To Horace Meyer Kallen
Cambridge, Massachusetts. November 19, 1911
As to me, the present is a blank like the Hinterland of Tripoli, with sniping going on desultorily, always in the same places. But the past and the future are both full of features. California, on the whole, disappointed me. The country is fine, the climate perfect; but the people are all—except the Italian restaurant-keepers and the Chinese—from Newton Centre, Mass. It was no relief morally. My notion of the U.S. now I have traversed the whole, is that it is a smaller place than I thought. The potential features are all marked, as in a child’s face, and there are no ideal surprises in store for us, as far as this country is concerned. It will be, for five hundred years, much the same thing, more congested. As to the future, I sail on January 24th , and am making in the first place for Madrid. In the late Spring I shall return to Paris to stay with Strong, and catch whatever winds of doctrine or revolution may be blowing in that most ventilated of atmospheres. Beyond that nothing determinate except freedom, which for the moment is a very distinct thing in my eyes.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Two, 1910-1920. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: American Jewish Archives, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati OH.