Category: LETTERS Page 1 of 274

To Charles Augustus Strong
C/o Brown Shipley & Co.
London
Box Hill, England. July 26, 1905

Please excuse this sheet of fool’s cap: I have no frivolous note-paper at hand and the contents are going to justify the pomposity—and perhaps the name—of the medium.

I had no notion that in submitting my innocent foot-note to your previous censorship I was asking you to aid me in any attack upon your doctrine. Perhaps, if you would only allow me my language, your doctrine would be almost my own. What I wanted was, not to misrepresent you. Now, my prudence seems to have its reward, for apparently I did misrepresent you in supposing that you made human thought “a view or result of much mind-stuff in fusion.” Your correction, if I understand it, brings up a point quite new to me. Mind-stuff contains relations between its own parts; and adding these relations together you get a sort of continuum given within mind-stuff, although the total landscape is only represented, and not within mind-stuff anywhere in an absolute sense. The partners hold hands, so to speak, but no one contains the whole minuet. Is this your idea? If so, it seems to me you are jumping from the frying-pan into the fire. For the “extensity” of sensations, or their essential lapse, is a character of their object; and this is a material character. If the extensity of a sensation can be predicated of mindstuff itself, then mind-stuff is extended! You would not maintain that, I suppose; yet how can you avoid it? Your inclusion of relations within mind-stuff either lifts mind-stuff into mind, its object acquiring the relations observed and it itself being lifted to a transcendental sphere and made an act of apperception or (as my book will call it) an intent; or else this inclusion reduces it more obviously than ever to matter. “Isn’t this what Bergson (whom I am surprised to hear you invoke, when his dichotomy of Matière et Mémoire is all on my side) tries to do, making the immediate material, and the reflective possession or representation of it spiritual and eternal—which is more than I can agree to. However, with many thanks for this information, I hasten to correct my foot-note and will make it read: “a certain bulk of sentiency in flux, illustrating spatial and temporal relations, and not merely representing them.” Is this better? There will be time to make further corrections, if I have gone wrong. I will also correct the phrase about “doing honour to spirit” and substitute “thinking to give spirit a more congenial basis by making it its own stuff, thereby forgetting that spirit is expressive and, being expressive must have a different status from that of its basis or subject-matter.” The style suffers: but I, too, am ready to make any sacrifice of personality on the altar of truth. I may, however, think of a better wording than that above.

Where I can’t accept your criticism is in respect to the word matter. Why should Berkeley’s ignorance of Aristotle be allowed to infect more generations? Matter is in a way approached from without, since it is potential and inferred, as every substance must be, including mind-stuff, or as truth is. But it means the surd in things, the existential strain that makes them be here and now, in this quantity and with this degree of imperfection. I have a previous note on the use of this word, too long to quote. You will see it when the book appears, for on this subject I know what I am talking about and speak quite deliberately.

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 Charles Augustus Strong
Hotel Cristallo
Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. July 25, 1926

Dear Strong,

I have just finished “Sous le Soleil de Satan”. Is the author a young man? If so, I think he may do very good things. I like his ideas (when they are ideas) and his prejudices: the portrait of Anatole France at the end is excellent. So the other minor characters: even the Devil is plausible, if you fall back on mediaeval ways of conceiving him. But there is a lot of rant and confusion: I had some difficulty in following the thread of events or emotions in places, and felt like skipping, or dropping the book altogether. Neither the hero nor the heroine is intelligible. It looks as if the author himself didn’t know exactly what was up. That the world is given over to the devil and that there are shady sides and bitter dregs in every life is perfectly true: but we must distinguish the part which is inseparable from existence of any sort—from flux and finitude—in this evil, and the part that is remediable. No doubt a very exacting spirit might rebel against existence itself: but I don’t know what he could find to substitute for it. Certainly this book suggests nothing: it does not represent religion as offering any real refuge: even there all seems to be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Why so tense, little Sir?

The Drakes are gone after staying five days—I am writing an article about Platonism and “Spiritual religion” apropos of a book of Dean Inge’s on that subject. It is an interruption, but I have definitely dropped the reins on the neck of my weary old Pegasus, and am letting him amble as he will. I shouldn’t accomplish any thing better by applying the bit and spurs.

And you?

Yours ever, G.S.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Three, 1921-1927.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY

To William Archer
5 Grove Street
Oxford, England. July 24, [1901]

Dear Sir,

You will not get my photograph from Pach—I am sorry you have taken the trouble to write to him. The many photographers I find in Oxford do not tempt me much more than he; but although I dislike the idea of having my face associated with my verses, I am writing to a friend in Paris, who has the photograph of a drawing made in ’96 by Andreas Andersen which I am asking him to send you. It is a clever drawing, and as it represents a past and somewhat fantastic aspect of my humble personality, I object to it less than to a glaring photo. Moreover, it corresponds exactly to the date of the later sonnets.

. . .

Thank you very much.

Yours faithfully,
G Santayana

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: The British Library of the British Museum, London.

To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. July 23, 1946

Dear Cory: This morning at eight o’clock I have walked to the local postoffice beyond the Lateran Gate, and brought home your blue pyjamas, coloured as if on purpose to match the virginal blue of the Blue Sisters. I have put on a pair, turning up about eight inches at the wrists and ancles. This can be easily corrected. Other wise the suit is delightful, smooth, and light (I have perferred it on this warm day to the white pyjamas that I was wearing and that I think have a stouter texture for winter).

By the way, I discovered that the white pyjama jackets, which I had not worn because they have no collars, do have long sleeves, so that they will do well, for sleeping, in winter under a worsted jacket. All together, I can now manage very well, and am much obliged for your care in looking after the matter under vexatious circumstances.

I suppose you will have sailed for England when this letter reaches New York, but I wished to acknowledge the receipt of the pyjamas in case this reached you before I have news of your arrival and address in England when I will write you a serious letter.

Yours affly, G Santayana

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.

To Rosamond Thomas [Sturgis] Little
Rome. July 22, 1952.

Dear Rosamond,

Your 4 parcels of rice-cereals arrived today, just when my supply was about to fail. Thank you very much.

You will perceive by this short letter that something else is beginning to fail me, namely my eyes, and reading is even harder than writing, so that it will be hard for me to do anything but compose old-fashioned verses.

It had already been enthusiasm for a poem of Lorenzo de’ Medici that had overtaxed my eyesight in making alternative English version of it. At least I have something to balance my imprudence in 23 stanzas in octava rima, making a complete partly original work: my last! For everyone tells me, that I am almost dead. It is more than tolerable, in spite of the heat.

I must stop scrawling, although I have various other things that I should like to tell you.

Yours affectionately,
G Santayana

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