To Thomas Munro
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. December 10, 1944
My dear Munro:
Your letter came to me in the midst of an avalanche of Army visitors, most of them very young and raw, but characteristically looking for something they had heard of at home, or from home, very recently. Others came to photograph or to interview me, and some simply in search of a modest autograph. . . . In this society, I put away your letter to be answered when the rear guard of war had begun to pass on. It has now thinned a good deal (like me on rations) and I return to the pleasant memories of you in Paris, and your enthusiasm for African figurines. . . . I am glad you are approaching the vast subject of the arts from that side, rather than from that of precepts and taste. The philosophers have written a good deal of vague stuff about the beautiful, and the critics a good deal of accidental partisan stuff about right and wrong in art. If you will only discover why and when people develop such arts and such tastes you will be putting things on a sounder basis.
My seclusion here for three years, with few books and only meagre newspapers, has been good for my health and for my work. Besides Persons & Places, 3 volumes, of which the last will not be published for the present, I have written a Theological book, and am turning now, well instructed by two great wars and their effects, to my old Dominations & Powers which will, if I live, represent the wisdom of my old age. I have outlived most of my contemporaries, all my family and early friends: but I have not lost them. On the contrary, reliving my life has been pleasanter than living it. In hopes of some day seeing you again.
Yours sincerely, G Santayana
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Seven, 1941-1947. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: Unknown.