To Logan Pearsall Smith
Hotel Bristol
Rome. March 19, 1925
This morning I have received a letter from an old friend, a sort of disciple, who says: “I do not fail to see, but thoroughly enjoy, how very much you have done in the direction of adapting your philosophy to the needs of Teutons and cooperative man.” Is there any ground for this ambiguous compliment? I am not aware of any adaptation, except to the evidence of things as they continue to march past, and I am not aware that the character of the procession has much changed: but a man is not able to survey his own career fairly, because his perspectives change as he changes. Let it be as God wills.
A hint from B. B. set me reading Sorel, whom I find nutritious even if half- baked.
I am now reading, and expect to review, a ponderous tome by Dewey, the pragmatic philosopher of Columbia, who also wishes to rear the truth on the sands of industrialism. I am going to call him the “Latest Oracle of the Zeitgeist:” and I have a feeling that these are swan-songs, because industrialism may be short-lived.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Three, 1921-1927. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: Library of Congress, Washington D.C.