To Llewelyn Powys
Hotel Bristol
Rome. October. 25, 1938
It is a problem that sometimes puzzles me why Anglo-Saxons, who hate lies, love shams. I think in nice Englishmen it may be for the sake of the protective colouring so secured. People have delicate unhatched feelings, that must not be exposed to the bleak air; and sham religion, friendship, patriotism, etc., help to screen those feelings conveniently, or even to express them in an impersonal figurative way that is not so embarrassing as the truth would be. But in Americans the cultivation of shams is a form of ambition. They must make believe they are well, happy, cordial, witty, optimistic, and music-loving because that is what they think they ought to be: and they insist that other people should help them to keep up the illusion. You succumbed, and helped them to do so. Isn’t it for that reason that the eclipse gave you such pause? It was proof that reality existed. But even cocktails, which foster illusion, are themselves realities, working mechanically and, said Lowes Dickinson once when we were drinking one, “the only good thing in America.” No: not the only good thing, but a great help to the goodness of other things.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Six, 1937-1940. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven CT