Category: LETTERS Page 2 of 274

Letters in Limbo ~ October 16, 1950

On October 16, 2024

To Rosamond Thomas [Sturgis] Little
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. October 16, 1950

You said in your last letter that you would like to know Cory: but you might not like him at all. However, he is by instinct a lady-killer and ingraciates himself into some women’s good graces in a surprising way; but has become less attractive (and deceptive) with middle age and cannot do the elderly gentleman as well as he did the young intellectual. He is intellectual, but strangely ignorant of literature and history, except in spots, where he has taken an intense interest in certain authors, especially Walter Pater in his youth and Proust (read in translation) in recent years. He took in this way to the most technical of my books, “Scepticism and Animal Faith”, and at 22 wrote a remarkable paper on it, which was the source of our acquaintance. He now understands my whole philosophy, but does not inwardly accept it, and really does not help me very much, except by finding fault (he is very “cheeky”) with my style when I make a slip, which after all proves that he appreciates it when it goes properly. But his chief virtue for me is that he is extremely entertaining; and also, now, that he understands the new school of poetry and English philosophy he also understands Catholic philosophy in places (where it is wrong) because it contradicts modern philosophy (which is wrong at that point also). He would have made a capital actor, is a most amusing mimic, and has a bohemian temperament, spends money when he gets it, and never thinks of the future.

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

Letters in Limbo ~ October 15, 1937

By David Spiech

On October 15, 2024

In LETTERS

To Justus Buchler
Hotel Bristol
Rome. October 15, 1937

My knowledge of Pierce is chiefly at second hand and from quotations, but I heard one of his Harvard lectures. He had been dining at the James’s and his evening shirt kept coming out of his evening waistcoat. He looked red-nosed and disshevelled, and a part of his lecture seemed to be ex-tempore and whimsical. But I remember and have often used in my own thoughts, if not in actual writing, a classification he made that evening of signs into indexes and symbols and images: possibly there was still another distinct category which I don’t remember. The index changes with its object but does not resemble it; the symbol resembles the object loosely and by analogy. In general I agree with what you say, that there is no hostility or contradiction between Pierce’s philosophy and mine, in spite of, or because of, the fact that they are so different.

From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Six, 1937-1940. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
Location of manuscript: Brooklyn College Library, Brooklyn NY

Letters in Limbo ~ October 14, 1927

By David Spiech

On October 14, 2024

In LETTERS

To Charles Augustus Strong
Venice, Italy. Oct. 14, 1927

I am tempted to say something about the philosophical part of your letter, although you know my disbelief in the value of controversy on these points. What is required is clearness in the respective conceptions: as to which is true, if any, we can leave it to God or to the horse sense of mankind. Now, I have felt for some time that your views were changing, and although of course my first choice would be that you should agree with me heartily and completely, if this is impossible, my second choice would be that you should take up an entirely different position from mine: there might then be either diversity without real conflict, or a fundamental difference of attitude or judgement, and not, what is most annoying, mutual misunderstandings.
It wouldn’t surprise me if, on the point you mention, misunderstandings stood between us rather than a real disagreement. I should agree that “the datum of perception” is not an essence. The phrase “datum of perception” can be understood only in the sense in which we speak of “data of ethics”—the elementary facts which make up our knowledge in that field. The “data of perception” would then be things, or the events in one’s life. But when I maintain that “data” are essences and that nothing “given” exists, I am using the term in a much stricter sense. By a “datum” I mean something which exists only speciously, and is exhausted by being given; so that there can be no such thing as a “datum of perception” at all. The deliverance of perception is the existence of an object: but this, by my definition, cannot be given: it can only be posited, as existing on its own account; and it is on its own account, if at all, that it exists. There can be “data” of intuition or feeling; there cannot be “data” of perception, but only objects. The data in perception are the essences which feeling or intuition is then manifesting in their entirety and raising to specious existence as terms in that perception: but the object of the perception (isn’t this what you mean by its “datum”?) is a fact outside the perception: whereas a “datum”, in my sense, can never be a fact outside intuition or feeling (which is simply intuition of a simple essence: for you understand that I am speaking of conscious feeling).
I don’t know whether this explanation does more than re-iterate what you know already to be my view: but I thought it worth while to repeat it, since your use of the phrase “datum of perception”, as if it were unobjectionable, suggests that my meaning of “datum” and “given” was not at the moment before your mind.
Miller used to be a hopeless victim of psychologism, not seeing that if the moments of life have no ulterior objects, consciousness of living must itself have no ulterior object, and the psychological flux must be only the “idea” or “datum” of a psychological flux, abusing the Cherub in his timeless ecstasy. I hope you have succeeded in bring this Cherub to earth, and making him recognize the omnipresence of animal faith, even in his own warblings.

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.

Letters in Limbo ~ October 13, 1945

By David Spiech

On October 13, 2024

In LETTERS

To John Hall Wheelock
Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. October 13, 1945

I see that you take kindly to my ugly ducklings. This morning I left at Miss Tindall’s the MS of one of the two plays, Philosophers at Court, which is long, in blank verse, and represents the visit of Plato to Sicily, to reform the government of Dionysius—the Younger, in my non-historical arrangement—and his discomfiture there. I am satisfied with the form this play has now taken, and will send you a copy as soon as Miss Tindall has typed it. I don’t think it will be much liked, although symbolically it is not without application to the present state of affairs: it is pessimistic—but gaily pessimistic, which perhaps makes it worse. I believe I have already written to you about some complaints I have received about Persons & Places, to the effect that I don’t say how good all my friends were, in spite of small defects in them which I ought not to have hinted at. Lyon Phelps made the same criticism about The Last Puritan, that there was not a single good person in the book: and this, by the same criterion, will be doubly true of Philosophers at Court. And somehow the same fatality—the absence of goodness in everybody—pursues the other play: The Marriage of Venus. This is short, and in rhymed verse after the manner of my Lucifer. The plot and the principal scenes seem to me all right: but there are horrible lax, flaccid passages and superfluous “poetic” expressions. I think, however, that without trusting to any positive new inspiration at my age, I can trust my experience to make negative corrections, chiefly omissions, and substitution of terse for conventional “poetic” language in various places. For instance, I can make these Olympians call one another you instead of thou and thee; and I can change their names from Greek to Latin, which is more intelligible in English, and lends itself better for comedy. I mean, then, to rewrite this play: otherwise I should be ashamed to publish it. You must therefore be patient, if you want the two plays to appear together. Meantime I shall be curious to see what you think of Philosophers at Court.

From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Seven, 1941-1947. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006.
Location of manuscript: Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries, Princeton NJ

Letters in Limbo ~ October 12, 1950

By David Spiech

On October 12, 2024

In LETTERS

To George Rauh
Via S. Stefano Rotondo, 6
Rome. October 12, 1950

Dear Mr Rauh,

My chief divergence from American views lies in that I am not a dogmatist in morals or politics and do not think that the same form of government can be good for everybody; except in those matters where everybody is subject to the same influence and has identical interests, as in the discipline of a ship in danger, or of a town when there is a contagious disease. But where the interests of people are moral and imaginative they ought to be free to govern themselves, as a poet should be free to write his own verses, however trashy they may seem to the pundits of his native back yard. I think the universal authority ought to manage only economic, hygienic, and maritime affairs, in which the benefit of each is a benefit for all; but never the affairs of the heart in anybody. Now the Americans and OUN’s way of talking is doctrinaire, as if they were out to save souls and not to rationalize commerce. And the respect for majorities instead of for wisdom is out of place in any matter of ultimate importance. It is reasonable only for settling matters of procedure in a way that causes as little friction as possible: but it is not right essentially because it condemns an ideal to defeat because a majority of one does not understand its excellence. It cuts off all possibility of a liberal civilization. And it is contrary to what American principles have been in the past, except in a few fanatics like Jefferson who had been caught by the wind of the French Revolution. Americans at home are now liberal about religion and art: why not about the forms of government? I mean to send you or Lawrence Butler my new book on “Dominations and Powers”, when it appears, where all this is threshed out naturalistically. Glad to know that Lawrence is well. Yours sincerely

G Santayana

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