is laid down on page after page; and grunted with delight at such a thickening up of our Harvard atmosphere. If our students now could begin really to understand what Royce means with his voluntaristic-pluralistic monism, what Münsterberg means with his dualistic scientificism and platonism, what Santayana means by his pessimistic platonism (I wonder if he and Mg. have had any close mutually encouraging intercourse in this line?), what I mean by my crass pluralism, what you mean by your ethereal idealism, that these are so many religions, ways of fronting life, and worth fighting for, we should have a genuine philosophic universe at Harvard. The best condition of it would be an open conflict and rivalry of the diverse systems. (Alas! that I should be out of it, just as my chance begins!) The world might ring with the struggle, if we devoted ourselves exclusively to belaboring each other.

I now understand Santayana, the man. I never understood him before. But what a perfection of rottenness in a philosophy! I don't think I ever knew the anti-realistic view to be propounded with so impudently superior an air. It is refreshing to see a representative of moribund Latinity rise up and administer such reproof to us barbarians in the hour of our triumph. I imagine Santayana's style to be entirely spontaneous. But it has curious classic echoes. Whole pages of pure Hume in style; others of pure Renan. Nevertheless, how fantastic a philosophy!—as if the "world of values" were independent of existence. It is only as being, that one thing is better than another. The idea of darkness is as good as that of light, as ideas. There is more value in light's being. And the exquisite consolation, when you have ascertained the badness of all fact, in knowing that badness is inferior to goodness, to the end—it only rubs the pessimism in. A man whose egg at breakfast turns out always bad says to himself, "Well, bad and good are not the same, anyhow." That is just the trouble! Moreover, when you come down to the facts, what do your harmonious and integral ideal systems prove to be? in the concrete? Always things burst by the growing content of experience. Dramatic unities; laws of versification; ecclesiastical systems; scholastic doctrines. Bah! Give me Walt Whitman and Browning ten times over, much as the perverse ugliness of the latter at times irritates me, and intensely as I have enjoyed Santayana's attack. The barbarians are in the line of mental growth, and those who do insist that the ideal and the real are dynamically continuous are those by whom the world is to be saved. But I'm nevertheless delighted that the other view, always existing in the world, should at last have found so splendidly impertinent an expression among ourselves. I have meant to write to Santayana; but on second thoughts, and to save myself, I will just ask you to send him this. It saves him from what might be the nuisance of having to reply, and on my part it has the advantage of being more free-spoken and direct. He is certainly an extraordinarily distingué writer. Thank him for existing!

As a contrast, read Jack Chapman's "Practical Agitation." The other pole of thought, and a style all splinters—but a gospel for our rising generation—I hope it will have its effect.

Send me your Noble lectures. I don't see how you could risk it without a MS. If you did fail (which I doubt) you deserved to. Anyhow the printed page makes everything good.

I can no more! Adieu! How is Mrs. Palmer this winter? I hope entirely herself again. You are impartially silent of her and of my wife! The "Transcript" continues to bless us. We move from this hospitable roof to the hotel at Costebelle today. Thence after a fortnight to Geneva, and in May to Nauheim once more, to be reëxamined and sentenced by Schott. Affectionately yours,

W. J.