Category: LETTERS Page 161 of 274

To George Sturgis
C/o B. S. & Co., London
Rome. February 11, 1928

I suppose they have telegraphed to you directly that your aunt Susie died yesterday morning, apparently after a short illness. I am leaving in two or three days for Paris and Avila: probably I shall have to stay for some time in Madrid. Your aunt’s age, and my own, softens this blow a good deal in my own feelings; and you who never saw her in her palmy days can hardly have an idea of the ascendency which she exercised over people, and particularly over me. Invalid as she was when you knew her, you must still have felt how much life there was in her spirit: I think she was confident of surviving her husband, and doing great things independently; but the flesh is treacherous, and things have turned out the other way.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Four, 1928–1932.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA

To John Galen Howard
MONTÉ-CARLO. EFFET DE MER
Monaco. February 10, 1913

Thank you so much for “Grasmere”, which is truly “a fructual stirp of that high dedicant,” W. W.–The wetness (which you ‘render so vividly) frightens me, however, who have fled to the Riviera from the fog and mire of Florence to try to out-stirp a catarrh.–Without question, you have the afflatus and the courage of poetry: it is remarkable in these days. And I  like your rhyme better than your blank verse!

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

To Arthur Allen Cohen
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo 6
Rome. February 9, 1948

Your letter about Kierkegaard raised in my mind more questions than it answered. Does existentialism assume that we are all Christians? Is Angst about “Salvation” that of the Jews at the time of Christ or that of later Christians of avoiding hell fire after death? Is not such ANGST a disease, an emotion produced by Protestant theology after faith in that theology has disappeared? And what is this self that feels the Angst and leaps heroically, for salvation into the Unknown? If it were the transcendental Self, or Brahman, it could feel no anxiety because it can be only transcendental, on THIS side of the footlights; it may have interrupted experiences, but it cannot die in the sense of not being capable of having more; and more of them can hurt it if it is purely transcendental, like the comfortable rich man in the stalls watching a tragedy and then a comedy. If, on the contrary, this self is the concrete human psyche or person we know perfectly what its circumstances are and what it needs to be anxious about. There may be wise or foolish decisions made by it, but no leap into the unknown. The whole thing, from this point of view, seems confused and gratuitous.
. . . .
Could one say, in the spirit of Kierkegaard, that the total Object confronting a life or personal existence was Circumstances? And would God be a religious name for this? If so, I could see the inevitableness, for our animal psyche, to fear, love, and grope for God. And in so far as the Kingdom of Heaven (i.e. the Reign of God) is just this Object in the measure in which its operation affects us, I can see how the Existentialist revives the Christian problem of salvation. But why revive the problem without reviving the concrete beliefs that would explain and solve it?

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Eight, 1948-1952.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: Unknown

To Bertrand Arthur William Russell
Queen’s Acre
Windsor, England. February 8, 1912

I have a proposal to make, or rather to renew, to you on behalf of Harvard College. Would it be possiblefor you to go there next year, from October 1912 to June 1913, in the capacity of professor of philosophy? . . . . What they have in mind is that you should give a course–three hours a week, of which one may be delegated to the assistant which would be provided for you, to read papers, etc.–in logic, and what we call a “seminary” or “seminar” in anything you liked. It would also be possible for you to give some more popular lectures if you liked, either at Harvard, or at the Lowell Institute in Boston. For the latter there are separate fees, and the salary of a professor is usually $4000 (£800). We hope you will consider this proposal favourably, as there is no one whom the younger school of philosophers in America are more eager to learn of than of you. You would bring new standards of precision and independence of thought which would open their eyes, and probably have the greatest influence on the rising generation of professional philosophers in that country.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Two, 1910-1920.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Mills Memorial Library, Bertrand Russell Archives, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

To Ezra Loomis Pound
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. February 7, 1950

Two messages from you are awaiting an answer. The first, besides being a compliment to my naturalism, or to the generative order of nature (as I call it in my new book, now nearing completion) exemplified it in a cherry-stone able to produce cherries, after going a long way round, and facing a good many risks of perishing on the way. And it would be fussy to object to your word “intelligence” to describe that potentiality in the cherry-stone; somehow it possesses a capacity to develop other cherries, under favourable circumstances, without getting anything vital wrong. That is “intelligence” of an unconscious sort. I agree in respecting it.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Eight, 1948-1952.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington