CHAPTER IX.

We reach now the last year of Chauncey’s life. I do not know whether it will seem to others as it does to me that some of the letters of this year have a peculiar and even tender interest, from a greater number of allusions to himself and his own early life than was common with him. But, certainly, there is here a full measure of that same serene, easy, playful, long discourse, with which we have now grown familiar, — the utterance of a mind that seemed to be always on a vacation.

In his speculations on conduct, here as well as elsewhere, those who knew him well may occasionally find some pathetic reminder of a defect. He had, I think, insensibly permitted the scientific habit — that habit which, as he himself has acutely said, refuses to acknowledge any burden of proof — to creep into the region of conduct; unobservant, in his own case, of those laws of life by which conduct of some sort is forced on men, and even inaction is made to count for action. His disorder was not that of Hamlet, where enterprises of great moment sicken from too much thinking: it was the more subtle difficulty of a mind, healthful and vigorous in its speculative activity, which is content to have no enterprises at all, and to decline the unremovable burden of ordering its own life. He had suffered little, except in one grievous particular, from the goads of experience; and he knew little of the hard exigencies of practical affairs, or of the strifes, the griefs, the longings, and the needs of the passionate seeker after moral perfection.

But, meantime, this cool tranquillity of intellect was very favorable to clear thinking; and out of it has come that body of discussion upon the high subjects with which the thinkers of his generation were most busy, — which has seemed to his friends so solid, so simple, and so fruitful. As to the correctness of his results, there must, of course, be a variety of opinion; this is a matter which has to do with premises, as well as methods of reasoning. But, if I may judge from my own case, those who differ from Wright can hardly have a wholesomer exercise than to read him. ⁸²

To Miss Jane Norton.

Jan. 5, 1875.

All the incidents of the New Years of my boyhood, which recur to my recollection readily, were very pleasant, I believe; and yet, like nearly all the rest of what has found lodgement in the garret of my memory, have a tinge of melancholy. This, I think, is not an indication at all of the surrounding love and kindness, or the reverse, in the circumstances of childhood, but is in accordance with a constitutional peculiarity.

I hold and have maintained with you, I believe, that memory is one of the most fallacious of our faculties (if a power so fundamental, the essential mind itself, is properly called a faculty), when not checked by other records or by rational criticism. The fallaciousness is not so striking as that of the single senses, perhaps, because its fallible testimony is in general not so important as that of the eye or ear to present interests. Yet the things remembered are not just and truly proportioned pictures of the past, but incidents which were impressed on account even of their abnormality, and through the predominance of feelings which temperament determined, rather than the actual and normal surroundings of life. I do

not account, however, that youth or woman unhappy, unlucky, or less level with the realities of life whom melancholy has marked for her own. He may, if not too deeply marked, be even happier in the early renunciation of all expectation or wish for happiness. This abstraction, “happiness,” is objectively a dream, and has no simple, single, answering feeling or passion in our natures. Its meaning is realized only in the concrete; in the particular desires, purposes, and passions, which happen to have their way, unopposed by others equally strong, or by untoward circumstances. The wish for a happy New Year is from this point of view an affectation. What we really, simply, and sincerely wish is the furtherance of the particular projects in the contemplation of which the present happiness or realized interests of the human mind so largely consist.

It is not to a general happiness through the year that we immediately aspire. The rational Promethean human mind is composed of hooks and eyes for the particular felicities of the morrows, the indefinitely recurring mornings of life and strength. “Good morrow” is a genuine wish, a sympathy with the real efficients of activity and happiness.

You write to this effect in what you say of the paltry value of the good resolutions of this season. I go farther, and assert their positive injury to the moral nature. Their reinvigorating effect on one’s morality is like that of a stimulant that calls out an energy which it does not replace. Though meant for a future, they only serve a present occasion, most likely at the expense of the future, and are very damaging to conscience. The true moral strategy is to surround one’s self with objective safeguards and incitements, and not to trust these raw recruits (these seasonal resolutions that are only spasms of enthusiasm in an enfeebled will), which may desert at the first occasion of real need. It is not wisdom, but conceit which relies on them. . . .

I have continued the warfare which I had begun, when we parted, against the æsthetic imagination, — against the word “imagination,” as used by æsthetic writers, not against what they denote by the word.

I had in a club-talk, a few days ago, a good illustration of the misleading influence of this misnaming, and of the pretence of explanation which namings often involve, when they are, at best, only true classifications or divisions; the name unhappily connoting attributes that are not the real grounds of the classification. The a priori philosophy surreptitiously introduces itself into theories of art and genius through such misnamings, — though my chief objection to this use of the word “imagination” was on account of its being already appropriated to a precise scientific meaning; a meaning whose limits and precision are disregarded in the æsthetic use of the word. Such words as “wit” and “humor,” or even “fancy” (though not this as in any true antithesis to what should be meant by imagination), are unscientific terms, and æsthetic writers are at liberty to wander at their own sweet wills within the limits of vagueness which these terms cover. But for the other count, — the misleading character of the theory implicated in “imagination” as the name of the poet’s faculty (his faculties, one should say, for his equipment is not in one single point or faculty alone): I had asserted that Kepler’s third law, “that the times of the planet’s revolutions are in the sesquiplicate ratio of their mean distances,” did not imply so much invention on his part, nor (as was more properly the case) so much learning and discipline in mathematics, as some of his earlier, untrue hypotheses; which, because they proved false, are now called fanciful. My opponent said that this true hypothesis is properly referred to the inventor’s “imagination,” because it was in accordance with the nature of things (!) As if this omniscient but long-time dumb faculty were a natural algebraist, and knew a priori the meaning of

sesquiplicate. Here you see a natural consequence of the fallacies of naming. My friend had gathered from this false naming that somehow there existed a faculty in us which is independent of the discipline's and tests of experience, and guides us rightly in our imaginations when freed from the disturbances of capricious fancy. Our familiarity with what to Kepler must a priori have seemed as fanciful as many of his failing hypotheses, being thus mistaken for imagination in him, becomes proof of the want in any one, so thinking, of the faculty or faculties so badly misnamed.

The fact that there is a heap of truth in the inference so drawn only makes the matter worse. Experience itself, and not any faculty independent of it, is what makes the imagination work more steadily toward the truth in some minds than in others, or on certain subjects better than on different ones. Thorough acquaintance with what is already known or accomplished on any subject guides the guess or device, especially in a negative way; or leads to the speedy rejection of many inventions, which a priori are just as good as the true ones.

But this experience is often in the intuitive mode of mental apprehension, or is not distinctly, reflectively, or discursively apprehended. Our judgments of inventions as they arise in imagination are in the form of common-sense judgments, though founded none the less on experience, and in fact on the inventor’s own experience.

This is especially the case in æsthetic judgments. They are in the common-sense shape, or are judgments for which the reasons or grounds do not distinctly appear in thought; the very subtlety of which, indeed, is impaired by habits of analysis. So that an artist with theories is generally the worse artist for them. Now, the man of genius, whether poetical or scientific, has greater capacities with given opportunities to gather this sort of experience, and the fertility of his imagination is correspondingly greater than that of

common minds; but it is not in this fertility — it is not in imagination at all — that his characteristic excellence consists. It is in the tests he can immediately apply from experience either through his culture or superior spontaneous observation; or where these fail (as they generally do, with reference to any great originality) it is in his patient self-directed study and his power of prolonged application, or in the efficient motives to these, that his superiority lies.

