Unquestionably the content of William James’s Principles of Psychology was responsible for most of its success, but there is no denying that style also played an important role in making his treatment of this content not only interesting but (for many) convincing and memorable. For instance, as contrasted with psychologies written in the old manner, the first substantive chapter of James’s masterpiece is on “The Functions of the Brain” (PP Ch. 2), not a topic guaranteed to elicit immediate attention from readers concerned about psychology as traditionally conceived. To arouse interest and understanding, he began this chapter with a fresh and apt analogy, a frequent stratagem in his arsenal of literary devices:
If I begin chopping the foot of a tree, its branches are unmoved by my act, and its leaves murmur as peacefully as ever in the wind. If, on the contrary, I do violence to the foot of a fellow-man, the rest of his body instantly responds to the aggression by movements of alarm or defense. The reason of this difference is that the man has a nervous system, while the tree has none; and the function of the nervous system is to bring each part into harmonious co-operation with every other.
(25)
Proceeding further, James provided a basic review of physiological reflexes, semi-reflexes, and voluntary acts, using his own easily duplicated observations from dissections of frogs to move the discussion along. Perhaps we are too jaded today to feel the excitement that such a straightforward, fact-based presentation could prompt in James’s day, especially when it led to persuasive conclusions regarding the relation between “man’s consciousness” and “the hemispheres of the brain.” In any case, by the time James completed his survey of “Some General Conditions of Brain-Activity” (Ch. 3), he had laid the foundation for a neurologically grounded treatment of psychology.
That treatment began in the next chapter (Ch. 4), where James applied lessons from his review of brain-functions to his analysis of “Habit.” Toward the end of this chapter, another feature of James’s style is illustrated when his discussion breaks into a disquisition on the “ethical implications and pedagogic maxims” to be drawn from the foregoing treatment of habit. This section of the chapter is crowned by his famous statement that
habit is thus the great fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor. It alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein. It keeps the fisherman and the deck-hand at sea through the winter; it holds the miner in his darkness, and nails the countryman to his log-cabin and his lonely farm through all the months of snow; it protects us from invasion by the natives of the desert and the frozen zone. It dooms us all to fight out the battle of life upon the lines of our nurture or our early choice, and to make the best of a pursuit that disagrees.
(125)
Combined with his preceding discussion of the relation between habit and brain-function, according to which habit is the result of the inculcation of neural pathways in the brain, this passage gives us a glimpse of the magic of James’s writing – at once richly scientific in outlook, resolutely humanistic in significance, and extremely effective in presentation. Not only is the substance important but James’s use of concrete, everyday examples makes his argument all the more compelling. Today’s reader may need a while to adjust to James’s expansive, late-nineteenth-century diction, but once the adjustment is made, the frequent power of his writing and text is hard to miss…or resist.
Before we go on to address other matters, it makes sense to spend some time exploring the substance and style of The Principles of Psychology. The substance of The Principles of Psychology can be described most succinctly under two headings: first, the topic of the entire work and, second, the topical division of its individual chapters.
As regards the overall subject matter of Principles, James provided a clear definition at the start of Chapter 1, “The Scope of Psychology”: “Psychology is the Science of Mental Life, both of its phenomena and of their conditions.” The phenomena, he said, are “such things as we call feelings, desires, cognitions, reasonings, decisions, and the like” in all their apparent “variety and complexity” (15). The search for their conditions, he suggested, is “the psychologist’s most interesting task” (17). And with a few quick examples he arrived at the conclusion that “brain-experiences” must be among those conditions, so that “a certain amount of brain-physiology must be presupposed or included in Psychology” (18). This explains the placement of the next chapters, which we have already mentioned.
Several things are worth noting. First, James did not assume that his readers would have a firm or precise understanding of mental phenomena. These phenomena are called by different names, each of which stands for a variety of phenomena of unspecified complexity. Clearly, he was not going to accept, much less offer any simple notion of the basic phenomena of psychology. More specifically, he was not going to reduce these phenomena to a single term like “idea,” as the traditional empirical psychologists in the Lockean tradition had done. Nor did he attribute these phenomena without further qualification to a “soul” or “mind,” as the spiritualist and rationalist psychologists had done, whether they spoke from within a religious or idealistic tradition. Even if there were some kind of mental “faculty,” that faculty would work “under conditions” (17). Otherwise, James asked, why would it “retain so much better the events of yesterday than those of last year” or even “an hour ago?” Why too, “in old age,” would “its grasp of childhood’s events seem firmest?” And why would “illness and exhaustion enfeeble it?” (16). A soul or mind operating without reliance on a body should be immune to physical tiredness, yet the effects of tiredness upon mental phenomena are all too obvious to any casual observer. Clearly, something other than pure facultative ability must be involved. Furthermore, the readily observed fact that “actions originally prompted by conscious intelligence may grow so automatic…as to be apparently unconsciously performed” suggested to James that “the boundary-line of the mental is certainly vague” (19). Is doing something out of a consciously nurtured habit not reflective of mentality, at least at some remove?
As a result of these initial considerations, James concluded that we should “let the science [of psychology] be as vague as its subject,” at least at the start. After all, “at a certain stage in the development of every science a degree of vagueness is what best consists with fertility” (19). Thus, at the very beginning of Principles, James called for open minds and opposed strict delineations of terms and assumptions. He proposed, in essence, that the new psychology required active exploration rather than passive reporting of already completed investigations. Thus, from the start, James presented psychology as a vital, challenging, and creative endeavor. Exciting, in a word. And he drew his readers in by inviting them to think and discover along with him.
Even at the start, however, James felt that the hallmark of mental life could be discerned. Observing that metal filings are drawn to a magnet just as Romeo was drawn to Juliet, he noted that if a wall came between Romeo and Juliet, they would not “remain idiotically pressing their faces against its opposite sides” as a magnet and filings would forever press against either side of an intervening card. Instead, Romeo would find “a circuitous way” around, over, or under the wall (20). Just so, James said, “the pursuance of future ends and the choice of means for their attainment” are “the mark and criterion of the presence of mentality in a phenomenon” (21). Hence, “no actions but such as are done for an end, and show a choice of means, can be called indubitable expressions of Mind” (23).
Notice that behavior now enters James’s scheme for psychology, despite the fact that it is missing from his definition. The subject matter of psychology may be “mental phenomena,” but the criterion of mentality is the pursuit of future ends: action following upon and completing mental life. Although James did not invoke the name of Darwin in this particular context, the point is clear: Mental life serves the purposes of the organism.
In sum, James began Principles with what amounted to a declaration of independence from previous modes of psychological thought. In neither substance nor style would he be limited by them.
As regards the individual chapters in The Principles of Psychology, the first thing one notices when skimming the table of contents is James’s unusual sequencing of topics. (See Appendix A for a listing of chapters.) The sequence is unusual not only in relation to twenty-first-century psychology textbooks; it was unusual in James’s day too. In fact, the only unanimous “reproach” offered by early reviewers of Principles, as James himself observed two years later, was that “my order of chapters is planless and unnatural” (PBC 1). Though he made concessions to this criticism when he re-ordered chapters in the abbreviated version of his work, he was adamant that he had followed “a good pedagogic order” in Principles, and it will help us understand his vision of psychology if we attend to what he had in mind. Basically, in today’s jargon, James wanted to take a “top-down” rather than “bottom-up” approach to mental phenomena, at least after he had established their neurological foundations (in his Chs. 2–3, as illustrated in Ch. 4) and discussed some methodological and philosophical matters (in Chs. 5–8).
Even with this rather large proviso about Chapters 2–8, it is difficult to claim that James’s ordering of chapters (from Ch. 9 on) works as seamlessly as he would have liked. But what he attempted to do, on empirical grounds (as will be explained in a later chapter), was to start (after those eight long preliminary chapters!) with what is “given” in immediate experience – that is, with the holistic experience of the ongoing “stream” of mental life – rather than with separate parts or elements (then all-but-universally called “ideas”) that had been abstracted out of this original, unified stream of experience. From this holistic starting point, he wanted to proceed step by step, disembedding aspect after aspect of psychological dynamics from the initial experienced whole. Thus, after he had established the personal nature of consciousness in “The Stream of Thought” (Ch. 9), he moved on to his chapter on “The Consciousness of Self.” From his discussion of the selective nature of self-consciousness in this chapter he was led naturally to the subsequent chapter on “Attention.” Then, his treatment of the role of attention to certain aspects of perceptual experience invited consideration of “Conception.” And hence, step by step, he proceeded to discussions of “Discrimination and Comparison,” “Association,” and so on. (Again see the chapter listing in Appendix A.)
It cannot be claimed that this progression of topics works all the way without some out-of-joint transitions here and there. Why, for instance, is “Sensation” treated after “Memory”? But there is a general logic to the organization of Principles that reflects James’s distinctive vision and allowed him, importantly, to avoid placing then-customary emphasis upon mental elements and their association (the means by which previous empirical psychologists had attempted to bring all those elemental “ideas” together). Instead, James’s emphasis from the start is on the active agency of personal consciousness rather than the passive and impersonal connection of basic elements, and his discussion of the selective character of consciousness leads ultimately to his chapter on the “Will” (Ch. 26), which itself follows upon discussions of the dictates of “Instinct” (Ch. 24) and “The Emotions” (Ch. 25), which complicate and limit but do not eliminate the important place of will in his psychology.
The last substantive psychological chapter in Principles, a chapter on “Hypnotism” (Ch. 27), is admittedly a catch-all for issues on the frontier of psychology in 1890, issues like altered states of consciousness, suggestibility, hallucinations, and double personality. (James tightened and followed some of the threads of this chapter in his 1896 Lowell Lectures on Exceptional Mental States [see Taylor 1982] and in his 1902 Varieties of Religious Experience.) After thus surveying the frontier of his day, James turned to some philosophical reflections in his final chapter on “Necessary Truths and the Effects of Experience” (Ch. 28). In this chapter, he addressed topics important to spiritualists and idealists though in decidedly empirical and Darwinian ways, which is to say, in ways opposed to then-regnant rationalist forms of explanation. (His arguments were more innovative and radical than those used by other empiricists up to that point in time, as will be discussed later.) In short, the last chapter in Principles points beyond the conceptual conflicts and deadlocks of James’s time, and it does so in ways that resonate, even today, with concerns and options that fall along the shared borders of psychology and philosophy.
As the table of contents in Appendix A makes clear, The Principles of Psychology covers many different topics, some of which are not typically covered in textbooks today. In particular, no textbook today discusses the philosophical issues that James discussed at considerable length in Chapters 5–8 and 28. Nor do they make the kind of distinction that James made between “The Perception of ‘Things’” and “The Perception of Reality,” though the philosophically relevant considerations in these chapters are precisely what make them potentially worthwhile for present-day psychologists as well as philosophers. And “Will” is not typically discussed in current textbooks, though recent “re-discoveries” of related phenomena have made volition a more relevant topic than it has been, in psychology or philosophy, since the 1920s.
In sum, then, even those who sympathize with James’s unusual chapter organization will understand why critics have said that his coverage of topics “meanders” and at times “zigzags,” sometimes in pursuit of “tangential subjects.” His big book (extending over two lengthy volumes) is in fact a bit “sprawling.” (James himself was dismayed at its bulk.) But The Principles of Psychology nonetheless offers a treasure trove of topics, facts, ideas, suggestions, and hunches, and it lit the way – many ways! – for others to follow. Even where it was disputed and refuted, it got lines of exploration under way…and can still provide useful points for consideration, as not a few individuals have argued.
James’s style of writing received a great deal of attention in early reviews of The Principles of Psychology, and well it should have. James was one of the great prose stylists of his generation. (His correspondence, now published in twelve hefty volumes, is an acknowledged jewel of the English language.) Widely read in literature, philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, and various natural sciences, among other fields, he could draw just the right phrase or quotation from his well-stocked memory and personal notebooks. Fluent in French and German as well as English, capable in Italian, and able to make his way in Latin, he had firsthand acquaintance with original texts from a wide range of times and places. Whenever he discussed a work, he did so based on his own careful and acute reading. This is apparent in the masterful summaries and criticisms he offered of key works regarding virtually every topic pertinent to psychology. He had not only studied each topic through the best literature in multiple literatures but had also thought critically about what he read so that he had uniquely perceptive things to say about claims that had been made, often including what this or that author should have concluded based on the evidence and arguments that he or she (usually he) had provided.
If Principles tends to be “sprawling” at times, it is also richly synthetic in nature, drawing together facts, insights, and theories from often distant fields. But at the end of each discussion, when he had gone as far as the facts and careful reasoning allowed, James was not hesitant to leave matters as they stood – unresolved, if in fact that was the case. This gave his work an appearance of being “loose” at times, of not being tied together as tightly and definitively as it could have been, but James insisted that this was deliberate “on account of the strong aversion with which I am filled for the humbugging pretense of exactitude” (CWJ 7: 329). Nowhere is his sense of the infancy and incompleteness of scientific psychology so apparent as in the final sentences with which he concluded Principles:
Even in the clearest parts of Psychology our insight is insignificant enough. And the more sincerely one seeks to trace the actual course of psychogenesis, the steps by which as a race we may have come by the peculiar mental attributes which we possess, the more clearly one perceives “the slowly gathering twilight close in utter night.”
(1280)
The closing quotation, from William Wordsworth’s The Excursion (1814), is illustrative of James’s frequent use of literary references.
Many commentators have mentioned the “unfinished,” forward-looking aspect of Principles, usually positively. As one colleague wrote:
Who ever heard of a psychologist before, writing with intent to make his subject clear and plain, with its difficulties & its questions well stated & made clear to be difficulties & questions; & not covered up with fancied solutions & put away till next time. It is just a book which you can’t lay aside, & which makes you in love with the subject.
(CWJ 8: 23)
And love it many did, finding James’s mode of expression and argumentation to be exceptional. “Whether we agree or dissent,” another person wrote, “with what delight we read his pages!” (Palmer 1930, 7). Even 45 years after the publication of The Principles of Psychology, James’s first biographer observed that it was read “not only by other psychologists, or by students of psychology, but by people who were under no obligation to read it,” for the simple reason that it is so “readable” (Perry 1935, 2: 91).
It is often said that style is the man. With James, this was certainly true. He was once described in the following way by someone who knew him well: “His marvellously large, human, candid, invariably meliorist outlook, his eye for the concrete, the breadth of his understanding of temperaments, of humanity, are incomparable…He was utterly candid, utterly unpretending, utterly open-minded, utterly truthseeking” (Miller 1975, 294, 310). The same words, without revision, could be applied to The Principles of Psychology.
Style, for James, always served the purpose of accurate and effective communication, which is not an easy thing to achieve when dealing with novel and complex issues. As he worked on Principles, he complained to his brother, the novelist Henry James, about the difficulties of forging “every sentence in the teeth of irreducible and stubborn facts” (CWJ 2: 59). Elsewhere, he noted that “life,” by which he meant experience, “defies our phrases” so that “something forever exceeds, escapes from statement” (VRE 479–480). The genius of The Principles of Psychology, as many have said, is that it so often captures truth on the wing by describing evanescent aspects of experience that generally defy expression. For instance, James famously wrote that “we ought to say a feeling of and, a feeling of if, a feeling of but, and a feeling of by, quite as readily as we say a feeling of blue or a feeling of cold” (238), but no one had until he taught us to do so. “Feelings of tendency,” he went on to argue, may be “vague” but they are nonetheless feelings (246). Once he had pointed this out, others agreed, surprised not to have noticed this before. As he argued elsewhere in Principles, in a related context, “the only things which we commonly see are those which we preperceive [and hence expect to see], and the only things which we preperceive are those which have been labeled for us” (420). As we shall see, James was an astute labeler, or namer, of many previously overlooked phenomena.
James’s remarkable writing – his often elegant expression – did not simply come out that way. After completing Principles, he reported that “I have written every page 4 or 5 times over” (CWJ 2: 138), and there is manuscript evidence to suggest this is true. The result of his efforts is an often beautiful text that usually reads fluently, though as one James scholar has put it, “James is delightfully easy reading the first time around, but gets more difficult with each successive reading” (Seigfried 1990, 173). His writing, in short, is clear but the thoughts it expresses are often nuanced and subtle. As a result, his work repays multiple readings. This is still the case more than 100 years later, when (unfortunately) too few read Principles once, let alone multiple times. Combined with the tendency to read only this or that chapter, this accounts for more than a few misconceptions and simplifications of James’s thought.
Another notable aspect of James’s writing is its tendency toward personalized illustrations. Many concrete examples, drawn from everyday life, make it easy for readers to see themselves in the situations he describes. In fact, one of the reasons his illustrations seem so life-like is that he often drew them from his own life. Whether he was referring to the psychological impact of the death of a child, supporting an insight with observations of the family dog, describing a choice of careers as involving the murdering of potential aspects of the self, conveying what it is like to have an obstructed will, or analyzing the difficulty of getting out of bed on a cold winter morning, James often drew upon his own experiences and observations. It wasn’t that he wanted readers to privilege his experience; in fact, he rarely identified experiences as his own. Rather, he wanted to encourage his readers to use their own memories and imaginations to compare his claims to the evidence provided by their own experience. He didn’t want blind followers, and he certainly didn’t aspire to the status of a guru. He wanted to advance knowledge as best he could, in concert with others. In sum, style for James was always at the service of substance and truthfulness as confirmed by multiple consciousnesses.
In conclusion, it seems fair to suggest that the interplay of substance and style in The Principles of Psychology accounts for much of its overall effectiveness. Many long-forgotten scientific, philosophical, and humanistic treatises contain facts and insights worthy of communication, yet they languish in obscurity for want of apt expression. Similarly, many stylish but substantially thin texts, even if they escape reduction to pulp or ashes, end up gathering dust in libraries, attics, and warehouses. Having something to communicate does not in itself guarantee an attentive audience, nor will all the style in the world avail without something sufficiently important to convey. Perhaps James himself best described what his Principles of Psychology accomplished by its combination of relevant facts and attractive style, when he wrote the following about someone else’s masterwork just six months before the publication of his own classic text:
It often happens that scattered facts of a certain kind float around for a long time, but that nothing scientific or solid comes of them until some man writes just enough of a book to give them a possible body and meaning. Then they shoot together, as it were, from all directions, and that book becomes the centre of crystallization of a rapid accumulation of new knowledge.
(HS 268)
Clearly, James wrote more than “just enough” of a book to create a “centre of crystallization” that conferred historical significance upon the memorable “body and meaning” that he had given to previously “scattered facts.”