Category: LETTERS Page 44 of 274

To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. June 14, 1947

[Material things] are perceived just as they appear to each observer, according to his eyesight and other senses: and this is known to everybody without optics or epistemology. That there is a dynamic or material reality, on the same plane as one’s self or psyche (not transcendental spirit) is assumed and required, as you say, in action: and action includes any movement of alarm, attraction, or attention. Animal faith posits the rat in the hole, by smell, in the dog. That the smell, as a datum, is “in” the brain, I should not say, because in that capacity I think it is an essence, and non-existent anywhere: but the feeling or inarticulate intuition of it exists, and its organ is no doubt in the brain; although the intuition as a living act belongs to the realm of spirit, and is not in space.

This old analysis of mine, which I don’t think it worth while to reconsider, makes me feel that your position is unnecessarily paradoxical, resting on what seems to me the radical error of British empiricism, namely, having turned “ideas” from being essences, into being perceptions. The knowledge we have of the world is a system of ideas; but it is not our psychological life, which is only feeling diversified. It is the function of parts of that life, in its vital alertness, to be the signs of existent objects and of their virtual character in terms of our own possible experience. We live in imagination, which we regard, often virtually with sufficient justification, as knowledge. But it is all theoretical, poetical, vaguely and floatingly sensuous; and it is science, as you say, that refines and consolidates it into literal exact abstract knowledge of the “skeleton” of dynamic-nature.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Seven, 1941-1947.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY.

To Charles Augustus Strong
Hotel Royal Haussman
Paris. June 13, 1930

I arrived here last night and hope to see you soon. My nephew George Sturgis came for two days to Avila, just before I left, and we made a part of the return journey together. He is at the Hôtel Foyot, and leaves for Cherbourg & New York in the middle of next week. I should be very much pleased if you could come to lunch with us (perhaps at the Foyot itself) or else let us come to see you at Versailles (he has a big motor), as I should like him to know you, and also Cory (is Cory here?), not that he is an intellectual, but because he is my nearest active relation. You know the good-natured business American: he is very American and very good natured.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Four, 1928–1932.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY.

To Melvin L. Sommer
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. June 12, 1948

Dear Mr. Sommers,

Many thanks for the photographs; I am sending those you wished autographed back to you in the envelope intended for them.

Many years ago two Frenchmen, brothers, named Doumic (which the profane pronounced De Micks) made an observation which I always remember about nationalities. Germans and British, they said, were races; but France and the United States were milieux. Now my long residence in America having been exclusively in Massachusetts, I might almost say, at Harvard, and my friends a special type of Harvard men, I feel the American essence much more in other Americans, who represent the great milieux or active society of the U.S. with its cordiality and ease; whereas the inhabitants of my corner of Boston, though certainly Americans, had a racial and social quality of their own, American topographically, but not American historically. That is what made me say (was it rude?) But are you “real” Americans? I should have said, “But did you come in the Mayflower in 1632?”

As to feeling a difference in Jews, I feel it I think, only if they do; and then it doesn’t signify a preference or the opposite, but only a diversity. My best pupils were Jews, as was my only modern “master” in philosophy, Spinoza. But many are not happy, and that is a pity.

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 Melvin L. Sommer.

To George Sturgis
Grand Hotel
Rome. June 11, 1941

I also have a fresh passport, for which I had to have a new photograph taken. It came out as from a beauty-parlour, all wrinkles and puffiness removed by magic, and I send you one that you may see that my bad winter has left me as pert as ever.

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 Henry Ward Abbot
C/o Brown Shipley & Co. 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Rome. June 10, 1931

Dear Harry,

Many thanks for introducing me to Miss Millay. I had seen her name, and possibly (if she ever wrote for The Dial) I may have read some piece of hers before: but all was lost in that terrible bog of false poetry into which I hate to step. Poetry, in the sense of versified passionate eloquence, seems to be a thing of the past. But I see that Miss Millay takes the bull by the horns and dresses up her poetry in the magnificent ruff and pearls of Queen Elizabeth. It is a wonderful performance: very rarely did I feel that the sawdust of modern diction was trickling out of the beautiful fancy-dress doll. The movement, and in particular the way of repeating and heightening a word, like a theme in music, are unexampled, as far as I know, in any contemporary performance. When it comes to the thought or the morality, just because it is somewhat genuine and modern, there is less nobility: a woman who was really in love and gave herself too freely to a lover who, liking her well enough at first, got tired of her in the end. The case demands repentance and sublimation, both of which Miss Millay avoids, in her evidently pragmatic philosophy. But without sublimation or repentance the feeling could not rise to the level of the versification. It is like very good Latin versification, such as is still occasionally produced by the well-educated.

I am at work on The Last Puritan and often wish I could show you a passage and ask you if it seems to you true to the life—to the inner life especially—of our old-fashioned friends.

I agree that the last years of life are the best, if one is a philosopher.

Yours sincerely, G.S.

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.