An American in the nineteenth
century who completely disregarded the genteel tradition could hardly
have done more.
But there is another distinguished man, lately lost to this country,
who has given some rude shocks to this tradition and who, as much as
Whitman, may be regarded as representing the genuine, the long silent
American mind--I mean William James. He and his brother Henry were as
tightly swaddled in the genteel tradition as any infant geniuses could
be, for they were born before 1850, and in a Swedenborgian household.
Yet they burst those bands almost entirely. The ways in which the two
brothers freed themselves, however, are interestingly different. Mr.
Henry James has done it by adopting the point of view of the outer
world, and by turning the genteel American tradition, as he turns
everything else, into a subject-matter for analysis. For him it is a
curious habit of mind, intimately comprehended, to be compared with
other habits of mind, also well known to him. Thus he has overcome the
genteel tradition in the classic way, by understanding it. With
William James too this infusion of worldly insight and European
sympathies was a potent influence, especially in his earlier days; but
the chief source of his liberty was another. It was his personal
spontaneity, similar to that of Emerson, and his personal vitality,
similar to that of nobody else.
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