But artistic or poetic genius requires for its full determination some further qualification of this definition. Such a genius has, I think, either originally, or by early discipline, greater voluntary power over modes of feeling. Feeling plays a greater part both in the spontaneous and in the controlled imaginations of such a mind than is common. Now, it is a universal fact in psychology that in a state of passion, or simple, definite feeling, the ideas, images, and expressions that are congruent with such a state arise alone. All irrelevant fancies are excluded by it. This therefore serves as a test or standard, analogous to the objective standard of experience in which the waking eye or ear governs the dream of thought, suppressing all that is irrelevant to clear perception; and we are said to perceive the truth or the reality. This “truth” of imagination, though analogous to that accordance, that agreement in significance, of thought with experience, of the universal with the particulars of experience, — in which truth really consists, though analogous to such truth in being a controlled or rectified fancy, is yet more properly called the “fit ,” the “becoming;” or when it is a revelation by the poet or artist of that in the harmony and justness of expression, which the common mind cannot attain without his aid, it is properly the beautiful or the fine. The ancients honored this name, “the beautiful,” more than we do, and thought it an equal of the true. With us, the word has acquired a less serious meaning, and a taint of sybaritism; so

that serious, moralizing art critics, to assist the appearance of levity in their favorite study, and with a just sense of the moral worth of beauty, have abused the name of truth. But allowing their aim and study to be called “truth,” or “truth of imagination,” it is no more properly an essential element of an internal faculty to be called imagination, and distinguished from fancy, than proper truth is an attribute of imagination in clear, objective perception. In neither case does the imagination contain the test of truth. It is rather rectified by the real standard. In poetic or artistic perception, capacities of simple, sincere, unaffected feeling is the rectifying standard. In outward perception, the standard is in our waking senses. In both cases, the imagination becomes true. In itself, it is no other than the fancy, and is neither true nor false a priori; though more likely false than true, when very fertile, and not governed by the excellences of mental equipment, which have been unjustly attributed to it. That which is misnamed “imagination” is the capacity of taking in truths from experience, not that of evolving them from within, in any other sense than implicit or common-sense judgments are from within; — unless we include also in this faculty connections of feeling with expression, so far, at least, as these, without discipline, may go.

You demanded, in our talk on this subject, what name I would substitute for “imagination,” when speaking, for example, of studies which are said, with real meaning, “to educate the imagination.” You objected to “cultivating studies,” because of its pretension; and to “the sentiments,” as smacking of affectation. Feeling, I know, is a favorite word; and lest pretension and affectation should approach too near, or lay rude, sacrilegious hands on what is so foreign to their nature, let us say the studies we seek to define are those that require, and, when genuinely pursued, develop through exercise true capacities of natural feeling.

Or let us say that certain studies educate, refine, and furnish with appropriate materials the natural feelings or the genuine sentiments of the man. The word “liberal” would hardly, do, and is affected by both technicality and vagueness. But what if one cannot find an equivalent expression to take the place of what is, on other grounds, objectionable?

Terseness is a good quality in a phrase; but when it is at the expense of periphrasis elsewhere, or compels a writer like Professor Tyndall to import the German Vorstellung in order not to get confused with æsthetic writers, it is proper for the latter to take a lesson in lexicography.

But my talk has run too continuously on from our last debate ; and true feeling would perhaps have put more vividly before my imagination the change in your interests and circumstances. Metaphysics might do as a diversion from your cares at home, but may not so well season your relaxations. Still, I find a new problem in your letter, — that on belief in dreams. Dr. Maudsley somewhere says that the development of incipient diseases are sometimes anticipated in dreams, and, he thinks, naturally from the altered proportions of our feelings in sleep; for symptoms scarcely perceptible in the presence of vivid waking sensations may assert themselves enough in sleep to govern the dream. And I may add that ideas, not unfounded in our experience, and really true, but opposed to some waking conviction or decision of our judgments, may assert themselves in dreams, and attach themselves vividly to interests which will give them weight in waking reflections; especially if we are in the habit of recalling dreams. But in this case the true ones remembered are as likely to be in the same small proportion to the false as in the case of rarely recollected dreams. The sensitiveness of certain conditions of ill-health is perhaps a more frequent cause for concern at dreams than race-peculiarities, nationality, temperament, or even habit. But into what a didactic vein I have fallen!

The following memorandum of a conversation with Wright, on “Living according to Nature,” was taken down by one of his friends in January, 1875: —

It is permissible to use the word Nature as the name of the harmony of things, but it is not permissible to confound the harmony in the whole, the laws of nature and the invisible orders both without and within us, — to confound the law of causation, whose formula is, “If thus, then so,” with the harmony we seek as moral beings, which without our seeking would not, and does not, exist. This (cosmically considered) lesser, but (morally considered) greater, or more important harmony sounding in our very ears, always alluring, though never actually or invariably regulating, like proper laws of nature, the agency of moral beings, is, in its completeness, an ideal harmony. What are properly called the laws of nature pervade the (cosmically speaking) lesser harmony; for we are parts of fate: our lives are also made up of the inevitable, when looked at from the cosmic scientific point of view.

The mistake of mystical philosophy is to suppose this lesser harmony to pervade also, or to be a part of the cosmically greater. This is Plato’s realism. The laws of this harmony are of a wholly different order, different in meaning, out of the other’s sphere, neither contradictory to nor in conformity with those of the scientific cosmos; though involving them as the laws of living structures involve those of matter generally, or as the laws of mechanical structure involve those of its materials and surrounding conditions. Mechanical structures, living structures, artistic and moral structures, are all fittings to ends; and these, though not absolute accidents (since nothing in the cosmos is absolutely accidental), yet relatively to any discoverable principles of the cosmos, are accidents. Now, the conditions which determine these several

forms of fitness are in the cosmos, but the ends are not, — except so far as human imaginations preconceive them, or as the actualities of constructions in living forms in art and in moral character are their embodiment. Being embodied more or less perfectly according to the standard of what can be conceived, they seek, or stimulate to action (by a law which is one of the cosmic ones), for their perpetuation and for their perfection; according to the abstract or ideal standard of that which they alone are, or which exists alone in them.

But this ideal standard has its determinants partly in inherited dispositions, and still more in those which early religious training induces. M. Antoninus was not a profound thinker upon what had made him what he was or felt himself to be. Innate predispositions to perceptions and actions, which, if right in their directive agency, are in accordance with reason, — that is, with the results of experience and observation, — are not thereby made a standard, or at any rate an independent standard, for self-culture. The way to follow Nature is to observe the means which, in accordance with the cosmic laws or conditions of Nature, and of human nature, are found to be conducive to self-sanctioned ends in the higher social or moral life of man, or in his reflective social nature; naturam observare is the way naturam sequi. This research observes the conditions of necessity, the laws of inevitable sequence in cosmic nature, and seeks to join to them the ideals of life in such manner as will realize or make actual these ideals as perfectly as possible in outward action. In this relation, Nature is not a teacher, but only a part of the lesson, and is a guide only in the sense in which a mountain-pass is a guide; namely, the limits within which our efforts are saved from total failure.

While, therefore, it is not permissible, in respect to the harmony of ideal ends with the outward activities of life, to confound it with those laws of universal nature that are not to be

obeyed, since they cannot be violated; yet the theoretical fault of this confusion is in some sort compensated by the practical value and force it has had with many minds of the poetical type. To imagine an ideal to be embodied somewhere or actualized, and to have an independent existence which, instead of being determined by reason, — that is, experience, — is what determines it, and especially determines the innate, intuitional, or spontaneous reason, seems to be a very natural tendency of the human imagination. Reverence, or at least the poetical form of it, demands that power and goodness or moral harmony should exist in actu, in a being in real nature, as well as in posse or ideally. Historically, this tendency has been of the greatest service to moral advancement. The Nature appealed to as a standard has been, in fact, a realized abstraction, an imagined embodiment of moral convictions, whether called the will and the laws of the gods or of universal nature or of common nature, or called a harmony which is objective or actually external to the idea of it. But, while theoretically wrong, its practical effect as against the superstitious reverence for idealized realities, dead forms, institutions, and sanctions, has been immense. Natural rights were pragmatically real, so long as divine rights remained so. The Nature still deserving our worship is the harmony of an elevated ideal standard, pragmatically opposed to the claims of traditional institutions and sanctions.

