James

equal to the demands of laboratory research in
physiology. Unable to engage continuously in
systematic instruction or research, he read wide-
ly both in science and in German literature,
and was at the same time profoundly stirred by
his visits to the Dresden and Berlin galleries.
He was, as always, fascinated by the manifesta-
tions of human nature and of national character-
istics in the life about him. The effect of this
scattering of interests, together with the brood-
ing induced by his unstable health, deepened the
philosophical interests which he had caught from
his father and to which he was predisposed by
temperament.

James returned to Cambridge in November
1868, and obtained his medical degree in the fol-
lowing June. There followed a prolonged period
of ill-health and nervous depression, which, like
most such intervals in James's career, bore
abundant fruit. It was clear that his interest was
in the biological sciences rather than in medical
practice, yet the weakness of his eyes and back
forbade the use of the microscope or long hours
of standing in a laboratory. But the amount and
the quality of the reading on science, literature,
and philosophy which James accomplished dur-
ing these years of supposed incapacity exceeded
the aspirations of most able-bodied men. In the
midst of this period (probably in 1870) there
occurred a crisis which was in part neurasthenic
and in part intellectual. He was delivered from
melancholia, and also from philosophic doubt.
The latter effect he attributed to the reading of
Charles Renouvier's Traite de Psychologic Ra-
tionelle (1859), which converted him to a belief
in moral freedom as an hypothesis to be actively
adopted.

In the fall of 1872 James was appointed in-
structor in physiology in Harvard College and
for the next ten years he taught comparative
anatomy, comparative physiology, and hygiene.
Lest the discontinuity of his development be ex-
aggerated it must be remembered that biological
science was at this time closely connected with
both philosophy and psychology, as was indi-
cated by the vogue of Herbert Spencer. The
theory of evolution which w'as the central topic
in general biology raised the issue of philosophi-
cal materialism, and James's attention to biology
thus prepared him for the course on the "Phi-
losophy of Evolution," which he inaugurated in
1879. Psychology, on the other hand, was get-
ting a fresh impulse from the physiology of the
senses and the nervous system, topics on which
James placed special emphasis both in his study
and in his teaching, and to which his attention
bad already been drawn, while in Germany in

James
1868, by the work of Helmholtz and Wundt. In
1875 ne announced in the department of natural
history a course for graduates on the "Rela-
tions between Physiology and Psychology," and
in the following year he added an undergraduate
course on the same subject. These courses were
transferred to the department of philosophy in
1877, and in 1880 James himself was similarly
transferred and became assistant professor of
philosophy. This instruction in physiological or
biological psychology was recognized as a new
departure and was viewed with some suspicion
by philosophers of the older schools. In connec-
tion with these courses, perhaps as early as the
autumn of 1876, James created what best de-
serves to be called the first American laboratory
of psychology, and one of the first in the world.
It was during this and the following year that G.
Stanley Hall [g.z/.] carried on his studies at
Harvard, under Bowditch and James. Hall's in-
terests were more consistently experimental than
James's, and the former founded a better
equipped and more active laboratory at the Johns
Hopkins University in 1882. Through the in-
fluence of James and Hall, and that of the con-
temporary German movement upon visiting
American students, psychological laboratories
began to multiply rapidly in the United States
towards 1890.
James married Alice Howe Gibbens on July
10, 1878. She was distinguished by the serenity
of her disposition, as well as by her wit and
beauty; and the companionship and protection
which his family life provided were in no small
measure responsible for the fruitfulness of
James's subsequent career. Of his five children,
one died in childhood, three sons and a daughter
survived him. In June of the year of his mar-
riage he had contracted with Henry Holt &
Company to prepare a book on psychology. This
finally appeared in 1890, as The Principles of
Psychology, and during the twelve years' inter-
val it was the author's major task. James's trips
to Europe were too frequent to enumerate, but
that taken during the summer of 1880 and his
longer residence abroad during the year 1882-
83 were of peculiar importance in his develop-
ment He was already known in Europe, in
France through his articles in the Critique Phi-
losophique, in England through his articles in
Mind. He had entered into correspondence with
many of his European colleagues. The visits of
1880 and 1882 brought him for the first time,
however, into personal contact with them; and,
as was characteristic of James's social relations,
acquaintance quickly ripened into affectionate
and enduring friendship. In August 1880 he