To Miss Jane Norton.

Nov. 20, 1870.

I have been much interested of late in my lectures, probably much more than my audience, though they show no lack of interest, and ought not to be expected to go beyond their teacher in zeal for knowledge. Still, my lack of experience and want of sympathy with the common or corporate spirit of an audience made me anticipate more than now seems rational from the spontaneity of the creature. An audience has a very passive consciousness. Doubts and questions are a private undercurrent in it, if they stir at all, — and it is difficult to bring them to the surface, the best minds have such awe of the inferior collective one. Still, I have had a number of interesting discussions with members of my class, in which the others seemed to be interested. On Friday, for instance, I was talking of sound and hearing, and questions about the significance of music forced themselves to the surface; and, for the time, we had the best sort of talk, — that of three or four independent minds, only too severely sensible. Our god, the collective animus, does not approve of any otherwise; and it is impossible to avoid the consciousness of his mute presence. He is so like an ox or crocodile, which, so far as it is active, acts on the lowest impulses, either lazy acquiescence or brutal excitement.

Absorbed in ideas, fascinated by them, we may imagine that this animus sympathizes with us. What it sympathizes with is our fascination, our interest. It gazes at what we gaze at. Whether it sees what we see, depends. Don’t apply this, in a feminine way, to my audience in particular, but to the extreme difference of audiences in general from that wisest animus, the independent, individual interlocutor, — a difference which my audience merely suggests to me in contrast with their individualities.

I have ten very regular, attentive listeners, though I must confess that my consciousness of their number and individualities does not grow, but rather diminishes. I feared at the outset that I could not fill forty hours with what I had to say; but more than a third of the course has hardly begun to approach the heart of the subject.

My preparation for the lectures consists, I find, in all that I have ever read or thought about their subject. I depended, not unwisely, as I think, on what my memory could furnish, under the guidance of my text-book; but I was unwise in thinking that this repository would be available in preparation for extempore expositions.

So, latterly, after getting a vivid idea of what was required to meet the intelligence of my audience (whether an adequate one or not, the god only knows), I have written out my lectures. I have now a larger and more varied audience in my imagination than I used to write for, though its number is only ten. I expect to gain from it more than I give in exchange, as in every fair bargain. A disinterestedness that does not do this for us is uninterestedness, and deadens our powers, — our usefulness as well as our selfish enjoyments. I don’t believe the stupid sentimentalist who demands effort without compensation, who thinks that disinterested actions are motiveless. Fascination, no doubt, allures us to heights beyond those to which selfish interest could impel us; but fascination leads us also into quagmires of misery. To be happy, then, one should distinguish rationally and, as I may say, selfishly between fascinating devils and fascinating angels. A bad idea, like that of throwing one’s self over a precipice, or of suicide in any other way, may be as disinterested a fascination as the most fascinating virtue: but the one is to the rational mind that death or stupidity which has no power, and that no power can lead; while the other is rationally the selfish happiness, if I may so say, of the supremely blessed. To

be led or drawn to happiness to which we are not impelled by antecedent motives is the freedom of our wills, or our freedom from selfishness.

This divides our higher from our lower natures. Beasts that perish may be fascinated to their ruin, as moths by a flame; but this capacity for being led beyond what pleasure or pain impels us to do is the characteristic irrationality of human beings, through which we may be led to ruin or to bliss. Ideas are the spirits that thus have the man in charge, and make him act out their wills, even against his own, and take possession of him, even though unwelcome guests. . . .

Though it is very true, as you say, that the tranquillity of old age often comes from a torpor in the nerves, yet it is generally dependent also on the growing supremacy of ideas in our lives. These have a different sort of influence on our wills from that of our sensibilities, and seem to be independent of the contrast of pleasures and pains, but can overwhelm them as modern armies with discipline and gunpowder could the old giants and heroes, or as mythic enchantments did in their time. It has always seemed to me a very wise observation of old Paley’s that the child is never happy when not absorbed in pleasures; but that old age may be happy when free from pain. The brain has a longer lease of life than the senses, and finally comes to live in a remote past, even among the things of its childhood. Much of the happiness, the tranquillity of old age or of intellect, depends, of course, on the quality of our philosophy and experience, and, as you say, on unlearning much. The child thinks of heaven as a show or a refectory. Angels afterward people it, first strong and beautiful, then gracious and wise ones. To unite all these heavens in middle life, to keep the zests of childhood in harmony with the happiness that vigor and beauty and sympathy give to maturity, and to join to them the serenity of intellect, is to be truly happy in fortunate circumstances, if not to be great. Greatness

is, however, too often any thing but happiness, though not a dull, depressing misery. It is often a tumult in which the heavens are at war with each other.

Our lives, though outwardly and apparently without such metamorphoses as insects, have them still internally. With the insect, the transition, though hidden and apparently abrupt, is yet really continued between the larva and the pupa, and from the pupa to the imago. And so the mind grows from feeding on the impressions and the pleasures of sense to a life of inward activity and refined enjoyment, and finally to the pleasures of thought and memory. Your human ideal — “a soul of perfect sensibility and perfect repose”— is not, then, to be met with once in a lifetime, but possibly in the stages of a whole lifetime. It takes a whole life to make a character; and happiness is not the result. Happiness is not a thing to be attained; but it may lie all along the way. This is what the old philosophers meant when they said that happiness is not a real or rational end, and that virtue only could be a real attainment, which, with circumstances beyond our control, might make the fortunate truly happy. Religion promises these fit circumstances, supposing, in its idealistic philosophy, that every hook must have its eye. But there are many unmeet meetings in the natural order of things, and no remedy for them; and neither happiness nor misery is anybody’s desert, except so far as they are everybody’s rational incentives. The human capacity for being led without these incentives is, therefore, the promise of improvement in the race, though not of heaven to the individual. Nevertheless, the two elements combined in your ideal of character are really combined in every source of refined pleasure. Ease and excitement, peace and passion, grace and vivacity, are synonymes of them, and include all pleasures or ends. By their combination, pleasures are refined as in music and in all the fine arts. Richness in musical tones and lustre in beautiful objects come from such combinations

in the senses; and in this they resemble still more refined effects. But I have wandered through all these pages to come to the point where you finished your beginning, and bade me good-night.

I read last summer a part of the article by Mr. Morrison on “Subjective Synthesis;” but I never finished it, for the “Review” was removed from the reading-room before I came round to it again. What I read interested me, though I do not quite agree with it, —or I did not; and now I remember so little, or I have so imperfect an idea of the article as a whole, that I could not fairly criticise it. I shall look for it again, however, and give it a fairer reading. The news, also, in these exciting times, draws my attention away from abstract subjects. The news has just come by telegraph of England’s excitement on the Eastern question, and announces Mr. Mill’s protest in the “Times.” If England really goes to war with Russia, will not the end of the world come next?

I never read Littré’s “Life of Comte,” and I doubt whether I should sympathize with his interest in the subject enough to enjoy it. I have more sympathy with what must be every patriotic French liberal’s feeling about the present state of their country. I suppose that they must all share Thiers’ illusions on this subject, which, I imagine, are not very different from what appeared to be ours, to European eyes, in the gloomiest period of our war. At the same time, the integrity of the French nation, or at any rate of its territory, does not appear to my perhaps prejudiced eyes as quite so important as did our national union. This question of territory is not separable from military glory. It is about changing a line of fortification and defence, instead of abolishing or avoiding one, as in our case.

Chauncey’s University lectures seem to have been only partially successful. In commenting upon the general subject of education, or in answering particular questions, he was very instructive; as, for example, in his article on “The Conflict of Studies,” North American Review, July, 1875; Philosophical Discussions, p. 267. ⁵⁷ and in one of his letters to Miss Howard. Ante, p. 119. ⁵⁸ In dealing also with a single pupil in his own study, he was in many ways an admirable instructor, — original, stimulating, fruitful. But for the systematic work of lecturing, and of handling an audience, he had marked defects, both mental and physical. Professor Gurney, who, as Dean of the College, had special opportunities of knowledge, has said something on this subject in a letter which is printed later on. In another letter, he says: —

. . . “You will have had a reminder, doubtless, that Chauncey delivered a course of University lectures, some years ago, on Psychology, based on Bain’s smaller work, in one volume, on the subject. I did not hear any of them, for they came during my office hours. I suppose, however, from his talks at the time, and from the little I heard from auditors, that they were developments of what seemed to him fruitful topics in the text, and that they were not very successful, — as was, indeed, the case with most of those lectures. The year before his death, you will remember also that he took up in the middle of the year a course in Theoretical Physics, —based on the text-book of Sir William Thomson and Tait,—which had been begun by another, but had to be abandoned by him from finding his work too heavy. He had some ten clever Sophomores in the course; but his heavy artillery was mostly directed over their heads. They complained much to me (as Dean) of their inability to follow him; but Chauncey, with the best intentions, found it almost impossible to accommodate his pace to their

short stride. His examination-papers, by the way, in this course, I remember as models of what such papers should be. Chauncey had as sound views on the subject of education, as fresh and original, and as little biassed by his own peculiar training and deficiencies of sympathy, as those of anybody I ever listened to, but he had no adaptability in practice.”

