To John Hall Wheelock
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. September 5, 1948.
The idea of writing imaginary social lectures on “Les Faux Pas de la Philosophie,” which ought to be in French but will at least have the title Of The Faux Pas of Philosophy, came to me long ago. It is not the “Errors” or “mistakes” that I mean, because that includes not only the whole of philosophy but all perception, history, religion, etc. [See Dialogue on Normal Madness] It is a normal illusion that the sky is blue and vaulted. That is not a faux pas, but a first step in science. But when modern philosophers say that astronomy is knowledge, but that there is only an idea that there are stars, I call that a faux pas, because it leads not to science and normal madness, but to being willfully wrong without necessity.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Eight, 1948-1952. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries, Princeton NJ