To Augusto Guzzo
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6,
Rome. February 15, 1948

Dear Professor Guzzo,

Your tremendous book has arrived and I have read the Introduction and the Summary. How I wish that you could have sent me this book fifty years ago, when I was writing my superficial “Life of Reason”. Now it comes at a moment when I am absorbed not in the critical or dramatic elucidation of conscious existence, not in my Self or in a rational conduct of my beliefs or duties, but in the fate of Mankind, conceived or found as a race of animals living in a material world. And as it is too late in my life for me to recast for myself the transcendental problem, or any problem of Existence or knowledge, I don’t dare to drop the train of thought that I am engaged in: “les moments me sont chers”. So I am afraid I shall never do justice to your profound revision of things from within outwards. Except that I know how that problem imposes itself on the self-questioning mind, and how dramatic is the order of evidence, the causa cognoscendi, that reflection can construct by intense criticism. However, I come in my descriptions of “Dominations and Powers” upon distinctions between “vital liberty” and “empty liberty”, between “growth” and “militancy”, between “economic” and “liberal” arts, and many other logical or moral questions; and I shall not forget to consult your pages on these points when I find myself in a difficulty.

The fact that you are at work on so vast and important a system of philosophy, even if the outlines of it all are already clear in your mind, makes me wonder all the more that you should be willing to give your precious time to translations, even with such good help as you count upon; and I am all the more grateful that my book on the Idea of Christ is to profit by that willingness. I suppose during the summer holidays you may like to turn to lighter occupation; and I know how fascinating the search often is, in translating, for a word or phrase that will convey the author’s intention. In any case, I have today signed the contract with the Edizioni Comunità for the Italian edition, in which article 8 runs as follows: “The Publishers undertake to use the translation of the said work made by Professor Augusto Guzzo”.

I hardly find words to tell you how much I appreciate this favour, as well as the gift of your new book.

Yours sincerely

G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Eight, 1948-1952.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: Unknown.