To Charles Augustus Strong
Rome. June 1, 1927
Let us not discuss the question of essences or “the spiritual life.” I have said all I feel—and perhaps more than I feel when I am not warmed up to the subject—in the little book, and I quite understand that it can appeal only to those who are predisposed to that sort of sentiment. You would agree with Abbot (an old classmate of mine at Harvard) who writes me that he has often found heads without ideas, but never ideas without heads. What more is needed to damn all Platonism?
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.