To Sidney Hook
C/o Brown Shipley & Co.
123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.
Rome. March 2, 1937
Dear Mr. Hook
You express my entire conviction when you say that philosophical detachment does not signify political indifference. I happen to have lived in isolation from affairs, on account of hardly ever being in my own country or feeling any vital affinity to modern movements; but a man might recognize the relativity of morals and of human nature itself without surrendering any part of his loyalty to his own self or family or nation. On the contrary, nature and truth give us carte blanche in such matters, and every encouragement to play our particular part. . . . although as a philosopher I am sympathetically interested in the Russian experiment, and feel the radical justification of it ideally (as monastic life is also justified), as a man my associations are in the opposite camp.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Six, 1937-1940. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: Morris Library, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.