Author: David Spiech Page 7 of 283

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

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 John Galen Howard
Effet de Mer,
Monaco, February 10, 1913.

Thank you so much for “Grasmere”, which is truly “a fructual stirp of that high dedicant,” W. W.1.The wetness (which you render so vividly) frightens me, however, who have fled to the Riviera from the fog and mire of Florence to try to out-stirp a catarrh. Without question, you have the afflatus and the courage of poetry: it is remarkable in these days. And I like your rhyme better than your blank verse!

G. Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Two, 1910-1920.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: The Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.

To Arthur Allen Cohen
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo 6,
Rome. February 9, 1948

Dear Mr. Cohen:

Your letter about Kierkegaard raised in my mind more questions than it answered. Does existentialism assume that we are all Christians? Is Angst about “Salvation” that of the Jews at the time of Christ or that of later Christians of avoiding hell fire after death? Is not such ANGST a disease, an emotion produced by Protestant theology after faith in that theology has disappeared? And what is this self that feels the Angst and leaps heroically, for salvation into the Unknown? If it were the transcendental Self, or Brahman, it could feel no anxiety because it can be only transcendental, on THIS side of the footlights; it may have interrupted experiences, but it cannot die in the sense of not being capable of having more; and more of them can hurt it if it is purely transcendental, like the comfortable rich man in the stalls watching a tragedy and then a comedy. If, on the contrary, this self is the concrete human psyche or person we know perfectly what its circumstances are and what it needs to be anxious about. There may be wise or foolish decisions made by it, but no leap into the unknown. The whole thing, from this point of view, seems confused and gratuitous.

. . . Could one say, in the spirit of Kierkegaard, that the total Object confronting a life or personal existence was Circumstances? And would God be a religious name for this? If so, I could see the inevitableness, for our animal psyche, to fear, love, and grope for God. And in so far as the Kingdom of Heaven (i.e. the Reign of God) is just this Object in the measure in which its operation affects us, I can see how the Existentialist revives the Christian problem of salvation. But why revive the problem without reviving the concrete beliefs that would explain and solve it?

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

To Bertrand Arthur William Russell
Queen’s Acre,
Windsor, England. February 8, 1912

I have a proposal to make, or rather to renew, to you on behalf of Harvard College. Would it be possible for you to go there next year, from October 1912 to June 1913, in the capacity of professor of philosophy? . . . What they have in mind is that you should give a course, three hours a week, of which one may be delegated to the assistant which would be provided for you, to read papers, etc., in logic, and what we call a “seminary” or “seminar” in anything you liked. It would also be possible for you to give some more popular lectures if you liked, either at Harvard, or at the Lowell Institute in Boston. For the latter there are separate fees, and the salary of a professor is usually $4000 (£800). We hope you will consider this proposal favourably, as there is no one whom the younger school of philosophers in America are more eager to learn of than of you. You would bring new standards of precision and independence of thought which would open their eyes, and probably have the greatest influence on the rising Generation of professional philosophers in that country.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Two, 1910-1920.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Mills Memorial Library, Bertrand Russell Archives, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

To Miriam Thayer Richards
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6,
Rome. February 7th 1952

You are much nearer in Cambridge now than I am to “happy snowflakes dancing” and even to my beautifully edited “Essays”, which I had never heard of. My memory for current minor events is much worse than for incidents in my life in the 1890’s, which seem to be, in retrospect, the vital period in it. Someone may have written to me for my consent to collect these “Essays” of which you tell me. I should naturally have consented; but I have forgotten the matter altogether. But not long ago a visitor brought me a copy of “The Sense of Beauty” to autograph, and I was dazzled by the size and elegance of my first-born little girl. This is not the case with all my progeny, some being very shabby and others buried; but I have had the satisfaction of seeing my favourite child, “Dialogues in Limbo” reappearing in its original type, with additions perfectly prepared to suit. And Scribner is planning an abridged edition of “The Life of Reason”, in one volume, which will be made by my friend and occasional secretary, Mr. Daniel Cory, and which I perhaps may not live to see.

Your name and your letter instantly turned my thoughts to Mrs. Toy, who so often and so affectionately used to speak of you. Her letters in her later years, and what I heard about her, which was very little, left a rather sad impression, as if her health and spirits suffered in solitude from the absence of the duties and pleasures of her former life. This was not a matter on which I could speak sympathetically, solitude being for me a sort of liberty realized; but of course it could not have been so unless I had a private picture gallery of friends and places in my head, to be revisited always with increased pleasure. It amuses me to read in the papers sometimes that I am now a recluse. It is accidentally a literal truth, because I seldom go about, on account of my bad sight and hearing, which makes crossing the city traffic dangerous; but I was never more conscious (or studious) of what goes on in the world, and there is nothing monastic about my daily life, in spite of living in a nursing home where the sister’s are nuns. But I see only one of them, the housekeeper, often, and almost all my visitors bring the air of free (but now pre-occupied) America with them.

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.