To Charles Augustus Strong
22 Beaumont St.
Oxford, England. April 29, 1917
Dear Strong,
I have selected passages out of the preface and the first two chapters of your book and arranged them in what seems to me a very lucid essay, which I suggest might be called an Analysis of Perception . . . I have just read the whole thing over, to correct typewriter’s errors: and my impression is that it is admirable: sober, simple, good-tempered, solid, clear, and unanswerable. Without meritricious ornaments, it gives one more pleasure than a more simpering work would give—Aristotle gives more pleasure than Cicero—at least to me. So that when you ask, Is it as good as Russell, I say, it is not so brilliant, but it is more delightful—not to mention the obvious fact that it is more correct. Not merely because I agree with it; I don’t agree with it all; but because, in spirit, it is science, and Russell’s is private speculation.
The first part of the French translation of Egotism has arrived, and I have had a sad disappointment. No charm of style whatever, no lightness, no smile! The man is interested only in abusing the Germans, and where I try to give the devil his due and retire like Hindenburg according to plan, . . . my good translator misunderstands the text, so as to turn my concessions into a solid blind phalanx of attack. In places he is exact, if not happy: and his knowledge of English is sufficient: what he misses is, I now see, rather subtly and inadequately expressed. I hope he won’t object to my objections, and that we sha’n’t quarrell.
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.