To Horace Meyer Kallen
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6,
Rome. March 8, 1952
Yesterday your friend Loring brought me your letter and “Patterns of Progress” and found me at 11 a.m reading in Lorenzo de’ Medici some musical verses on the diabolical act of Prometheus in bringing fire down to earth with the dreadful consequences of war, trade, and the devouring of cooked carcasses. All fire wills to go heavenward, where according to Aristotle it belongs, and on earth, according to the love-sick Lorenzo, there should be only vegetables and nude Adams and Eves.
I am with you rather than with Lorenzo, not caring at all for love-making in Paradise, but thinking that knowledge both as a means and an end is the best of acquisitions.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Eight, 1948-1952. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY.