That James Senior's concern for and celebration of the lowly and the quotidian was made possible by a generous inheritance from his businessman father is just one of the paradoxes that emerges from a close inspection of his life and intellectual career. He writes with undisguised enthusiasm about the everyday passengers of an omnibus, that ‘social institution’ whose occupants, ‘honest and faithful men and women’ all, induce unease in the faces of the more aristocratic owners of any passing barouche. Yet the ability to offer such a paean to the democratic masses is due in large part to the freedom of not having to join those same commuting hoards because of a wealth derived from a man probably more accustomed to the barouche than the bus. James Senior's intellectual dilettantism, his enjoyment of the occasional lecture series or journalistic commission, did not prevent him from tirelessly publishing lengthy works attempting to explain the philosophical system he had derived from his masters Swedenborg and Fourier. As William James noted in his introduction to his father's writings, ‘Probably few authors have so devoted their entire lives to the monotonous elaboration of one single bundle of truths.’ The delicate balance that William attempted to maintain between admiration of his father and gentle criticism – despite their monotony, these are after all ‘truths’ – is similarly found in Henry James.