To Henry Ward Abbot
Oxford, England. April 23, 1887
While at Oxford I hope to meet some more specimens of the English race, thanks to Lord Russell, who has been a godsend to me. I don’t tell you anything about my adventures with him because I have to maintain with you my reputation as a philosopher, and in this respect I have quite lost my reason. When I am safely in Spain again, and can treat the matter objectively, I will make a full confession of my fall—from grace and self-control I mean and not into the Thames, although this also is mortify- ing enough. Herbert Lyman can tell you about it, if you care to know.
Truth is the form of our judging imagination just as space and time are forms of our perceptive imagination. It is as impossible to make a statement without postulating a real objective truth, as to conceive a figure without implying indefinite space. But it is precisely on account of this necessity of postulating truth, that I claim respect for such systems as Christianity—not mere courtesy, but the sincere recognition that it stands on the same footing as our own system. I protest against the solipsism of creeds. I demand that just as a sane man recognizes that his neighbors are centres of reality for themselves just as much as he is a centre of reality for himself, and that he appears to them as a mere object with as good right as they are objects to his own consciousness; so I say should a system recognize that it appears as a psychological fact in other systems with as much justice as other systems appear as psychological facts to itself. I do not propose that we should give up the postulate of absolute truth (although I may sometimes seem to say so, owing to the difficulty of expressing oneself): I only propose that we should abandon the assertion, implied in any claim of the exclusive right of our own system to be considered true, that absolute truth is postulated once only—in one consciousness—instead of being postulated in many separate acts. This is not clear—I can’t make it clear. But my conception is that we must believe our beliefs to be absolutely true, just as we believe ourselves our feelings to be perfectly real; but that this necessity no more excludes our admitting other beliefs as absolutely true for themselves—from their own point of view— than our belief in the reality and subjectivity of our feelings excludes our belief in the reality and subjectivity of other people’s. The advantage which you try to give beliefs founded on “reason and logic” is illusory, as it seems to me, because reason and logic are internal to systems, not external to them. You don’t get your convictions through reason and logic, but build reason and logic on your convictions. The coercive force of logic depends on the similarity of the structure of human minds, on which the necessity of logical axioms also depends. The sanction of logic is in psychology, not vice versa. That reasons must be given is a fact, but there can be no reason why facts, why the world at all, should be given.
As a matter of fact, I agree with you that Christianity is becoming untenable, because the firm and unshakable convictions in our minds are no longer Christian doctrines, but scientific ones. . . . There are certain convictions which cannot be exiled from the mind, convictions about everyday practical matters, about history, and about the ordinary passions of men. A system starting from these universal convictions has a foothold in every mind, and can coerce that mind to accept at least some of its content. The same is not true of systems founded on extraordinary and exceptional experiences, because these simply may cease to exist, in which case the system loses its hold. This is what is happening to Christianity. So I should say that the criterion by which one system is judged to be more tenable than another is not logic but necessity—not the greater reasonableness of believing its facts but the greater impossibility of disbelieving them.
I can’t help my philosophical passion. If I were not to generalize and preach I should have to stop thinking. . . . I am certainly mediocre as a whole, and in the important human qualities—courage, serviceableness, and honesty— sadly deficient. I have of course my strong side—a strip of greatness, as it were—but I am altogether too poor a specimen of humanity for this to tell in the long run. Don’t bet anything on my turning out well. I don’t care enough about it myself to work for success. What I crave is not do great things but to see great things. And I hate my own arrogance and would worship the man who should knock it out of me.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book One, [1868]-1909. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY