To Andrew Joseph Onderdonk
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. June 8, 1945
Dear Onderdonk:
You know how weak old men’s memories become for current events. I can remember or rather reconstruct old scenes most vividly; but what happened last week or last month is lost in the fog. For this reason I can hardly remember whether a second parcel from you, containing only tea, has reached me or not. Such a parcel, once or twice, has actually come; but some have arrived anonymously, so that, if I didn’t write to thank you, it either didn’t get to me at all, or did so without your name. In any case, let me thank you now for your kind intention. But don’t send anything more. The family have now begun to attend to my little wants regularly.
. . . . I am glad you refrained from sending me the review in Camby’s paper about the second volume of Persons & Places, [entitled “The Middle Span” without my knowledge or consent for commercial reasons: but it is an integral part of the whole book, and will ultimately, I hope, appear, with volume third, in an edition with illustrations, marginal comments (omitted, I suppose, for economy) and the suppressed passages: but I shall not see that edition, so that I can indulge in the illusion that it will be magnificent.]
Such selected reviews of vol. II as I have seen have shown more tolerance than I had expected, especially in this time of political ardour and glory. The most appreciative is by Christopher Morley: he understands my spirit perfectly; only my philosophy is ignored, which is better than if it were misrepresented.–By the way, I am not in the least “Beyond Good and Evil”, you meant perhaps beyond praise and blame: and even that is not true when the praise or blame are intelligent. Certainly mere anger doesn’t affect me. Anger always has a cause, and in that sense may be important; but it never has a reason, and therefore should be disregarded in correcting one’s own sentiments.
My next book, on “The Idea of Christ” will surprise people by being entirely different, and will make a different set of people angry. But it will please the High Church party, when they are not really believers.
Yours sincerely,
G Santayana
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Seven, 1941-1947. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY