To Richard Edmund Butler
Rome. July 20, 1952
Dear Father Butler
I do not think you have learned any thing from reading my books; you have read the words and perhaps thought what Saint Thomas might have said about it. This would do nicely for passing an examination; but it would not enlarge your mind: This is confirmed by your saying that “Soliloquies” is (verbally) the best of my books all of them being mere attempts to defend “Interpretations”. It is true that, as to religion, this book had struck the keynote. But as to “reason” and “ideas” all is changed in “Soliloquies”.
G.S.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Eight, 1948-1952. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: Provincial Archives, Province of St. Albert the Great, Chicago IL.