William James on Exceptional Mental States: The 1896 Lowell Lectures

Often , says James, life is seen as evoking a challenge from certain individuals, w ho feel themselves to be fittest to answer in a “superior” way. We all know of such “one idea-d” persons, he goes on, naming more than a half dozen then currently in the minds of his audience— Henry Berg, founder in 1866 of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; Charles Henry Parkhurst, Presbyterian clergyman and reformer, who held a New York City pastorate from 1880 to 1918, and who launched a furious attack on organized crime in state government, which led to an official investigation; Dorothy Dix, mid-nineteenth-century humanitarian who visited the insane asylums and forced legislation for improvement of the care for the mentally ill; John Brown, famous abolitionist before the Civil War, who led the raid on Harper’s Ferry; General Booth, founder of the Salvation Army; Frances Willard, president of the World Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, suffragette, and founder of the Prohibition Party in 1883; and others.