To Paul Arthur Schilpp
Hotel Bristol
Rome. January 16, 1939
As to the commentators you suggest for the volume on me (about which I presume there is no hurry, so that we can return to the subject if the plan goes forward) there is only one name that pleases me absolutely, if you can secure it, that is, Russell. Edman and Lamprecht are friendly but not incisive writers: they would repeat things I have said without improving on them, and their appreciations would not be important. Dewey and Lovejoy are in a higher class: but can you secure them? Strong is a personal friend of mine, but he is not interested in anything that does not immediately touch his theory of perception in its technical details, and never criticizes books or systems in general. However, if you can get him, (he too is 76) I am perfectly willing. So with Perry, Sellars, and Prat: they are just professionals, and good fellows. The great success of the book would be the communication from Marcel Proust, if you can find a suitable medium: but alas, the first thing he would say when summoned from the vasty deep to discourse about me would be, “Who is that? I never heard of him!”
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