Author: David Spiech Page 75 of 283

To Andrew Joseph Onderdonk
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. February 23, 1946

Dear Onderdonk:

I have to thank you for your Christmas card and now for the large size calendar with views of old Harvard. Le Christ de Dijon is not like my “idea” of Christ, because it is resisting suffering, while my Christ is choosing and transcending it, like the Christ rising from the tomb by Piero della Francesca which you may remember I used to have in my room. However, many sides are to be found in the idea of Christ, as in the reality of Old Harvard. But as to Harvard, I think the album of photographs you sent me of the new Harvard is more attractive than old Harvard ever was: I mean to the eye. Harvard was terribly ugly; but we could be tolerably happy there notwithstanding. I am afraid, if you come back to live in Europe you will find it uncomfortable as well as ugly. Things seem destined to be brought down to a lower level all round, as at the fall of the Roman Empire. Better stay in Chicago. I read in the paper yesterday of a person asked if he came from Austria. He did, but his reply was: Vengo dal Purgatorio. Don’t gather from this that I wish I were not here. I am quite happy here, and cheerful. But I have given up demanding luxuries.

Yours sincerely,

G Santayana

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.

To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. February 22, 1947

Dear Cory:

The last two days have been spent devouring Guénon’s book, which has not disappointed me, although he leaves the reader rather in suspense about the nature of the “First Principles” or “Superior Knowledge” on which he makes everything hang. To digest him I have to reverse him, making the “first” last and the “superior” ultimate. In that way I can follow almost all his steps. Of course, he is a doctrinaire and shows no sympathy with sinners and jolly fools: but if you are thinking of spiritual liberation and the beatific vision, certainly modern life is a sad mess.

Father Benedict here has given me (to read) a book by a Don at Magdalen, Oxford, named Lewis, about the machinations of the devil and his police against the soul of a young Anglican. The picture of society is much like Guénon’s: and Mr. Wheelock has sent me a novel about New York life, “Am I asleep or awake,” to the same effect. People are calling for the Last Judgment as in the time of Christ.

Yours as ever,

G Santayana

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.

To William James
Berlin. February 21, 1887

I am very much obliged to you for your articles on Habit and on the Perception of Space. I have read them with great interest—all the more because they go over some of the points you brought out in Phil. 2 and 9. I remember how much the idea of the nervous system as a sort of recording angel struck me at that time. It touches one of my pet questions, the sanction of Ethics, the supposed disappearance of which alarms Mr. Lilly and his school. I can’t help feeling that if people were more inclined to look for the sanction of morals in the facts, they would stop worrying about the future of morality.

Strong and I intend to spend the coming vacation in England, where we find we can go very cheaply by way of Hamburg. My address will therefore be care of Brown, Shipley & Co, and anything sent to me for Strong will reach him. He is looking well and says he feels very much better. He has been working two hours a day over Lotze’s psychology and hearing lectures with me. He seems to be a little afraid of himself in view of the probability of his getting a chance to teach at Cornell next winter. I tell him he is well prepared enough and should thank his stars that he can begin to learn in a practical way by teaching. Still, considering what good friends we are, Strong tells me astonishingly little about himself, perhaps because he thinks I don’t understand how he feels about things, or perhaps because he is naturally reserved. But the fact is I have no idea what has been the matter with him this winter, except that evidently he has not been at ease. I myself have done very little tangible work, although I have been reading all sorts of things, especially Goethe. I don’t think my time has been wholly wasted, as I have gathered a good many impressions besides a working knowledge of German—enough, that is, to read and understand, but not enough to talk connectedly. I ought to have got along much better with the language, but I have really had very little occasion to speak it, and the pronunciation is so abominably hard that I hardly trust myself with more than a syllable at a time. I enjoy hearing it, however, especially in the hearty, honest native way. On the whole I am very glad I came to Germany, although the superiority of the place from the student’s point of view is not so great as I had imagined. In health too, I am feeling well, better a great deal than last year when, as you may remember, I was a little under the weather. In Spain, too, during the summer my stomach became refractory, but this cooler and moister climate made everything all right again. For a while I had some trouble with the complicated cooking here in vogue—but custom can make one swallow any dish, even if it contains thirty nine articles.

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 Charles Augustus Strong
Hotel Marini
Rome. February 20, 1922

Dear Strong,

Thank you for your letter of the 11th. with your article on Schiller-on-Strong on Strong-on-Schiller; also for the London Mercury. I am sorry you have had such a bad cold, and so prolonged: the weather here has continued very bad, and I wonder why I thought Rome a nice place for the winter; but it has proved a nice place in one important respect, as far as I am concerned, that I have managed to keep off the usual winter diseases, and have been well and able to work, although not with any energy. During the last fortnight I have been caught in a tangle, finding that what I thought fresh matter for a chapter or two was nothing but the same old subject, and yet not being clear that it had all been said before, nor able to introduce the new paragraphs into the previous chapters. I am now copying it all off as it stands, and leaving it for a later revision to decide whether it is all a lot of redites or not.

Isn’t something of this sort the trouble in your article too? The effect on me, I might as well confess frankly, is discouraging. It seems like trying to draw on a piece of paper that is worn and dirty with much rubbing out of old lines; the hand is not free, the eye is misled; it is hopeless. Why not take a fresh sheet? Why discuss at all, and why with Schiller? As he shows in your paragraph (4) he is nothing but a squeaking automaton: he will always squeak the same thing, no matter how you tickle him. Let him alone. And all this scholastic language does not serve the only purpose that might justify scholastic language: it does not define nor settle anything; it is all radically infected. For instance, I was seriously puzzled in paragraph (1) by the words “it ‘the datum’ conveys the object only in the form of a ‘meaning.'” I thought for a while that you were calling the essence a “meaning”, as some of our American friends wanted to do: I suppose now that you were simply troubled for lack of proper words in which to express the fact that the datum is not the object. But then how can it “convey” the object? All this needs, I think, to be approached quite differently and to be stated in fresh language. Three or four lines above this passage, I can’t understand how the ego, in your system, is “all experience de-objectified.” That would seem to describe intuitions or mental discourse, the fact that various essences appear in varying combinations: but I understand that your ego is sub-intuitional: how then is it experience at all? I also fail to follow you about the non-existence of meaning psychologically. Is it all behaviour merely? Is there no given essence to mark that behaviour inwardly? Is there no premonition of the object, before the datum is used to describe it, so that we know where that object lies, and that the datum is not all? Cf. the pillar-box.

Yours ever,

G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Three, 1921-1927.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY.