Author: David Spiech Page 14 of 283

To William James
Berlin. January 9th 1887.

Dear Prof. James.

I was delighted to get your letter this morning, and hope you will forgive my not having written. The truth is I was ashamed to do so, because I have done those things which I ought not to have done, and I have not done those things which I ought to have done, and there is no science in me. But I have been having a good quiet time, picking up some German, and finding out which way the philosophical wind blows in these parts . . .

I find it pretty hard to make friends among the Germans, although they are good, simple-hearted people. The Americans are so much more lively that I always find myself going with them. There are a great many here, studying everything and nothing. I have been to some American dinners and Kneipes, but otherwise I have poked comfortably at home, reading Goethe, with whom I am in love. I find no difficulty in reading, and understanding lectures, but I am helpless when it comes to talk.

[I] still propose to take up physiology, but I am afraid . . . I shall do little in that direction. I do not know how to work. I think, apart from the spelling book and the Greek grammar, I have never studied anything except for pleasure and with enthusiasm; and I find it terribly hard to peg at things that I don’t seem to grasp. I recognize that all this is an additional reason for trying to get a feeling for the severe, minute way of handling things, and I shall try to do something in that direction. But my vocation is toward the human, political problems. Even the metaphysical and ethical puzzles appear to me rather as obstacles to be cleared than as truths to be attained. I feel now as if I could pass beyond them into the real world. And as far as the world we live in—I mean the social world—is to be got at by study, it strikes me it is to be found in history and political economy (not counting literature.) It is in this direction that I am drawn. Of course, if one could study everything, it would be very nice to understand the physical world too: but isn’t it a fact that popular and second hand science, bad as it is, is less treacherous than popular Pol. Econ. and history? I can better afford to be misled about chemistry or physiology than about free trade or the Reformation. That is why I am anxious to look into these subjects for myself.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.

To Robert Seymour Bridges
Hotel Bristol
Rome. January 8, 1925

Through the more and more frankly confessed mythical character of exact science—I . . . have been recognizing of late that the church is a normal habitation for the mind, as impertinent free thought never is. But there remains the old misunderstanding, the forcing of literature into dogma, and the intolerable intolerance of other symbols, where symbols are all. Here in Rome, in the Pincio and the Villa Borghese, I often watch with amazement the troops of theological students of all nations, so vigorous and modern in their persons, and I ask myself whether these young men can truly understand and accept the antique religion which they profess—especially the Americans (very numerous) with their defiant vulgar airs and horrible aggressive twang. Could the monks of Iona and the Venerable Bede have been like this? Was it perhaps after some ages of chastening that the barbarians could really become Christian and could produce a Saint Francis?

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Three, 1921-1927.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: The Bodleian Library, Oxford University, England.

To Rosamond Thomas Bennett Sturgis
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. January 7, 1948

Your astonishing flowers came on Christmas eve, and for a moment seeing such profusion of roses and double carnations, I thought of sending them to the Chapel, where they would have on their five altars that night and the next morning a long series of Masses; for each priest on that occasion says three. But on second thoughts I selfishly kept them for my own decoration, because if I had sent them to the Chapel the whole Community would have begun to whisper that I was converted at last and they would have spread all sorts of rumours, which might even have got into The Rome Daily American, where one of the editors is a friend of mine, and thence would have flooded America with proofs that my wits were turned, and my whole philosophy invalidated as being that of a Jesuit in Disguise. Whether these fears were grounded or not, I can’t say; but the flowers meantime made a great show in my small room, and some of them lasted in good condition until New Year’s.

The box with mayonnaise, marmalade coffee, raisin buiscuits, glycerine soap, etc., has arrived also, and will be duly appreciated as the contents reappear gradually from Sister Angela’s pantry. But as I think I have written before, you mustn’t feel obliged to keep me in stock of all these things, because if I am really short of anything I can now order it, through an arrangement with Mr Wheelock of Scribner’s, from the “Vendome” grocery in New York, who send me as it is a regular monthly parcel with tea, coffee, cocoa and buiscuits, and I see by a list of delicacies they have sent me that they can also provide “bitter-sweet orange marmelade,” which is precisely the sort of “jam” that I prefer. However, I don’t mean to discourage your good habits; and if at any time you feel like sending me something there is a small but precious thing that I can’t yet get here again namely “Vapex,” which gives me pleasure and apparent relief whenever my catarrh threatens to become a cold in the head. Ordinarily my nose and eyes are quite dry, and it is only from the throat that I have to clear away the nasty sticky stuff. My doctor gives me preventive injections and a syrup called Bronchiolina which brings relief, although not immediately. But innocent girlish Vapex is an immediate help, and pleasanter than any scent I know of.

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 Daniel MacGhie Cory
Rome. January 5, 1939

Yesterday evening I had a visit from—Ezra Pound!

He is taller, younger, better-looking than I expected. Reminded me of several old friends (young, when I knew them) who were spasmodic rebels, but decent by tradition, emulators of Thoreau, full of scraps of culture but lost, lost, lost in the intellectual world. He talked rather little (my fault, and that of my deaf ear, that makes me not like listening when I am not sure what has been said), and he made no breaks, such as he indulges in in print. Was he afraid of me? How odd! Such a dare-devil as he poses as! I had just been reading his article, and the one about him, in the Criterion, so that I felt no chasm between us—“us” being my sensation of myself and my idea of him . . .

His beard is like a painter’s and his head of hair (is it a wig?) like a musician’s. On the whole, we got on very well, but nothing was said except commonplaces.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Six, 1937-1940.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY.