Santayana Edition

The Works of George Santayana

Author: David Spiech Page 72 of 283

Letters in Limbo ~ March 8, 1946

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On March 8, 2024

In LETTERS

800px-Caelian_HillTo Mary Potter Bush
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo 6
Rome. March 8, 1946

I have received a great number of visitors, more than I ever did in my life; chiefly army-men who had read “Persons & Places” or “The Last Puritan,” and in one or two cases I have actually made new friends, as you say you have the gift of doing. It has been a great pleasure.

I have been living unterruptedly in this house since October, 1941, and don’t expect to leave it during the rest of my life. Summer here, on the brow of the Caelius, with a green outlook and a horizon as broad as at sea, is quite tolerable.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Seven, 1941-1947.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY

Letters in Limbo ~ March 7, 1940

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On March 7, 2024

In LETTERS

Thomas_Stearns_Eliot_by_Lady_Ottoline_Morrell_(1934)To Ezra Loomis Pound
Hotel Danieli
Venice. March 7, 1940

You and T. S. E. are reformers, full of prophetic zeal and faith in the Advent of the Lord; whereas I am cynically content to let people educate or neglect themselves as they may prefer.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Six, 1937-1940.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: The Beinicke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven CT.

Letters in Limbo ~ March 6, 1941

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On March 6, 2024

In LETTERS

george-santayana1To George Sturgis
Grand Hotel
Rome. March 6, 1941

Never mind about not understanding my philosophy; you are happier as you are.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Seven, 1941-1947.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.

Letters in Limbo ~ March 5, 1939

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On March 5, 2024

In LETTERS

rwemersoTo Nancy Saunders Toy
Hotel Bristol
Rome. March 5, 1939

Genuine thought is solitary, and as Emerson said, we “descend to meet.” That is, in the direction of comforting opinions and the latest thing in science, gossip and not truth. We might ascend to meet, if we were in pursuit of repentance and not of self-congratulation.

The terms of a science are not parts of things, but only ideas of things; and just as one sense gives us one idea, say colour, and another sense another idea, say hot or cold, so one science may give us a classification into genera and species and another science a mechanism of a geometrical or atomic kind. These sciences may all be true; they will none of them be the whole or even a part of the material reality. They will be theories, just as our experience will be ideas or sensations. And both science and experience are only languages in which, for human purposes, nature may at times be described.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Six, 1937-1940.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.

Letters in Limbo ~ March 4, 1930

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On March 4, 2024

In LETTERS

101307710-3254425.530x298To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Hotel Bristol
Rome. March 4, 1930

My general yearly account was also very favourable considering the panic in Wall Street; the value of the total was only one percent less than last year; and counting the sum I had saved, it was a good deal more. My nephew is a treasure.

Truth has rather stuck in the mud, and is abandoned for the moment; but fiction has been moving. A lovely short chapter—picture of budding friendship—written out in ink, quite original, and I think in the right key. But I have also been at work on something else, which I won’t describe, lest it should turn out to be a wind-egg.

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

Page 72 of 283

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