To Max Harold Fisch
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. May 4, 1951
Dear Mr. Fisch,
My doctor here, as well as the aggravation of my various complaints (which you must have noticed when you were good enough to come to see me) has advised me not to receive visitors for the present, and I am afraid I shall not be able to receive Dr. Enzio Boeri on this occasion. Perhaps later, if he should be again in Rome, I may be able to welcome him.
The phrase about Pierce in your remarks about me was perfectly natural because, as you say, I doubt that I have ever mentioned him in my books; and he was not much talked of at Harvard in my day. Once, however, I heard him give an evening lecture there, where he was staying with William James It was about signs, and made a lasting impression on me; that all ideas, in so far as they convey knowledge, are signs has become a favourite doctrine of mine. But I have never studied his published works, and it is from your book I have first gained a general view of his achievement. If he had built his philosophy on signs I might have been his disciple.
Yours sincerely,
G Santayana
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Eight, 1948-1952. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.
Location of manuscript: University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign