BOOKS AND MEN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LIV, 19 March 1921, Page 7

BOOKS AND MEN

(By ELZEVIR in the Argus.)

Wo arc passing (I sec by the papers) through a bad time ; a bad, confused, irascible, dispirited time; but personally 1 feel that there are still some mercies left to be thankful for. Last year it was the letters of Henry James, two volumes full of them, and a xare good book they made ; to-day wc are given, likewise in two volumes, the letters of his elder ] and yet more famous brother, William James. . . In some moods, we all, I suppose, find the epistolary the- best and plcasantcst kind of writing; I had almost written! the best kind of literature, but that would have been untrue; for letters are not literature any more than a chip of marble is a statue. A piece of real literature is like a statue, carefully carven, deliberately "wrought to stand in the middle of the city square, a thing of enduring beauty ; a letter is like, a chip of marble the sculptor play fully shies at a passing acquaintance. This is an important distinction. It is a commonplace to say that a man's letters arc more self-revealing than a man's books, because the former were not meant for the public eye ; but this is a poisonous doctrine, for it implies that in everything written for the public eye theie is a strain of insincerity and humbug. "What is true, I take it- ,is that that the two things reveal two different sides of a man's true self. Great literature is a. revelation of great minds at their great moments; when we have learned to love and admire a great man it is natural that we should wish for glimpses of him at moments ■ other than his greatest; hence ai the justification for publishing a man's familiar correspondence. There is no lack of self-revelation in "Paradise Lost;" it lays bare its authors mind at the topmost pinnacle of thought and emotion ; but we sometimes long to drop from these vertiginous altitudes to commune with him on a more warm and intimate level, to hcai him ragging a friend, using slang. being genial and undigmhcd and human. A man's letters seat you at his fireside, so to speak. His Looks malic you feel his immense superiority to yourselt.; ns letters, jvithout making inm less admirable,, show you the traits lie has. in common with you and ah mankind; and thus raise you in your own esteem. What, would we give to be so admitted to .Shakespeare's intimacy! 1 for my part would gladly exchange-well no, not "Hamlet," but-":\s you Like It." and half-a-dozen more of the plays, for a volume of his letters to Ben. . • • 1 do not mean, of course, that all letters arc self-revealing. I. should be sorry to think that the one I received from my tailor this morning—in which he splits an infinitive by "begging to again remind me "—reveals the man's true nature ; I trust Ik! has a better self, though it is inarticulate. Ine fact is, that self-revelation is an art, and can be achieved after a long training in the use of words ; hence the best letters, the only ones that endure, are the letters of men of letters. Who are the best English letter-writers 1 Whose letters do we, as a matter ol fact, read and re-read? Horace Walpole, Cow per, Lamb, Bryon, Soutliey, Fitz Gerald, Stevensongo over the whole list of great letter-writers and see if you can fine one who was not also a writer of books. Dorothy Osborne is the sole exception I can. for the moment, think of; and is she a real exception ■! A classic, doubtless, but—do you really read her I Let us come back, after this long and unnecessary digression. 'to William James, who writes, "I've also read Stevenson's lettcis. which everybody ought to read just to know how charming a h pm an being can be;'' and 1 .say, in like manner, that everybody ought to read the letters of William James—and those of his brother - just to become more intimately acquainted with two of the rarest spirits of our time, and to rejoice that men are still made ■after this fashion. Which w r as tho greater and rarer of the two, who .shall say I By what common standard shall we measure them'! j\ hundred years hence—it is safe to make these predictions, since one will not be,here to be refuted if the books of one of them arc read, it will be Henry's rathei than William's; because exquisite art is the one thing that keeps <"• book alive down the centuries. But if William's books have. a shorter/ life. bis work will be 1 none the less immortal. The con tributions he made to the common fund of ideas can nevci 1 pass awa-i'. though the v ritings ir which he embodied them may b( forgotten. The names of oiu Australian explorers may pasout of our memories, but thr wheat will wave on the plain;they found for us. James's text book of psychology, which made him lambus, is now obsolete, 1 am told, but the- psychological truths he discovered are truths for all time. His great "Varie tics of Religious Experience," a survey of facts rather than a philosophic treatise, was pioneering work in a new field, a field in which much work has sinc< been done. Of. all his books, the likeliest to endure, as the classica, statement of a philosophic position, is his 'litlJle_ book o\. "Pragmatism" —both in matter and in manner a genuinely origiua' book. To me it sccnis thai prag mati'Siu— which proclaims the ah solute truth that there is no ab solute truth-is a detestable paradox, which if? generally ac ceptc-d would have a really pernicious effect' on human "enclea vour; but mv opinions on philosophy are not, I admit, of grcir importance... One thing,, at anj rale, we can (ol atlm7: : that James brought to the service of pbiloso ph v a vividness, a freshness, ( ? vitality which were invaluable Henrv Sidgwiek once noted _ thai the two besetting sins oLphiloso phic writers Mere jargon and ver b'Qsitv. James was never, ver ■fyose. and he carried his hatred o jargpn to such lengths that, .you may almost say his "Pragmatism*" is written in slang. After read-

ing, with "immense gusto," Mr J Balfour's "Foundations of Belief he writes—" There is more real philisophy in such a hook than in fifty German ones of which the eminence consists in heaping up subtleties and technicalities about the subject. The English genjus makes the vitals plain by scuffling the technicalities away." To sou ft" the technicalities away was his constant aim- '• o another friend he writes of the "grey-plaster temperament of our bald-headed young Ph.D.'s, boring each other

at seminaries." and proposes to "start a systematic movement ab Harvard against the desiccating and pedantifying process." Pedantry was, for him, always the deadliest enemy of truth. In the second volume 1 commend to your special attention a photograph of James and his famous colleague. Josiah Roycc, sitting on a. low stone wall discussing philisophy. Roycc, who was a good Hegelian. had doubtless been -saying something about the Absolute. James suddenly became conscious of his daughter's presence with a camera; whereupon he cried out-"Roycc. » il J"» Damn the Absolute!" And the camera has caught the two sages in the act of chuckling over this ■oivise statement of pragmatic principles. It is a picture which ought to be published m all fuiuro histories of philosophy, and so should a letter from James to Rovce, in the course of which he says (to the man, remember, who represents all that he himself most detests in philosophy)— When I compose my Gilford lectures mentally, 'lis with the design exclusively of overthrowing your svstcin, and mining your ,ei.ee. ' I lead a parasitic lib: upon you, for mv highest flight of ambition is to become your conqueror, •aid "o down into history as such, you and I rolled in one another s inns and silent (or rather loquacious still) in one hist, death ■•nipple of an embrace. How then 0 mv dear Roycc, can I. forget you , r be contented out oi your close neighbourhood ! ;: There is an extraordinarily winning quality ,1,01.1 these letters. One ays down the collection feeling that, .low ever we may icgaril pragnuiihiu, this mastcr-pragmatist must '.ssurcdlv have been one of the oc«t and most delightful of men; to use his own characteristic ;,l mi , J? about another, -lies as übcial-hcartcd a man as Uic Lord ever walloped en-rails ni(1) • His letters to his orothci rlenvv- whose later novels ho could' not read, and whose style , )C rt >gardcd as :. perversity-" llia tch, in touching aflcctionatelc,s his brothers letters to him, \ glorious pair: In the whole ,f historv can you hnd another |mir of 'brothers about whom 'ducat ed people have depute, after their death, which of the two hnd the greater genius, Ihe joncourts. ol course, and tintin^sleys: but these are on a farmer level. On the higl.es cvel, this American household is he one exception 1 know o to Nature's mlc. not to !-•<> » ■emus on two brother:, Jhe .same ule seems to apply to sisteis villi again, just one illustrious Bronte. .