"It is absolutely the only philosophy with no humbug in it," an exhilarated William James wrote to a friend early in 1907. And later that year, after finishing the proofs of his "little book," he wrote to his brother Henry: "I shouldn't be surprised if ten years hence it should be rated as 'epoch-making, ' for of the definitive triumph of that general way of thinking I can entertain no doubt whatever--I believe it to be something quite like the protestant reformation."

Both the acclaim and outcry that greeted "Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking" helped to affirm James's conviction. For it was in "Pragmatism" that he confronted older philosophic methods with the "pragmatic" method, demanding that ideas be tested by their relation to life and their effects in experience. James's reasoning and conclusions in "Pragmatism" have exerted a profound influence on philosophy in this century, and the book remains a landmark.

This generous omnium-gatherum brings together all the writings William James published that have not appeared in previous volumes of this definitive edition of his works. Miscellaneous and diverse though the pieces are, they are unified by James's style and personality, which shine through even the slightest of them. The volume includes 25 essays, 44 letters to the editor commenting on sundry topics, and 113 reviews of a wide range of works in English, French, German, and Italian. Twenty-three of the items are not recorded in any bibliography of James's writings. Two of the new discoveries are of particular interest: dating from 1865, when he was still a medical student, they are James's earliest known publications and give his first published views on Darwinian biology, which was to affect profoundly his own work in philosophy and psychology. Among his reviews are one of "Ueber den psychischen Mechanismus hysterischer Phaomene," by Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud, published a year after the first appearance of that historically famous essay, and showing the breadth of James's interests, reviews of George Santayana's Sense of Beauty (1897) and Bernard Berenson's Florentine Painters of the Renaissance (1896).

"The Will to Believe" addresses several of the most important and perplexing problems of philosophy. In ten lucid essays James deals with such subjects as causality and free will, the definition of the good life and the Good itself, the importance of the individual in society, and the intellectual claims of scientific method. Linking all these essays, most of which were delivered as lectures to popular audiences, is James's deep belief that philosophy does not operate in a vacuum but is influenced by our passional and volitional natures.

As Edward H. Madden points out in his substantial introduction, these essays, written over a span of seventeen years, represent not so much a fixed system of ideas as a patient searching, an organic development of James's thought in response to his own criticism and that of others.

This is the sixth volume to be published in "The Works of William James," an authoritative edition sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies.

This final volume of "The Works of William James" provides a full record of James's teaching career at Harvard from 1872 to 1907. It includes extensive working notes for lectures in more than twenty courses. Some of the notes contain summary statements of views of James's that have never been published before, such as his treatment of the question of proof in ethics, in the only course he ever taught in that subject; others reflect contemporary controversies in philosophy, notably the famous debate on Idealism and the nature of the Absolute; still others illuminate early stages of James's thinking on crucial problems in what was to become his philosophy of radical empiricism. Often the notes yield information about his sources that is not to be found in the published writings. Because James's teaching was so closely involved with the development of his thought, this unpublished material adds a new dimension to our understanding of his philosophy.

James's public lectures gained him world renown, and most of them were subsequently published. There are, however, several sets of notes for and drafts of important lectures that he never wrote out for publication; these are included in the present volume. Among them are his two series of lectures in 1878 on the physiology of the brain and its relation to the mind; the Lowell Lectures of 1896 on exceptional mental states; and the lectures of 1902 on intellect and feeling in religions, which were designed to supplement "Varieties of Religious Experience" and were intended to be his last word on the psychology of religion.

"Essays in Philosophy" brings together twenty-one essays, reviews, and occasional pieces published by James between 1876 and 1910. They range in subject from a concern with the teaching of philosophy and appraisals of philosophers to analyses of important problems.

Several of the essays, like "The Sentiment of Rationality" and "The Knowing of Things Together," are of particular significance in the development of the views of James's later works. All of them, as John McDermott says in his Introduction, are in a style that is "engaging and personal...witty, acerbic, compassionate, and polemical." Whether he is writing an article for the "Nation" of a definition of "Experience" for Baldwin's "Dictionary" or "The Mad Absolute" for the "Journal of Philosophy," James is always unmistakably himself, and always readable.

In "Pragmatism" James attacked the transcendental, rationalist tradition in philosophy and tried to clear the ground for the doctrine he called radical empiricism. The hook caused an uproar; it was greeted with praise, hostility, ridicule. Determined to clarify the pragmatic conception of truth, James collected nine essays he had written on this subject before he wrote "Pragmatism" and six written later in response to criticisms of that volume by Bertrand Russell and others. He published the collection under the title "The Meaning of Truth" in 1909, the year before his death.

"The Meaning of Truth" shows James at his best--clear and readable as always, and full of verve and good humor. Intent upon making difficult ideas clear, he is also forceful in his effort to make them prevail.

A pioneer in early studies of the human mind and founder of that peculiarly American philosophy called Pragmatism, William James remains America's most widely read philosopher. Generations of students have been drawn to his lucid presentations of philosophical problems. His works, now being made available for the first time in a definitive edition, have a permanent place in American letters and a continuing influence in philosophy and psychology.

The essays gathered in the posthumously published "Essays in Radical Empiricism" formulate ideas that had brewed in James's mind for thirty years as he sought a way out of the philosophical dilemmas generated by the new psychology of the late nineteenth century. They constitute the explanatory core of his doctrine of radical empiricism, a doctrine that charts his course between the absolute idealism he could not accept and, at the other extreme, the law of associationism, which reduces knowledge to sheer contiguity of ideas. In his introduction John J. McDermott describes the historical background and the genesis of James's theory and considers the objections raised by its opponents.

This ninth volume of a projected twelve continues the series of William James's correspondence with family, friends, and colleagues that was begun in Volume 4. Consisting of some 470 letters, with as many more calendared, it offers a complete accounting of James's known correspondence from July 1899 through 1901.

Volume 9 covers the period of James's great collapse, of his years of exile in Europe in search of health, and of the beginning of his withdrawal from full-time teaching at Harvard. In spite of his heart troubles, nervous prostration, and often-proclaimed inability to work, James wrote and successfully delivered his Gifford Lectures, which in 1902 were published as The Varieties of Religious Experience, probably his most widely read work.

In Europe, James develops a profound ambivalence toward America. He comes to realize how strong his attachment is to his home but at the same time he becomes more and more dismayed by the emergence of the United States as an imperial power with the consequent loss of what he perceives to be his country's moral purity.

James's views on religion are expressed in various fragments and asides. While creeds and churches continue to make no claims upon him, he believes that religious experience places us in touch with a deeper stratum of reality. Because of his intimate association during these months with the dying Frederic Myers, problems of psychical research are also prominent.

He corresponds with leading women in the emerging field of social work, including Frances Morse, Elizabeth Evans, and the Goldmark sisters, Pauline and Susan, and prominent intellectuals such as Theodore Flournoy, Wincenty Lutoslawski, Carl Stumpf, Ferdinand Schiller, Henry Sidgwick, Hugo Munsterberg, Josiah Royce, George Herbert Palmer, Charles William Eliot, James Mark Baldwin, and Edwin Godkin. His daughter, Margaret Mary, and his youngest son, Alexander Robertson, receive fatherly advice and encouragement from a distance during the crucial years of their young lives.

This sixth volume of a projected twelve continues the series of William James's correspondence with family, friends, and colleagues that was begun in volume 4. Consisting of some 400 letters, with an additional 400 calendared, it offers a complete accounting of his correspondence for the years 1885-89.

During this period and after years of false starts and procrastination, James completed most of the work on the book that was to become a classic in its field, The Principles of Psychology. It was also during these years that he became more directly involved in the world of psychical research. Most of his efforts in this area were devoted to Leonora Piper, the American trance medium, but he also found time for correspondence with fellow inquirers in Europe such as Frederic William Henry Myers and Edmund Gurney. James's interest in his graduate students is apparent in his correspondence with, among others, George Santayana and Charles Augustus Strong, who in beginning their own academic careers still sought their mentor's advice and support. Established correspondents -- colleagues such as Josiah Royce, Granville Stanley Hall, Shadworth Hollway Hodgsone, Theodule Ribot, Charles Renouvier, and Charles Sanders Peirce -- return in this volume as they continue their dialogue with James about the psychological and philosophical issues of the day.

There were also many changes in James's family life during these years -- the death of his youngest son, Herman James, and the birth of his daughter, Margaret Mary. And, because his wife Alice and the children were away from home for long periods of time, letters to Alice dominate the volume -- letters that reveal the emotional support andaffirmation that James drew from his wife. These were also the years when James was at his most sociable, sometimes making three or four social calls a day and reporting daily to Alice the bits of Cambridge and Boston gossip.

In May 1908 William James, a gifted and popular lecturer, delivered a series of eight Hibbert lectures at Manchester College, Oxford, on "The Present Situation in Philosophy." These were published a year later as "A Pluralistic Universe,"

During the preceding decade James, as he struggled with deep conflicts within his own philosophic development, had become increasingly preoccupied with epistemological and metaphysical issues. He saw serious inadequacies in the forms of absolute and monistic idealism dominant in England and the United States, and he used the lectures to attack the specific form that "vicious intellectualism" had taken.

In "A Pluralistic Universe" James captures a new philosophic vision, at once intimate and realistic. He shares with his readers a view of the universe that is fresh, active, and novel. The message conveyed is as relevant today as it was in his time.

Supervised by a team of scholars, each a specialist in his field, "The Works of William James" fills the long-standing need for an authoritative, standard edition of the philosopher's works. The General Editor and supervisor of the project is Frederick Burkhardt. Mr. Burkhardt, formerly a professor of philosophy and then a college president, is President Emeritus of the American Council of Learned Societies. The Textual Editor, Fredson Bowers, Linden Kent Professor of English at the University of Virginia, is in charge of the establishment of the text and its production according to standards of the Center for Editions of American Authors. Gold Medalist of the Bibliographical Society, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Corresponding Fellow of The British Academy, Mr.Bowers is the author of two books on the theory and practice of textual criticism and editor of several multivolume critical editions. Ignas K. Skrupskelis, the Associate Editor, contributes the substantive notes. He is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina and has conducted extensive research in the James collection.

This eighth volume of a projected twelve continues the series of William James's correspondence with family, friends, and colleagues, which was begun in volume 4 of the Correspondence. The eight volume contains some 530 letters, with an additional 620 letters calendared, thus giving a complete accounting of James's known correspondence from 1895 to June 1899 inclusive.

During this period, James struggles against various temptations, never completely successfully, to devote all of his attention to philosophy, the first and great love of his life. To this end, he published The Will to Believe with a promise to set out more formally his system of radical empiricism. The volume helps document the reception of the book and the controversy to which the title essay gave rise, a controversy the main issues of which have once again returned to the forefront of philosophical discussion and places James in the middle of postmodernist discussion. His 1898 tour of California where he delivered his lecture on "Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results," the start of the pragmatism controversy, also belongs to the period of the present volume. Among the distractions from philosophy are his 1896 Lowell Institute lectures on exceptional mental states and the Gifford lectures on varieties of religious experience, on which he began work in the late 1890s. His new philosophical correspondents are the Polish nationalist and messianist Wincenty Lutoslawski and Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller, the future strategist of the pragmatism controversy.

James becomes a public philosopher, whose views were sought on the problems of the day. To James's great dismay, the United States was becoming an imperial power: the Venezuela crisis and the Spanish-American War sometimes rousing James into outrage. France was being torn apart by the Dreyfus affair with James expressing strong sympathies for Dreyfus and the intellectuals. The race question was coming to the forefront, with Booker T. Washington entering the list of correspondents.

His family continued to take up much of his attention. As his children grew older, they became the recipients of numerous didactic, affectionate, and playful letters from a father often at a distance.

This twelfth and final volume of The Correspondence of William James concludes the series of William James's correspondence with family, friends, and colleagues that began with volume 4. The first three volumes were devoted to the letters exchanged between the brothers William and Henry James. Consisting of some 600 letters, with an additional 650 letters calendared, this final volume gives a complete accounting of James's known correspondence from April of 1908 to 21 August 1910, inclusive, the last letter having been written five days before James's death on 26 August 1910. The volume also accounts for undated letters, as well as letters located too late to be included in their proper chronological place in the preceding volumes.

The correspondence takes place against a background of aging and illness. First came Henry's collapse in the spring of 1910, which led William and Alice to undertake their last voyage to Europe. Leaving wife and brother in England, William journeyed to Paris in hopes that a doctor there could ease the pain in his chest, and then to Bad-Nauheim. There, although the results from X rays and measurements of his blood gave him hope, his condition did not improve. William wandered around Europe, joined by his wife and brother, before boarding a steamer for Montreal. By then an invalid, unable on most days to make even simple entries in his diary, he traveled from Quebec to Chocorua, where he died in the arms of his wife.

Professionally there are three major events during this period in James's life. First was the delivery at Manchester College, Oxford, of the Hibbert Lectures on the present condition of philosophy, published in 1908 as A Pluralistic Universe. As was his habit, James sent numerous complimentary copies of his book and received many thoughtful responses, which provide a rare opportunity to see how differently diverse readers interpret the same book. Next came publication of The Meaning of Truth, which forced James to return to the defense of the pragmatic conception of truth. The third was his work on a textbook in metaphysics that was to become the posthumously published Some Problems of Philosophy.

