To Ezra Loomis Pound
Clinica della Piccola Compagnia di Maria
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. July 29, 1942
In reading the R[ealm] of Spirit (if you go on with it) please keep in mind that I don’t believe anything existent can be defined, only indicated; so that all sorts of different fingers or words pointed at it are better than any one name. So when I say “form of life”, the expression is casual and might have been “kind of life”, or “zone”, as you suggest. I meant merely that life in places issues in spirit, and that spirit is not an independent substance or centre with a persistent individuality: only a spark of light.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Seven, 1941-1947. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven CT.