Author: David Spiech Page 210 of 283

To Robert Traill Spence Lowell Jr.
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. June 5, 1949

Those intrigues about Yaddo were surely too trivial, after all that the war and the peace have shown us of human folly, to make you suddenly despair of the world. I may be wrong; because as I never at any age imagined that the world was rational or decent, fresh scandals seem to me a matter of faits divers such as one expects to find in the papers. You, a Lowell, a Bostonian, a descendent of Jonathan Edwards, have a strong conscience that cannot endure the thought of acquiescing in evil by letting it alone. Your morality must be militant, even when it cannot be victorious or when the victory won here would breed a greater evil there. I quite understand that, and try to do justice to it in the book I am at work on, where “The Militant Order of Society” is one of the chief divisions. And I know that what is imposed by force or authority for a season, say in education or training, may grow into the flesh, possibly (indirectly) even into the heritage of the race, so that the practice of that kind of virtue will become a part of the “Generative Order of Society” instead of a part of the “Militant Order”. In other words what was tyranny may become free virtue.

But now, this way of passing from forced and painful virtue to natural goodness is the way of evolution, summed up by Bergson at the end of his Deux Sources by announced that men are destined to become gods. But this, for a Christian, is blasphemy. Supernatural grace may sanctify natural powers when they are exercised expressly for supernatural ends, like St. Paul “eating and drinking for the glory of God”. But human nature can never become divine; it may be at best, as in Christ, humbly obedient to divine control, always against the natural will, as in Christ praying in the garden. And the moral preference for effort over joyful conformity and for progress over perfection is characteristic of liberal Protestants and modern Jews, and utterly un-Catholic. I think, therefore, that your quarrel with the Spirit that seemed to prevail at Yaddo, and strong proposals for reforming it, or even your disgust at seeing friends misunderstanding your motives, could have been only incidental occasions for reviving your faith in the Church.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Seven, 1941-1947.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA

To Charles Augustus Strong
Hotel Bauer Grünwald
Venice. June 4, 1924

I am having an enchanted floating existence here (not that I ever take a gondola) and wish it could last for ever. Venice is more excitingly beautiful than anything I have ever seen—and I had been here twice before without seeing it! The weather has threatened twice to become oppressive, and then has relented. I have found a second nice restaurant—out in the middle of a little piazza in front of the Teatro Fenice, where I now go to dine, surrounded by towering old walls and a deep saphire sky. Nevertheless, I have written to have my letters sent to the Hotel Cristallo, Cortina d’Ampezzo, as at any moment I may be driven away by heat.

Work continues lazily.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Three, 1921-1927.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY

To Ralph Barton Perry
C/o Brown Shipley & Co
123, Pall Mall, London, S.W1
Rome. June 3, 1933

Dear Perry,

Here is a letter of Wm James which Mrs. Toy has found among old papers. I don’t remember why I once sent it to her, and I am a little disappointed, because I thought it was another in which James upbraided me for my too “Faustlike nature”.  However, at Mrs. Toy’s suggestion, I send this to you, to be annexed to the collection of James’s letters, whoever is in possession of them. I am a rolling stone, and no worthy repository for perishable relics.

Yours sincerely,
G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Five, 1933-1936.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA

To Charles Augustus Strong
Rome. June 2, 1925

Most of the clouds have passed: Mercedes and her fellow-pilgrims have departed, after agonies of uncertainty about lost luggage, most of which was recovered; and poor Mrs Toy, scarcely arrived in England, was so very homesick, bored, and ill, that she went back directly to blessed Boston! This is the second time this has happened, and I think I know the reason, but it is too psychological and complicated for a letter. Finally, Onderdonk, who again seemed on the point of appearing, has again given it up: so that I am preparing for departure, and will add a postcript if I get an answer today about a place in the train. My delay, apart from the presence of my Spanish friends, was due to a desire to see how long Rome proves habitable in summer. It is now warm, but not intolerable, and there are thundershowers when it has got a bit oppressive. I also wanted to finish my review of Dewey before leaving, but I am now resigned to any fate as far as work is concerned: I seem to be becalmed.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Three, 1921-1927.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY

To Charles Augustus Strong
Rome. June 1, 1927

Let us not discuss the question of essences or “the spiritual life.” I have said all I feel—and perhaps more than I feel when I am not warmed up to the subject—in the little book, and I quite understand that it can appeal only to those who are predisposed to that sort of sentiment. You would agree with Abbot (an old classmate of mine at Harvard) who writes me that he has often found heads without ideas, but never ideas without heads. What more is needed to damn all Platonism?

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Three, 1921-1927.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY