Author: David Spiech Page 219 of 283

To Augusto Guzzo
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome, April 16, 1948

As to reading the translation, I should be delighted to read it all and should do so in any case when it is printed, as translations give me a new sensation about the character of one’s thought. It is sometimes a salutary lesson. You learn to be like Le Misanthrope in Molière:

Et ses propres sentiments sont blâmes par lui
Lorsqu’il les retrouve dans la bouche d’autrui.¹

1. And he repudiates his own opinions / when he finds them in the mouths of others (French).

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

To Charles Scribner’s Sons
Messrs Charles Scribner’s Sons
New York
C/o Brown Shipley & Co London
Athens, Greece. April 15. 1905

Gentlemen: I have your note of March 24– in which you tell me you sent me one copy of “The Life of Reason”, for which I beg to thank you although it has not yet reached my hands. I have sent you today, in two packages, the M.S. of the rest of “Reason in Art”, which I hope will arrive safely. “Reason in Science” is not quite copied out, as I have been making a general revision of that volume, but it will doubtless be ready by the time your printers have finished the other parts. If there should be any special hurry about it, I could at any moment send you the earlier chapters, which are ready. As I have no great confidence in South-European post-offices (knowing the perfidious character of the Spanish one) I prefer to wait till I get to England—about June 1—if there is no urgency in the matter.
Yours very truly, G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries, Princeton NJ

To George Sturgis
Hotel Bristol
Rome. April 14, 1934

I wrote not long ago to the new President of Harvard College about the legacy which I am leaving them, expressing the hope that if the sum given wasn’t enough for the intended purpose—to keep some impecunious genius alive—they would allow it to accumulate. He has replied very civilly, saying he had been a pupil of mine, and much impressed when a Freshman by the view I unrolled before him of the history of philosophy: so that there is no knowing how far I may not be responsible if he goes wrong. But as to the legacy, he said he hoped I had mentioned in the deed of gift that they might let the income accumulate, because otherwise they might feel bound to spend it all. I don’t remember the exact wording of the deed. Would it be easy for you to look it up and send me a copy of that passage? I don’t want to make any fuss: and if they don’t feel authorized, as things stand, to let the fund grow, I will suggest that they invite some other friend of Harvard to double it. After the present crisis passes, that ought to be easy. The trouble is that the income of $40,000 now wouldn’t keep even a poet from starving.

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 Paul Arthur Schilpp
Hotel Bristol
Rome. April 13, 1939

Dear Mr. Schilpp— I have your letter of March 28– and also the one addressed to “Dr.” Daniel Cory, which I will forward to him in a day or two. He is at this moment on his way from London to Florence, and I am not quite sure what his address will be in the latter place, but he will send it to me as soon as he settles down. He is not a doctor, nor even a college graduate, but when a very young man, taking some odd courses at Columbia, he came across my Scepticism & Animal Faith and was very much taken with it. He began, therefore, in what I think the right path; but his philosophic innocence is now lost, and he has departed in various ways from my highway. However, he understands my views, and knows me personally very well; he is also (more than I) an expert in the theory of perception and knowledge, having been thoroughly and painfully drilled in it by my friend C. A. Strong.

Under a separate cover I am sending you typewritten copies of the pieces from the Triton Edition which we are agreed to use in the proposed 1937–1940 volume about me. I have made the necessary corrections. As you suggest a change of title for the “Brief History of my Opinions” it occurs to me that, especially with the three pages added (I think they will go perfectly as a continuation, not a footnote) the whole might be called “A General Confession”. Or is that too facetious? You know it is the phrase used by Catholics when, on great festive occasions, they make a review of all their past sins.

Yours sincerely,
G Santayana

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 Ira Detrich Cardiff
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. April 12, 1948

Dear Mr. Cardiff, Your letter and the selections enclosed make me very hopeful of the value of the whole collection proposed. They also give me a salutory view of my own foibles, because many of these sayings show a bias which I had forgotten that I ever had. I mean that they are preponderantly anti-traditional and anti-clerical. I still agree with what I say there, yet I shouldn’t now say it in that tone; and I now feel too ignorant of “science” — and too much puzzled by it to appeal to it, in the 19th century way, as to a well-known fountain of truth and light. However, littera scripta manet, and it is right that you should choose these old jibes, as they seem to please you and as they evidently pleased me. I should make only one suggestion: Don’t include anything merely for being true. It must not be commonplace … I was also much pleased that you took things from “The Last Puritan” and from “Persons & Places”. The longish passage from Mr. Boscovitz’s mouth about religions, jewels, flowers and women makes me feel hypocrital; those are distinctly his sentiments rather than mine. But I wrote them and like them better than my own usual feelings. Do put that passage in. And if you have not chosen it already, please put down Mario’s where he tells Oliver that he doesn’t “make up” the stories he relates but that “we must change the truth a little in order to remember it.” That is cynicism without bias, and psychologically exact.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Eight, 1948-1952.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY