Category: LETTERS Page 29 of 274

To Llewelyn Powys
Hotel Bristol
Rome. October 20, 1937

The senses are self-convinced, self-satisfied, but they are not controversial, they are not propagandist, they are not partisan. The moment we turn the magic of the moment into a maxim, we have clouded the sky. Aristippus is then on the way to become Epicurus, and Epicurus, though only opening a crack of the door towards asceticism, was on the way to become Buddha, or Burton. It seems to me that the mature materialist, whilst giving up all claims to direct the course of nature, may sympathize impartially with all her ingenious works, amongst which sacristies and their contents are not the least; theologies are as wonderful as spider’s webs, and there is no particular object in destroying them, except occasionally for domestic comfort. Fancy is in one sense prior to sensation, because the form of sensation is fanciful and original; and vice versa the most airy flights of fancy, and the greatest ambitious works of men’s hands, issue in pure sensations felt in their presence. It seems to me reasonable to take all these things with equal thanks, and with equal detachment.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Six, 1937-1940.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven CT

To Ellen Shaw Barlow
Hotel Bristol
Rome. October 19, 1935

I don’t know what I may have said that misrepresented my mother’s relations with the Sturgis family. I am sure she had a real “culte”  for them, especially for your mother and for “Uncle Russell” and “Uncle Robert”. Their characters, their persons, and their way of living were what she thought absolutely right and superior to anything to be found elsewhere. She especially despised, in comparison, Spanish ways and Spanish ideas. That is why I have never been able to make out why she ever married my father. But there were probably strands in her character and experience which I had no notion of, having known her only in her old age, when she was very silent and led a retired resigned and monotonous life. Family history, and even one’s own past, are hard to decipher unless you have documents to go by. It is like deciphering the Roman Forum. There are the stones, perfectly plain; but they belong to different strata and it is impossible to piece anything out of them that shall correspond to what existed at any one time. The reason you say my mother gave for Susie’s not staying in the Convent—that Susie liked meat and not vegetables—is most characteristic of my Mother. She believed in dialectical materialism before anyone had heard of Karl Marx. And if we take that saying symbolically, I think it was most true, because religion with Susie was a social passion, not a spiritual one, and in her enthusiasms there wasn’t very much peace. She was certainly not made to be a nun; but she was driven to make that experiment by dissatisfaction with her surroundings after the fun of first youth was gone.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Five, 1933-1936.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA

To Bryn[jolf] J[akob] Hovde
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. October 18, 1949

Dear Dr. Hovde,

Your request for a contribution to the book of tributes to John Dewey reaches me too late. You evidently did not know that I have been living in Italy for many years. Moreover, in spite of repeated suggestions to the contrary, I have thought it better not to figure among the many admirers who have arranged this demonstration for Dewey’s ninetieth birthday. It is not the sort of thing to which I am naturally drawn, and there are particular reasons in this case why I should abstain from any expressions of regard and admiration that might seem perfunctory, or inadequate.

Yours sincerely,
G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Eight, 1948-1952.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: Morris Library, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale

To George Sturgis
Hotel Bristol
Rome. October 17, 1937

Without pretending to understand the detail of business or politics, I have long felt that I saw a reason for the troubles and the blankness of the official mind in both directions. The reason, I think, is this: that ideas sometimes stand for things and sometimes for ideas, or in other words for nothing. It is the same difference as in a cheque when there is money in the bank and a cheque when there isn’t. And money itself, in the capatilist and credit system, is only paper money; so that you may perform vast operations with it all in the air, and be surprised at the end when events leave you in the lurch. . . .

In politics paper-money is now called “ideology”, a word that didn’t exist when I was young, but that would be convenient if it were clearly opposed to “realism” (which is also a set of ideas) as being theory spun in the head without control by the facts. Ideology is what dominates in President Roosevelt’s speech. I could have read it here, in the English or French papers, if I had been curious. The Italian papers could hardly have printed it in full without criticism and controversy, which would have been ill-advised. They gave short extracts, and said it was “Wilsonian”. That was enough for me, and I didn’t look it up further; but now I have read the whole and the comments you enclose. It won’t do much harm in America, because there it can pass as a political sermon, with quotations from a bishop and a novelist, who might perfectly well have written the whole of it. But it may increase the confidence with which other ideologists in France and England will hasten to draw cheques on Emptiness.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Six, 1937-1940.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA

To Rosamond Thomas [Sturgis] Little
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. October 16, 1950

You said in your last letter that you would like to know Cory: but you might not like him at all. However, he is by instinct a lady-killer and ingraciates himself into some women’s good graces in a surprising way; but has become less attractive (and deceptive) with middle age and cannot do the elderly gentleman as well as he did the young intellectual. He is intellectual, but strangely ignorant of literature and history, except in spots, where he has taken an intense interest in certain authors, especially Walter Pater in his youth and Proust (read in translation) in recent years. He took in this way to the most technical of my books, “Scepticism and Animal Faith”, and at 22 wrote a remarkable paper on it, which was the source of our acquaintance. He now understands my whole philosophy, but does not inwardly accept it, and really does not help me very much, except by finding fault (he is very “cheeky”) with my style when I make a slip, which after all proves that he appreciates it when it goes properly. But his chief virtue for me is that he is extremely entertaining; and also, now, that he understands the new school of poetry and English philosophy he also understands Catholic philosophy in places (where it is wrong) because it contradicts modern philosophy (which is wrong at that point also). He would have made a capital actor, is a most amusing mimic, and has a bohemian temperament, spends money when he gets it, and never thinks of the future.

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