To Enrico Castelli
Via S. Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. September 4, 1948
Dear Professor Castelli,
My best thanks for your “Fenomenologia della nostra Epoca” which I have read with exceptional interest and pleasure. I wish it were longer and, although the theme is evident throughout, more systematic in arrangement. I say this because I am afraid that the succinct and informal way of making your observations may lead some readers to take it more lightly than it deserves. And the public in England if not in the United States is now ready to be convinced that something has gone radically wrong at least since the Reformation or at least since the French Revolution. Toynbee, in his great “Study of History” says since the 13th century.
Modern “idealism” or “psychologism” which reduces reality to appearance, and, in America, truth to opinion, removes all conception of external control or preformed standards: and the acceleration of actions without a purpose has turned subjective frivolity into a compulsory nightmare. Looking back to the 13th or even to the 19th century we feel that mankind has lost its way.
You say that it is impossible to turn back and recover the circumstances and sentiments of the past. Of course it is impossible in the concrete or pictorially: we can’t dress or fight or speak as in the 13th century. But many of us can retain or recover the faith, supernatural and moral, that animated that age: although even the Church does not hope to convert the whole world: so that the best that can be aimed at in that special form is that a Catholic community should always survive, scattered or concentrated in particular places, until the day of Judgement. As to what may ensue then we may have different expectations. I think that a revelation of supernatural control and destiny is not necessary to secure a valid principle of order in morals and politics. This would be secured if scientifically we made out clearly two things: 1st The real conditions of life on earth, and 2nd, The real needs and potentialities of human nature in each man or group of men. The Greeks had a rational view of human existence. We, with more experience and modesty, might frame various social systems, realistic and humane, by which to live according to our variable natures.
The paper I hope to write for the translation of your book will not be on these lines, but expressly written for the American public.
Yours sincerely,
G Santayana
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Eight, 1948-1952. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: Collection of Enrico Castelli Gattinara di Zubiena