To Joseph Malaby Dent
C/o Brown Shipley & Co.
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Nice, France. Feb. 12, 1923
My dear Mr Dent,
It was not for any personal dissatisfaction with your management in the publication of my two books, that I went over to Constable; it was because Mr Pearsall Smith had arranged with Constable (Mr Kyllmann being a personal friend of his) for the “Little Essays”; and as this book was (for me) a great success, and as it presented a good appearance, there were exactly the same reasons for continuing with Constable as for continuing with you.
I decided for him because he publishes (and takes a great interest in) my “Life of Reason” (which is my principal work), because he seemed to advertise and sell my books with success, and because, in consequence, I got much more money out of them than before.
As to a fresh edition of “Winds of Doctrine”, I think it is very desirable. There are parts of that book that can stand, and have a permanent interest: others, especially the essay on Russell are already out of date. I should be glad to revise the whole, cutting out or condensing most of the Russell article and parts of the Bergson, thus reducing them to what I conceive to be their real importance: and to balance those omissions, I might add a chapter on Freud, and a few pages to the first essay, to carry the survey over the war. It would thus make a fair commentary on my own times, which might have a permanent interest. As I am now in my sixtieth year, and my health is not very robust, I am concerned to arrange my works in the most presentable form, freed as much as possible from dead matter. The only trouble is that for the moment–and certainly this moment will last a year or two–I am at work on my system of philosophy, which I should regret above all things to leave unfinished.
Could you then postpone the revision and reissue of “Winds of Doctrine” for a year or two, when I might be free to attend to that matter with an easy conscience?
Yours sincerely,
GSantayana
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Three, 1921-1927. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill