Intellectual Circles

In the early 1870s, a group of brilliant young men, James among them, gathered to discuss philosophy.

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- Foremost among the members were Charles Sanders Peirce, a prodigy in mathematics, logic, and semiotics; lawyer Oliver Wendell Holmes, a long-time friend of the James family; and mathematician and philosopher Chauncey Wright. The group became known as The Metaphysical Club, and it provided James with a stimulating intellectual circle in which to share ideas.
  
  James began teaching (2) in spring 1873, and enjoyed it immediately. At last, he found a forum in which he had authority and earned respect. Buoyed by teaching and his philosophical comrades in the Club, James felt stronger and happier than ever before. Still, when Charles Eliot offered him a position teaching anatomy and physiology the next year, James wavered, first saying yes, then no, then yes again. His dilemma was not only whether to teach, but what to teach: should he commit himself to biology or, as he wrote to his brother Henry, “stick to psychology or die.” Mired in indecision, James experienced familiar neurasthenic symptoms. As usual, he escaped.
  
  Sometimes Europe beckoned; sometimes, he joined his friends James Jackson Putnam and Henry Bowditch in Keene Valley, in the Adirondacks. Climbing the high peaks, hiking verdant trails, James felt rejuvenated by the “natural animal life” that he found in Keene Valley and later, when he bought a country home for his family, in Chocorua, New Hampshire (2).
  
  Beginning with his 1865 piece in the North American Review, James began to publish in well-regarded journals and to gain a reputation in philosophical circles. In 1880, he traveled to Europe intent on meeting men whose works he had been reading and writing about, such as Shadworth Hodgson, Alexander Bain, Herbert Spencer, and George Croom Robertson, editor of the journal Mind. A warm reception from these colleagues deeply affirmed James’s faith in himself and the direction he hoped to follow in his career.

In this section

	William James. J. Notman, photographer. Cabinet photograph, [1880].	Charles Peirce. Whipple, photographer. Carte-de-visite. Boston, undated.

	Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Photograph, 1874.	Chauncey Wright. Photograph, 1874 or 1875.

	Paul Ross and WJ at Chocorua. Joseph Thacher Clarke, photographer. Kallitype, [1889-1891].	Dallas D. L. McGrew, artist. [The William James house at Chocorua, New Hampshire] Watercolor on paper, September 1902.

	Faculty Records 1877-1880. Minutes of the faculty meeting of 26 September, 1877.	WJ. Review for the North American Review of Lectures on the elements of comparative anatomy, by Thomas Henry Huxley. Autograph manuscript, [1865].

	Shadworth Hodgson. William Locke, London, photographer. Carte-de-visite [July 1877].	George Croom Robertson. Photograph, undated. From the James family album.

	WJ. [Notebook 18] Autograph manuscript, ca. 1905. Outlines of lectures given at Wellesley, Chicago, and Glenmore on radical empiricism, pragmatism, and pluralism.	Harvard Square. Photograph, ca. 1870. Harvard University Archives, HUV 80 (2-10)

	Harvard Yard. Photograph, 1869. Gore Hall, housing the College Library, is on the right. Harvard University Archives, HUV 20 (1-2)