Note 18 — XII
Reading edition
James J. Putnam to William James
Boston, Mar. 9, 1898.
Dear William,—We have thought and talked a good deal about the subject of your speech in the course of the last week. I prepared with infinite labor a letter intended for the Transcript of last Saturday, but it was not a weighty contribution and I am rather glad it was too late to get in. I think it is generally felt among the best doctors that your position was the liberal one, and that it would be a mistake to try to exact an examination of the mind-healers and Christian Scientists. On the other hand, I am afraid most of the doctors, even including myself, do not have any great feeling of fondness for them, and we are more in the way of seeing the fanatical spirit in which they proceed and the harm that they sometimes do than you are. Of course they do also good things which would remain otherwise not done, and that is the important point, and sincere fanatics are almost always, and in this case I think certainly, of real value.
Always affectionately, James J. P.