Author: David Spiech Page 1 of 283

To Nancy Saunders Toy
Hotel Danieli,
Venice. April 22, 1940

I hope you won’t be altogether displeased if I tell you what I think. You know perfectly well what sort of . . . mind and conscience Russell has: those of a rebel or reformer. He feels no loyalty to dominant things but enthusiasm for possible ideal contrary things. Now this seems to me legitimate in a pure philosopher. There is no reason why “spirit” (I am full of this now, re-reading the proofs of my new book on that subject) should be human; there is no reason, even when it is human, that it should be attached to one age, religion, or moral code rather than to another. Plato proposed community of wives and children: there was a theoretical excuse, if not reason, for that idea; and in the same way Bertie proposes his trial marriages in colleges, etc. It is an excursus into mere possibilities, made vital for him by his hatred and contempt for convention. Perhaps what he proposes might do very well, if it could be established. But nothing can be established in this world merely because it is ideally possible: it must flow from what precedes, it must be derivable from physical forces actually afoot. This is what idealists overlook; and it is only by a happy chance that sometimes they propose something feasible and capable of forming a living morality. Generally, by proposing only that which is underivable from the real state of things, they waste their enthusiasm, and merely irritate practical people and deceive and demoralize other idealists like themselves. And here the rightness of the conventional moralists comes in. It is a political, not a philosophical or ideal rightness. Society is established: its morality may be modified in some, not in any, directions; and good reforms must not disconnect the future from the past. Society therefore is right in defending its morality. This does not imply that Plato & Bertie, or even their books, ought to be publicly burned. Possibly, in a very well-settled civilization, idealists may be allowed to lecture, and be laughed at. Or they may be wept over: Bertie (and his brother) certainly have had dreadful lives: heroic in their way, but misguided and tragic; and it seems unnecessary to persecute them, when they have so conspicuously discredited the principles which they preach, by living up to them.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Six, 1937–1940.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.

To Ervin Paul Hexner
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. April 21, 1946

Dear Professor Hexner,

The proposed book on politics which you ask about is amorphous; like some others of mine (now all published, thank heaven) it has been on my hands for many years—since before the other war. A mass of manuscript exists, and I have now imposed a plan on it which, though an after-thought, I think will help me to arrange and rewrite the whole, if I live long enough. It was always called “Dominations and Powers”, the point being to distinguish beneficent from vexatious government. This evidently involves defining first who is to be benefitted or vexed; so that much philosophy precedes and accompanies the parts that ought to be, but are not, learned. If you have read the late Professor Collingwood’s “New Leviathan” you may have some notion of the sort of book mine would try to be, although of course our philosophies, temper, and style are very different.

Yours sincerely

G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Seven, 1941–1947.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: The Pennsylvania State University Libraries, University Park PA.

To George Sturgis
New York Hotel
Nice, France. April 20, 1923

Old age in my bones, or a very exceptional season, can alone account for the fact that, in winter clothes and often in an overcoat, I am still cold here very often. However, unmistakable signs of Spring, not to say summer, have appeared, the sun (when it shines) is dazzling and hot, and I walk daily up the delightful paths of the park into which the old castle grounds have been turned. There is abundance of water at the top (I don’t know how it gets there) which runs down in rivulets along the roads; and although these babbling brooks are only gutters, I find them very poetical, and babble poetry to them in response. The trees and flowers are also at their best, and I feel more secure in my health; and since my friend Strong left me (I suppose I told you he had come here for a week with his motor) I have begun to work again, and feel encouraged in that respect, as my vol. II is “getting together”.

I expect to return to Paris about the middle of May, and perhaps to go later to England for the end of the summer, but not for the winter, as I am afraid of relapsing into my dreadful bronchitis. Fortunately it doesn’t make much difference to me where I am, if disease and society allow me to philosophize in peace.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Three, 1921-1927.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA.

To Charles Augustus Strong
Brookline, Massachusetts.  April 19, 1900

I am delighted beyond measure that my little book should please you. Thank you very much for all you say. It encourages me very much, coming from a person of your solid judgment and religious nature and education. If you find my book good, it can’t be rotten. But I must attempt to answer your criticism, so as to set myself right both with you and with my own conscience. When I said that religion should give up its pretension to be dealing with matters of fact, I meant, as you doubtless felt yourself, that the religious machinery (gods, hell, heaven, grace, sacraments etc) was not in the plane of fact but in the plane of symbols. But symbols are symbols of fact; and in a sense poetry deals with matters of fact, and the better and more poetical the poetry the more real and fundamental the facts with which it deals. It is not artificial in the sense of being arbitrary. It is a representation of reality, according to the requirements of a part of reality, the human imagination. And yet there is a plain sense in which it is right and obvious to say that poetry does not deal with (I should have said, perhaps, does not contain, does not constitute) matters of fact. Apollo is not a fact in the same plane as the sun: yet the religion of Apollo “deals with” the fact “sun”. Otherwise the religion of Apollo would be impossible; it would have no basis and no subject-matter. So that all I mean by relegating religion to the sphere of poetry is to distinguish, as we should all do in poetry, between the reality represented and the fiction by which that representation is made. Painting does not deal with flesh and hair, but with pigments; yet by its manipulation of those pigments it represents, and, if you like, deals with, hair and flesh. Possibly the whole ambiguity might be removed by saying deals in, instead of deals with. But my book was not meant to be a creed, even for skeptics, and its definitions are not meant to have theological precision. They are “thrown at” ideas.

You can’t sum up the moral values of the parts of the Universe and say the result is the moral value of the Universe itself. For these moral values cancel one another and disappear into merely physical energies when you trace them back to their source. The good and evil in the world are not the world’s merits and demerits, because by the time you have traced them back to the general laws from which good and evil alike flow, the laws have forfeited those moral characteristics. I disagree, then, with what you say about the credit for what is fair and good being due rather to the Universe than to us. It is as if you said vision belonged rather to the Universe than to the animals in it, because of course the Universe gave the animals eyes, and not they to themselves. The Universe deserves no credit for our virtues until it acquires them—until it becomes ourselves. When the sympathy with moral ends begins to be a principle of action, moral values arise; there are none in the mere conditions of goodness, and the rain and the corn and sunshine are not moral objects. To regard them as such is really to make them gods; it is mythology; and to my mind your awe- inspiring, amiable, sympathetic and admonishing Universe is a mythological object. I value it as such; as such it is a religious idea, and a true one; but it is not a matter of fact.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY.

To John Hall Wheelock
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. April 18, 1949

Yesterday I gave a visitor, Mr. Peter Russell, my last copy of Dialogues in Limbo, because he expressed regret at not being able to order it from England; and I am writing to ask you to be good enough to have two more copies of this book sent to me, as being my favourite child, I don’t like to be parted from it for long.

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.