To John Middleton Murry
C/o Brown Shipley & Co
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Rome. November 1, 1927
A heretic, I should say, had to be a believer; he had to maintain a principle while denying some of its consequences. I am a free-thinker or sceptic: and my sympathies in religion are with the orthodoxies—not with one, but with each in contrast to its heresies. I am therefore not a heretic; but you are right that my share in the spiritual life is more vicarious than personal, if a complete ascetic renunciation is understood to be involved in it. Such insight as I may have comes from poetic indolence, or speculative ecstasy. I can feel the sweetness of saying No, and the greater joy of leaving the daisies growing in the field rather than plucking them to wilt in my buttonhole.—I thought my little book made my position quite clear: but I have a more formal treatise, about to appear, called The Realm of Essence in which I speak more than once of my personal attitude towards the ambition of those who aspire to be pure spirits. I do not share it.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Three, 1921-1927. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: The Newberry Library, Chicago IL