Most of James's philosophical correspondents remain the same as in the previous volume: John Dewey, Henri Bergson, Francis Herbert Bradley, Ferdinand Canning Schiller, Charles Sanders Peirce, Ralph Barton Perry, William Pepperell Montague, Horace Meyer Kallen, Arthur Oncken Lovejoy, Charles Augustus Strong, and Dickinson Sergeant Miller. With the French philosopher Emile Boutroux and the German pragmatist Julius Goldstein there is more extensive correspondence in this volume than in the previous one. Sigmund Freud, while not a correspondent, makes a cameo appearance when he and James meet in the fall of 1909 at Clark University.

This eleventh volume of a projected twelve continues the series of William James's correspondence with family, friends, and colleagues that began with volume 4. Consisting of some 500 letters, with an additional 650 letters calendared, volume 11 gives a complete accounting of James's known correspondence from April 1905 through March 1908.

Several major professional events in James's career occur during this period, including his California adventure--a semester of teaching at Stanford University in the spring of 1906 that is interrupted by the San Francisco earthquake on April 18. In the fall of that year, James delivers the Lowell Lectures on pragmatism. Also during this period, in 1908, he agrees to deliver the Hibbert Lectures at Oxford, which were to become A Pluralistic Universe. In 1907, after several years of a reduced teaching load, James retires from Harvard, giving his final course that January.

James has trouble concentrating on writing what he considers his great work in philosophy, a book setting out his metaphysics but with the central focus shifting now from radical empiricism to pluralism. And as criticism of pragmatism persists, he becomes more and more impatient with its critics, who in his view make no effort to understand this new philosophical movement.

He continues his correspondence with the first generation of professionally trained philosophers and psychologists in America, among whom are Dickinson Sergeant Miller, Charles Augustus Strong, Charles Montague Bakewell, Mary Whiton Calkins, Arthur Oncken Lovejoy, Ralph Barton Perry, and Horace Meyer Kallen, and remains in touch with friendly critics Francis Herbert Bradley and Josiah Royce as well as with philosophical allies Henri Bergson, Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller, and Charles Peirce.

A number of correspondents make their first appearance in this volume. Marion Hamilton Carter, a muckraking journalist, acquaints James with some of the social problems of the South but also drags him into many futile sittings with mediums. Horace Fletcher, a nutritionist whose reforms became known as Fletcherism, gives James dietary advice. Alfred Hodder, a former student of James, embroils James in his complicated marital situation, and only Hodder's death saves James from having to testify in court. Maxim Gorky, who on a visit to America scandalized some by presenting as his wife a woman to whom he was not married, makes a brief appearance as James praises his writing. Clifford Beers, a former patient in a mental hospital, receives moral and financial support from James and initiates a movement for the reform of mental hospitals.

Consisting of some 572 letters, with another 460 calendared, this tenth volume in a projected series of twelve offers a complete accounting of William James's known correspondence--with family, friends, and colleagues--from the beginning of 1902 through March 1905.

For James these were hopeful years of recovery. The end of the depressing cure at Nauheim, the successful conclusion of the arduous Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh, the reaching maturity and independence of his two eldest children, and the gradual withdrawal from teaching responsibilities at Harvard allowed him to hope that he would at long last present his philosophical message to the world in the shape of a treatise on metaphysics.

Philosophy was in a state of unrest, with old alliances breaking up and new ones forming, and was ripe for a more fruitful reformulation of its traditional questions. Intellectualism, philosophical and scientific, was waning, making room for the emergence of an empiricism congenial to humane values. As reflected in the letters of this period, James comes to recognize that Dewey and the Chicago school were his allies and that the Frenchman Henri Bergson was moving in the same direction. Consequently, Bergson is the major new correspondent of the present volume, and, because he emerges during this period as James's leading supporter, Ferdinand Schiller is another dominant correspondent.

Often boisterous and irreverent, Schiller saw himself as a general about to overwhelm an aged and sleepy, but still dangerous, enemy. James, in the meantime, had to call upon all of his diplomatic skills to keep on good terms with the people Schiller irritated, while remaining Schiller's friend and defender. Scholars will find much material in this volume that will help them judge whether the common view of pragmatism as a capricious subjectivism largely reflected a widespread lack of respect for Schiller.

While continuing his involvement with anti-imperialism, James takes a more critical stance toward existing social conditions during this period, proclaiming his admiration for the small and insisting on the connection between great size and social evil. In 1904 he tours the American South. There are hints that he was acting as a scout for his brother Henry, which perhaps caused William James to see more of the meanness and shabbiness of the region than he would have otherwise.

Along with Bergson and Schiller, prominent intellectuals represented in this volume include Theodore Flournoy, Wincenty Lutoslawski, Carl Stumpf, Hugo Munsterberg, Josiah Royce, Charles Sanders Peirce, Oliver Lodge, John Dewey, George Herbert Palmer, Charles William Eliot, James Mark Baldwin, and Edwin Godkin.

The seventh volume of a projected twelve continues the series of William James's correspondence with family, friends, and colleagues that was begun in volume 4. Consisting of some 488 letters, with an additional 510 calendared, it offers a complete accounting of his correspondence for the years 1890-94.

The chief event of the period is the publication of the long-awaited Principles of Psychology, which produced many congratulatory and critical letters from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Christine Ladd Franklin, Shadworth Hollway Santayana, James Mark Baldwin, and others. James devoted much effort to ensuring that Harvard did not fall behind its many emerging rivals in psychology, engineering the coming of Hugo Munsterberg to Harvard and raising funds for the psychological laboratory. Strains and a sense of rivalry began to develop with Granville Stanley Hall, his former student, who was established as president of nearby Clark University. Also of interest are his letters about and to Mary Whiton Calkins concerning her efforts to become a graduate student at Harvard.

James's major essay in ethics, "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life, " appeared during this period and provoked considerable correspondence. Among the more curious letters is that to Alexander McKenzie, who after visiting James's classroom in an official capacity expressed concern about his lack of Christian faith.

These years saw the birth of James's last child, Alexander Robertson, and the death of his sister Alice. They were also the years of his long European sabbatical.

William James, well known for his contributions to psychology and philosophy, occupies a secure place in American intellectual history.This fifth volume of a projected twelve-volume edition chronicles James's emergence into professional and personal maturity. During this period, James took decisive steps toward resolving his notoriously protracted and difficult search for a profession. he published his first substantial signed articles and undertook some shrewd academic maneuvering that would secure him a chair in philosophy despite his lack of formal training.

This fourth volume of a projected twelve begins a new series: William James's correspondence with family, friends, and colleagues. The 309 letters in this volume start when William James was fourteen and on his second trip abroad and conclude when he was thirty-five, negotiating with the president of Johns Hopkins University about a course he had been invited to teach on the relation between mind and body. William James's correspondence in these twenty years deals with everything from his protracted search for a vocation to his recurrent physical and emotional problems. The letters range from his relations with family and friends to his irregular education to his odd - one might say Jamesian - courtship of Alice Howe Gibbens and reveal his developing views on art, morality, politics, women, medicine, philosophy, science, religion, national character, the Civil War, the South, Americans abroad, and other writers and thinkers. They are witness to his growth into adulthood and the price he paid for that growth. William James's teenage letters reveal an adolescent amazingly charming and precocious who displayed from the beginning the promise of his maturity: witty, self-assured, and discerning. His letters simply dance with delight at the world around him. Packed with commentary, much of it considered and trenchant, the letters give us a young William James in the round, brilliantly.

This twelfth and final volume of "The Correspondence of William James concludes the series of William James's correspondence with family, friends, and colleagues that began with volume 4. The first three volumes were devoted to the letters exchanged between the brothers William and Henry James. Consisting of some 600 letters, with an additional 650 letters calendared, this final volume gives a complete accounting of James's known correspondence from April of 1908 to 21 August 1910, inclusive, the last letter having been written five days before James's death on 26 August 1910. The volume also accounts for undated letters, as well as letters located too late to be included in their proper chronological place in the preceding volumes. Professionally there are three major events during this period in James's life. First was the delivery at Manchester College, Oxford, of the Hibbert Lectures on the present condition of philosophy, published in 1908 as A "Pluralistic Universe. As was his habit, James sent numerous complimentary copies of his book and received many thoughtful responses, which provide a rare opportunity to see how differently diverse readers interpret the same book. Next came publication of "The Meaning of Truth, which forced James to return to the defense of the pragmatic conception of truth. The third was his work on a textbook in metaphysics that was to become the posthumously published "Some Problems of Philosophy. Most of James's philosophical correspondents remain the same as in the previous volume: John Dewey, Henri Bergson, Francis Herbert Bradley, Ferdinand Canning Schiller, Charles Sanders Peirce, Ralph Barton Perry, William Pepperell Montague, Horace Meyer Kallen,Arthur Oncken Lovejoy, Charles Augustus Strong, and Dickinson Sergeant Miller. With the French philosopher Emile Boutroux and the German pragmatist Julius Goldstein there is more extensive correspondence in this volume than in the previous one.