Category: LETTERS Page 1 of 274

To Sidney Hook
C/o Brown Shipley & Co.
123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.
Rome. March 2, 1937

Dear Mr. Hook

You express my entire conviction when you say that philosophical detachment does not signify political indifference. I happen to have lived in isolation from affairs, on account of hardly ever being in my own country or feeling any vital affinity to modern movements; but a man might recognize the relativity of morals and of human nature itself without surrendering any part of his loyalty to his own self or family or nation. On the contrary, nature and truth give us carte blanche in such matters, and every encouragement to play our particular part. . . . although as a philosopher I am sympathetically interested in the Russian experiment, and feel the radical justification of it ideally (as monastic life is also justified), as a man my associations are in the opposite camp.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Six, 1937-1940.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: Morris Library, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

To Richard Colton Lyon
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. March 1, 1949

The element of existence belongs to the self and leaves the idea to be, as in Plato, ideal: a visionary term or a form. It seems to me that a perception (which in so far as it is spiritual I call an intuition) is either, behavioristically, a reaction in the body to a physical stimulus, or a moment of spirit, spirit for me not being a substance but a flash of feeling in a psyche, intermittent and immaterial. This psyche or self in its animal life, when especially attentive, emits this immaterial cry, and sees this immaterial idea. A pure sound, as heard, and a pure light, as seen do not seem to me to be anything but illusory phenomena, signs for the spirit of the body and the world in which it is incarnate. They do not exist except as features or qualities in its own moral, immaterial, volatile life.

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.

To Rosamond Thomas Bennett Sturgis
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. February 28, 1949

Your letter of a week ago brings unexpected news and it has taken me a few days to digest it. I see what a completely new and actively social life your marriage will open before you, and how this, added to the warmth of a new affection, will bring you. . . .

More important than the setting is to have some idea of your future family circle. As to Mr. Little himself, being master of a House in Cambridge and being Secretary to the University are both positions of which I have no first hand knowledge, but they suggest administrative and executive duties rather than teaching, and you don’t tell me what Mr. Little was before there were Houses at Harvard. Garrick and the 18th century sound like a specialty in English history or literature. And then of his four children, which are boys or men and which girls or women? That must make a great difference in the ease with which you can slip into your new position. I have some experience of this sort of problem, as my sister Susana had six step-children as well as a middle-aged husband with fixed habits. Anyhow, give him my compliments and congratulations; and I can understand how you too can feel a fresh glow of youth and excitement at the prospect of this new life. What I cannot sincerely congratulate you on is the procession of visitors and official functions which will demand your time and attention. But I am an old bear, and could never feel the charm of society where it went beyond real friendship or a real feast to the eye and to the gullet.

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.

To Rosamond Thomas Bennett Sturgis
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. February 27, 1946

Dear Rosamond: Today I drove to the post office and got your gift of four books on sublime politics. You ask whether they are what I want. Yes, exactly, at least three of them. I am less sure about Churchill’s war speeches, although they may be what I need, even if I don’t like them, in order to give me a victorious thrill and a sense of being a good fellow surrounded by a nation of other good fellows, guaranteed to beat any other set of good or bad fellows on earth. Being in doubt about the possibility of getting my organism, at its age, to react properly on this alcoholic stimulant, I have for the moment lent this one book to Mother Hilda, acting head of this establishment (the Mother General being on travels of inspection in foreign parts), who is an ardent Englishwoman and speaks of “Mr. Churchill” with a hush of reverence. She sends word that she is much obliged, and will take great care of the precious volume and return it soon for my improvement. Meantime I have begun on “The Anatomy of Peace” by Emery Reves, which attracted me most; and I began with the last chapter to see what he was after: for the “jacket”, if that is what you call the paper cover, gave me no clear idea of the author, who didn’t proclaim himself to be a professor or even a Ph.D, and was not described in any of the comments quoted by the editor as belonging to any party. That fact encouraged me; and indeed I have found the last chapter splendid. Just what I think myself! Only, of course, I should add a word or two that might materially transform the issue. We must have law or suffer conquest: agreed; but if we have law, somebody must enforce it, and we should have to submit just as if we had been conquered. Apparently the establishment of this control is to be left to circumstances, as it always has been hitherto. I may get more light on that point when I have read the book properly, beginning at the beginning.

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.

To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Rome. February 26, 1950

My portrait was finished on Saturday and, as far as I can judge, it is rather good. I showed Wood my only previous portrait by an artist, Andreas Andersen’s carbon of 1896, and he looked at it intently for a long time and seemed to appreciate it. He said it still looked like me, which was a compliment to Andersen as well as to me.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Eight, 1948-1952.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY.