William James (1842–1910) was considered America's leading philosopher and psychologist during his lifetime, a distinction that many still claim for him today, though Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey must be recognized as serious contenders for the former title. There is no need for this book to say much about James's life, as there already are numerous excellent biographies, in particular those by Ralph Barton Perry (TC), F. O. Matthiessen (WJ), Gay Wilson Allen (WJ), Jacques Barzun (SWJ), Howard Feinstein (BWJ), and George Cotkin (WJ). After a peripatetic childhood in which his father, the theologian Henry James, Sr., hustled him and his younger siblings, among whom was the novelist Henry James, Jr., from one European nation to another in search of an adequate education, and a brief stint as a painting student of William Morris Hunt, William entered the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard in 1861. Upon graduation in 1864 he enrolled in the Harvard Medical School, completing the M.D. degree in 1869, with a year off to participate in Louis Agassiz's research expedition to Brazil. After suffering serious ill health and depression from 1869 to 1872, William became an instructor in physiology at Harvard, where he spent his entire career until his retirement in 1907. He rapidly moved up the academic ladder, becoming instructor in anatomy and physiology in 1873, assistant professor of physiology in 1876, assistant professor of philosophy in 1880 and full professor in 1885, and a professor of psychology in 1889.