Category: LETTERS Page 1 of 274

Letters in Limbo ~ April 27, 1952

On April 27, 2025

To John W. Yolton
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome, April 27, 1952

Dear Mr. Yolton,
You were very good to send me the number of the Columbia Philosophical Journal chiefly devoted to comments on my recent book, including your own article. I have at once read this, and most of the others, and my general impression is of the great difference in interest and taste that separates American feeling now from me, due doubtless to my advanced age and to the excited and absorbing sentiment that the politi- cal anxiety of the moment naturally produces in the United States. You are less affected (as I gathered long ago from your letters) than most of the others by this preoccupation, and yet I seem to see traces of it, not so much in what you say as in the omission of a point in my view of rational gov- ernment which I regard as important: the idea of “moral societies”. Individual psyches are surely the only seat of synthesis for political ideas; but these ideas are largely diffused and borrowed in their expression and especially in the emotion or allegiance that they inspire. Religion, espe- cially, is traditional. In conceiving of a Scientific Universal Economy, with exclusive military control of trade, I expressly limited its field of action to those enterprises in which only economic interests and possibilities were concerned. Education, local government, religion, and laws regarding pri- vate property, marriage and divorce, as well as language and the arts, were to be in the control of “moral societies” possessed of specific territories. These would be governed in everything not economic, by their own constitutions and customs. Of course sentiment and habits would be social in these societies. Children would all be brought up to expect and normally to approve them; but any individuals rebelling against their tribe would be at liberty to migrate, and to join any more congenial society that would take them in, or remain in the proletariat, without membership in any “moral society”. My view is that civilizations should be allowed to be different in different places, and the degree of uniformity or variety allowed in each would be a part, in each, of its constitutional character. It would by no means be expected that every person would lead a separate life. What I wish to prevent is the choking of human genius by social pressure.

Yours sincerely,
G Santayana

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

Letters in Limbo ~ April 26, 1924

By David Spiech

On April 26, 2025

In LETTERS

To George Sturgis
Hotel Bristol
Rome, April 26, 1924

America is now so obviously at the top of the tree, so far at least as prosperity goes, that you must all feel more than ever that it is the land of opportunity. Here too life seems pretty decent, and there are immense compensations for the comparatively small scale of business in the old world.

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

Letters in Limbo ~ April 25, 1947

By David Spiech

On April 25, 2025

In LETTERS

To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. April 25, 1947

The German book by Alfred Weber on saying goodbye to history as hitherto written is the best thing I have seen about the present state of the world. I have suspended all other work for a few days in order to read it, devour it rather. Unfortunately, towards the end, as happens with things written in haste, it peters out into a debased Platonism—debased because it keeps the mythological taint of Platonism while discarding its moral definiteness and inspiration. But the historical part, and the honest sentiment in the whole are superior to anything I have seen in English or Italian or French.

From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Seven, 1941-1947. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY

Letters in Limbo ~ April 24, 1912

By David Spiech

On April 24, 2025

In LETTERS

To Charles Augustus Strong
Ávila, Spain. April 24, 1921

The six weeks I have just spent in Madrid have given me a very good impression of the place. It has the charms of an agreeable and affectionate woman who is not beautiful; my friend Mercedes made me feel at home at once; it was like living in the bosom of one’s own family, with somewhat greater freedom to the good. I should be quite content to spend most of the remainder of my life there, if circumstances made it advisable. This is just the conviction, one way or another, which I wished to acquire in my experimental visit this winter: so that I am quite happy about the result, especially as it is favourable, and leaves this pleasant possibility open for me in the future.

Your decision to build at Fiesole is quite exciting. I hope you will not be disappointed in the architect or in the time he takes to finish the house. I shall be most interested in hearing about it, and seeing the plans if you have them. Florence and its neighbourhood are delightful, perhaps the most delightful place where a pensive stranger could pitch his tent; but just for that reason if you live there you will be swallowed up in the Anglo-American colony, formed by the other pensive strangers who have come to the same conclusion as yourself. The moral climate, in consequence, is not so delightful as the landscape. That is why I should hardly choose Florence to live in permanently; but you may not feel the force of this objection, and in any case, it is a place anyone across would be glad to visit often.

