This chapter presents some comments about the significance of William James's philosophy. James was a friend of Josiah Royce from his youth to the end of James's beneficent life. As a pupil of James for a brief time, Royce thought of himself as James's disciple; although perhaps a very bad one. According to Royce, James is an American philosopher of classic rank because he stands for a stage in our national self-consciousness—for a stage with which historians of our national mind must always reckon. This statement shall be the focus of the present discussion, which also estimates the significance of the stage in question, and of James's thought insofar as it seems to express the ideas and ideals characteristic of this phase of national life.
William James and Other Essays on the Philosophy of Life.