No sooner had James reached Brazil than physical illness, attended by change of mood, dampened his scientific inclinations. James even joined the Thayer expedition to Brazil led by Agassiz. While at Harvard he fell under the influence of Louis Agassiz, the Swiss scientist who was the most acclaimed scientist then working in America. Above all, he retained a heightened sensitivity to figure and color, which subsequently found expression not only in the sketches profusely scrawled over his notebooks and letters, but also in the vivid imagery which enlivened his prose.Ībiding by the parental admonition to seek a career in the sciences instead of in the arts, James enrolled in 1861 in the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard, and in 1863 in the Medical School. When the enthusiasm for art wore off, James carried with him into later life some excellent portraits, including a pencil-sketch of himself. After his polyglot education, James decided to be a painter, and the family, to accommodate its eldest son, settled in Newport, Rhode Island, so that he could study with the distinguished portraitist, William H. Rare is the kind of fame James eventually won rarer still is the winning of this fame by one whose life is marred by the false starts, fitful efforts, painful halts, and uncertain beginnings of James’s own youth and early manhood. Like his sister, Alice, he was susceptible to long periods of psychological depression which distracted him from work. D espite his cultural advantages and his individual talent, William James succumbed in his youth to anxieties concerning his fitness for any public career.

Introduction to the book of james