From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Two, 1910-1920. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY

Letters in Limbo ~ April 23, 1887

By David Spiech

On April 23, 2025

In LETTERS

To Henry Ward Abbot
Oxford, England. April 23, 1887

While at Oxford I hope to meet some more specimens of the English race, thanks to Lord Russell, who has been a godsend to me. I don’t tell you anything about my adventures with him because I have to maintain with you my reputation as a philosopher, and in this respect I have quite lost my reason. When I am safely in Spain again, and can treat the matter objectively, I will make a full confession of my fall from grace and self-control I mean and not into the Thames, although this also is mortifying enough. Herbert Lyman can tell you about it, if you care to know.

Truth is the form of our judging imagination just as space and time are forms of our perceptive imagination. It is as impossible to make a statement without postulating a real objective truth, as to conceive a figure without implying indefinite space. But it is precisely on account of this necessity of postulating truth, that I claim respect for such systems as Christianity—not mere courtesy, but the sincere recognition that it stands on the same footing as our own system. I protest against the solipsism of creeds. I demand that just as a sane man recognizes that his neighbors are centres of reality for themselves just as much as he is a centre of reality for himself, and that he appears to them as a mere object with as good right as they are objects to his own consciousness; so I say should a system recognize that it appears as a psychological fact in other systems with as much justice as other systems appear as psychological facts to itself. I do not propose that we should give up the postulate of absolute truth (although I may sometimes seem to say so, owing to the difficulty of expressing oneself): I only propose that we should abandon the assertion, implied in any claim of the exclusive right of our own system to be considered true, that absolute truth is postulated once only—in one consciousness—instead of being postulated in many separate acts. This is not clear—I can’t make it clear. But my conception is that we must believe our beliefs to be absolutely true, just as we believe ourselves our feelings to be perfectly real; but that this necessity no more excludes our admitting other beliefs as absolutely true for themselves—from their own point of view— than our belief in the reality and subjectivity of our feelings excludes our belief in the reality and subjectivity of other people’s. The advantage which you try to give beliefs founded on “reason and logic” is illusory, as it seems to me, because reason and logic are internal to systems, not external to them. You don’t get your convictions through reason and logic, but build reason and logic on your convictions. The coercive force of logic depends on the similarity of the structure of human minds, on which the necessity of logical axioms also depends. The sanction of logic is in psychology, not vice versa. That reasons must be given is a fact, but there can be no reason why facts, why the world at all, should be given.

As a matter of fact, I agree with you that Christianity is becoming untenable, because the firm and unshakable convictions in our minds are no longer Christian doctrines, but scientific ones. . . . There are certain convictions which cannot be exiled from the mind, convictions about everyday practical matters, about history, and about the ordinary passions of men. A system starting from these universal convictions has a foothold in every mind, and can coerce that mind to accept at least some of its content. The same is not true of systems founded on extraordinary and exceptional experiences, because these simply may cease to exist, in which case the system loses its hold. This is what is happening to Christianity. So I should say that the criterion by which one system is judged to be more tenable than another is not logic but necessity—not the greater reasonableness of believing its facts but the greater impossibility of disbelieving them.

. . . I can’t help my philosophical passion. If I were not to generalize and preach I should have to stop thinking. . . . I am certainly mediocre as a whole, and in the important human qualities—courage, serviceableness, and honesty— sadly deficient. I have of course my strong side—a strip of greatness, as it were—but I am altogether too poor a specimen of humanity for this to tell in the long run. Don’t bet anything on my turning out well. I don’t care enough about it myself to work for success. What I crave is not do great things but to see great things. And I hate my own arrogance and would worship the man who should knock it out of me.

From The Letters of George Santayana: Book One, [1868]–1909. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY.