Author: David Spiech Page 106 of 283

To Enrico Castelli
Via S. Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. September 4, 1948

Dear Professor Castelli,

My best thanks for your “Fenomenologia della nostra Epoca” which I have read with exceptional interest and pleasure. I wish it were longer and, although the theme is evident throughout, more systematic in arrangement. I say this because I am afraid that the succinct and informal way of making your observations may lead some readers to take it more lightly than it deserves. And the public in England if not in the United States is now ready to be convinced that something has gone radically wrong at least since the Reformation or at least since the French Revolution. Toynbee, in his great “Study of History” says since the 13^th century.

Modern “idealism” or “psychologism” which reduces reality to appearance, and, in America, truth to opinion, removes all conception of external control or preformed standards: and the acceleration of actions without a purpose has turned subjective frivolity into a compulsory nightmare. Looking back to the 13^th or even to the 19^th century we feel that mankind has lost its way.

You say that it is impossible to turn back and recover the circumstances and sentiments of the past. Of course it is impossible in the concrete or pictorially: we can’t dress or fight or speak as in the 13^th century. But many of us can retain or recover the faith, supernatural and moral, that animated that age: although even the Church does not hope to convert the whole world: so that the best that can be aimed at in that special form is that a Catholic community should always survive, scattered or concentrated in particular places, until the day of Judgement. As to what may ensue then we may have different expectations. I think that a revelation of supernatural control and destiny is not necessary to secure a valid principle of order in morals and politics. This would be secured if scientifically we made out clearly two things: 1^st The real conditions of life on earth, and 2^nd , The real needs and potentialities of human nature in each man or group of men. The Greeks had a rational view of human existence. We, with more experience and modesty, might frame various social systems, realistic and humane, by which to live according to our variable natures.

The paper I hope to write for the translation of your book will not be on these lines, but expressly written for the American public.

Yours sincerely

G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Eight, 1948-1952.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: Collection of Enrico Castelli Gattinara di Zubiena.

To Guy Murchie
National Liberal Club,
Whitehall Place. S.W.
London. September 3, 1895

I have only a bad reason for writing tonight, which is the sonnet opposite . . .

Brévent
O dweller in the valley, lift thine eyes
To where, above the drift of cloud, the stone
Endures in silence, and to God alone
Upturns its furrowed visage, and is wise.
There yet is being, far from all that dies,
And beauty, where no mortal maketh moan,
Where larger spirits swim the liquid zone,
And other spaces stretch to other skies.
Only a little way above the plain
Is snow eternal; round the mountains’ knees
Hovers the fury of the wind and rain.
Look up, and teach thy noble heart to cease
From endless labour. There is perfect peace
Only a little way above thy pain.

From The Letters of George Santayana: Book One, [1868]-1909. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Collection of Guy Murchie, Jr.

To Charles G. Spiegler
C/o Brown Shipley & Co.
123, Pall Mall, London. S.W.1
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. September 2, 1939

Dear Mr. Spiegler,

The sonnet about which you say “there has been rather heated discussion” was written fifty-five years ago, and I should hardly trust myself to say now exactly what interpretation, if any, might exactly correspond to what may have been in my mind when I wrote it. I say, if any, because at twenty the mind is susceptible to momentary lights, and my sonnet wasn’t written at one sitting. When I came to “the soul’s invincible surmise” I was probably thinking simply of Columbus; but when I came to “the light of faith,” I was probably thinking of the Catholic Church. And neither of these possible thoughts had much to do with the origin of the sonnet, which I can voutch for distinctly. In the Bacchae, of Euripides I had come upon . . . words . . . I translated into the line: “It is not wisdom to be only wise”—or too knowing as one might say in prose. Nietzsche had not then been heard of, but the Bacchae is Dionysiac, and I was not blind to that romantic inspiration. The rest of the sonnet was built around that line, which became the second; but I daresay my interest was not exclusively literary; this was, I think, the first of my sonnets (among those published) and, though it seems to be the most popular, it is certainly one of the thinnest in rhythm and diction. But I was certainly in a state of emotional flux in regard to religion, not having yet reached the equilibrium which the twenty sonnets of the first series are meant to lead to. The process, however, took several years.

All this, however, seems to me of little moment. When once anything is given to the public, it belongs to the public, and they are at liberty to find in it what meanings they choose. Whether the author appreciated or not the possible suggestions of his words is a biographical question of no importance in the estimation of the extant work. He may have put into it unawares forgotten or potential perceptions, or even pure collocations of facts or ideas that only a later point of view could disclose to the mind of some other person.

If your interpretation is that my way of seeing and writing is intellectual, I think you are right; but it is intelligence about emotion—intelletto d’amore—so that your critics may be right too.

Yours very truly

G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Six, 1937-1940. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: Collection of Mrs. Charles (Evelyn) Spiegler, Forest Hill NY.

To Charles Hartshorne
C/o Brown Shipley & Co.
123, Pall Mall, S.W.1 London
Paris. September 1, 1928

Dear Mr Hartshorne,

There is little that I can say about Charles Peirce of any importance. He hasn’t had any direct influence on me. On the one occasion when I saw and heard him, I was struck by his very unacademic personality, and I have always remembered with profit a distinction which he made in his lecture that evening between “index”, “sign”, and “symbol”. When his posthumous essays came out, I read and liked them; but except through his connection with Wm James, he has remained rather in the margin of my impressions.

Yours very truly

G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Four, 1928-1932.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Unknown.

To William Morton Fullerton
Avila, Spain August 31, 1887.

Dear Fullerton—

Thanks very much for your interesting letter, which I read in bed this morning, being at present convalescent from a little bilious attack that has recently turned me inside out. This biliousness of mine will give you optimist a chance to attribute any disagreeable and unsightly truth I may hereafter mention to the stock cause, viz, to indigestion. Men having generally turned their eyes to more profitable uses than seeing, when ever they discover anything it is supposed to be by means of that larger organ called the liver. Were we bilious people not here in rather large numbers, to enlighten the world, to what depths of superstition and infatuation would not you comfortable hypocrites have brought it! I confess I am overwhelmed by the catalogue of your collection honors and glories. I tremble in addressing such a high and famous authority. I marvel at his having deigned to write me a sixteen-page letter. I am going to have it framed in four nickle frames (until the times turn golden) between two plates of glass, so that both sides may be legible. These four tablets I shall hand down to my nephews (for like the Pope I shall have only nephews) as the main part of their inheritance (indeed, they won’t get much else.) Meantime I shall treasure them in an ark, modelled on the ark of the covenant, and for this purpose I write by this mail to the British and Foreign Bible Society for a Bible, in order to inform myself on the subject of ark-architecture. Alas! my own Bible, that my mother gave me with tears in her eyes, begging me never to part with it, has disappeared in the most tragic and lamentable manner. Being often in Popish and other heathen countries, I naturally carried my Bible jealously in my breeches pocket, lest the Inquisition or some tribe of cannibals should confiscate it and desecrate it, incidentally wasting and eating me as a Christian and a brother. But sad and strange experience has convinced me that the reason why in these godless countries there are no Bibles is not because the Devil, therein supreme, prohibits them, lest men should believe and be saved. The reason why Bibles are not found is because there is an alarming scarcity of paper, none being to be found even in water-closets. Now, as I am unfortunately a great frequenter of these establishments, on account of biliousness, diarrhoea, indigestion, dyspepsia, and colic; and as at the same time, mindful of my dear and sainted mother’s last wishes, I always carry my Bible in my breeches’ pocket; I have found myself in a cruel dilemma. Godliness said “Treasure thy Bible, and on no account tear out the leaves thereof.” But cleanliness answered “Did not David eat the consecrated bread when he was ahungered, and did not the Lord justify David? Tear thou then out likewise the leaves of thy Bible, and wipe thine ass therewith for thy need is as pressing as David’s, nay more.” And when I considered that since I was in England I have given up the use of drawers, and that the British and Foreign Bible Society might not be willing to send me a clean pair of trousers, even if I told them in what sacred cause I had sacrificed those I possessed,—when I considered those things I always decided in favor of cleanliness. I was careful, however,—I must say this in my own justification,—to begin by tearing out the Song of Solomon, and the passage about Loch’s daughters, and Ecclesiastes, and the pages descriptive of Sodom and Gomorrah, and such others as I thought godliness wouldn’t much care about. Still, as time went on, and my visits to water closets unprovided with paper continued, more and more of my Bible has disappeared, and now, I regret to say, only the upper half of the first page of the Gospel according to St. John remains. That is why I have to send to the British and Foreign Bible Society for a new copy in which to learn how the ark was built. When it comes, I assure you your letter shall be worthily enshrined.

Of course, when you are planning a novel, you must have had some experience of the tender passion. If you are engaged, or expect to be so, of course I cannot ask for any confidences, but if your loves have been less serious, or if unfortunately they have been unhappy, why don’t you tell me something about them? You know I am very prudent and sympathetic (I think I can say that without arrogance) and although I haven’t the genius, etc. of your new friends, I can FEEL! Besides as I have always been an admirer of yours, and not of your intellect alone, I have some right to be treated with confidence. I therefore think you might tell me something, when you next find time to write to me, about the inner side of all this full life of yours. All these great friends of yours have daughters, and all of these daughters have eyes, and some of them, at least, hearts. Ergo, when a handsome and fascinating young man, with the most brilliant prospects, appears upon the scene as if by magic, and carries everything before him, it is not credible that these maidens should all prove insensible. Something must have happened.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.