{"id":49401,"date":"2014-11-10T12:00:10","date_gmt":"2014-11-10T12:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=49401"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:29:33","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:29:33","slug":"william-james-on-choosing-purpose-over-profit-and-the-life-changing-power-of-a-great-mentor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/11\/william-james-on-choosing-purpose-over-profit-and-the-life-changing-power-of-a-great-mentor\/","title":{"rendered":"William James on Choosing Purpose Over Profit and the Life-Changing Power of a Great Mentor"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAfter all, the great problem of life seems to be how to keep body and soul together.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

William James is celebrated as one of the most influential philosophers of all time. His publication of The Principles of Psychology<\/em> in 1890 established him as the father of American psychology. His 1901 treatise The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature<\/em>, originally delivered at the prestigious Gifford Lectures<\/a>, remains one of the most important theological works of all time and inspired Carl Sagan\u2019s superb The Varieties of Scientific Experience<\/em><\/a>. But if James were alive today, his contributions might well be dismissed under the fashionable accusation of privilege<\/a> \u2014 he was born into a wealthy family and his father, a prominent theologian, was independently wealthy himself a century and a half before the term \u201cindependently wealthy\u201d entered the vernacular; his godfather was Ralph Waldo Emerson<\/a>. But he also endured an undue share of physical hardship, suffering from a range of physical ailments since childhood \u2014 near-blindness, debilitating back pain, and various skin and stomach conditions \u2014 as well as regular bouts of severe, suicidal depression since early adulthood. His life was defined by dualities in deeper ways, too \u2014 James was a man straddling two epochs as a scholar of theology in an era when the dogmatic beliefs of the previous generation where past the point of repair and a science-minded skeptic before the golden age of twentieth-century scientific discovery.<\/p>\n

And yet despite these vexing dualities, James navigated his life with tremendous faith in the power of personal choice in shaping one\u2019s destiny \u2014 which included, as it always has and always will, the discomfiting luxury of making difficult decisions. Nearly four decades before he came to put this conviction into words in his timeless treatise on habit<\/a> \u2014 \u201cWe are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone.\u201d<\/em> \u2014 he enacted it in his own life as he stood on the precipice of a monumental choice, the kind all of us have to make at one point or another, the value of which we only ever appreciate in hindsight.<\/p>\n

\"williamjames\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1861, 19-year-old William enrolled into Harvard to study science after a short apprenticeship with the artist William Morris Hunt. But as he immersed himself in the pursuit of a medical degree, he grew increasingly disillusioned with the prospects laid before him by this established path to a \u201csuccessful\u201d life as a respectable doctor \u2014 a life of steady income and steady petrification of his deeper aspirations. He knew he had to confront the trying choice between profit and purpose. (Around the same time, halfway around the world, a young Leo Tolstoy was tussling with a parallel tension between income and ideals<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

In a letter to his cousin Kitty from September of 1863, found in the altogether illuminating The Letters of William James, Vol. 1<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>; free download<\/em><\/a>), 21-year-old James outlines his choices with equal parts exasperation and snark:<\/p>\n

I have four alternatives: Natural History, Medicine, Printing, Beggary\u2026 After all, the great problem of life seems to be how to keep body and soul together, and I have to consider lucre. To study natural science, I know I should like, but the prospect of supporting a family on $600 a year is not one of those rosy dreams of the future with which the young are said to be haunted. Medicine would pay, and I should still be dealing with subjects which interest me \u2014 but how much drudgery and of what an unpleasant kind is there!<\/em><\/p>\n

He adds a lament about the crippling industrial model of higher education<\/a>, which shoves young people down the conveyer belt of specialization and careerism before they\u2019ve had a chance to find their true purpose<\/a> \u2014 a lament equally, if not more, valid today:<\/p>\n

The worst of this matter is that everyone must more or less act with insufficient knowledge \u2014 \u201cgo it blind,\u201d as they say. Few can afford the time to try what suits them.<\/em><\/p>\n

In a letter to his mother later that month, James exorcizes the growing urgency and unease of his impending choice:<\/p>\n

I feel very much the importance of making soon a final choice of my business in life. I stand now at the place where the road forks. One branch leads to material comfort, the flesh-pots; but it seems a kind of selling of one\u2019s soul. The other to mental dignity and independence; combined, however, with physical penury.<\/em><\/p>\n

James, longing to be a family man, peers into the future and considers how choosing the pursuit of purpose over profit would affect his imaginary future love, to whom he refers by a Shakespearean allusion, as he revisits his four options:<\/p>\n

