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Especially useful for ethical critics is James Duban’s The Nature of True Virtue: Theology, Psychology, and Politics in the Writings of Henry James, Sr., Henry James, Jr., and William James. This intellectual history traces the influence of Jonathan Edwards, whose treatise of 1765 is invoked by the title. The first six chapters discuss Henry Sr.’s belief in “disinterested benevolence,” a Calvinist concept amplified and liberalized by Swedenborg in a manner compatible with socialism; and they also examine the rejoinders of William, whose attention to “interest” corrects such idealizations. The remaining four chapters treat Henry Jr.’s narratives as “anatomies of selfishness” that reflect, yet revise, his father’s ideas. What Maisie Knew and The Wings of the Dove celebrate spontaneous virtue yet also reveal the greed caused by a lack of familial affection, while The Bostonians and The Princess Casamassima confirm “the practical irreconcilability of aesthetic and socialistic temperaments.” More questionable is Duban’s ironic reading of The Ambassadors, according to which Strether remains duped by his supposed disinterestedness. Then, too, skeptics may wonder about the depth of the novelist’s engagement with the theologians. But this book responds effectively to critics who exaggerate the son’s affiliations with the father: “don’t bet your inheritance or hard-earned royalties on society’s providing the redeemed form of man.”