Category: LETTERS Page 26 of 274

To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. September 7, 1931

I am always glad to get your letters and post-cards and to see that you are well. The ups and downs of one’s relations with Strong are nowadays a little troublesome, but I think with prudence and forebearance we may weather all storms. I feel rather as if my friendship with him were a family corpse, to which nevertheless it is right to show respect and consideration. He never writes without saying something unpleasant; but I think he doesn’t perceive the effect which his attitude must have on others, and he expects everything to go on as usual. I am perfectly willing to let it do so: only one has no sense of security with a friend in so hostile a mood.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Four, 1928–1932.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY

To Charles P. Davis
C/o Brown, Shipley & Co
123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland. September 6, 1936

Dear Davis,

It is all right about your not liking my book. Of course, it isn’t a novel in the ordinary sense; it is a study of characters and moral contrasts. No obligation on anybody to like it. But I should be curious to know in what direction you and your friends find it wrong: plot, style, morality, tone, character-drawing, or what? The book is done: I shall never write another “novel”, you may at least take comfort in that; but your judgements would tell me what you and your friends are attached to, and that is always interesting. The last American novel I have read is Faulkner’s “Sanctuary”. Do you like that? And how about Aldous Huxley’s “Eyeless in Gaza”?

As to the success of my novel with the public and the reviewers, it has been immense. 148,000 copies were sold in the U.S. before Aug. 1st, in England less than 10,000. But of course I am making money—not yet paid, most of it. Altogether, when the harvest is all in, it will not be far from $50,000. I am being translated into French, Spanish, and German, and printed in raised letters (in England) to be read by the blind! Me and the Bible.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Five, 1933-1936.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York, NY

To John Hall Wheelock
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. September 5, 1948.

The idea of writing imaginary social lectures on “Les Faux Pas de la Philosophie,” which ought to be in French but will at least have the title Of The Faux Pas of Philosophy, came to me long ago. It is not the “Errors” or “mistakes” that I mean, because that includes not only the whole of philosophy but all perception, history, religion, etc. [See Dialogue on Normal Madness] It is a normal illusion that the sky is blue and vaulted. That is not a faux pas, but a first step in science. But when modern philosophers say that astronomy is knowledge, but that there is only an idea that there are stars, I call that a faux pas, because it leads not to science and normal madness, but to being willfully wrong without necessity.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Eight, 1948-1952.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries, Princeton NJ

To Enrico Castelli
Via S. Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. September 4, 1948

Dear Professor Castelli,

My best thanks for your “Fenomenologia della nostra Epoca” which I have read with exceptional interest and pleasure. I wish it were longer and, although the theme is evident throughout, more systematic in arrangement. I say this because I am afraid that the succinct and informal way of making your observations may lead some readers to take it more lightly than it deserves. And the public in England if not in the United States is now ready to be convinced that something has gone radically wrong at least since the Reformation or at least since the French Revolution. Toynbee, in his great “Study of History” says since the 13^th century.

Modern “idealism” or “psychologism” which reduces reality to appearance, and, in America, truth to opinion, removes all conception of external control or preformed standards: and the acceleration of actions without a purpose has turned subjective frivolity into a compulsory nightmare. Looking back to the 13^th or even to the 19^th century we feel that mankind has lost its way.

You say that it is impossible to turn back and recover the circumstances and sentiments of the past. Of course it is impossible in the concrete or pictorially: we can’t dress or fight or speak as in the 13^th century. But many of us can retain or recover the faith, supernatural and moral, that animated that age: although even the Church does not hope to convert the whole world: so that the best that can be aimed at in that special form is that a Catholic community should always survive, scattered or concentrated in particular places, until the day of Judgement. As to what may ensue then we may have different expectations. I think that a revelation of supernatural control and destiny is not necessary to secure a valid principle of order in morals and politics. This would be secured if scientifically we made out clearly two things: 1^st The real conditions of life on earth, and 2^nd, The real needs and potentialities of human nature in each man or group of men. The Greeks had a rational view of human existence. We, with more experience and modesty, might frame various social systems, realistic and humane, by which to live according to our variable natures.

The paper I hope to write for the translation of your book will not be on these lines, but expressly written for the American public.

Yours sincerely,
G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Eight, 1948-1952.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: Collection of Enrico Castelli Gattinara di Zubiena