Royce's Voyage Down Under

A Journey of the Mind

Frank M. Oppenheim

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780813194899
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosopher Biographies

Josiah Royce's voyage to the South Seas in 1888, undertaken on his physician's advice, restored the philosopher to full physical and mental vigor. What is not so well known is that after a few months of sailing Royce began to "bag new game, " as he put it, in his philosophical pursuits. Frank M. Oppenheim examines Royce's writings from this year of travel, including his correspondence and the notes he made on his reading, and finds there the seeds of much of his later thought.

While Professor Oppenheim is careful not to overstate the importance of this year of travel in the development of Royce's philosophy, he shows without question that the period was fruitful both intellectually and psychologically. His thoughtful analysis gives us a fuller appreciation of the philosopher and the man.

1

Introduction

In the spring of 1888, William James wrote from Harvard to George Santayana studying in Berlin: “Royce (broken down at last) is on his way to Australia. But he’ll be as stout as ever next year.”¹ James’s forecast was accurate. Early in 1888, Josiah Royce (1855-1916), American philosopher of community, was exhausted. His doctor advised him to sail leisurely and alone to Australia. Royce took the three-month cruise from Boston to Melbourne, then enjoyed the natural beauty of Australia and New Zealand for two more months, and finally returned by way of California to Harvard for the autumn term of 1888.²

On his voyage certain events occurred that advanced Royce’s intellectual development significantly. To give balance to our study it should be stated at once that on his Australian trip Royce did not grow intellectually as much as he did through his transformative insights of 1883, 1896, and 1912.³ For these latter three were respectively the seeds of The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, of his revised version of The Conception of God, and of The Problem of Christianity. Yet when Royce ended his 1888 trip, he knew that he brought back to Cambridge more than simply a body and mind refreshed by a long vacation at sea. He was convinced that during this trip he had “bagged new game” philosophically. Hence he was eager to share it.⁴ Before landing in Australia, he had written William James: “In fine, I have largely straightened out the big metaphysical tangle about continuity, freedom, and the world-formula, which, as you remember, I had aboard with me when I started, and I am ready to amuse you with a metaphysical speculation of a very simple, but, as now seems to me, of a very expansive nature, which does more to make the dry bones of my “Universal Thought” live than any prophesying that I have heretofore had the fortune to do.”⁵ This tantalizing news made William James reply, “I shall ‘admire’ to hear your final solution of the antinomies, and am eager deswegen [on that account] for your return.”⁶ Precisely what had occurred in Royce’s thought during his 1888 sojourn? This question focuses the central aim of the present study.

For his recuperation the doctor had prescribed simply that he live alone on a sailing ship.⁷ Yet Royce regained his health, thanks not only to his solitary union with nature but also to his communion with people, aboard and ashore. Was it this blending of creative solitude and stimulating dialogue within his mind that “largely straightened out the big metaphysical tangle about continuity, freedom, and the world-formula”? The question suggests a twofold approach to Royce through his solitary reflections and through his social relations during this Australian cruise.

According to Milton R. Konvitz’s description, Royce’s mind was “trying to control a bursting complexity of thought.”⁸ Even before his voyage to Australia, during a dozen years he had already nourished his philosophy from roots that were affective and aesthetic, conative and creative, as well as logical and rational, although it was to this last mentioned pair that his published work had directed more attention. To understand Royce adequately, then, we first need to acquaint ourselves with the many different functions he fulfilled during his 1888 sojourn, functions that reflect his many-sided personality. Such a strategy will bring us in line with the standard Royce set for anyone aiming to grasp his philosophy: namely, an understanding of Royce’s own “essential temperament” as the unique determinant of his philosophizing.⁹

Even if we lack that “whole of the longer story” he wrote to his wife about his South Sea experience, what do the available letters from the trip and his written reflections on it suggest concerning his personality and temperament?¹⁰ As a correspondent, Royce is frank, humorous, and noticeably self-revealing. As a patient, he is keenly alert to the “turns of weather” that his psyche undergoes during his convalescence. As a sensitive perceiver both of nature and of his own affective responses to it, he reveals how major changes of one’s natural setting induce altered states of consciousness. As a fellow companion or hiker, he shows himself to be an artist of dialogue, a man of many lively interests, and a guest who is humanly flexible. Moreover, he is an insightful student of men and of their political systems. Along such general lines, we can in the first part of this study gain a closer acquaintance with the affective and volitional sides of his personality.

Under this set of sails, we can launch out next to fathom directly the intellectual depths he reached on his 1888 voyage. Our questions will then become: 1) In his solitary reflection, what discovery caused his new “metaphysical speculation”? 2) What deeper moral insight helped him better understand his ethical “question about Freedom and the Ideals”? 3) How did his new social relations stimulate a social and political philosophy given little expression until then?

What method guides our investigation in this second part of the study? Through textual analysis we assemble the available clues that Royce left of his intellectual growth in 1888, while keeping his first sketch and his marginalia on Martineau in subordinate positions. Then in the final part of the study we test our reading of these clues against a later, key, Roycean insight, against two of his leading philosophical works produced shortly after his return, and against the total context of his life’s intellectual development.

In contradiction of our present aim and method, some objections readily arise. For example, it might be said that insights do not usually occur on health cruises. And if the marginalia on Martineau do stem from Royce’s depressed period, it might be argued that they may not be used even as subordinate evidence. In briefest response here, it can be said that great minds often make key discoveries when relaxed after toil.¹¹ Secondly, intrinsic and extrinsic evidence suggests a postdepression dating of Royce’s marginalia on Martineau, thus freeing them for a critical subordinate function in our study.