To the Same.

February, 1875.

... I have meditated for a long time a machine for setting down thoughts, which should only involve the easiest play of the fingers, without subjecting to servitude the arm or the body, and would be as easy of manipulation as the deaf and dumb alphabet, but more expeditious. No doubt thoughts

— even the thoughts of the foolish — are of sufficient dignity to hold in subjection and rightfully claim the service of all the muscles. But true Christian democracy teaches that mercy is above commandment; and that the dignity shown chiefly by the latter is one not sufficiently shown otherwise.

To Mr. Darwin.

Cambridge, Feb. 24, 1875.

Your letter of last September, after its long wanderings, reached me at length through Dr. Gray in time to serve as a Valentine, and gave me much pleasure, of which not the least part was the release I had from the discipline of a doubt whether my long letter of last summer was properly mailed or ever reached you.

It seemed to me, and this was my chief motive in writing, that a letter to one interested especially in some of the many points of investigation which lay loose in my mind, would serve to give them a greater degree of coherency, while preserving for me more freedom than was compatible with the more vigorous requisites of an essay. I have found that writing in any other style is apt to crystallize one’s meditations into opinions too fixed for clear, open thought. I was quite willing to submit them, however, as comparative crudities to so friendly a critic, and I am much gratified that you found so little to object to in the letter.

I had thought a little upon the point you make that the two motions of the head, that of denial and that of inspection, are widely different, and had conceived of their grading into each other in the expression of the mixed mental states. I have since made a sort of geometrical analysis of them as extremes of a series of movements. Thus, placing and holding fixedly the tip of the forefinger on the top of the head, the head can only move on an axis through this point and the turning-point

in the neck. This is one extreme, — the gesture of denial, refusal, warning, &c. By placing the finger successively on the forehead, the tip of the nose, and the chin, the axis of rotation is successfully brought forward by stages toward the horizontal direction it has in the most neutral of critical considerations. But already at the forehead there is a decided element of consideration introduced into the gesture, according to my instinct of interpretation. Professor Lowell is unable to recall distinctly the character of the movement, like our negative, which he saw in Southern Italy, and learned to understand as an affirmative one; but he is so far interested in the question that he has offered to make inquiries of Signor Monti, an Italian gentleman, a native of Sicily, who formerly taught the Italian language in this College. If, as I hope, he gets the true gesture from him, I will preserve and transmit to you as accurate a description of it as I can.

Very lately, while reading for the first time in my life the Memorabilia of Xenophon, in translation, I came to a passage near the beginning of Chapter iv., Book i, where Socrates gives an interesting statement of the argument from the appearance of design for the existence of the gods; and I was struck with this sentence: “Is it not,” he asks, “like the work of forethought ... to make the eyelashes grow as a screen, that the winds may not injure it [the eye]? To make a coping on the parts above the eyes with the eyebrows, that the perspiration from the head may not annoy them?” It was with the latter query that I was most struck; for it was a new suggestion to me, and seemed truer than the first. I found that the idea of this use was in the minds of several of my friends; but whence they derived it, they could not tell, whether from literature or direct experience. One gentleman, formerly much devoted to athletic exercises, told me that, in rowing, the perspiration was often annoying from running into the outer corners of his eyes. His eyebrows are rather thin and short. Dr. W.

James, Instructor in Physiology in the College, who went with Professor Agassiz on his first expedition to South America, says that he spent several hours a day in a part of the expedition fishing in the Amazon, under a scorching sun; and that the sweat, running from his forehead and drying into a brine, irritated his eyes excessively, so that he was obliged to bathe them frequently in the river. Fishing under a broiling sun in a tropical stream seems not far removed from the conditions of existence of primeval man. I thought that if you had referred to this use of the eyebrows, I should have remembered it; but I made a cursory, though fruitless search for it.

I have lately read, by the way, the principal additions and corrections in your edition of the “Descent of Man;” and your less qualified adoption of Mr. Wallace’s views on the use of the lay of the hair on the gorilla’s fore-arms gave me another hint toward the little speculation on uses, which I venture to propound at the risk of making another long letter. The survival of the panniculus carnosus in the human forehead and scalp (the latter partially rudimentary), the development of the corrugator muscles, the survival, or perhaps even the development of the eyebrows, and the length of the hair on the head, — all seem to me related to the denuding of the forehead, which doubtless was by sexual selection, or for ornament. The arrangement of the hair on the foreheads of most hairy animals, and in the eyebrows as well as in the eyelashes (which do not serve, as Socrates thought, for screens against the wind), seems to be adapted to keep the rain and perspiration out of their eyes, or to serve for shedding water. Now, the loss of this use in the hair on the forehead would have been a considerable expense for beauty, if the correlative adaptations made for it below and above, in the retention or increase, perhaps, of the hair on the brows, and the increase of length in the hair on the head (to serve as a parting thatch for shedding rain, in place of the old shingles), had not taken

its place, and laid the foundations for later developments of beauty. The prototypes of the long hairs, or vibrissæ, in the eyebrows of some families, perhaps served the same use; I have met with an instance of this occurring in three successive generations, at least. But the eyebrows are sometimes curly, and may serve (as a friend suggests, who has curly ones, and is one of the three who have had vibrissæ) to catch the perspiration and rain, which strokes of the hand would remove from time to time. It occurred to me that, in the same way, a negro's woolly mat might serve to catch a tropical shower, and hold it till he has an opportunity to shake it out. Perhaps the panniculus of the scalp served for this latter purpose. The reversal of direction in the hair bordering the forehead in some monkeys may be for a similar service; the above suggested use of the panniculus could be experimentally determined in this case. The cowlicks on the foreheads of many children may be relics of, or reversions to, a similar normal arrangement in the straight-haired varieties or races of primeval men. The vibrissæ of the brows, especially in curly ones, would have served in former times as gargoyles; as in the nose they apparently serve for joining drops, and extending the conducting and evaporating surfaces of the nasal passages, thus promoting the circulation of the lachrymal ducts.

Other features serving the same important end in vision, of shedding water, I have hinted at above; namely, the muscles which produce the transverse and vertical furrows of the forehead. Their non-appearance or slight development in childhood indicates the lateness of their acquisition by the race. That these furrows have been serviceable as drains or watercourses, taking the place of arrangement in the hair formerly on the forehead, is not inconsistent with the uses of the grief-muscles which you seem to me to have fully made out. To compress the eyeball in the more energetic action of the corrugators, and to shade the eyes from excessive light by their

lesser action, seem to be unquestionable uses. That they should also serve this other use, and that their development has largely depended on this use, are, to me, none the less credible and even probable views.

The inquiry as to which of several real uses is the one through which natural selection has acted for the development of any faculty or organ, or stands and has stood in the first rank of essential importance to an animal’s welfare in the struggle for life, has for several years seemed to me a somewhat less important question than it seemed formerly and still appears to most thinkers on the subject. The reasons you give why sexual selection should have had much to do with several of the features, of which I have spoken, I still believe are perfectly valid. The uses of the rattling of the rattlesnake, as a protection, by warning its enemies, and as a sexual call, are not rival uses; neither are the high-reaching and the fore-seeing uses of the giraffe’s neck rivals, but are in the most intimate conspiracy to the same effects. Furthermore, it seems to me presumable that in a long course of development, even in cases of highly specialized faculties, existing uses have risen in succession or alternately to the place of first importance, as in the various uses of the hand. This principle of a plurality of existing uses involves a very important influence in secondary uses, whether these are incidental or correlative acquisitions, or are the more or less surpassed and superseded ones. They seem to connect in some cases the action of natural selection with the inherited effects of habit and exercise. An animal may, for a comfort or convenience, which bears but little reference to its essential welfare, be indirectly furthering, through exercise, certain faculties which, though rarely called into exercise in functions of prime importance, may nevertheless have, or may come to have, such functions. Thus, the constant or frequent use of the corrugators for forming vertical furrows and draining the forehead into the lachrymal

ducts, or down the nose, or drawing the brows together for shading the eyes, may have been a preparation of them for their rarer but more important surgical service of quickly correcting the circulation of the eyes, and thus keeping the vision keen in conditions of exposure to danger.

There is nothing in this principle which is really new or different from what you have set forth in your works, except the emphasis or prominence I am inclined to give it. The value of a plurality of coexisting uses in making the principles of natural selection and that of the inherited effect of habit co-operate in a larger number of cases and to a greater degree than could otherwise happen, ought to raise the principle from the rank of a scholium to that of a main theorem in the development doctrine. At least, my present interest in one of its possible illustrations makes the matter seem so to me. It is, no doubt, a very interesting inquiry how any given organ or faculty is specially related to essential conditions of an animal’s existence; but it is not so important to the theory of natural selection as it would be if the efficacy of this process depended solely or generally on a single or permanent relation of this sort. The aid, too, which sexual selection gets (and gives) from such an association with habits and natural selection, or through a plurality of uses, is worthy of consideration. I do not conceive the question whether, in a given case, the coloring of an animal is protective or sexually attractive, is a question of alternatives, of which only one can be true. Sexual selection may in one case take up what natural selection has laid down, as in lengthening the hair beyond its value as a thatch for keeping the rain from the forehead and eyes. Or this agency having perhaps elaborated in another case the woolly mat of the negro, the hair may then have curled still closer than the task demanded, from its value in holding water; and then, later, sexual selection would return to the artificial cultivation of the African savage’s coiffure.

Among the multitude of topics in my head last summer, one, for which I had no space from the length of my letter, related to a class of gestures used in reflection, meditation, and, I may add, continuous thought or speech under distracting circumstances. To some of these gestures you refer when you say, “Why the hand should be raised to the mouth or face in deep thought is far from clear.” I came to this question from the speculations of which I wrote; and I hope —since it would make this letter too long to do so now — to discuss it with you some other time. But I may state here one general conclusion which I had reached. The service on which many gestures seem to be founded appears to be to prevent the attention from wandering, by turning it to something upon which it can readily be kept, and from which it can as readily be recovered. This prevents its wandering too far into the swamp of vague, uncontrollable feelings, such as those of self-attention, visceral sensations, and the reflexes from involuntary movements. The great sensibility of the face, especially about the mouth, seems to me to explain the gesture to which you especially refer; and even the pressure of the hand on the forehead appears to relate rather to vague sensations in it, thus controlled by the . hand, than to any direct effects of the pressure on the action of the brain. But the full justification of these conclusions is a long argument, into which I will not here enter.

I send, in the same mail with this letter, a number of the “Nation,” which contains a couple of “Notes” by me about books on evolution. They begin at the foot of page 113.

In this letter, Chauncey expresses the purpose of writing again to Mr. Darwin; but in the six months of life that remained to him he did not do it. Mr. Darwin’s latest note to him was written in reply to this, on March 13. He says, “I write to-day, so that there shall be no delay this time in

thanking you for your interesting and long letter received this morning. I am sure that you will excuse brevity, when I tell you that I am half killing myself in trying to get a book ready for the press. I quite agree with what you say about advantages of various degrees of importance being co-selected and aided by the effects of use, &c. The subject seems to me well worth further development. I do not think I have anywhere noticed the use of the eyebrows, but have long known that they protected the eyes from sweat. During the voyage of the ‘Beagle,’ one of the men ascended a lofty hill during a very hot day: he had small eyebrows, and his eyes became fearfully inflamed from the sweat running into them. The Portuguese inhabitants were familiar with this evil, as I well remember from a ridiculous incident: they immediately brought a woman who was suckling a baby to squirt milk from her breast into his eyes; but he ran away in dismay! I think you allude to the transverse furrows of the head as a protection against sweat; but remember that these incessantly appear on the forehead of baboons. ... I have been greatly pleased by the notices in the ‘ Nation.’” Wright’s correspondence with Mr. Darwin may well draw attention to his powers as an observer. A friend who saw much of him speaks of “the personal observation and investigations of the facts of science which he was all the time carrying on with great interest during his later years, and of which there is but little direct expression in what he wrote for publication. Perhaps,” it is added, “the notices of him have hardly emphasized the mention of his great abilities in this direction sufficiently to give an adequate impression of them.” ⁸³

To Miss Grace Norton.

July 12, 1875.

The charm of the first days of the vacation in Cambridge is a theme which I believe I have several times summoned the muse to set forth through me; but stilts were the only aids she

ever lent me, as Miss Jane, whom I invoke to keep me from mistaking such aids for wings, will testify, if you will not take my word for it. And so, in plain prose, I say that the change is almost as complete from the busy days of Commencement and the Centennial The celebration of the taking command of the American army by General Washington, at Cambridge, July 3, 1775. ⁸⁴ as a journey and a complete change of scenes and associations could produce; so that the fortnight since you left us seems almost as long to me as it ought, of course, to seem to you. I met a Professor in the college grounds last evening luxuriating in the cool moonlight and the solitude, and truly grateful in his heart to the multitudes who have fled from the College, leaving it to silence and to such as him. They take all the trouble, he said, of journeys, and of providing uncomfortable accommodations for themselves; and leave behind them comfort and the fullest, richest accommodation to him, for which he feels much obliged.

A part of this feeling no doubt comes from the easy, serene, and full, but unforced occupation of the vacation; though the calm outward circumstances keep very perfect harmony with these, at least in the beginning. But though untrammelled, unstimulated spontaneity is the Buddhist’s bliss, its progress, as his philosophy recognizes, is towards sleep. Not this sleep, but somnolescence, is the true philosophic end, as we agreed, I think, last summer.

One is sure to find, at this season, the crabbedest resident in a civil mood. It is under such circumstances that I go to see our old friend -----, feeling sure to find him in his most social humor; though I have not yet called on him this season.

. . . . . . . . .

I have nothing to write about, — not a thought for which to beg audience or hospitality of you, and no disposition to

enter on any of our old debates. In fact, my disputatiousness has lately exhausted itself in my last three communications to the “Nation the very last being a renewal of my old warfare with Spencerism, written since you left us. Utilitarianism even would fail to put me on the defensive; since I have had my say on it against Sir Henry Maine. A Note in the “Nation” of July 1, 1875, at p. 411. ⁸⁵ I am in my present mood quite willing to allow that the rules of right are founded in the nature of things: without insisting on any explanation of how they are so founded or discovered; or what the things are, the nature of which shows the right, and should be followed. Still, in accepting this mystical formula, I think it no more than fair to reserve the right of a positivistic inquisition and interpretation of it when we come to a serious discussion.

Mrs. Jacobs’s house is closed, and I am proposing to myself to go back to Mrs. Wood’s boarding-house, for the vacation, where I expect the companionship of Professor Lovering and Mr. John Fiske, for a part of the time at least. I had a very pleasant, long, and philosophical afternoon call from Mr. Fiske on Saturday, and found him quite open and unprejudiced in his appreciation of Spencer.

