The Letters of William James, Vol. 1 · William James
WM. JAMES.
Love to all the Childs, please, and all the Nortons who may be within reach. _To Theodore Flournoy._ PENSIONE VILLA MAGGIORE (PALLANZA), _Sept. 19, 1892_. MY DEAR FLOURNOY,--Your most agreeable letter--one of those which one preserves to read in one's old age--came yesterday.... I am much obliged to you for the paper by Sécretan, and (unless you deny me the permission) I propose to keep it, and let you get a new one, which you can do more easily than I. It is much too oracular and brief, but its _pregnancy_ is a good example of what an intellect gains by growing old: one says vast things simply. I read it stretched on the grass of Monte Motterone, the Rigi of this region, just across the Lake, with all the kingdoms of the earth stretched before me, and I realized how exactly a philosophic _Weltansicht_ resembles that from the top of a mountain. You are driven, as you ascend, into a choice of fewer and fewer paths, and at last you end in two or three simple attitudes from each of which we see a great part of the Universe amazingly simplified and summarized, but nowhere the entire view at once. I entirely agree that Renouvier's system fails to satisfy, but it seems to me the classical and consistent expression of _one_ of the great attitudes: that of insisting on logically intelligible formulas. If one goes beyond, one must abandon the hope of _formulas_ altogether, which is what all pious sentimentalists do; and with them M. Sécretan, since he fails to give any articulate substitute for the "Criticism" he finds so unsatisfactory. Most philosophers give formulas, and inadmissible ones, as when Sécretan makes a _memoire sans oubli_ = _duratio tota simul_ = eternity!
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