To Richard Colton Lyon
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. August 16, 1948
Don’t worry about ignorance of philosophy or anything else. The only thing that is annoying is set opinions when they are not one’s own and are asserted without good arguments.
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 Porter Garnett
UNIVERSITY CLUB
San Francisco. August 15, 1911
I am struck in California by the deep and almost religious affection which people have for nature, and by the sensitiveness they show to its influences; not merely poetically, but also athletically, because they like to live as nature lives. It is a relief from business and the genteel tradition. It is their spontaneous substitute for articulate art and articulate religion, and is perhaps the substance out of which these may some day be formed afresh.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Two, 1910-1920. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Unknown.
To Charles Augustus Strong
Volksdorf, Germany. August 14, 1905
Dear Strong,
Your last letter has given me much to ruminate over—at first I couldn’t understand all your points but I think that I do now. When you say that “extensity” is not extension, and that it belongs to sensation and not to the object felt, I recognise a Jamesianism; but it seems to me that if we distinguish the fact of feeling from the content of it, the former being a psychic event and the latter a material element, “extensity” is altogether absent from the first; a landscape has extensity, but my seeing the landscape has none. The difference between a landscape and infinite geometrical space, I understand; the latter being constructed; but the extensity of something which is a psychic fact and not the object represented or discovered there, is beyond me. Are you not running about in a circle trying to escape from natural things and forced nevertheless to find behind your back what you are removing from before your eyes? Of course I use “mind” for what is distinguishably psychic, non-extended, imponderable, neither north, east, south, or west of any other mental fact. But the extensity of James’s bellyache is decidedly under his waistcoat, and is in truth nothing at all but the projection of one vague physical object, in which pain is felt, into the region covered by another physical object, better defined, in which pride, perhaps, is taken. But to say that the pain, apart from the idea or object called the belly, is extended seems to me as capricious and silly as to say that the pride I take in my waistcoat is an extended, rounded, and many-buttoned pride. I agree with you that sensation and emotion are the subject-matter of psychology, quite as much as reflection or thought; but sensation, to be distinguished from what is felt, has to lose its material properties and cease to be extended, coloured, heavy, measurable, lockable in chests, or preservable through time. In a word the occasions of knowledge are mental but the objects of knowledge are not.
Yours ever,
G Santayana
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book One, [1868]-1909. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY.
To José Sastre González
Via S. Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. August 13, 1943
Querido Pepe,
Hoy, dia del segundo bombardeo de Roma, recibo tu carta del 25 de Julio. Comprendo que penseis en “los malos ratos” que habré yo pasado aqui, pero no, yo sigo sin novedad y tranquilo, sin cambiar en nada la rutina del dia. Hay que darse cuenta de que vivo en un convento que es a la vez hospital. Todo está en regla, y si ocurriera alguna desgracia en esta casa, no podia el auxilio estar mas a mano. Este barrio no es ni céntrico ni industrial, en gran parte compuesto de jardines, al mediodía del Coliseo y del Laterano. Si cayera alguna bomba por aquí seria por casualidad, y yo confio en que saldremos ilesos de la guerra.
Naturalmente, el ánimo sufre de oir hablar de tantos horrores, pero a mis años, conociendo que soy inútil, yo me consuelo con mis libros y mi filosofía, como si se tratase de la historia antigua. Además, todo lo que ahora ocurre en el mundo es impresionante. Muchas veces recuerdo las ideas de mi padre, y me figuro lo que él hubiera dicho de todo esto.
No hay que pensar en viajes. Eso me agitaría mucho mas que el ruido de las bombas, o de la artillería contra-aerea, que es la que mas hiere los oidos.
De salud, bien, y con esperanzas de llegar a ver como ternina esta tragedia.
A ti y a toda la familia un apretado abrazo de tu tio,
Jorge
Translation:
Dear Pepe,
Today, on the day of the second bombing of Rome, I have received your letter of July 25. I understand why you think about “the difficult moments” that I must have had here, but I have nothing new to report and am calm, without changing in any way my daily routine. You must realize that I live in a convent which is at the same time a hospital. Everything is in order, and if any misfortune should strike this house, help could not be closer. This area of the city is neither downtown nor full of industry; it is made up in large part of gardens to the south of the Colosseum and the Lateran. If a bomb should fall here it would be by chance and I do believe that we will come out of the war unharmed.
Naturally the mind suffers when it hears talk of so many horrors, but at my age, knowing that I am useless, I find solace in my books and my philosophy, as though it were a matter of ancient history. Besides, everything that is happening in the world is out of the ordinary. I often remember my father’s ideas and imagine what he would have said about all of this.
You mustn’t think about trips. That would upset me much more than the noise of the bombs, or of the anti-aircraft artillery, which is the one that hurts the ears most.
As far as health goes, I am well and I have hopes of living long enough to see how this tragedy ends.
For you and the whole family a strong embrace from your uncle,
Jorge
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Seven, 1941-1947. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: Collection of Sra. Eduardo Sastre Martín, Madrid, Spain.
To George Jean Nathan
Paris. August 12, 1923
The title “The Smart Set” suggests a world where I don’t belong: but if you will send me a number, and if I have any thing on hand that would seem suitable to such a superior environment, I should be glad to let you have it.
G Santayana
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Three, 1921-1927. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: Cornell University Library, Ithaca NY (Postcard).
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