Author: David Spiech Page 231 of 283

To Charles Augustus Strong
Hotel Bristol
Rome. Feb. 14, 1932

It has never been easy for me to decide whether your view fell rather on the side of the line which I call panpsychism (or panpsychologism) or on the side which I call the mind-stuff theory. Of course, you are under no obligation to adopt just these categories, and may perfectly well put the lines of cleavage elsewhere: but I am talking of my own attempts to understand your position. You say now that I ought to have seen that you take the second view: very well. But in saying that “feeling” is “that in the nature of matter which makes it possible for it ever to be aware.” I am still in doubt as to your meaning. What is your criterion of possibility in such a case? The previous existence of something like awareness? The previous existence of the “luminosity” which in awareness is focussed into conscious feeling? Or rather, into the qualities of experience? Or do you mean merely such qualities or arrangements as give a normal occasion for conscious feeling–in a word, matter capable of being organized into living bodies? If you meant only this last, I should entirely agree. But I don’t think it helps at all to produce awareness that there should have been awareness, or something like awareness, earlier.

Yours ever
G.S.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Four, 1928-1932.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY

To William Cameron Forbes
60 Brattle Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts. [1902–June 1904]

Dear Cam,
Will you dine with me on Wednesday Feb. 12th at seven o’clock at the Harvard Union, where I am trying to get together a few of the old crowd? I hope very much you will not fail us.

Yours ever, G Santayana
I need not warn you not to dress.

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 Joseph Malaby Dent
C/o Brown Shipley & Co.
123 Pall Mall, S.W.1
Nice, France. Feb. 12, 1923

My dear Mr Dent,
It was not for any personal dissatisfaction with your management in the publication of my two books, that I went over to Constable; it was because Mr Pearsall Smith had arranged with Constable (Mr Kyllmann being a personal friend of his) for the “Little Essays”; and as this book was (for me) a great success, and as it presented a good appearance, there were exactly the same reasons for continuing with Constable as for continuing with you.

I decided for him because he publishes (and takes a great interest in) my “Life of Reason” (which is my principal work), because he seemed to advertise and sell my books with success, and because, in consequence, I got much more money out of them than before.

As to a fresh edition of “Winds of Doctrine”, I think it is very desirable. There are parts of that book that can stand, and have a permanent interest: others, especially the essay on Russell are already out of date. I should be glad to revise the whole, cutting out or condensing most of the Russell article and parts of the Bergson, thus reducing them to what I conceive to be their real importance: and to balance those omissions, I might add a chapter on Freud, and a few pages to the first essay, to carry the survey over the war. It would thus make a fair commentary on my own times, which might have a permanent interest. As I am now in my sixtieth year, and my health is not very robust, I am concerned to arrange my works in the most presentable form, freed as much as possible from dead matter. The only trouble is that for the moment–and certainly this moment will last a year or two–I am at work on my system of philosophy, which I should regret above all things to leave unfinished.

Could you then postpone the revision and reissue of “Winds of Doctrine” for a year or two, when I might be free to attend to that matter with an easy conscience?

Yours sincerely,
GSantayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Three, 1921-1927.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

To George Sturgis
Address: Rome, Feb. 11, 1928
C/o B. S. & Co.
London

Dear George,
I suppose they have telegraphed to you directly that your aunt Susie died yesterday morning, apparently after a short illness. I am leaving in two or three days for Paris and Avila: probably I shall have to stay for some time in Madrid. Your aunt’s age, and my own, softens this blow a good deal in my own feelings; and you who never saw her in her palmy days can hardly have an idea of the ascendency which she exercised over people, and particularly over me. Invalid as she was when you knew her, you must still have felt how much life there was in her spirit: I think she was confident of surviving her husband, and doing great things independently; but the flesh is treacherous, and things have turned out the other way.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Four, 1928-1932.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA

To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Hotel Bristol
Rome. Feb. 10, 1935

Dear Cory,
There are many advantages in having you come to this hotel, if you can stand it. You will have the exclusive use of my sitting-room from 11:30 to 5 o’clock; and after 5 o’clock, though I shall be there, you may always come in without fear of disturbing me, because I am only reading, and reading nothing usually that requires much concentration of thought.

You will see that the room is larger and better than the one I had formerly, and very sunny. As you are to be on half pension, like me, I shall expect you to come to lunch with me every day (except when the weather is bad) as in the old days. I will pay for your lunch, of course: but as that will add a good deal to my daily expense (as well as pleasure) I think I might cut down your allowance a little and give you 500 lire a week instead of 2500 a month, as I had promised. Your hotel bill, with 10% for service, and something for washing and drinks, will be about 350 lire a week, leaving you 150 a week for pocket-money. It’s not much; unless you have some other source of income as well, but if you feel cramped you can always leave the Bristol and reduce your fixed expenses, so as to have more loose cash.

Look me up–room 77, at the front end of the passage–when you arrive, unless it is after 10:30 p.m when I usually go to bed: and I don’t reappear, dressed and ready to go out, until about 1 p.m. so that at 12, when I am having my bath, you mustn’t expect to see me.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Five, 1933-1936.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY