To Charles Augustus Strong
9 Ave de l’Observatoire
Paris. July 5, 1914
Dear Strong,
Here too we have had a pleasant change from the great heat of the previous days, and are luxuriating in cool breezes, grey skies, and threatening rains. Fuller remains for another week, but I can get no satisfaction out of him; whatever we talk of, he seems to be always thinking of something else. My brother stayed for six days—three of which I spent in his company. He says I am somewhat improved in character, and more like other people; also that when he visited Venice he saw, at the Lido, bathing-suits that he had never seen before. He is full of the milk of human kindness, and cannot take his eyes off the love-making he sometimes sees in the streets of Paris.
Two families have come to look at the apartment, the second today. Françoise says the Moseses too are leaving, having taken their lease for a year only, so that when any one inquires for the apartment to let, the concierge replies that there are two—the third floor for 4600 francs and the fifth floor for 4000. That doesn’t sound very encouraging.
I have not done any work to speak of, save reading a German Protestant work on Duns Scotus. I think all the points made now-adays in the controversies about perception were clearly stated by the Scholastics; whence their reputation for trifling and pedantry and unintelligible hairsplitting.
Yours ever,
G.S.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Two, 1910-1920. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY