Part 10 (1/2)

”It appears that I must have possessed imagination after all,” said Francis.

”If you will allow me to say it,” said Caesar in his most suave tones, and turning his heavy black eyes upon the king's face, ”you had too much. Had you possessed less imagination and more judgment, you might many times have destroyed the Emperor Charles. To challenge him to fight a duel was a gratuitous and very imaginative piece of civility; to let him escape as you did more than once when you could easily have forced an engagement on terms advantageous to yourself, was unpardonable.”

”I know it,” said Francis, bitterly. ”I was not Caesar.”

”No, sir,” said Johnson in loud, harsh tones, ”nor were you happy in your marriages--”

”I adore learned men,” whispered Francis to Lady Brenda. He had at once recovered his good humour.

”A fact that proves what I was saying, that the element of judgment is necessary in the selection of a wife,” continued the doctor.

”I think it is intuition which makes the right people fall in love with each other,” said Lady Brenda.

”Intuition, madam,” replied Johnson, ”means the mental view; as you use it you mean a very quick and accurate mental view, followed immediately by an unconscious but correct process of deduction. The combination of the two, when they are nicely adjusted, const.i.tutes a kind of judgment which, though it be not always so correct in its conclusions, as that exercised by ordinary logic, has nevertheless the advantage of quickness combined with tolerable precision. For, in matters of love, it is necessary to be quick.”

”Who sups with the devil must have a long spoon,” said Francis, laughing.

”And he who hopes to entertain an angel must keep his house clean,”

returned the doctor.

”Do you believe that people always fall in love very quickly?”

asked Lady Brenda.

”Frequently, though not always. Love dominates quite as much because its attacks are sudden and unexpected, as because most persons believe that to be in love is a desirable state.”

”Love,” said Caesar, ”is a great general and a great strategist, for he rarely fails to surprise the enemy if he can, but he never refuses an open engagement when necessary.”

[1]

”_Cola diritto, sopra il verde smalto mi fur moetrati gli spiriti magni che del verderli in me stesso 'n esalto_”

--INFERNO.

Strange as it may appear, it does not seem to be so much of a descent, or of a break in the chain of continuity, to turn to hear William James speak in letters, which have the effect of conversation. From the very beginning of his precious book I somehow feel that I am part of the little circle about him. The conversation goes on--Mr. James never loses sight of the point of view and sympathies of the party of the second part--and you are not made to feel as an eavesdropper.

Standing on the ladder, unhappily a rather shaky ladder, to put back ”With the Immortals” on the shelf, I pa.s.s Wells's great novel of ”Marriage,” which I would clutch to read again, if I had not already begun this Letter of James--written to his wife:

I have often thought that the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral att.i.tude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: ”This is the real me!” And afterwards, considering the circ.u.mstances in which the man is placed, and noting how some of them are fitted to evoke this att.i.tude, whilst others do not call for it, an outside observer may be able to prophesy where the man may fail, where succeed, where be happy and where miserable. Now as well as I can describe it, this characteristic att.i.tude in me always involves an element of active tension, of holding my own, as it were, and trusting outward things to perform their part so as to make it a full harmony, but without any _guaranty_ that they will. Make it a guaranty--and the att.i.tude immediately becomes to my consciousness stagnant and stingless.

Take away the guaranty, and I feel (provided I am _uberhaupt_ in vigorous condition) a sort of deep enthusiastic bliss, of bitter willingness to do and suffer anything, which translates itself physically by a kind of stinging pain inside my breast-bone (don't smile at this--it is to me an essential element of the whole thing!), and which, although it is a mere mood or emotion to which I can give no form in words, authenticates itself to me as the deepest principle of all active and theoretic determination which I possess....

Personal expression is, after all, what we long for in literature.

Cardinal Newman tells us, I think, in his ”Idea of a University,” that it _is_ the very essence of literature. _Scientia_ is truth, or conclusions stated as truths which stand irrespective of the personality of the speaker or writer. But literature, to be literature, must be personal. It is good literature when it is expressed plastically, and in accordance with a good usage of its time. A reader like myself does not, perhaps, trouble himself sufficiently with the philosophy of William James as represented in these ”Letters.” One has a languid interest in knowing what he thought of Bergson and Nietzsche or even of Hegel; but for the constant reader his detachment or attachment to Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas is not nearly so important as his personal impressions of both the little things and the big things of our contemporary life. Whether you are pragmatic or not, you must, if you are at all in love with life, become a Jamesonian after you have read the ”Letters”! And his son, Mr. Henry James, who, we may hope, may resemble his father in time, has arranged them so well, and kept himself so tactfully in the background, that you feel, too, that whether young Henry is a pragmatist or not, he is a most understanding human being.

The only way to read these ”Letters” is to dip into them here and there, as the only way to make a good salad is to pour the vinegar on drop by drop. To use an oriental metaphor, the oil of appreciation is stimulated by the acid of wit, the salt of wisdom, and the pepper of humour.

Frankly, since I discovered William James as a human being I have begun to read him for the same reason that I read Pepys--for pure enjoyment!

A friend of mine, feeling that I had taken the ”Letters of William James” too frivolously, told me that I ought to go to Mr. Wells to counteract my mediaeval philosophy and too cheerful view of life. Just as if I had not struggled with Mr. Wells, and irritated myself into a temperature in trying to get through his latest preachments! I am not quite sure what I said of Mr. Wells, but I find, in an article by Mr.

Desmond MacCarthy in the ”New Statesman,” just what I ought to have said.