But what a lot of gossip I have found for a letter which had nothing to say, or only friendly greetings to bear. Yet even a friend is an egotist, and true altruism is a conversion and reflection, not a sacrifice of self-regard; an identification, not an opposition of interests. And a friendly reception implies some endurance of egotism, if not much interest in its beggarly garb of gossip. The amount, or rather the depth, of this medium of gossip is unlimited, objectively, reaching even to the numbering of the hairs on one’s head, to say nothing of the ideas within. And its pertinency extends to the range of illumination which the light of sympathy diffuses through the circumstances of life.

To the Same.

July 18, 1875.

... It never occurred to me before that our prospective treatise on “Manners” would be, so far as my contributions would determine its form, a branch of the utilitarian philosophy. It would be a great triumph if I could get you to indorse a utilitarian account of such manners as the votes of all refined and sensible people approve,—the true lawgivers in this branch of morals; an account which would show that their justification is wholly in effecting the greatest happiness of the greatest number,—notwithstanding that the refined and sensible would mostly be unaware of any such principle of judgment, would be simply conscious of having no superstitious regard for the authority of manners. The true character of common sense is not to interfere with the due poise of the considerations that determine its judgments by handling them with the force of analytic attention. Reverence, however, not less than irreverent analysis, interferes with this poise; and to be free from superstition is, therefore, the supreme merit of such a judgment.

One remains a boy longer in philosophy than in any other direction; though this has its drawbacks, since manners even in philosophy—modes of thought and feeling, even about the most abstract subjects — are early fixed, and the danger of a late maturing in philosophical opinions is that such heterogeneous combinations, such deformities, as dogmatic scepticism, come to pass.

----- wants to reconcile, or to have somebody else reconcile, views that are in conflict in his mind; and because men like Lewes pretend to do this, he admires them, very uncritically, I think. Lewes, in my opinion, is a very shallow

thinker, who is making capital out of a strong general desire to have the two philosophies reconciled.

On Friday evening, I saw ----- again, and introduced the subject of the “duty of belief,” as advocated by him in the “Nation.” He retracted the word “duty.” All that he meant to say was that it is foolish not to believe, or try to believe, if one is the happier for believing. But, even so, he seemed to me to be more epicurean (though he hates the sect) than even the utilitarians would allow to be wise. He is by temperament opposed to what is known as epicurean; and, mistaking pleasure to be only the passive pleasures of life, he misunderstands what this philosophy really teaches. To him the perfection of moral action and belief is in heroic conditions of life; and a creed adapted to these, however rare they may be in fact, is to him the true creed, covering the whole range of life, and prescribing a rule for the extremes of human action; whereas, he thinks an epicurean could, according to his philosophy, do nothing better in extremis than commit suicide. And so I had to argue over again the irrationality of suicide on epicurean principles ; the necessary illusion of it as an end, or a means to any end; in short, to prove to him that the suicide is sane only on heroic principles, which, as being responsible for such insanities, had to provide imaginary motives against it.

He quite agrees that evidence is all that enforces the obligation of belief, and that it does this only in virtue of its own force as evidence. Belief is only a matter of choice and, therefore, of moral duty so far as attending to evidence is a volitional act; and he agreed that attention to all accessible evidence was the only duty involved in belief. On the other hand, I allowed that he was not the only sinner who misuses the word “duty,” which ought to mean only those principles of conduct, and what follows from them, which recommend

themselves to all rational beings, or at least to all adult, rational, human beings. And, further, I allowed that unproved beliefs, unfounded in evidence, were not only allowable, but were sometimes even fit, becoming, or appropriate to states of feeling or types of character which are deserving of approval, or even of honor. This fitness does not however amount to an obligation of duty. So far we are agreed, and he retracts.

A Rebus for the children. What does “S E E 8 o” spell?

To the Same.

July 25, 1875.

I see that you make “selfish” synonymous with “spontaneous.” Now the noble divinity Spontaneity is any thing but selfish, — except as children and poets and lovers are selfish. Chauncey was fond of humorously deifying “Spontaneity.” The reader of Plutarch may recall a passage from the “Life of Timoleon,” where it is said: “And having built a chapel in his house, he there sacrificed to Good Hap as a deity that had favored him, and devoted the house itself to the sacred genius.” Mr. Clough, in his revision of the earlier translations of Plutarch, appends at the word “Good Hap” this note: “Automatia in Greek; almost equivalent to spontaneousness. . . . His instinctive and apparently unreasoning decisions had been attended with such happy results as to make him unavoidably refer them to something out of himself, to some preternatural guidance.” ⁸⁶ His are actions without reflection, or what depends on reflection, — like the dictates of Duty — or of anybody else. He is, it is true, sometimes selfish, or inspires selfish acts; but oftener, in good people, he favors every duty but that of thinking of and doing to-day, in cold blood, what a glow of enthusiasm or generous feeling prompted under his influence yesterday, — like writing a poem. But Spontaneity is generally credited, and I think rightly, with a certain

elemental force, inchoate, undetermined in direction, but making its own course among accidents, like a torrent. Such is the play of children and the young of all animals. This, however, is in itself mere activity; and something of Spontaneity, its best part, is in the quieter flow of a lesser energy in the channels of habit and natural instinct, such channels as afford the least obstruction, or give to energy the least of the character of work or of energy converted to use by purpose. Don’t think this to be of necessity selfish; for to think so is to pervert the word “selfish” to what I have observed to be a peculiarly feminine meaning. . . . To be selfish does not mean to please, or to be level with, one’s self merely; but to do this at the expense of somebody’s more or less well-founded rights, or at the expense of generous feeling, at least, in one’s self. But unphilosophical women are, I have observed, apt to be miserly of this latter expense; to suppose that every generous impulse is obligatory, simply because it is generous. But generous principles, not impulses, are alone obligatory even to the best, and must conform to the higher laws of justice. A disposition to absolute and universal sacrifice, or altruism, leaves, in theory, nothing to sacrifice any thing to; and is, of course, in practice, never realized. All that is realized is a morbid, irrational self-accusation of selfishness. . . .

You ask if letter-writing is still odious to me. I think it is, but so that the good of it, the Promethean endurance and philanthropy of it, is set off on high artistic principles against its evils, the vexatious stupidities of the Cadmean invention.

To the Same.

Aug. 2, 1875.

I go to-morrow to Portsmouth, and on Wednesday to Magnolia, there to visit for a day or two Mrs. Lesley and her

daughters, — my once little friends. Whether I shall get back in time to reach you on Friday, or not till Saturday, I leave to Spontaneity. . . . The weather here is so cool to-day, and has been for several days, that it seems absurd to go down to the Sea on account of comfort, or for less than some spiritual advantage, such as Friendship or Truth; for which I have spelt it with a big S. . . .

I hope the “Nation” will publish this week my incidental notice of Spencer’s “Persistence of Force” in an article on “German Darwinism.” The Nation, September 9, 1875; Philosophical Discussions, p. 398. This was his latest printed article. ⁸⁷

I have been thinking and writing more or less to the point on aeronautics, but have not got far into the subject yet.

Chauncey mentions in the last two letters an intended visit to the Lesleys at Magnolia, — on the seashore, near Manchester, Massachusetts. Of this visit, Mrs. Lesley writes: “His last visit to us was at Magnolia, only a few weeks before his death, when his deep composure, his perfect self-control, and his splendid conversation restored to me any impression that might have faded of my earlier intercourse with him. Day after day he wandered on the shore with Mary, discoursing to her of wonders in sea and sky and air. How carefully he explained, how considerately he waited for her comprehension, how glowingly and enthusiastically he pointed out successive wonders!”

To the Same.

Northampton, Aug. 22, 1875.

