Author: David Spiech Page 4 of 283

To Henry Ward Abbot
Oxford, April 30– ’87

I have read Royce’s book, which I received a few days ago. I am glad to have it, and read it with interest if hardly with pleasure. It is indeed linked dulness long drawn out. It is intolerably diffuse. When a man has something to say he begins by telling you what the situation is, what objects he has in view in speaking to you, and what he proposes to say. He then says it. When he is through he informs you of what he has said, and of his reasons for saying it, and concludes with a hopeful review of the whole matter.

Apart from this and from the vileness of some of the words and phrases (e.g. “lonesome”, “I don’t just perceive why”) I like the style. The absence of cleverness is a praiseworthy self abnegation on the part of a clever man.  I honor his desire to see books solidly and honestly written, although I must deplore his attempt at writing one himself.

As you will doubtless have anticipated, I disapprove of the moral, at least of the doctrines involved in it. What business has anyone to call the rather weak affection a wife retains for her husband unworthy? Aren’t husbands & wives to love each other after they cease to think each other perfect? There is, too, a ludicrous inadequacy in the “crime” the unfortunate little fool committed, to bring about such dreadful tragedies.

Royce shows his inexperience. One must laugh at the notion of what’s her name’s chastity on the ground that her husband had once got entangled with a girl foolish enough to go mad of disappointment. If at least he had seduced the creature, or made love to her after he was married, or been engaged to both at once—but as it was the hullabaloo is absurd. Nothing is really so immoral as an extravagant morality. Royce’s theories of love and marriage disgust me.  They show what nonsense we talk when we lose respect for experience, tradition, and authority.

…I am being entertained with breakfasts and lunches here, thanks to my introductions from his lordship.¹ I find it up hill work to talk to the English fellows, although they are remarkably at home in all sorts of things. They won’t say what they are thinking about, but keep always thinking about what they shall say. The result is that with my love of laying down the law, I do most of the talking and doubtless appear an intolerable damned fool. By the way, Catholicism is in high favor in these parts, and conversions are continual. All this, according to you, would be impossible if they had only taken N.H.4.²

¹ John Francis Stanley Russell.
² Natural History 4.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY

To Susan Sturgis de Sastre
GRAND HÔTEL & HÔTEL TIVOLLIER TOULOUSE RUE DE METZ 
TOULOUSE, LE
29 Avril 1906

Mr. Rockefeller is not a lunatic; he is, I understand, a little timid, and doubtless has detectives to protect him against “cranks” that might loiter about his house. But he is comparatively well, and has a new wig to make him beautiful; and he is coming to spend seven weeks at Compiegne this Summer with the Strongs. Mrs. Rockefeller comes with him; they are going to travel under an assumed name, to protect themselves from begging letters and indiscrete curiosity. Strong tells me that he has written an essay on the duties of rich men, which he is going to read some Sunday afternoon to his father-in-law. It points out that very large fortunes are truly “trusts”; and that instead of being left to individuals of one’s family they should be made into public funds, administered by some trustees of distinction, for the benefit of the community at large.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Alderman Library, University of Virginia at Charlottesville

To Charles Augustus Strong
22 Beaumont Street
Oxford, April 28, 1916

I am glad to have news of you, as I was beginning to wonder if you really had got to Banff or were hiding elsewhere. Perils and dangers are so evenly spread nowadays that I hardly think Margaret will be more exposed at Cambridge than the rest of us elsewhere. As everything indicates that the Germans (having again lost a good many submarines) will comply with Mr Wilson’s demands, or as many as he may ultimately insist upon, you will at least be able to sail safely in the “New Amsterdam” in June, and can live safely for a while, if not deliciously, in America. It is extraordinary how soon and how humorously we become accustomed to danger.

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 John W. Yolton
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome, April 27, 1952

Dear Mr. Yolton,
You were very good to send me the number of the Columbia Philosophical Journal chiefly devoted to comments on my recent book, including your own article. I have at once read this, and most of the others, and my general impression is of the great difference in interest and taste that separates American feeling now from me, due doubtless to my advanced age and to the excited and absorbing sentiment that the politi- cal anxiety of the moment naturally produces in the United States. You are less affected (as I gathered long ago from your letters) than most of the others by this preoccupation, and yet I seem to see traces of it, not so much in what you say as in the omission of a point in my view of rational gov- ernment which I regard as important: the idea of “moral societies”. Individual psyches are surely the only seat of synthesis for political ideas; but these ideas are largely diffused and borrowed in their expression and especially in the emotion or allegiance that they inspire. Religion, espe- cially, is traditional. In conceiving of a Scientific Universal Economy, with exclusive military control of trade, I expressly limited its field of action to those enterprises in which only economic interests and possibilities were concerned. Education, local government, religion, and laws regarding pri- vate property, marriage and divorce, as well as language and the arts, were to be in the control of “moral societies” possessed of specific territories. These would be governed in everything not economic, by their own constitutions and customs. Of course sentiment and habits would be social in these societies. Children would all be brought up to expect and normally to approve them; but any individuals rebelling against their tribe would be at liberty to migrate, and to join any more congenial society that would take them in, or remain in the proletariat, without membership in any “moral society”. My view is that civilizations should be allowed to be different in different places, and the degree of uniformity or variety allowed in each would be a part, in each, of its constitutional character. It would by no means be expected that every person would lead a separate life. What I wish to prevent is the choking of human genius by social pressure.

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 George Sturgis
Hotel Bristol
Rome, April 26, 1924

America is now so obviously at the top of the tree, so far at least as prosperity goes, that you must all feel more than ever that it is the land of opportunity. Here too life seems pretty decent, and there are immense compensations for the comparatively small scale of business in the old world.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Three, 1921-1927.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA