To Sidney Hook
C/o Brown Shipley & Co.
123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1.
Rome. January 27, 1930
Dear Mr Hook
It is very kind of you to send me these three articles of yours, and I have been reading them with much interest and (I hope) some profit. As I said in a post-card which I sent you some time since, I should feel a very general agreement with you, if you put things differently! For instance, on p. 124 of the Marx-Lenin article, you seem to contrast “human needs” with material forces. But what efficacy of any sort could a “need,” more than a thought or a prayer, have in the world, if it were not a material impulse in an animal body? So the “ideas” whose power you exalt on p. 142, might find some difficulty in making themselves felt if nobody had them.
Yours sincerely
G Santayana
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Four, 1928-1932. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Morris Library, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.