. . . Shall I then attempt to celebrate the glories of Ashfield, and especially of the last day of my visit? Or would it not be more in keeping with my inveterate habits of thought to account for the seeming inconsistency of my deserting your

paradise, and staying so long here, — in this very centre of dog-day weather?

While I meditated on the irrationality of such a proceeding (or non-proceeding), the sensible effect of the weather got ahead of any rational considerations upon it. I have not cared to move (spontaneously) since I came; and numbers of little reasons have bound down to the ground by small threads my great sensible purpose to get back to sea air. I roused myself, however, so far this morning as to take a short tramp with my nephew Fred, a boy of thirteen, to the summit of Mount Holyoke. The air had a whiff of Ashfield in it; and the always beautiful view was varied at a later hour by picturesque clouds and distant showers along the great valley and over the hills. I mean now to go to Cambridge on Tuesday.

It seems much more than a week since, last Tuesday morning, I set out on the stage-top, with the driver, in a drizzling fog. I was reduced to interesting myself in the talk of the driver with a former schoolmate of his, just returned from the Far West on a wedding journey with his bride. Think of my being seriously interested to catch and remember the points of humor in this talk! But they were not memorable, and have all escaped me. Only the serious fact remains, that a large number of Ashfield youths — the more energetic of them — are scattered widely; some gone to larger towns, and some to the far Western settlements. This was a glimpse of the process which has been going on for more than two generations in all the lesser towns of Massachusetts. And I was reminded of a theoretical consequence of this fact, — one of my pet speculations,—which a lately settled Northampton physician, an old schoolmate of mine, long resident in the hills, entirely indorses; namely, that the physical deterioration of Massachusetts populations, resulting in so large a proportion of persons afflicted with nervous and mental

disorders, is due, not merely to hard fare, but to the selection and removal from the population of those best able and most determined to better themselves by emigration. This is, of course, a normal fact, or universal social law, so far as the relation of the country to large towns is concerned; though in England, and other parts of the world, it is not, of course, carried so far as it has been with us.

A rather interesting bit of youthful reminiscence occurred to me the other day. A part of an herbarium which I collected in my boyhood, and which I had supposed entirely destroyed by a fire many years ago, had come to light in the garret among the things saved from the fire. My examination of it was a partial exemplification of a position I held in a talk with Miss Jane a few (by the Almanac) days ago, on the illusions of our memories of childhood,—a singular impression, on comparing memory with these documents, of familiarity and strangeness combined. The herbarium, or this remnant, is in a good state of preservation (probably saved from the insect teeth of time by the smoking it got), and seems creditable for a boy; but the botanical names, written in an unformed hand, and other points of strangeness, almost made me doubt the identity of this youthful collector with your correspondent; and a considerable number of the plants are perfect strangers to me now, though, of course, very carefully examined by their descriptions then.

As a converse experience, I took up the current number of a Northampton weekly newspaper late last evening, and, glancing at its literary matters, saw, under the heading “Educational,” a short piece on “The Memory.” Reading the first sentence, it had to me a strange familiarity; and then I discovered that the piece was an extract from my Todhunter article, The Conflict of Studies: North American Review for July, 1875; Philosophical Discussions, p. 267. ⁸⁸ and that my name (not that of the Review) was

appended. “This is fame!” I said; but, as the family had all gone to bed, I had to wait till morning to show them how a prophet had been recognized even in his own town.

. . . But all that I have said is not celebrating the praises of Ashfield, — unless it be by a theme which might appear to you to appear to himself to be one of its transient and departed glories. Nothing but poetry, I am sure, could sound the true praises adequately; and my muse is not equal to that, though in my youth she also undertook it. Late in youth, however, in a mood of scientific reformation and repentance, I burned up all my performances of this sort (and they were considerable in amount), destroying them more effectively, it seems, than the fire did the botanical labors of boyhood. Now, only for narration, exposition, description, argument, any thing didactic, — are the quills I wield. To throw a new light on old objects, — “a light that never was,” &c., — this I only emulate in abstract matters. There is a sort of resemblance between philosophy and poetry. In neither are the objects or themes matters of novel interest: in both, it is the vision, not the object, that is brought with fresh novelty to consciousness; and novelty in the object is only an aid or accessory to sight,— a new light, not a new task for it. Philosophy is poetry in the abstract, — “the vision and the faculty divine.” And poetry is philosophy in the concrete. And Ashfield, with its walks and talks, its drives and discussions, is both! Could I say more?

In the last letter, Chauncey refers to a conversation, at Northampton, with a physician who had formerly been his schoolmate. This was Dr. Thomas Gilfillan, See p. 14. ⁸⁹ formerly of Cummington, who had lately returned to his old home, and whom Chauncey had not met for many years. Dr. Gilfillan’s account of this meeting will interest those who remember

Chauncey’s quiet, easy ways among his intimates: “In the summer of 1875,” he says, “he made his last visit to his early home. We met again after nearly thirty years of separation. How quietly he would drop into my room of an evening for a chat! Taking from his pocket his corn-cob pipe, and the stem and tobacco, he proceeded to mount, load, and light it, insisting that a corn-cob made a most superior pipe. He smoked, and as he smoked he talked; and amid the pleasant fumes of his homely pipe we chatted, — sometimes of old times, sometimes of science, sometimes of medicine; often we drifted into or over many subjects; but, whatever the subject, the amount of information he would bring to bear upon it was wonderful. His memory seemed to have grasped the most salient facts, and to hold them ever ready for his use. He was at home on medical topics, — familiar with the newest and most approved remedies, their use, effects, and even their methods of preparation.

“These were happy evenings; and, as they passed, I could see more and more of the old friend, as he was of old, so like and still so different; but, though years had wrought such changes in him, he was the same quiet, companionable friend as in days gone by. He, too, seemed to enjoy his stay with us, reluctant to see its end. Several times he named the day for his departure; and still its evening would find him in my room, with his friendly cob pipe, smoking and chatting. He seemed to linger, loath to leave, as though he had a premonition that this was the last time. We parted but a few short weeks, and then the silver cord was loosed.”

To Miss Jane Norton.

Cambridge, Sept. 1, 1875.

----- has convinced me that letters ought to begin like talk. I have paraded all my reasons against it, and

surrendered the point. I stayed in Northampton until this week, when by a desperate effort, on Monday, I tore myself away, and came to Cambridge.

This was a true case of fascination, — out of the realm of the simply agreeable and rational, — and I believe I understand now what the attractions of Northampton are to the summer visitors who stay there. These visitors very generally appear in the character of invalids. The place is medicinal, the climate sedative. A few days, or doses, of it, induce complete inactivity, a semi-paralysis, which benefits the nervous patient by compelling rest, bodily and mental. The scenery is charming and a rational attraction. All besides is fascination; that is, a drawing, or holding, without reason or excuse, or even in spite of reason and against one’s will. How lazy those are made by it, who are not acclimated, is seen in the fact that, to induce them to ascend Mount Holyoke, the charms of its matchless view are powerless. Elaborate steam machinery is provided to carry them all the way up the tremendous height of three hundred feet (not very steep), all the rest of the entire nine hundred feet being accomplished in common carriages. Six or seven times the height is an easy feat for pedestrian tourists, in stimulating mountain air. I do not think that I was hurt by this treatment, though I was not in much need of it.

The later days were much more pleasant than the first, and added rationality to my stay. I was too lazy to write even a postal card (what I never did) to say that what struck me in the article in the “Springfield Republican” that I sent to you was the reference to Mr. Tennyson’s own judgment on his “Queen Mary,” and the accordance of this judgment with the view which ----- , alone among the critics, had expressed regarding the motive of its interest; the accordance of this judgment also with Miss -----’s as to the artistic merits of the poem.

The marriage question discussed by Mr. Gladstone was interesting, but did not suggest to me our talk. I think we agreed that the State, or all outside influences, whether civil or religious, legal or moral, could wisely exert over marriages only a veto power of a well-defined character, laid down in black and white. Reason, or rather the analytic reason, is but a rude guide of life; there can be but little positive wisdom in any system of laws; and the happiness of life in minutiae depends upon very much that is not common in our judgments, or laid down in any defined wisdom; these are not competent to deal with such questions. Wisdom herself, if I may use so realistic an expression, — or the power of judgment, and not merely wise counsels, — must be imparted when possible; or men and women will make marriages of a piece with the general tenor of their foolish lives.

I do not think that we ought to idealize the marriage state to the extent of expecting that two weaklings, however skilfully matched, could make themselves strong by the union, nor do I believe that any censors (much less any system of censorship) could compass the skill of true match-making, except negatively in well-defined prohibitory rules, — though some obstacles thrown in the way of marriage, not materially different from what now exist, would have the effect to make the parties give more thought to the rational side of the subject than their natures or fancies incline them to do. As to any ill effect upon posterity of the present freedom of marriage unions, no law-givers, no private counsellors, are at all equal to the subtle skill of nature, shown in the survival of the fittest; which, though a rough remedy for evils that wisdom, if it existed, might forestall, is one which wisdom has not yet equalled. The ancient state of Sparta, whose law-givers undertook to do the work of nature in selection, perished in consequence; and nature selected those ancient communities whose principles of freedom and humanity to the weak

seemed opposed to her Dracontic laws. Not to help natural selection is the human way, strong in its weakness, of gaining the favor of this fatal power; and not to legislate is often the wisest principle of legislation. Not to judge for one’s neighbor, not to advise even for a friend, but rather to present grounds of judgment and advice, is often the wisest rule of personal influence. For what do we know? Does wisdom exist? And if not, — are we to be misanthropes or despairing philanthropists? This would certainly prove that wisdom does not exist in us, but rather that the conceit of it has made us judges. To those whose past life is predominantly practical and executive, whose first question is “what to do about it?” who feel called upon first to act, and secondly to act wisely, the special Delphic answers are these radical ones: “Know first, and act only on real knowledge; beware of opinion.” — “Keep knowledge at nurse as long as possible; cherish its grounds, reasons, and questions; draw conclusions only when the necessity of decision compels.” And the Delphic wisdom would, I think, also say, in criticism of a later oracle, “Let not your love of your neighbor mistake itself for a knowledge of him.” — “Treat him, morally, as a specimen, not as an individual. As an individual, like or dislike him, according to the bent of your nature, yet strictly within the limits of justice.” — “Don’t mistake an æsthetic preference, on the one hand, for a moral judgment; nor let generous feeling, on the other hand, corrupt either justice or good taste.” — “The Golden Mean, as a rule of duty, is more level with reason than the Golden Rule, though perhaps as a sentiment it is less effectively beneficial in the unreasoning mass.”

But perhaps you are mentally charging me with the supreme conceit of dealing out Delphic wisdom much beyond what is written or delivered by the priestess. My defence is that this wisdom is only of the negative sort, about “what not to do,” in which the moral institutes of wisdom chiefly consist,

and to which the common experience of life mainly contributes; and if I have fallen into my old way of preaching, — why, this, I hope, will be a pleasant reminder of old written talks of the sort. This is the last of the letters to Miss Jane Norton. I preserve, upon a later page, Chauncey’s expression of admiration for this gracious and noble woman. She died in May, 1877. ⁹⁰

To Mr. Norton's Daughter, Sara.

Sept. 1, 1875.

On going yesterday to Shady Hill to call on your father, I was most agreeably introduced to the interesting little animal-plants which you so kindly and thoughtfully sent me. Last evening I read about them in Mr. Darwin’s book; and this morning, after they reached my room, I gave a dead fly to one of them, and while writing other letters I have been watching the sun-dew close upon it. Only a few hair-like arms have yet laid hold on the fly, though the rest are slowly heading towards it. The sun-dews are not so lively as animals which have minds, but seem, according to Mr. Darwin’s account, to be almost as sensitive and intelligent, though they don’t appear to know it. I suppose that it takes so long for them to act that they have at the time no energy to think. They seem so well provided with intelligence for their wants, that they do not need any minds to gather more for them.

Instead of catching a new fact every day to remember and think about, a fresh fly once a week to digest is all they get or want from the world they live in, besides water, air, and a little earth, — and sunlight and warmth. Not many wants! Don’t you wish you were a Drosera rotundifolia, — such a fine name to have, too, — to which a fly is as welcome as a letter, or more so? They only feel, probably, if they feel at all, just as you do when you get nearly or quite asleep, and

a fly lights on your nose; only with your arms you would brush it away, instead of folding it in them so fondly as the Drosera seems to do. The Drosera seems to love flies; but really does not care for their minds, and has not any sympathy or pity for them, I think, — not having any mind of its own.

When I was in Northampton lately, I found some dried pressed plants which I had preserved when a boy, and among them was a pitcher-plant, a sort which also catches flies and drowns them with other insects, and is thought to live on them, though it does not digest them like the Drosera and the Dionaea. There ought to be some pitcher-plants in Ashfield, in the swampy places; for I remember finding some in a swamp among the hills, not far from Ashfield, many years ago; they are also called side-saddle flowers and huntsman’s caps. Their botanical name is Sarracenia purpurea.

It will not be long before we shall meet again in Cambridge, and then we will talk more about your nice present, for which I thank you very much.

To Miss Grace Norton.

Sept. 1, 1875.

Among illusions, not “my own idiosyncracies,” is one arising from not clearly dividing associated accidents from essential characters, when in the synthetic operations of imagination we have joined them together, — as what we are saying or have said to a friend, on the one hand, with their personal traits and individual characters, on the other. Imagination, the so- (mis)called faculty, the “faculty divine,” is distinguished from common powers of the sort by an instinctive apprehension of what truly and essentially belongs to its objects, which, in common minds, only reflective comparison could separate from accidents; and this power so guides invention that the

poem is recognized as a true representation by others besides the poet; but every one other than the ideally perfect poet is under the illusion that the thoughts and interests between the lines of his own composition are conveyed by them more or less distinctly to his readers; and this illusion obtains most in letters, since correspondents are never to themselves what they seem to us. Indeed, one of the charms of intercourse is in the riddles thus presented. Discussion is often not so much for the sake of truth or decision as for the discovery of individual traits and causes, infinitely various, and the reading of these riddles. . . .

Our solicitude about posthumous reputation is just as rational, when truly disinterested, as about a contemporary one. One’s reputation is a trust to keep and transmit, if it aspires to be more than a claim to present advantage; and solicitude about its future is not, therefore, any thing different or less noble than one’s present devotion to its excellence. To be sure, it makes no difference to the dead what is thought of them, or into what hands their names and fames may fall; but it makes a vast difference to the living, — mere idealists though they all are, — who act with reference to the future, the permanent, and the universal. It is a present sense of a fitness for which we are now responsible, rather than any future sense, which is concerned.

It is a great advantage in spoken words that the impress of them in the world is for the most part a sound vanishing in the air, the vehicle only, not the storehouse, of thoughts incorporated in the mind or becoming the thoughts of another, or at best the momentary embodiment of social sympathies. If phonantographs were common, would they not be worse than weeds, — dirt, indeed, which we would expel furiously? And written words are rivets and chains by which our freedom is fettered, our moods pinioned, and our Protean lives set in false because fixed postures. . . .

I haven’t yet read Professor Clifford’s article, but do not recognize in his scepticism, as you quote it, a novelty in philosophical opinions. It is very like that of the very ancient pre- Socratic sceptics, but looser in thought than a well-trained modern thinker ought to be. The truths of geometry and mechanics are abstract or conditional truths, not true at all as descriptions of what actually is or ever has been, except by the rarest accident, since the conditions supposed in them, like drawing a perfect circle or straight line, or the postulates demanded in their enunciation, are never exactly realized. If Mr. Clifford supposes, or thinks it legitimate to suppose, that there was ever a time when an infinite intelligence could not have comprehended the actual orders of the world in complex formulae, involving the abstract truths of geometry and mechanics, as we now know them, or would have found it more impossible than now, he surrenders the whole ground of scientific speculation on the subject. He needed not have been so particular in designating the superseded laws, but might as well have admitted miracle at once into his speculation, as the orthodox do,—and for the unseen present as well as for the unrecorded past. If one speculates in science at all, it must be from some grounds; but it is not necessary to assert dogmatically that these are indefeasible. Science does not deal with the unconditionally possible or impossible, or with what the orthodox call “the possible with God,” but follows out consequences from what is known, surrendering speculation rather than these grounds. To come in conclusion to the admission of miracle is a wasted journey; why not admit it at the start? A law that is good for a moment is good for infinite time, unless it be presumably — on the ground of higher laws, not of mere uncertainty — an alterable law.

I had, a month or more ago, a hot dispute with ----- about Stuart Mill’s position on this very subject, which he conceived to be the same as Clifford’s. Dr. ----- took sides

with me, in distinguishing between Mill’s doctrine, that inconceivability in the negative is not a legitimate proof of absolute truth of fact, — and the doctrine of Clifford, as I understood and still understand it, viz.: that this test could be disregarded in a scientific speculation, in rational inference, — as if reason had not its laws. Confusion may not have any laws, perhaps, or any ascertainable ones. -----, after calling Mill and his doctrine many hard names, had to admit that this distinction noted an important difference.

I stayed in Northampton even longer than I intended when I wrote. It was one of my excitements to plan every day for going the next, though this grew tiresome after I was reduced to complete sedateness, and the weather got a little cooler. I reached Cambridge on Monday evening. The proofs of my long-delayed article on Darwinism had been waiting for me here a week, and the publication was thereby still more delayed. I am thinking a little of a short visit to Mr. Thayer at Mount Desert.

This visit to Mount Desert he never made. On September 2, he wrote to me: “Think of my staying at Northampton for a fortnight in August! I found, on returning, a card from William Ware, a fortnight old, calling on me to join him in the journey to Mount Desert. ... If I do not get from you any discouragement, I propose to go down by the Bangor boat on Tuesday next, the 7th.” On Tuesday, he had packed his bag for the journey, but sat talking in his room until it was so late that it would require some exertion to reach the boat in time; whereupon, much according to a common habit with him, he concluded not to go. We, at the other end, knowing nothing of this, expected him, and when he did not come still looked for him by the next arrival. In a few days, however, instead of welcoming my friend, I opened the Boston paper to read of his sudden death; and the date of the paper was the day of his funeral.

I cannot better tell the details of his death than by quoting from a letter of this same date, in which my kind friend, William Ware, first told them to me: —

“Boston, [Tuesday], Sept. 14, 1875.

“You will, I suppose, before this reaches you, have learned all that is to be told about Chauncey’s death. It so happened that I myself heard of it only last night. I went early this morning to Cambridge, but, as I learned from Mr. James, Mr. Henry James. ⁹¹ he had already been taken to Northampton. His brother came down yesterday, and I presume the funeral will take place there to-day. Except St. John Green and Hooper, whom I have not seen, no one of his friends was in Cambridge but Mr. James; he went at once to the house on Sunday morning, but it was too late. It seems that his landlady found him sitting over his writing, with the gas still burning, at some late hour on Sunday morning, and was leaving him undisturbed, thinking he had fallen asleep. A sound of distress attracted her attention; and, finding him insensible, she sent at once for Dr. Driver, near by. He arrived immediately, and said at once that there had been some kind of attack, and that another was coming on. This was indeed the case. They laid him on his bed, but before Dr. Wyman, who had been sent for, could arrive, he was gone. The impression seems to be that the first attack must have been early in the evening.

“He had been very bright and well, and there was nothing to give warning that all was not right with him. Mr. James said that about a week ago he spent an evening at his house, and he had never known him more delightful, —talking in his best vein, not about things and ideas but about people, giving astonishingly minute characterizations of them. Innocent, mild, kindly, sympathetic, pure-minded,—these were the

words Mr. James used about him; and, in speaking of his relations at the Nortons and his admiration of Miss Jane, he quoted his saying that he would rather have her personal approbation than all the fame of this country and Europe. It was a great satisfaction to hear Mr. James’s appreciative talk, and to have all his lovely and amiable ways brought up; and I could not but hope that Mr. James was mistaken, of late at least, in thinking that he had been so miserably unhappy. I had hoped that for the last year or two things had been less difficult with him. He has certainly seemed, as I have seen him, quiet and serene. . . . Mr. James said that his face was perfectly white and very noble to look at.”

On the night before he died, he was perfectly well, and stood in the door-way talking cheerfully and kindly with his landlady (the daughter of Mary Walker), and her colored friend, Mrs. Jacobs, with whom he had boarded. This was at about ten o’clock on Saturday evening, September 11. The college vacation was not yet over, and most of his friends were away; even his chum, Mr. Emery, was absent for the Sunday. The apartments consisted of two bed-rooms and a common study; on Sunday morning, at about seven o’clock, he was found in his study in the manner which is described in Professor Ware’s letter; and he died in half an hour, with no sign of consciousness, the physician and his friend Mr. Green being present. No definite cause could be assigned for this sudden death, even after a post-mortem examination. The examination was made by Dr. Thomas Dwight, of Boston. Dr. Dwight informs me that the membranes of the brain were much congested, and there were appearances which indicated that a certain amount of congestion had existed for some time; but the cause of death was not ascertained. He adds: “The brain weighed fifty-three and a half ounces, which is above the average, but not remarkable. The frontal portion was uncommonly developed. In studying the arrangement of the convolutions, I found an anomaly, of which there was at the time but one instance recorded in literature; namely, a bridge of brain tissue extending over one of the chief fissures, that of Rolando. Whether it is of any real significance, our knowledge does not permit us to say, but it was certainly remarkable. . . . The anomaly was observed in the brain of a Dr. Fuchs, who was a clinical professor at Göttingen. He was, of course, an educated and intelligent man, but I am not aware that he was in any way remarkable. The case was described by Rudolf Wagner, in a work of which I think the title is Vorstudien zu einer wissenschaftlichen Morphologie und Physiologie des Menschlichen Gehirns. It is in two thin quarto volumes, and contains good plates: it is at the Boston Public Library. Hetchl, of Vienna, in the Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift, of October 13, 1877, describes six additional cases which he has observed, and alludes to two by Teré, one of which he considers doubtful. The arrangement of the convolutions in the temporal and parietal lobes of the brain of Mr. Wright was remarkably simple.” ⁹²

He was taken to Northampton on Monday. But few persons from a distance were able to be present at the funeral on the next day; yet his faithful and dear friends, Mr. Norton, at Ashfield, and Mrs. Lesley, at Magnolia, had learned of it in time to come. He was laid in his father’s tomb, in the old graveyard where so many of his ancestors for two hundred years had been buried. The tomb is by the roadside, looking over the great meadow, — that reaches round to his father’s door, a mile away, — and across the distant Connecticut, to the long, even brim of the Pelham hills that bound the eastern horizon. It is the same large and tranquil scene which lay before his eyes when they first opened upon this world of wonders.