To Charles Augustus Strong
Hotel Miramonti
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. July 25, 1934
Dear Strong,
It is now a week since I arrived here, and everything is going well. I have a room at the east end of the house, directly opposite where I was before, with a pleasant view of the foothills and woods, with the Monte Cristallo on the left. It is less grand than the other panorama, but rural and peaceful. The food is excellent, and the highroad tarred, so that I need not fear the dust in crossing it. Naturally, I miss a little the luxury and friendliness of your villa, and the picturesque dinner in the Piazza; but I can work better and sleep better here, as well as get plenty of exercise Venice looked its best, and I am looking forward to returning there in October; . . .
I have now read the first of Bergson’s new essays and a part of the second. I note that he regards himself as “small” compared with the “masters”, Aristotle & Spinoza (wise choice!) and, in places, admits the material world as also real. If these things are sincere, and there is no equivocation, he would rather disarm general criticisms; because his insistence on duration and vegetative consciousness budding in the dark would then be legitimate enough; that is a perspective in which experience can be viewed, if we abstain from inquiring into its causes or surroundings.
Yours ever, G.S.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Five, 1933-1936. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY.