The Dedication of Germanic Museum of Harvard University/Address by William James

by William James (1842-1910)

The Chairman: Ladies and Gentlemen, Germany used to be called the country of poets and philosophers. There may have been some truth in that appelation. Certain it is that in poetry and her sister art, music, and in philosophy, the influence of Germany upon this country has been greatest. We are happy to have with us to-day a distinguished philosopher, widely known in this country and abroad, whose work exemplifies as well as that of any living scholar the unity and mutual interdependence of German and American thought, Professor William James.

ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR WILLIAM JAMES.

I am asked, on behalf of the general body of teachers in our University, to put into words the delight with which they welcome this noble enlargement of our educational resources.

Year by year our “Hochschule” here has been growing from a rural into an urban institution. Our buildings are becoming so numerous, and have such curious uses, that of themselves they form a kind of city, and give to the newcomer that sense of indefinable interests, fed from unknown sources and ministering to unintelligible needs, with which cities in general affect their rustic visitors. The mere background of life here, in short, is now so complex that to dwell in its presence is a sort of liberal education. The air is so full of spiritual currents, the names one hourly hears, the things one daily sees, are so packed with ideal suggestiveness, that quite unconsciously the climate of the World of Thought becomes familiar,—we learn at any rate the points of its compass, and the various quarters which the wind may blow from, in that elevated sphere of Being. Our imagination at the same time involuntarily acquires a perspective. We see too many serious interests at work here to enjoy naively our own original one-sidedness.

And with the ever-growing vastness of what there is to be known, and the awful specialty now required of the knower, it appears more and more as if the only superiority which the so-called “liberally” educated man can have over others, is just the possession of this background, which narrowly educated men have perforce to go without. Through it the “liberal” mind is kept in contact with the general probabilities of things, and gains that golden quality of reasonableness which ought to be the ripest fruit of education.

It is, now, as part of our own general background that we non-Germanic members of the Faculties so gladly greet the Germanic Museum. Although collectively we may possibly be as wondrously learned as the outside public supposes us, what is really perhaps the most wondrous thing about us is the encyclopaedic character of our ignorance,—when we are taken singly. Our excuse is that no one can afford to revel in such depths of ignorance as a “professor”—he has his background, and can go to it for information, and there is always some colleague alongside of him to extricate him from a mistake. The ignorance of the German past, for instance, with which most of those for whom I modestly speak are afflicted, would, I am sure, if it could be revealed to the gentlemen who have just addressed us, appear almost inconceivable in its profundity. We are not Teutomaniacs, not archaeologists, not Kunsthistoriker, not even artistic in our tastes. Yet we heartily and sincerely welcome this collection, each of us on his own account and ignorant as we are, because of its immediate and palpable effect upon our background. No one of us can enter into the presence of those snow-white images across the Delta, or look upon those fine photographs of German architectural work, without feeling something within him instantaneously making response in a way that builds out and interprets better his consciousness of what we already were before we had this gift.

Professor Francke this afternoon has spoken of the intense spirit of individualism that characterizes German life and animates the works here shown. Our University, like our old Bay State, has always been noted for its individualism. Like recognizes like, and leaps to meet it. As children of Harvard, we see here in the concrete the very heritage whose faith we have unconsciously kept. We discern some of the roots of our own being, and appreciate one side of our own character better—both as loving it and as noting where its weak points lie—when we see it thus remotely working in a bygone world and under outlived fashions, yet keeping so intimately true to the genius of the type. We get a glimpse of our vocation, see that we stand for a spirit that human life will always need to have expressed.

I said just now that we are not all Teutomaniacs, but in one sense our University, like most American Universities, is Teutomaniac. Its ideals of scholarship and of the scholarly character have been inspired by German rather than by French or English models. Research into minute points, first-hand contact with some bit of the crude fact, the student pushing into holes and corners some methods of investigation invented by the master—this is the basis of our higher teaching, and this is all that we have absolutely required of our disciples. This method, of course, like all things human, has defects. Lack of urbanity, so to call it, is its chief shortcoming—poor literary form often, redundancy of detail, or oddity of emphasis. But the virtues that go with it are the fundamental ones: sincerity, veracity, fidelity and patience—all these go with what Professor Francke so affectionately terms the German “Lust am Kleinen”—and, out of the many details, if the workers all keep faithful, we trust that the great edifice of truth will in the end be reared. The results are already encouraging. We have to-day in nearly every sphere of learning a genuine “Gelehrtes Publikum” in America; and if our major-generals are still rather disproportionately few for the strength of our scholarly army in petty officers and privates, that is a fault to which the lying-in hospitals and other sources of nativity in our country may any day bring a remedy. The field lies ready for the geniuses at any rate, whenever it shall please them to be born here.

Meanwhile, we cannot cast our eyes upon those sculptures across the Delta without understanding our own spirit better. Look at so many of those mediaeval figures, each so individual and peculiar, chosen by the artist we don't know why, except because he loved it,—the detail first and the ensemble afterwards, but beauty nestling everywhere amid the curiousness. Oddity and redundancy, perhaps, but infinite sincerity,—what is this but our own life in another form greeting us across the ages?

Bacon expressed the Germanic spirit when he wrote: “There is no excellent beauty without some strangeness in the proportion.” The mediterranean or classic spirit has always sought to avoid strangeness, and thereby its works are so wonderfully communicable and urbane. It starts with the notion that a noble ensemble is possible, and works over the raw material by way of elimination and abstraction. But in spite of the intellectuality of classic work, we may still believe in our Germanic spirit as being the more fruitful thing. Its productions are fuller-bodied and less abstract. Something indeed it misses,—universality, simplicity, and purity; but it preserves more turns and shades of truth, and its content is so much the richer for its greater concreteness.

We gain above all a certain loveability in our works. Love goes from one individual to another individual, but individuals are always redundant with their own detail. Love, when once kindled, feeds on every point of peculiarity which its object offers. The Germanic genius loves unique objects, rich in curves and quirks, and points of peculiarity.

The mediterranean genius, more precocious, got historically the earlier right of way in artistic matters, and in that field has usually kept the prestige and authority. A century ago the great literary Germans themselves almost forgot, in their admiration of the classic spirit, what they owed to their own Northern character. It was in the philosophic and scientific field, and in poetry, that the greatness of the German genius first came to be acknowledged. But greatness can afford to bide its time. The whirligig has its revenges. And there is something almost epigrammatic in the fact that one of the very first steps which Harvard takes towards what must eventually be a great illustrative museum of plastic art-history, should be that splendid room-full of German objects now in the old gymnasium,—German objects, with their unreduced uniqueness and individuality.

Germany has caught up, then, and taken the lead here, but the Italic and the Gallic genius must follow. Then only will our liberalizing background fill the measure of its possibilities. Meanwhile, for this beautiful and truly cultivating instalment, I can only repeat, on behalf of all my colleagues of all the different faculties, the sincere gratitude which has already been so fully expressed, to the friendly and large-minded Emperor, to the generous private donors, to the skilful workmen, and last, but not least, to our devoted colleague, Kuno Francke.