To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. February 17, 1948
No wonder that Ryle riles you with his contemptuous repetitions of “pet dichotomy” “sham-question,” and “unsophisticated” “assumption.” Dons used to be old fogeys, but now at Magdalen they seem to be cultivating modernity. Father Benedict here keeps bringing me books by a certain lay theologian Lewis (a convert to Christianity, apparently) whom I should have never supposed Magdalen would tolerate. He has the same cheap way of summing things up in two words, and announcing that all else is effete. However, I find Ryles handwriting quite legible “semantically,” each word is a hieroglyphic to be recognised as a whole, not an aggregate of letters. This is good psychology; but I don’t know what “semantic” is intended to mean now. Is it anything like “Self-transcendence?”
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Eight, 1948-1952. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY.