The Ghost Hunters - Deborah Blum [41]
James had established a small laboratory at Harvard to run psychology experiments. His work paralleled a similar, even more ambitious push in Europe, especially Germany, where scientists rushed to design and install equipment for monitoring physical evidence of psychological stimulus. Yet as this German approach, with its stress on measurement and quantifiable result, gained influence and acceptance, James found himself increasingly alienated from the science he had helped pioneer. A humanist at heart, and a contrarian, he gradually turned away from a mechanistic view of human behavior.
The new psychologists believed, as one leading American practitioner would say, that human behavior would be understood only when “all cells and fibres involved in each act of the mind or emotional state ... could be numbered and weighed.” James didn’t quarrel with the importance of that principle; he’d written papers himself explaining that states of consciousness in the brains of animals resulted from chemical changes at the molecular level. He’d concluded that the same principle undoubtedly applied to the biology of human consciousness.
But he disagreed that accepting such results automatically defined him as a materialist and an atheist. James resisted the idea that along with its “brass instruments,” science had acquired the ability to understand and explain everything about human thought and behavior. How did one measure questions about “the ultimate cause of existence” or whether life had meaning? Given that, James felt, science had no firmer grasp on Truth with a capital T than did the theologians. As for himself, the great questions were, he said, “hopelessly out of reach of my poor powers,” just as they lay beyond the reach of his fellow academics.
James’s desire to both explain the science and to look beyond it made his book on psychology intellectually challenging—and extremely slow going. Already his publisher, Henry Holt, was writing irritated letters demanding to know what was taking so long. And in addition to the textbook, James was now teaching philosophy. He was bothered by headaches, stressed by his drive to do so much so well. He began to obsess on his need for peace, quiet, even a change of scenery. After four years of living with a temperamental husband, Alice didn’t hesitate. She encouraged him to take a break. He was so restless now, she said, she could more easily care for the boys in the company of her mother and sister.
WILLIAM’S FIRST STOP was at his brother’s elegant London flat. Henry James Jr. was making a name for himself as a writer of style and substance. He’d published a rapid-fire sequence of well-received novels, The American, Daisy Miller, Washington Square, and Portrait of a Lady-all in a four-year span. Henry James had achieved a level of acclaim that his brother could only envy.
William relaxed into the visit. He spent afternoons in conversation at his brother’s clubs, surrounded by an aromatic fog of tobacco smoke. He made occasional calls on scientists. He walked the sooty streets, enjoying Henry’s company. Then he found himself suddenly alone. Back in America, Henry James Sr. was dying. Their mother had died of bronchitis earlier that year, and their sister, faced with this second impending death, felt overwhelmed. She asked Henry Jr. to come home.
William—the more high-maintenance brother—was to stay in England. “All insist William shall not come,” his sister telegraphed. William debated returning home anyway, despite his nervous state, but had to admit that he probably wouldn’t be an ideal deathbed companion. “How much better it will be to recollect him well than so decayed,” he explained in a letter.
He wasn’t certain that his father would even recognize him. Henry Sr. had suffered a series of small strokes after his wife’s death. Paralyzed by illness and grief, the old man stubbornly turned his face to the wall and refused to eat. He died on December 18. At the end, he talked incessantly of a