Having at last “got round” to your MS., I have read it with very great interest and admiration for both its style and its temper.  I hope you will finish it and publish it.  It is the best written out “case” that I have seen; and you no doubt have put your finger on the weak spots of our treatment of the insane, and suggested the right line of remedy.  I have long thought that if I were a millionaire, with money to leave for public purposes, I should endow “Insanity” exclusively.

You were doubtless a pretty intolerable character when the maniacal condition came on and you were bossing the universe.  Not only ordinary “tact,” but a genius for diplomacy must have been needed for avoiding rows with you; but you certainly were wrongly treated nevertheless; and the spiteful Assistant M.D. at ——­ deserves to have his name published.  Your report is full of instructiveness for doctors and attendants alike.

The most striking thing in it to my mind is the sudden conversion of you from a delusional subject to a maniacal one—­how the whole delusional system disintegrated the moment one pin was drawn out by your proving your brother to be genuine.  I never heard of so rapid a change in a mental system.

    You speak of rewriting.  Don’t you do it.  You can hardly improve
    your book.  I shall keep the MS. a week longer as I wish to impart
    it to a friend.

    Sincerely yours,

    WM. JAMES.

Though Mr. James paid me the compliment of advising me not to rewrite my original manuscript, I did revise it quite thoroughly before publication.  When my book was about to go to press for the first time and since its reception by the public was problematical, I asked permission to publish the letter already quoted.  In reply, Mr. James sent the following letter, also for publication.

    95 IRVING ST., CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 
    November 10, 1907.

    DEAR MR. BEERS: 

You are welcome to use the letter I wrote to you (on July 1, 1906) after reading the first part of your MS. in any way your judgment prompts, whether as preface, advertisement, or anything else.  Reading the rest of it only heightens its importance in my eyes.  In style, in temper, in good taste, it is irreproachable.  As for contents, it is fit to remain in literature as a classic account “from within” of an insane person’s psychology.

The book ought to go far toward helping along that terribly needed reform, the amelioration of the lot of the insane of our country, for the Auxiliary Society which you propose is feasible (as numerous examples in other fields show), and ought to work important effects on the whole situation.

You have handled a difficult theme with great skill, and produced a narrative of absorbing interest to scientist as well as layman.  It reads like fiction, but it is not fiction; and this I state emphatically, knowing how prone the uninitiated are to doubt the truthfulness of descriptions of abnormal mental processes.

    With best wishes for the success of the book and the plan, both of
    which, I hope, will prove epoch-making, I remain,