This paper views William James's work as an active and intentional confrontation with life-historical experience. The metaphor of vision is seen to figure centrally in James's psychological and philosophical writings. The author connects the visual metaphors in his work with the eye troubles that he suffered from during the period 1865 to 1885. He notes that health and the ability "to see" were virtually synonymous in James's writing on psychopathology and that his scholarly work focused on extending "the field of vision." "Visions of horror" were also a central element of his transient emotional crisis which was very similar in nature to his father's breakdown twenty-five years earlier. Significantly, his eye problems abated following his editing and arranging the publication of his father's literary remains. The author concludes that the issue of seeing was the constitutive passion of James's life just as it formed the constitutive imagery of his thought.