Category: LETTERS Page 51 of 274

To William James
Box Hill, England. July 27, 1905

Dear Mr James,

I have just re-read, or read for the first time in some cases, the series of articles you have been good enough to send me. They have given me new light on many points—most important of all on the relation of “Humanism” to “Truth”. It is perfectly clear that opinions are not all equally good on pragmatic principles, since some fulfill their pledges with advancing experience while others do not. I am inclined to think that you would meet with less misapprehension and hostility on this score if you gave out, in dogmatic form, how you conceive “the final system of reality” (which you assume on page 3 of the article on “Experience of Activity”) to be made up. I imagine you would say it is a historical system, its substance being feelings which may or may not be appropriated by persons. It would remain to work out a physics of these feelings, and to show how proposition might be essentially true or false descriptions of this historical flux.

I have got a clearer notion, I think, than I had when we talked in Athens, of what makes my way of seeing things puzzling to you—a mystery, you called it. You expect me to look at everything as I look on the things I don’t believe in—religious myths, e.g.—which can have, of course, a symbolic or pragmatic truth. My nature, on the other hand, compels me to believe in something in quite a different sense, and this something is, in my view, double—material nature with its animation on the one hand, and logical or mathematical forms on the other. These are discovered by us, starting from sensation, and, in the first case, are tested by pragmatic standards.

But we look to them in order to understand the origin of our experience (or its standard in signification) and I, for one, heartily accept them in that rôle. So I embrace materialism on pragmatic grounds—and on transcendental grounds also. The prohibition to believe which, in some expressions of it, pragmatism seems to impose, as if every opinion had to be symbolic and had to be superseded, is what I object to. It is too Hegelian. History, at least, must have a definite constitution, apart from the pragmatic value of knowing it.

With renewed thanks, Yours sincerely, G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.

To Charles Augustus Strong
C/o Brown Shipley & Co.
London
Box Hill, England. July 26, 1905

Please excuse this sheet of fool’s cap: I have no frivolous note-paper at hand and the contents are going to justify the pomposity—and perhaps the name—of the medium.

I had no notion that in submitting my innocent foot-note to your previous censorship I was asking you to aid me in any attack upon your doctrine. Perhaps, if you would only allow me my language, your doctrine would be almost my own. What I wanted was, not to misrepresent you. Now, my prudence seems to have its reward, for apparently I did misrepresent you in supposing that you made human thought “a view or result of much mind-stuff in fusion.” Your correction, if I understand it, brings up a point quite new to me. Mind-stuff contains relations between its own parts; and adding these relations together you get a sort of continuum given within mind-stuff, although the total landscape is only represented, and not within mind-stuff anywhere in an absolute sense. The partners hold hands, so to speak, but no one contains the whole minuet. Is this your idea? If so, it seems to me you are jumping from the frying-pan into the fire. For the “extensity” of sensations, or their essential lapse, is a character of their object; and this is a material character. If the extensity of a sensation can be predicated of mindstuff itself, then mind-stuff is extended! You would not maintain that, I suppose; yet how can you avoid it? Your inclusion of relations within mind-stuff either lifts mind-stuff into mind, its object acquiring the relations observed and it itself being lifted to a transcendental sphere and made an act of apperception or (as my book will call it) an intent; or else this inclusion reduces it more obviously than ever to matter. “Isn’t this what Bergson (whom I am surprised to hear you invoke, when his dichotomy of Matière et Mémoire is all on my side) tries to do, making the immediate material, and the reflective possession or representation of it spiritual and eternal—which is more than I can agree to. However, with many thanks for this information, I hasten to correct my foot-note and will make it read: “a certain bulk of sentiency in flux, illustrating spatial and temporal relations, and not merely representing them.” Is this better? There will be time to make further corrections, if I have gone wrong. I will also correct the phrase about “doing honour to spirit” and substitute “thinking to give spirit a more congenial basis by making it its own stuff, thereby forgetting that spirit is expressive and, being expressive must have a different status from that of its basis or subject-matter.” The style suffers: but I, too, am ready to make any sacrifice of personality on the altar of truth. I may, however, think of a better wording than that above.

Where I can’t accept your criticism is in respect to the word matter. Why should Berkeley’s ignorance of Aristotle be allowed to infect more generations? Matter is in a way approached from without, since it is potential and inferred, as every substance must be, including mind-stuff, or as truth is. But it means the surd in things, the existential strain that makes them be here and now, in this quantity and with this degree of imperfection. I have a previous note on the use of this word, too long to quote. You will see it when the book appears, for on this subject I know what I am talking about and speak quite deliberately.

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 Charles Augustus Strong
Hotel Cristallo
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. July 25, 1926

Dear Strong,

I have just finished “Sous le Soleil de Satan”. Is the author a young man? If so, I think he may do very good things. I like his ideas (when they are ideas) and his prejudices: the portrait of Anatole France at the end is excellent. So the other minor characters: even the Devil is plausible, if you fall back on mediaeval ways of conceiving him. But there is a lot of rant and confusion: I had some difficulty in following the thread of events or emotions in places, and felt like skipping, or dropping the book altogether. Neither the hero nor the heroine is intelligible. It looks as if the author himself didn’t know exactly what was up. That the world is given over to the devil and that there are shady sides and bitter dregs in every life is perfectly true: but we must distinguish the part which is inseparable from existence of any sort—from flux and finitude—in this evil, and the part that is remediable. No doubt a very exacting spirit might rebel against existence itself: but I don’t know what he could find to substitute for it. Certainly this book suggests nothing: it does not represent religion as offering any real refuge: even there all seems to be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Why so tense, little Sir?

The Drakes are gone after staying five days—I am writing an article about Platonism and “Spiritual religion” apropos of a book of Dean Inge’s on that subject. It is an interruption, but I have definitely dropped the reins on the neck of my weary old Pegasus, and am letting him amble as he will. I shouldn’t accomplish any thing better by applying the bit and spurs.

And you?

Yours ever, G.S.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Three, 1921-1927.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY

To William Archer
5 Grove Street
Oxford, England. July 24, [1901]

Dear Sir,

You will not get my photograph from Pach—I am sorry you have taken the trouble to write to him. The many photographers I find in Oxford do not tempt me much more than he; but although I dislike the idea of having my face associated with my verses, I am writing to a friend in Paris, who has the photograph of a drawing made in ’96 by Andreas Andersen which I am asking him to send you. It is a clever drawing, and as it represents a past and somewhat fantastic aspect of my humble personality, I object to it less than to a glaring photo. Moreover, it corresponds exactly to the date of the later sonnets.

. . .

Thank you very much.

Yours faithfully,
G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: The British Library of the British Museum, London.

To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. July 23, 1946

Dear Cory: This morning at eight o’clock I have walked to the local postoffice beyond the Lateran Gate, and brought home your blue pyjamas, coloured as if on purpose to match the virginal blue of the Blue Sisters. I have put on a pair, turning up about eight inches at the wrists and ancles. This can be easily corrected. Other wise the suit is delightful, smooth, and light (I have perferred it on this warm day to the white pyjamas that I was wearing and that I think have a stouter texture for winter).

By the way, I discovered that the white pyjama jackets, which I had not worn because they have no collars, do have long sleeves, so that they will do well, for sleeping, in winter under a worsted jacket. All together, I can now manage very well, and am much obliged for your care in looking after the matter under vexatious circumstances.

I suppose you will have sailed for England when this letter reaches New York, but I wished to acknowledge the receipt of the pyjamas in case this reached you before I have news of your arrival and address in England when I will write you a serious letter.

Yours affly, G Santayana

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.