Author: David Spiech Page 12 of 283

To Charles Scribner Jr.
C/o Brown Shipley & Co. 123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.
Rome. March 4, 1930

Thank you very much for your letter (of Feb. 21) and the cheque enclosed, from which I gather that some ladies’ college continues to use my early works as textbooks.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Four, 1928–1932.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY.

To John Hall Wheelock
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. March 3, 1947

I am also reading a life of Einstein that the publishers have sent me, asking for a review, or at least a “puff”, but it arrived too late for that purpose. I find it absorbing, although translated from ponderous German into bad English. However, through the fog of words I seem to catch the faint light of very distant stars, and that is exhilarating.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Seven, 1941-1947.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript:Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries, Princeton NJ.

To Sidney Hook
C/o Brown Shipley & Co.
123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.
Rome. March 2, 1937

Dear Mr. Hook

You express my entire conviction when you say that philosophical detachment does not signify political indifference. I happen to have lived in isolation from affairs, on account of hardly ever being in my own country or feeling any vital affinity to modern movements; but a man might recognize the relativity of morals and of human nature itself without surrendering any part of his loyalty to his own self or family or nation. On the contrary, nature and truth give us carte blanche in such matters, and every encouragement to play our particular part. . . . although as a philosopher I am sympathetically interested in the Russian experiment, and feel the radical justification of it ideally (as monastic life is also justified), as a man my associations are in the opposite camp.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Six, 1937-1940.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: Morris Library, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

To Richard Colton Lyon
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. March 1, 1949

The element of existence belongs to the self and leaves the idea to be, as in Plato, ideal: a visionary term or a form. It seems to me that a perception (which in so far as it is spiritual I call an intuition) is either, behavioristically, a reaction in the body to a physical stimulus, or a moment of spirit, spirit for me not being a substance but a flash of feeling in a psyche, intermittent and immaterial. This psyche or self in its animal life, when especially attentive, emits this immaterial cry, and sees this immaterial idea. A pure sound, as heard, and a pure light, as seen do not seem to me to be anything but illusory phenomena, signs for the spirit of the body and the world in which it is incarnate. They do not exist except as features or qualities in its own moral, immaterial, volatile life.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Eight, 1948-1952.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.

To Rosamond Thomas Bennett Sturgis
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. February 28, 1949

Your letter of a week ago brings unexpected news and it has taken me a few days to digest it. I see what a completely new and actively social life your marriage will open before you, and how this, added to the warmth of a new affection, will bring you. . . .

More important than the setting is to have some idea of your future family circle. As to Mr. Little himself, being master of a House in Cambridge and being Secretary to the University are both positions of which I have no first hand knowledge, but they suggest administrative and executive duties rather than teaching, and you don’t tell me what Mr. Little was before there were Houses at Harvard. Garrick and the 18th century sound like a specialty in English history or literature. And then of his four children, which are boys or men and which girls or women? That must make a great difference in the ease with which you can slip into your new position. I have some experience of this sort of problem, as my sister Susana had six step-children as well as a middle-aged husband with fixed habits. Anyhow, give him my compliments and congratulations; and I can understand how you too can feel a fresh glow of youth and excitement at the prospect of this new life. What I cannot sincerely congratulate you on is the procession of visitors and official functions which will demand your time and attention. But I am an old bear, and could never feel the charm of society where it went beyond real friendship or a real feast to the eye and to the gullet.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Eight, 1948-1952.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.