ABSTRACT

Where is this moment of truth? It seems to efface the Atlantic, and to bring us to a shared present. Perhaps the terror is both universalized, for all men, and particularized in each person's own past and present. James is bridging more and greater gaps in a series of problems where the demands on his powers are increasingly extreme. And is the final `password' or form of charm missing in such a way that the last lesson of the Master is something about the limits of language, and of representational powers? If so, it puts no limits to the reflection on the `how' and the final movement of mind is towards relations that are so stretched that one suggests there is no risk too great. And if one's powers fail one has at least acted so as to deny the possibility of the limit.