It will, perhaps, also be interesting to read the account which a listener at Chauncey’s lectures has given of them. A friend Mr. J. B. Warner, a graduate at Cambridge in the class of 1869. ⁵⁹ writes: —

. . . “The audience at his lectures was very small,—not more than half a dozen regular attendants, and very few casuals. . . . They made a class of beginners in philosophy. The lectures were delivered in a monotonous way, without emphasis, and they failed to arouse interest.

“I think the explanation of this is to be found in the elementary character which he was obliged to give them, in order to adapt them to his class. In looking over the notes which I took at the time, I find that he began at the very beginning, and ventured to expect no philosophical training, and hardly even a knowledge of philosophical terms, in his hearers. In this sort of work, he had had, I suppose, no experience. A poorer man might have done it better. The class did not aid him much by discussion, — a thing for which he expressed much regret to me in private. But his monotonous fluency seemed, to those of the class who did not know him, to forbid interruption. He showed the utmost patience; but I do not think that he quite knew how to approach the class. . . . He did not talk over our heads; but he failed to interest us. You may think it strange, for you have undoubtedly seen him, as I often have, interest and instruct children and persons entirely without special training. But what he could do in conversation, stimulated by questions, and himself interested in the effect of his teaching or talking, he could not (or at least

did not) do in these lectures, where he had not one point to expound, but a system to cover, and that to a knot of persons who made little response but devout scribbling in their notebooks.

. . . The picture which is vividly before me is of his face rather a blank, his eyes fastened on the desk below him and therefore appearing shut, his frame almost motionless, and his voice even, to a monotonous degree.”

To show, on the other hand, the nature of Chauncey’s influence over his private pupils, and something of his methods, I will quote a few passages from a letter of one who was under him, both in his public and private instruction: Mr. Henry W. Holland, of Cambridge. ⁶⁰—

“My acquaintance with Mr. Wright began in 1863, when I was in the Lawrence Scientific School. The course there, being adapted merely to the needs of a special calling, seemed too narrow for the objects I had in view; and, having heard of Mr. Wright as an able and learned man, I went to him, and at once decided to take lessons of him in physical and mental science. It was one of the most important and fortunate events of my life. He was an extraordinary teacher for any one who really wanted to study, — always ready with explanations and illustrations of difficult points, always patient and interested. Very soon my hours with him ceased to be mere recitation, and our time was spent more in discussing the points that the lesson raised than in repeating the words of the text-book. Before long I took up Logic, but I did not get a firm grasp of it, and at his suggestion soon took Hamilton’s Metaphysics in its stead (following it with Mill’s Logic), which we discussed very fully. I was exceedingly interested at once. The change was a wonderful one to me; and, with Mr. Wright’s guidance, Hamilton became the great feature of that part of my mental growth. . . . The study

aroused and stimulated my mind as nothing had done before. Mr. Wright was so fair and full in his judgment; and his mental power so far exceeded that of any man that I have ever had the good fortune to know, that he might easily have kept me a mere listener; but his modesty and openness were such that he always treated my suggestions and criticisms as cordially as his own. . . . My lessons lasted only two years or so, but our relation as student and teacher continued to some extent during the dozen years of friendship that followed, for I never ceased to feel the power of his wonderful mind. He used to bring me his writings, or read them to me in his room, particularly of late years, welcoming any suggestion or criticism. . . .

“When he delivered his lectures on Psychology in the University course, they were not all fully written out beforehand; indeed, some were not written at all. He had quite as large an audience as could have been expected, considering the slight attention that the other University lectures received where any work was required from the hearers, — some fifteen or twenty, in his case, I think, rather unequal in philosophical skill, but all attentive and well in hand. . . .

“He had little society talk; but he could converse brilliantly at a dinner table or over the later cigar. He was, however, at his best in his own study, — with his gray dressing-gown on, and with his regularly filled pipe. There many men sought him, as I did, for information or suggestion; and those who came once seldom failed to come again.”