Author: David Spiech Page 86 of 283

To Susan Sturgis de Sastre
Florence. January 1, 1913.

It is a long time since I have written, or since I have had any news from you . . . I have been to lunch with several literary English people, all very constrained, and I have avoided a fancy-dress party at Lady Sybil Cutting’s, to which Strong was obliged to go dressed as an ancient Roman in pink stockings!

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

To Mary Williams Winslow
Florence, Italy.  December 31, 1912

Thank you very much for the pretty calendar with its kind message. It has found me still here—though rather restive—retained by my friends, Strong and his daughter, Loeser and his wife, the Berensons, etc, but driven on by the bad weather. London couldn’t be more wet and foggy—and by a certain dislike I have taken to the place and to the life of the aesthetical colony in it. Rome is far more to my taste—larger, nobler, more genuinely alive, and more appealing to wide reflection. In Florence it is rather the quaint, incidental, and hopelessly archaic that people feed their imagination upon. The landlord of my hotel complains that the stream of tourists has dwindled, and that people who came to spend the winter in Florence now go to Cairo instead. I can perfectly sympathize with this change of fashion, and though I am too lazy and fond of solitude to go to Egypt with the smart rabble, I am going for a while to the Riviera, to catch a glimpse of the sun and sea, on my way to Andalusia and thence to Madrid.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Two, 1910-1920.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.

To Otto Kyllmann
New York Hotel
Nice, France. December 30, 1922

Dear Mr Kyllmann,

It had not occurred to me that you would have any interest in not sending the preface to my “Poems” to Scribner, together with the rest of the sheets; nor do I now understand what that interest is. Messrs Scribner had written asking for a signed photograph to put in the volume; and in giving my reasons for not desiring that, I mentioned that at your request I had written a preface, which I thought might partially satisfy the same curiosity to which a portrait would have appealed; and that this preface would be a godsend to the critics who didn’t wish to read the poems themselves. I took for granted that you would send the preface with the book: so that, having raised that expectation, I should certainly prefer to have you send it, if you have no objection to doing so.

I see that misunderstandings can arise from having two publishers for the same book, and in future, as in respect to “Scepticism and Animal Faith,” I shall remember this fact, and endeavour to have all communications between me and Messrs Scribners pass through your hands, so that complications may be avoided.

Yours sincerely,

G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Three, 1921-1927.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia PA.

To Gertrude Stein
[Cambridge, Massachusetts?] [1895 or 1896]

My dear Miss Stein

Friday evening is perfectly convenient, and you may expect me at 7:45 at Miss Yerxa’s. If you don’t think the subject too vast I should like to talk about ‘Faith and Criticism’.

Yours very truly

G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven CT.

To William Morton Fullerton
Berlin. December 28, 1887

I am astonished at your wanting me to send you more stuff à la Rabelais; I certainly can do no such thing professionally and on demand, but only at the call of nature, as it were, or when the spirit (or bowels) may move. But as to your prohibition to be serious, I consider it an insult to a philosopher. I am always serious. It is a great mistake to suppose I am ever in fun. It is the thing that jokes, not I. If this world, seriously and solemnly described, makes people laugh, is it my fault? I am not to blame for the absurdities of nature.

You want my opinion on the axiom that “in a world of squat things a toad would be beautiful”. Well, there is a fraction of an idea in it. It is not the shape or quality of things in itself that makes them beautiful, but the relation of this quality to something else. But to what? Your axiom says, to the quality of the real world—“If things were squat” it says. Now that is wrong. If all things were squat the flatness of the world would be neither a beauty nor a fault. If the world were accidentally less flat than the creative impulse or formative idea would naturally have made it, then things squat would be beautiful indeed. See what I mean? There is a certain ideal dwelling in each of us, which the growth of our minds and bodies under the most favorable circumstances would fulfil. But the circumstances are not favorable as a rule. Therefore the actual result differs from what it strives to be and naturally would be but for external obstacles. Hence ugliness and beauty, as well as all forms of good and bad. The difference between beauty and good in the general and all-inclusive sense, is that beauty is the excellence or perfection of the expression of a thing: It is the adequate presentation of the ideal impulse, whereas virtue is its adequate existence. Therefore virtue is beautiful when represented, but beauty is not virtuous. For beauty being in the image or expression of things, these things need not exist to produce beauty, but only their image need exist—Verbum sat.

Now, having expatiated sufficiently in answer to your question, let me put one to you in turn. What is one to do with one’s amatory instincts? Now, for heaven’s sake, don’t be conventional and hypocritical in the answer you give yourself and me. If you are, you won’t take me in. I know that you don’t really believe that the ordinary talk on such subjects is satisfactory. Let me describe the real situation. A boy lives to his twelfth or fifteenth year, if he is properly brought up, in a state of mental innocence—I don’t say he should not know where he came from when he reached this world, and on which track he travelled thither, nor that he should never have seen dogs stuck together; what I say is that, unless he has been currupted, these things have no meaning and no attraction for him. But soon it is otherwise. He grows more and more uncomfortable, his imagination is more and more occupied with obscene things. Every scrap of medical or other knowledge he hears on this subject he remembers. Some day he tries experiments with some girl, or with some other boy. This is, I say, supposing he has not been corrupted intentionally and taken to whorehouses in his boyhood, as some are, or fallen a victim to paiderastia, as is the lot of others. But in some way or other, sooner or later, the boy gets his first experience in the art of love. Now, I say, what is a man to do about it? It is no use saying that he should be an angel, because he isn’t. Even if he holds himself in, and only wet dreams violate his virginity, he is not an angel, because angels don’t have wet dreams. He must choose among the following

               Amatory attitudes.

1. Wet dreams and the fidgets.
2. Mastibation.
3. Paiderastia.
4. Whoring.
5. Seductions or a mistress.
6. Matrimony.

I don’t put a mistress as a separate heading because it really comes under 4, 5, or 6, as the case may be. A man who takes his mistress from among prostitutes, shares her with others, and leaves her soon, is practically whoring. A man whose mistress is supposed to be respectable is practically seducing her. A man who lives openly with his mistress and moves in her sphere is practically married. Now I see fearful objections to every one of these six amatory attitudes. 1 and 6 have the merit of being virtuous, but it is their only one. 2 has nothing in its favor. The discussion is therefore confined to 3, 4, & 5. 4 has the disavantage of ruining the health. 5 has the disadvantage of scenes and bad social complications—children, husbands at law, etc. One hardly wants to spend one’s youth enacting modern French dramas. 3 has therefore been often preferred by impartial judges, like the ancients and orientals, yet our prejudices against it are so strong that it hardly comes under the possibilities for us. What shall we do? Oh matrimony, truly thou art an inevitable evil!

As you perceive, I do not consider sentimental love at all in my pros and cons. It is only a disturbing force, as far as the true amatory instincts are concerned. Of course it has the same origin, but just as insanity may spring from religion, so sentimental love may spring from the Sexual instinct. The latter, however, being intermittent, which religion is not, the insanity produced is temporary. Here is a serious letter for you: now answer it like a man and a Christian—(in the better sense of the word, which is “a fellow such as I approve of”.)

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.