If I myself were the only one concerned I should not hesitate an instant in my choice. But it seems hard on Mrs. W. J., \u201cthat not impossible she,\u201d to ask her to share an empty purse and a cold hearth. On one side is science, upon the other business (the honorable, honored and productive business of printing seems most attractive), with medicine, which partakes of the advantages of both, between them, but which has drawbacks of its own. I confess I hesitate. I fancy there is a fond maternal cowardice which would make you and every other mother contemplate with complacency the worldly fatness of a son, even if obtained by some sacrifice of his \u201chigher nature.\u201d But I fear there might be some anguish in looking back from the pinnacle of prosperity (necessarily reached, if not by eating dirt, at least by renouncing some divine ambrosia) over the life you might have led in the pure pursuit of truth. It seems as if one could not afford to give that up for any bribe, however great.<\/em><\/p>\n

And yet, admitting to being \u201cundecided\u201d still, James is aware of the rare privilege that renders him among those few young people who \u201ccan afford the time to try what suits them.\u201d He tells his mother with a self-conscious wink:<\/p>\n

I want you to become familiar with the notion that I may stick to science, however, and drain away at your property for a few years more.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"williamjames_young\"<\/a><\/p>\n

James did choose to stick to science. Around the time he wrote that letter to his mother, he changed majors from Chemistry to Comparative Anatomy and Physiology \u2014 the Harvard department where he lucked into one of the most formative relationships of his life. There, he came to study under a professor named Jeffries Wyman, whose influence on James\u2019s ideals and decisions became a spectacular testament to how unsung mentors and champions shape creative geniuses<\/a>. A brilliant yet humble man \u2014 a perennially rare combination \u2014 he imparted on his pupils, by way of personal example, enduring values of kindness, generosity, humility, unflinching integrity, and resolute refusal to advance himself at anyone else\u2019s expense. Under Wyman\u2019s wing during those two critical years of determining the course of his entire life, James blossomed into himself \u2014 his ideals, his values, his character \u2014 with courageous authenticity. He would later come to write of his mentor:<\/p>\n

His extraordinary effect on all who knew him is to be accounted for by the one word, character. Never was a man so absolutely without detractors. The quality which every one first thinks of in him is his extraordinary modesty, of which his unfailing geniality and serviceableness, his readiness to confer with and listen to younger men\u2026 Next were his integrity, and his complete and simple devotion to objective truth. These qualities were what gave him such incomparable fairness of judgment in both scientific and worldly matters\u2026 He had if anything too little of the ego in his composition, and all his faults were excesses of virtue. A little more restlessness of ambition, and a little more willingness to use other people for his purposes, would easily have made him more abundantly productive, and would have greatly increased the sphere of his effectiveness and fame. But his example on us younger men, who had the never-to-be-forgotten advantage of working by his side, would then have been, if not less potent, at least different from what we now remember it; and we prefer to think of him forever as the paragon that he was of goodness, disinterestedness, and single-minded love of the truth.<\/em><\/p>\n

James graduated from Harvard with a degree in medicine, but wasn\u2019t interested in practicing. Instead, he followed his calling and set out to study philosophy and psychology on his own, imbibing self-education with diligent visits to the Harvard and Boston libraries. He persevered through failing eyesight, debilitating depression, and frequent brushes with the very \u201cbeggary\u201d he foresaw and feared. Decades later, having followed his purpose to become America\u2019s first great psychologist, he joked<\/a>: \u201cI never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The Letters of William James<\/em><\/strong><\/a> is full of soul-stretching insight into one of the greatest minds and most visionary spirits humanity has ever known, featuring James\u2019s meditations on melancholy, happiness, writing, creativity, and human nature. His brother, the great novelist Henry James<\/a>, captures this beautifully in the introduction to the 1920 edition:<\/p>\n

Life spoke to him in even more ways than to most men, and he responded to its superabundant confusion with passion and insatiable curiosity. His spiritual development was a matter of intense personal experience.<\/em><\/p>\n

Complement this particular snippet with a recentering read on how to find your purpose<\/a>, then revisit Alan Watts on money vs. wealth<\/a> and Eleanor Roosevelt on living with integrity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

_______________________________<\/p>\n

Brain Pickings<\/em> is the brain child of Maria Popova, an interestingness hunter-gatherer and curious mind at large obsessed with combinatorial creativity who also writes for <\/em>Wired<\/em> UK and <\/em>The Atlantic<\/em>, among others, and is an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow. She has gotten occasional help from a handful of guest contributors<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 brainpickings.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAfter all, the great problem of life seems to be how to keep body and soul together.\u201d Life spoke to him in even more ways than to most men, and he responded to its superabundant confusion with passion and insatiable curiosity. His spiritual development was a matter of intense personal experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[202],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spirituality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49401\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}