To Nancy Saunders Toy
Rome. March 12, 1932
I have just read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, on top of Benda’s disparaging view of all worlds, old and new. There seems to be a general change of tone, among the modern school, from the optimism of our time. It is not our old pessimism, either, but a sort of horror of mechanism, which I don’t feel, perhaps because I have always believed that the universe is mechanical, and that nevertheless the spirit can be, I won’t say at home in it, but supported by it.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Four, 1928-1932. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.