The James household of the 1850s consisted of a patriarch and matriarch, four sons, and one daughter. Let's run through the scorecard this morning. The patriarch was Henry James Sr., a graduate from Union College, a drop-out from Princeton Theological Seminary, and a participant at what seemed an earth-shaking movement at the time, but what has been nearly forgotten since -- Swedenborgian mysticism. The matriarch was Mary Robertson James, nee Walsh, Irish on her father's side, Scottish on her mother's, introduced to her future husband by her brother, when both of the young men were students together at Princeton. In long talks Henry persuaded her first that the Bible doesn't require the office of Minister (he was talking himself into leaving the seminary), and then that she should marry him -- in a civil ceremony, of course. (The officiant at the wedding was the Mayor of NYC himself, Isaac Varian.) Their oldest child was William James, who of course is the ins...
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Louis Menand summarizes the philosophy of Henry James Sr. quite well. Here's the money quote: "Henry James, Sr. was a Platonist. He believed (following Swedenborg) that there are two realms, a visible and an invisible, and that the invisible realm, which he named the realm of the Divine Love, is the real one. From this premise, the usual conclusions follow: humankind is now separated from the true and the real; its destiny is to arrive at the consummation intended for it by God; philosophers are here to help the rest of us understand what that consummation is. James' particular conception of it was derived in part from his reading of Swedenborg and in part from a writer with whom Swedenborg was often paired in the nineteenth century, the French socialist Charles Fourier...." From Fourier he took an idealization of the brotherhood of men, and the idea expressed in the title of his own final book, Society the Redeemed Form of Man.