To Henry Ward Abbot
Oxford, England. April 23, ’87
I can’t help my philosophical passion. If I were not to generalize and preach I should have to stop thinking. . . . I am certainly mediocre as a whole, and in the important human qualities—courage, serviceableness, and honesty— sadly deficient. I have of course my strong side—a strip of greatness, as it were—but I am altogether too poor a specimen of humanity for this to tell in the long run. Don’t bet anything on my turning out well. I don’t care enough about it myself to work for success. What I crave is not do great things but to see great things. And I hate my own arrogance and would worship the man who should knock it out of me.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book One, [1868]-1909. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY