Author: David Spiech Page 238 of 283

To Charles Augustus Strong
22 Beaumont St.
Oxford, England. Jan. 12, 1919

My brother in Boston has lost his wife, who was the youngest (except my youthful self) of our generation. Their boy is still in France, and writes very interesting accounts of his experiences as a soldier. My brother is naturally much affected and writes despondently about his own approaching end: but I believe there is no ground for this foreboding, Yours ever
G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Two, 1910-1920.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY

To Benjamin Apthorp Gould Fuller
ANGLO-AMERICAN NILE STEAMER & HOTEL COMPANY
CHIEF OFFICE, SHARIA BOULAC, CAIRO
(GRAND CONTINENTAL HOTEL BUILDINGS)
Near Luxor on the Nile. January 11th

Dear Fuller,
….
I am at this moment going up the Nile with an impossible party of tourists, conscious of being no less grotesque myself than the rest of them. So many labour-saving-machines have left us no time for anything, else I should like to travel long in the East and yield for a time to its fascinations. People here seem to realise something of Faust’s dream, to be young in body and old in spirit. What an amusing place the world would be to such a creature. We sometimes speak of regretting lost illusions. What a silly idea! We may well regret lost powers, but the loss of illusions is an unmixed benefit. It leaves you free face to face with the facts and authorizes you to profit by every real opportunity. The trouble is that, the Life of Reason being so largely in abeyance, people do not ordinarily lose their illusions till they have lost their passions, and then the real world, when they see it for the first time as it is, seems to them stale, not because it is real but because they are played out.
I may perhaps go to Jerusalem and Damascus before returning to Europe. The donkey is losing its terrors for me and I now generally ride at the head of the party. Think what a party it must be!
Yours G Santayana

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 Lino S. Lipinsky de Orlov
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. Jan. 10, 1951

Dear Mr. Lipinsky,

At first sight the photograph of your drawing of me surprised me, but after a moment it began to please. It boldly illustrates the difference between reproduction and characterisation, by its economy of means and its penetrating suggestion of character. The emphasis on the eyes would almost suffice to betray a disinterested philosopher. The mouth might be a better symbol for some; but you treated mine (which was said to laugh too much) very discreetly, giving it a faint trace of amiability. The limits of a sketch hardly allow for more elaboration. If you exaggerate, it becomes caricature. The wide-open eyes in your drawing might become ridiculous if taken to show me anxious or scared, rather than calmly observant; but I believe they are true to life, and admirably rendered. I should be much obliged if you would send me two or three more copies, and hope that Scribners will use it to balance the very fleshly and bloated photos of me that they have sometimes republished, faute de mieux.1 With many thanks
Yours sincerely
G Santayana

1. For want of better ones (French).

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Eight, 1948-1952.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: Collection of Lino S. Lipinsky de Orlov

To William James
Berlin. Jan 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.

(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. Jan. 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