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.