He gave a sincerely respectful hearing to
sentimentalists, mystics, spiritualists, wizards, cranks, quacks, and
impostors--for it is hard to draw the line, and James was not willing
to draw it prematurely. He thought, with his usual modesty, that any
of these might have something to teach him. The lame, the halt, the
blind, and those speaking with tongues could come to him with the
certainty of finding sympathy; and if they were not healed, at least
they were comforted, that a famous professor should take them so
seriously; and they began to feel that after all to have only one leg,
or one hand, or one eye, or to have three, might be in itself no less
beauteous than to have just two, like the stolid majority. Thus
William James became the friend and helper of those groping, nervous,
half-educated, spiritually disinherited, passionately hungry
individuals of which America is full. He became, at the same time,
their spokesman and representative before the learned world; and he
made it a chief part of his vocation to recast what the learned world
has to offer, so that as far as possible it might serve the needs and
interests of these people.
Yet the normal practical masculine American, too, had a friend in
William James. There is a feeling abroad now, to which biology and
Darwinism lend some colour, that theory is simply an instrument for
practice, and intelligence merely a help toward material survival.
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