I thought that I’d read this before, but now I’m not so sure. Surely, I wasn’t thinking of Henry? More likely, I was imposing some stereotypes and prejudices onto my memories.

What my memories left out was how gentle and credulous the scientist was of religious experience and feelings, most especially towards a sort of combination of positive thinking and what we would call ‘new age faith healing.’ He is slightly less gentle towards of forms of Christian belief and gives the impression of personally being a vaguely agnostic Methodist (except when receiving positive energies from new age healers).

James, when speaking about knowledge, frequently uses the term ‘warranted.’ I bring this up because of Alvin Plantinga’s advocacy of using the word ‘warrant’ instead of ‘justified’ when defining knowledge. I am cruelly and inadequately simplifying here, but one reason is that he didn’t like the moralism implied in ‘justified,’ at least not in an epistemological context. How much did Plantinga take from James’ gentle treatment of religious feeling and his use of ‘warranted?’

I do not have any great wisdom to impart in dealing with the particular issues parents face when they adopt an older child, because I haven’t been such a parent for very long. But I would like to make a pitch on behalf of older children needing parents.

First, ‘older children’ can be a bit of a misnomer. The sad truth is, if a child is not matched with a prospective couple by the time he or she is two or three… that child will probably never be adopted. Never. They’re done. Sure, it can happen, but so can winning the powerball lottery. Have you won forty million dollars lately? I didn’t think so.

There are a lot of (justified) complaints about how a woman over forty is no longer valued, but this is a class of people who are no longer valued when they might still need potty training.

It was easy for us to choose to adopt our child. She was five when we first saw her picture (and almost seven when we were finally able to adopt her), and we were in love instantly; we didn’t have any interest in any other children after that – younger, older, whatever… we knew who our daughter was.

But the circumstances that led us to her – to that photograph, at just the right time when it was available to be seen – were convoluted and unlikely. A butterfly sneezes in Latvia in 1989 and maybe everything transpires differently and we never see her.

And if we we hadn’t, the sad and terrible truth is, our beautiful, intelligent, loving child would almost certainly never be placed with adoptive parents. It feels shocking to say. Who would not want her?

Most prospective parents only want babies or toddlers. And I can understand that, but now I can also understand how terrible a bias that is. That an adopted child is not a replacement for a hypothetical biological child is one of the first lessons you learn, but by adopting mewling little one who still needs diapers changed, it is easier to pretend that he or she is a replacement. We cannot pretend that. It’s okay – because she is wonderful for who she is (and she is quickly and weirdly beginning to resemble both her parents). But we did have to shed an illusion that many adoptive parents would rather cling to.

Beyond how wonderful our child is, there is a moral calculus. Ultimately, adopting is a moral decision. A parent has already taken the first step to decide to take into their home, a child who needs a family.

So take an additional step and consider an older child. Most people won’t do that, so babies will always be more ‘valuable’ than other children. But adopting a child who is six year old is a more moral act than adopting a baby. People who adopt children over ten are saints.

You will miss out on things, but the child was in danger of missing out on nearly everything. You have to accept that it is not about you. But that is part of what being a parent is, I guess. I guess because I do not know anything yet.

But while I may not know much about parenting. But while I may turn out to be a really bad dad who messes everything up. For all that, I do know that some actions are better than others.

Within this relatively brief book (less than 250 pages) is a beautiful meditation on the evolution of American philosophy as a unique branch of thought, from Ralph Waldo Emerson through the 1920s, more or less. The conceit holding it together is the private library William Ernest Hocking, a once prominent philosopher who was deeply influenced by William James (the dominant figure in American philosophy, as this book sees it). The books in his library, discovered in a poorly climate controlled and slight dilapidated house in rural New Hampshire, cover almost the entire history of philosophy, but also religion and poetry, and illustrate how great American philosophers, like James, Hocking, and Emerson, and also others, like Josiah Royce and Charles Peirce, are both part of and outside of the main stream of western and world philosophy.

Wrapped around that excellent book is a depressing sort of autobiography about the author’s failing marriage and probable drinking problem (the former is sort of resolved – though he’s clearly a terrible husband; the latter feels like it’s sitting there, like a drunken turd in the corner of Hocking’s library). Kaag does not come across as very likable, but does come across as anxiously self- justifying. I have resolved to read more James and to read the copy of Hocking’s The Meaning of God in Human Experience that has been sitting in my library for far too long. I might also resolve to read some more academic books by Kaag, but not until the bad taste has faded.