Author: David Spiech Page 227 of 283

To Corliss Lamont
C/o Brown Shipley & Co. 123
Pall Mall, London, S.W.
Rome, Italy. March 5, 1935

The subject of immortality has long ceased to be a living issue with me; and though I know that some people agonize about it, I am confirmed in my old impression that this is a verbal or mythical obsession of the human mind, rather than a literal belief. Everything, in myth and religion must be understood with a difference, in a Pickwickian sense, if we are to understand it truly, and not to import an unnatural fanaticism into the play of poetic fancy.

. . . . Orthodox heavens are peaceful: souls are not supposed to change and pass through new risks and adventures: they merely possess, as in Dante, the truth of their earthly careers and of their religious attainment. In other words, souls in heaven are mythical impersonations of the truth or totality of those persons’ earthly life.

. . . . [T]his life, and anything truly living, is something dramatic, groping, planning, excited, and exciting. It is dangerous: and Nietsche needn’t have told us to live perilously: it would have been enough to tell us to live.

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

To Rosamond Thomas Bennett Sturgis
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome, March 3, 1945

Don’t think that I haven’t a sweet tooth: I like marmalade, for instance, very much; but in liquids sugar seems to me to take away from the thirst-quenching freshness of the drink, and I like the accompanying solids sweet, to make me more thirsty. If I went on in this way, I might be taken for a glutton and epicure, and not a philosopher: I will be silent, and not spoil the reputation for austerity that I hope to acquire now that I have grown thin.

. . . .Tea is my favourite meal, and always happier than the others, because it seems more casual: you can be reading at the same time; and the fact that liquids prevail in it over solids makes it seem less gross.

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 Jessie Belle Rittenhouse
60 Brattle Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts. March 2, 1904

Dear Miss Rittenhouse,
I enclose a photograph (after a drawing by the late Andreas Andersen, made in 1896) and two stanzas from my translation of l’Art. Publication is self-alienation and I have no moral right to impede any plans you may have to operate on the corpus vile of my poor Muse.
Yours truly,
G Santayana

From l’Art by Théophile Gautier.
… All things return to dust
Save beauties fashioned well.
The bust Outlasts the citadel . . .

Chisel and carve and file,
Till thy vague dream imprint
Its smile
On the unyielding flint.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Rollins College, Winter Park FL

To Robert Traill Spence Lowell Jr.
Rome. March 1st 1951

I think reason, as applied to action, is a passion like any other, the desire to achieve harmony among all the impulses of the psyche, which desire is itself one of those impulses, like that of steadying yourself when you are walking along a narrow plank. Pure reason, if an intellectual and not a vital power, might just as well be pleased by toppling over as by walking straight. . . . If we reject order we reject health, distinction, and beauty, as well as peace of mind.

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