Author: David Spiech Page 265 of 283

To Rimsa Michel
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6,
Rome. July 8, 1950

Dear Mr. Michel

Your well typed Essay, in its flexible black leather binding, added to certain melancholy notes in your letter, made me feel at once that you were a young man of feeling, who liked to work like an artist: and I began to read with a little apprehension that you might be only that—or perhaps a sentimental lady: (your name not being decisive (for me) on that point) and that you might really be impossibly mystical or poetical, like the theosophists. I have now finished reading the whole and find nothing of the sort, even at the end. You detach the meaning I give to “essence” clearly and soberly. In reading, for some thirty pages, I found only a faithful enough echo of The Life of Reason, as conceived in New York, and was uneasy only at what seemed an exclusive acquaintance with that and with my works in general, as if I were not a man but a text-book. This misgiving was corrected afterwards, as far as sympathy with my later writings is concerned. You not only know them all well but you are the only critic I have come upon who understands the character of the change that came over my manner. I have explained this, with a reference to my circumstances and uncongenial philosophic teachers, until I went to Germany, in the Preface or Introduction written for the one volume edition of Realms of Being.

This leads me to the first jolt which I felt while so pleasantly conveyed in your carriage: your sharp objection to the word “Realm”—because it is not republican. Have you never heard that natural history, until the other day, divided nature into the Mineral, Vegetable and Animal Kingdoms? I didn’t know that this word, like the word “essence” was taboo in America. I braved the inevitable prejudice in the case of “essence” because it is the only proper word for what I had in mind, and traditionally opposed to “existence”, like “form” to “matter”. But the reading that is now done, beyond “majors” in colleges, or at home, is very limited in proportion to what everybody was expected to know a hundred or even fifty years ago. “Culture” is collapsing into compendia and school-books, as at the beginning of the “dark ages”. (You must consider that I am very old.)

. . . The chief point that has arrested my attention in your interpretation is the relation, discussed at the end, of the good to the rational or moral. You understand perfectly how I get “beyond good and evil” not by abolishing or even modifying their commonsense reality, but by transcending them in view of their relativity. The last words of Dominations & Powers, the book—my last book—just finished, are these; “Comparison (of values) presupposes a chosen good, chosen by chance. The function of spirit is not to pronounce which good is the best but to understand each good as it is in itself, in its physical complexion and its moral essence”.

The quality of your essay is so unusually good, and good in the higher insights, that I should like to know more of your “other failures” and of the circumstances that can have occasioned them. Why should you be unhappy with so much capacity for discernment? And I should judge that it has not been material difficulties that have stood in your way.

Yours sincerely

G Santayana

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

To Charles P. Davis
C/o Brown Shipley & Co. 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.
Versailles, France. July 7, 1932

Alas, a prolonged failure to respond to letters, and to everything else, has an easy explanation at our age. My sister died in February, 1929, after an illness of five days: but, as you know, she had suffered for a long time from some sort of gout or dropsy (we never understood what it was) which made it difficult and painful for her to move. She had also suffered a great deal morally, in the last years, from her husband’s avarice and other crotchets; but she had successfully maintained her American independence in money-matters, and had the consolation of being at last appreciated and even loved by her step-children and their wives and young ones, because she helped them out of the straits in which their father left them, and was the Providence of the whole family, as well as of many other poor people in Avila. Her husband himself died the following year, and my sister Josephine, who had lived with them since 1912, died in October 1930, on St. Theresa’s day. She had, by the way, reconciled herself in a half-conscious way with the Church; her confessor said he thought she had never committed a mortal sin: so that her end was peaceful also, and there were no unpleasant complications in the matter of religious rites. We had also arranged her money-matters nicely . . . and the fact that, spending very little, she had become rather rich, has been a Godsend to us in the “crisis”, since it has helped us practically not to feel the pinch—at least not yet.

My sister Susana’s money went to her husband and his family; and they have since modernized their houses, and even got automobiles—not so common in Avila as in the U.S. Altogether the memory of my sister is sweet to everyone now, although we didn’t make her life particularly sweet to her while she was in this world. I don’t know how frankly she spoke her thoughts to you: but in spite of her religious fervour and experience, she remained always passionately attached to people and circumstances and events in her surroundings. She was full of plans, even at the age of 77, about what she would do when she was free, and could rebuild their house, and make a different will, and get me to come and live with her. I should have done so with pleasure, if she had survived her husband: but human projects are seldom realized—never, perhaps, as we had formed them.

I have sometimes felt an impulse to write to you and learn how things had worked themselves out in your life. . . . My own existence is absolutely monotonous. I live only in hotels; work every morning for two or three hours in a dressing-gown: I am worse than an arm-chair philosopher: I am a poet in slippers. In winter, I am in Rome: in summer often in Paris or at Cortina in the Dolomites; and I hardly see anybody. But I have more literary projects than I shall live to execute; I read a lot of beautiful and interesting books, old and new; I take a daily walk in the most approved and quiet places, wherever the priests walk; and I am, Deo gratias, in good health and in easy circumstances.

What more can one desire at seventy? Love? Faith? If I am without faith or love, I am not without a certain amused connivance at the nature of things which keeps me tolerably happy.

Your old friend

George Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Four, 1928–1932.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY.

To Paul Arthur Schilpp
Hotel Savoia,
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. July 6, 1940

There is no strain whatever for me in remaining here, so long as the United States is neutral and I can get my money regularly from Boston, where a nephew of mine has charge of it. There is no excitement here and no controversies, and except for darkening windows and seeing no foreigners, we might forget that anything was wrong. There are also restrictions about food-stuffs; but living in hotels I eat what is served, and find it more than sufficient. You know, I suppose, that I am a Spanish subject, not an American citizen, so that my passport and my permit to reside in Italy are obtained without any difficulty or ominous warnings. It would be much more disturbing to my peace of mind if I were in Switzerland or even in Spain, which swarm with refugees. The end of hostilities with France is certainly a great relief, because it removes all fear of invasion (except by air) and of heavy casualties in the army.

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 Charles Augustus Strong
9 Ave de l’Observatoire
Paris. July 5, 1914

Dear Strong,

Here too we have had a pleasant change from the great heat of the previous days, and are luxuriating in cool breezes, grey skies, and threatening rains. Fuller remains for another week, but I can get no satisfaction out of him; whatever we talk of, he seems to be always thinking of something else. My brother stayed for six days—three of which I spent in his company. He says I am somewhat improved in character, and more like other people; also that when he visited Venice he saw, at the Lido, bathing-suits that he had never seen before. He is full of the milk of human kindness, and cannot take his eyes off the love-making he sometimes sees in the streets of Paris. . . .

Two families have come to look at the apartment, the second today. Françoise says the Moseses too are leaving, having taken their lease for a year only, so that when any one inquires for the apartment to let, the concierge replies that there are two—the third floor for 4600 francs and the fifth floor for 4000. That doesn’t sound very encouraging. . . .

I have not done any work to speak of, save reading a German Protestant work on Duns Scotus. I think all the points made now-adays in the controversies about perception were clearly stated by the Scholastics; whence their reputation for trifling and pedantry and unintelligible hairsplitting.

Yours ever

G.S.

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 Boylston Adams Beal
Ávila, Spain. July 4, 1893 [postmark]

Dear Boylston,

Nothing that could have happened would have given me the pleasure this news does. . . . You must be very happy, dear old boy, I hoped this would happen, but didn’t expect it so soon. I believed it would be, because I could see that your love for her was real and that she was too clever and sensible a girl to despise the chance to be happy, or not to find out what an angel you are. This is perfectly fine and makes me feel so un-Laodicean that I should like to give three cheers for you both. I had not noticed anything amiss about you, except your early hours; of course for the present we renounce you, but everything has its time, and you must not say hard things about bachelorhood and its joys, which have a tenderness of their own which, faute de mieux no doubt, I cling to still. You shall have a box all to yourself, as once before, and I shall have a beautiful long coat for the wedding. I want to write to Elsie, too, and have so many letters today that I stop here. God bless you.

G. S.

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.