William James Early Years
It has been said about William James that he was "a child of privilege and by all odds should have become a playboy or at best a dilettante."
James was born with a silver spoon on January 11, 1842 in New York City. James' family was cosmopolitan and deeply religious. His father Henry James, Sr. was a Swedenborgian theologian. His father doted on all the five children. He was well connected to the contemporary literary and philosophical luminaries. He often took his family to Europe.
His father wanted to provide them with a kind of education that would enable them to outdistance their countrymen in their breadth of knowledge. So he sent his children to fine schools, provided them with gifted tutors and took them frequently to museums, lectures and the theatre.
William's brother Henry went on to become one of America's most famous novelists, and his sister Alice also achieved literary acclaim with the posthumous publication of her diaries.
Education
After sending his son to many different schools Henry James Sr., concluded that European education was far superior to that in the United States. William attended schools in the United States, England, France, Switzerland and Germany. This made him familiar with many different languages and cultures and fluent in five different languages. He was also benefited greatly from a stimulating home environment.
He learnt painting with William Morris Hunt and was familiar with almost all the major museums in Europe. He later entered the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard, to study chemistry and after that the Harvard Medical School.
Career
It was difficult for William to choose a career, as he had leanings towards creative art and towards science too. He started his career as a promising artist but a year later changed his mind and never went back to painting again. Instead he enrolled his name in the Lawrence Scientific School.
Some biographers believed that reason for doing so was partly his inconsistent family life, which was always on the move, and partly his father's educational experiments. This sudden change of tracks in his career has been the subject of considerable speculation among biographers. Some feel that one of the reasons could be his ill health - the eye trouble he had undergone as a student artist
Some people also suggested that William's father convinced him to enter the field of science. His ill health forced him to return home after his third term at Harvard. He read widely on Science, Philosophy, and Psychology during that time. He returned to the Scientific School and shifted his studies from Chemistry to Anatomy.
A month later, he again changed to medicine. This helped him to continue studying the human body in which he had lately developed an interest. This might also have appealed to the psychological state of his mind at that time.
Travel
Even the study of medicine failed to arouse his enthusiasm and so James traveled to the Amazon with Louis Agassiz. His studies were interrupted twice because of his trips. He also went on a trip to Germany where he studied philosophy.
Alice Gibbens
William James married Alice Gibbens at the age of 36, after a prolonged courtship. She was a schoolteacher from Boston and an accomplished pianist. She was a dutiful wife who proved to be his strength in trying times. A mother of five children she was his lifelong intellectual companion. | 
