To Charles Augustus Strong
Hotel Bristol
Rome. March 17, 1927
I want to send off vol. I. of the Big Book, “The Realm of Essence,” which I have almost completely rewritten but to which I wish to add an appendix—concerning three contemporary equivalents for my theory which have lately come to light: viz. Guénon’s version of the Hindu Brahman, Whitehead’s chapter on “Abstraction” in his “Science in the Modern World”, and Husserl’s “Phaenomenologie”. The latter (which I am just beginning to study) is wonderfully coincident with my notions, although approached from the psychological side. . . . I think a short notice of these three writers, with some quotations, will very much conciliate the readers—at least the professorial readers—of my “Realm of Essence” and make them see that it is no hobby or madness of mine, but an obvious Columbus’ egg which their worships had never thought of erecting on its own bottom.
I am reading Congreve for the first time: he is less licentious than I expected, and infinitely more witty. I laugh aloud like a madman at many of his sallies. And his English is admirable—a great treat and lesson for me after most of what I am condemned to read—beginning with the new “Morning Post”.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Three, 1921-1927. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY.