An excerpt from the "It has been wisely said that a man never really overcomes his first love. I take this to be the case in intellectual matters no less than in romantic affairs. Mills' first intellectual attraction was for pragmatism. As a young scholar, it was for him a way of life and a set of propositions about the nature of the world. From his first effort, to his last unpublished writings, C. Wright Mills retained a lively interest in the social and intellectual values of pragmatism. He was the embodiment of Jamesian Man; complete with a heroic definition of self. Like William James, he invested his political beliefs with a highly personal content. He inveighed against American intervention in Latin America quite in the same way, and with the same motives, as James' activities in the Anti-Imperialist League. His faith in intellectual activity as a basic way out of the morass of power was articulated in a manner made famous by James' 'Les intellectueles unite!' At the same time, Mills' mistrust of narrow professionalism rings a familiar note to those acquainted with James' indictment of higher academicism. The similarities between Mills and James are so patently clear, it is disconcerting to see how thoroughly the connection has been missed."