2

Context: Voyage and Recuperation

Since his 1882 start at Harvard, Royce had passionately desired to succeed there. Psychologically his 1888 breakdown stemmed from his drive to become an accepted philosophical colleague within a prestigious department and from his ambition to win a full professorship eventually. In the beginning, he had to invest three years of demanding teaching to steady his first perilous perch in the department. Then, in addition to carrying out as an assistant professor of philosophy his full instructional duties of teaching fifteen to eighteen hours weekly at Harvard and at the Society for the Collegiate Instruction for Women (the future Radcliffe), he simultaneously saw through publication his first major philosophical work, his first volume in history and character study, and his first novel.¹ These protracted pressures took their toll. Royce was stout, but not superhuman. He doggedly pushed himself into the first semester of 1887-1888, and completed it. But on February 9, 1888, he confided to Daniel Coit Gilman, the guide of his intellectual life: “The breakdown is nervous of course and needs nothing, I am assured, but a long sea voyage all alone, to make me myself again. . . . I feel nearly all the time very well and nobody meeting me on the street would call me ill, but the little devil in the brain is there all the same, and this kind goeth not out but by travelings and hard fare.”² That spring, the Harvard Corporation granted Royce a leave of absence at half pay. He indicated to Gilman that a “very dear friend” was financing the trip and insuring the safety and comfort of his family during his absence. Signs point to the ever-faithful Charles Rockwell Lanman as this friend, who also gifted Royce with smoking pipes, a three-month supply of tobacco, and a set of informative ocean charts.³

Others helped, too. George Herbert Palmer influenced President Eliot of Harvard to secure the services of that independent philosopher Francis Ellingwood Abbot. The latter would carry on Royce’s advanced course in the philosophy of nature but in his distinctively non-Roycean way.⁴ William James thoughtfully provided mineral water, figs, and some French novels. Serving as Josiah’s secretary, his wife Katharine penned needed letters, assisted with the packing, and helped gather reading materials for the trip. Besides the French novels these included Cassanova’s memoirs, some books in mathematics and mechanics, and, yes, those gift volumes of A Study of Religion just received from James Martineau in England.⁵ Royce had an Australian acquaintance, Richard Hodgson, secretary of the American Society for Psychical Research, who provided him with introductions to friends in Australia.⁶ Someone arranged passage with Captain Howes of the Freeman. And soon all was ready.

After two days of delay, the square-rigged Freeman finally weighed anchor from Boston on February 27. Lanman recorded that an awful storm tore at the sails of this bark as it faded out of sight and beyond Boston light into the wintry North Atlantic trying to reach the more peaceful summertime of the southern seas. Just as perilously perched as the Freeman was its invalid passenger, since Royce was undergoing the crucial test whether his psyche could actually survive its run-down condition and regain its full vigor. His trial lasted longer than that of his ship. For soon it encountered twelve weeks of fair weather so that it sailed leisurely into the South Atlantic, down to the Cape of Good Hope, and then straight through the Indian Ocean towards Melbourne, the capital of Victoria. Meanwhile Royce was undergoing what he had expected: “a long siege of dull spirits at the outset of the voyage.”⁷ Despite his “headweariness” at the start of the voyage, Royce’s wits would whir on mechanically. But his emotions were dull and motionless, due to his “overtaxed nerves . . . uncomplicated by any organic or other deep trouble.” Fortunately, Royce was his own best analyst and knew that his long period of depression, if wisely handled, would be turned into part of an “experience . . . in many ways highly educating.”⁸ To William James he described his flattened state as not strong enough to be called “misery,” even as he told of his cure:

It was an absolute negation of all active predicates of the emotional sort save a certain (not exactly “fearful”) looking-for of judgment and fiery indignation. —But all this pathology is no longer in order. With the winds and the birds of the southern sea came a new life. . . . And now that passion has come again, and the good Lord seems to have some life in his world of “Sonnen und Milchstrassen,” my wits grow more constructive, and I more and more look upon the voyage as a very highly educating experience.⁹

After nearly three months of sailing, Royce found “the sea a perfectly satisfactory cure” for himself. Writing from off Melbourne, he was “full of enthusiasm” and longed to go hiking on dry land.¹⁰

Royce’s interaction with nature dated from his childhood. He had viewed the vistas of the Sacramento Valley, gazed meditatively at the Golden Gate, and hiked alone along pine trails on the Coastal Range. During his first six years at Harvard, when he added long journeys of laborious research and the pressures of publishing to his heavy academic load, such tastings of nature, while providing welcome relief, were very brief.¹¹ Now, however, during the first twelve uninterrupted weeks of his voyage, except for his routine contacts with the crew, Royce was immersed in nothing but nature. Its forces, working down upon him from the outside universe and up from within his own organism, wrought their cure physically and psychologically.

Royce’s letters written “out of Melbourne” portray a person filled with a new zest for life. He believed in nature’s tendency to initiate and integrate self-healing processes.¹² Moreover, as his regular hiking and regimen showed, he usually exercised some self-discipline to remain healthy. Not only did he write, “I am enjoying myself like a seabird,” but also, “I am holding myself back from any hard work.”¹³ As the Freeman drew near Melbourne, by day and night Royce experienced nature’s beauties afresh.¹⁴ He began to sense a seemingly divine presence alive in all the “suns and milky ways” of the universe. All around him, in sea, sky, stars, and birds, he felt life passionately and, even more ...