William James, the big brother who sought clarity

Thursday marked the 100th anniversary of the death of William James, a giant in American intellectual history, a trailblazer in both philosophy and psychology. He combined analysis with empathy, a great example of the modern ideal of the balanced mind.

James' two greatest works, The Principles of Psychology (1890) and The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), are towering achievements, still resonant today in probing why we behave as we do and believe what we do.

William James was the older brother of famed novelist Henry James. It is amazing that two such extraordinary minds came from the same family and that, despite some resemblance in their thinking, the two were so different in style and sensibility. Henry's drive was to complicate - to show how even the simplest words and actions are fraught with ambiguity. William's drive was to simplify - to make the motives for human action more accessible and understandable.

So it is not surprising that older brother William sometimes grew frustrated with his sibling: "I read your Golden Bowl a month or more ago," he wrote Henry in 1905, "and it put me, as most of your recenter long stories have put me, in a very puzzled state of mind. . . . why won't you, just to please Brother, sit down and write a new book, with no twilight or mustiness in the plot, with great vigor and decisiveness in the action, no fencing in the dialogue, no psychological commentaries, and an absolute straightness in the style?" Why, William seemed to be asking Henry, can't you write more like me?

This difference in styles is, of course, linked to the different fields in which they wrote, but it also reflects the different demands these writers made on the world around them. To read Henry you must immerse yourself, entirely surrender to his mental landscape. To read William James, you can remain separate, using his writing to supplement your own ideas.

Take, for example, this passage, from a chapter titled "On Habit" in Talks to Teachers (amended from an earlier chapter in Principles of Psychology):

So far as we are thus mere bundles of habit, we are stereotyped creatures, imitators and copiers of our past selves. And since this, under any circumstances, is what we always tend to become, it follows first of all that the teacher's prime concern should be to ingrain into the pupil that assortment of habits that shall be most useful to him through life.

It's practical, it's human, it's direct, it's smart. William goes on to explain how to inculcate the proper habits. The chapter is a wonder of practical insight and guidance, and every elementary school teacher in the country would do well to read it and apply its lessons in the classroom.

William's life is a study in self-improvement and self-realization. He grew up in a wealthy and educated home. His father, Henry James Sr., was intensely devoted to his five children, traveling with them throughout Europe in search of the best education for them. Henry Sr. was also friends with the greatest thinkers of the day, and the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were often on hand to converse with the children, especially with the brilliant oldest child, William.

Yet despite - or perhaps because of - such attention and devotion, William suffered a harrowing mental breakdown in his early 20s. He felt he had been visited by the devil, an experience that would haunt him for the rest of his life. His suffering may have been sparked by too much opportunity, too many talents, and, perhaps, the overwhelming stress of great career expectations.

He began by studying art in Paris, then returned to America to study medicine, then shifted his attention to science. From here, he moved into philosophy, which he saw anew through the lens of his artistic and scientific background, which took him into the then-new field of psychology. He eventually married, had a family, and became a Harvard University professor with adoring students and throngs of international admirers. He interacted with many of the greatest minds of his age, from Mark Twain to Sigmund Freud. His ideas on free will, chance, the emotions, mysticism (he was an early user of mind-altering substances), and social change still influence great thinkers today.

His early, confused career path, and his continued struggles with depression, emerge in the personal and empathetic quality of his writing. In his philosophy, he was unwilling to reduce life to one or another rule, unwilling to cancel possibility. He stayed open, especially in his study of religious experience. Some took him to task for entertaining ideas about supernatural experience, but he explained: "To upset the conclusion that all crows are black, there is no need to seek demonstration that no crows are black; it is sufficient to produce one white crow; a single one is sufficient."

One hundred years after his death, William James still seems astonishingly modern. He is more accessible than his student, John Dewey, and more recognizable as a distinct individual voice than most philosophers writing today. To read him is to feel the presence of a human mind in all its variety and contradiction - a deep, generous mind that wants to impart what it believes to be true while respecting the beliefs of others. He is a model for our times.