ABSTRACT
William James was born into one of the leading families of New York City. His grandfather, a strict Calvinist and also named William, was an Irish immigrant who had amassed a fortune in real estate. His father, Henry, rejected the grandfather’s religion and became an unorthodox mystic. His mother, Mary, was also a child of wealth, and his brother, Henry Jr., became a famous novelist. The life of the James family was one of creative anarchy. Their dinner table was animated with lively debate in which the children were expected to hold their own with guests such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Washington Irving, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. To encourage intellectual freedom, and to avoid the rigidity of his own joyless upbringing, Henry Sr. put his children into as many different schools as possible. The family moved often, restlessly wandering back and forth across the Atlantic, alighting temporarily in London, Paris, New York, Geneva, Newport, Bonn, and Albany.
