Category: LETTERS Page 271 of 274

To George Washburne Howgate
C/o Brown Shipley & Co. 123, Pall Mall
London, S.W.1
Rome. May 31, 1933

[M]an is an animal before he is a spirit, and can be a spirit only because he is alive, i.e. an animal. The nature of the human animal, however, is to be intelligent, to be speculative; and hence the vocation to transcend the conditions of his existence in his thought and worship.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Five, 1933-1936.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Collection of Mrs. George W. Howgate.

To Van Wyck Brooks
C/o Brown Shipley & Co. 123 Pall Mall, S.W.1. London
Rome. May 22, 1927

Although I am not sure whether I owe the pleasure of reading your book on “Emerson & Others” to your initiative or that of your publishers, I would rather thank you personally for it, because I have one or two things which I should like to say, as it were, in private. Your pictures of Emerson are perfect in the way of impressions: not that I knew him (he was dead, I think, when I first reached America, aged 8); but that, whether true to the fact or not, they are convincing in their vividness. But just how much is quoted, and how much is your own? Am I to believe—I who haven’t read the Journal and know little of the facts—that Emerson was such a colossal egotist and so pedantic and affected as he seems on your pages 39 and 40? Or have you maliciously put things together so as to let the cat out of the bag? Sham sympathy, sham classicism, sham universality, all got from books and pictures! Loving the people for their robust sinews and Michaelangelesque poses! And for the thrill of hearing them swear! How different a true lover of the people, like Dickens!

You apologize because some of your descriptions applied to the remote America of 1919: I who think of America as I knew it in the 1890’s (although I vegetated there for another decade) can only accept what I hear about all these recent developments. On the other hand, when you speak of the older worthies, you seem to me to exaggerate, not so much their importance, as their distinction: wasn’t this Melville (I have never read him) the most terrible ranter? What you quote of him doesn’t tempt me to repair the holes in my education. The paper I have most enjoyed— enjoyed immensely—is the one on the old Yeats. His English is good: his mind is quick.

Why do the American poets and other geniuses die young or peter out, unless they go and hibernate in Europe? What you say about Bourne (whom again I haven’t read) and in your last chapter suggests to me that it all comes of applied culture. Instead of being interested in what they are and what they do and see, they are interested in what they think they would like to be and see and do: it is a misguided ambition, and moreover, if realized, fatal, because it wears out all their energies in trying to bear fruits which are not of their species. A certain degree of sympathy and assimilation with ultra-modern ways in Europe or even Asia may be possible, because young America is simply modernism undiluted: but what Lewis Mumford calls “the pillage of the past” (of which he thinks I am guilty too) is worse than useless. I therefore think that art, etc. has a better soil in the ferocious 100% America than in the Intelligentsia of New York. It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theatres, etc that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Three, 1921-1927.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002.
Location of manuscript: The Charles Patterson Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

To George Pierce Baker
Oxford, England. May 17, 1887

Royce’s novel! Good heavens, what a failure! I’m so sorry for him, poor man; he knows so much about the universal consciousness that he has forgotten what individual consciousness is like, especially in women. And thus I have no patience with the false, inexperienced morality of the book, which shows private judgment (on the subject of what is seriously wrong and what is excusable) run wild. And the tedium of it.

I am having a delicious time in Oxford, such as no mortal has a right to expect in any part of this wretched earth. I am being dined lunched and breakfasted, and have met a lot of nice fellows, who are sweet, gentle, and good besides being learned and athletic—in fact, walking ideals. Of course the town is charming, and the fields emerald green. I feed, read, go to some lectures, walk, talk, and loaf. Perfectly happy for the time being, but looking forward to a stupid summer at Avila, where I propose to do some solid work, pleasure being out of the question. My future depends mainly on the Harvard-fellowship-dispensing-bureau. If they wisely decide to contribute to the patriotic work of keeping me alive, I shall probably be in Berlin again next winter.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book One, [1868]-1909.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001.
Location of manuscript: The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven CT.

To the Class of 1886
[Rome.] [May or June 1936]

As to my inner or moral adventures during this half-century, they are in part recorded in my books, which, I believe, would fill all the spaces left vacant in the questionnaire by my non-existent children and grandchildren. Not living any longer in America or being a professor naturally had some influence on my mental tone; also the war of 1914–1918 when I remained in England, chiefly at Oxford. Nevertheless I think I have changed very little in opinion or temper. I was old when I was young, and I am young now that I am old. I have passed through no serious illnesses, emotions, or changes of heart. On the whole the world has seemed to me to move in the direction of light and reason, not that reason can ever govern human affairs, but that illusions and besetting passions may recede from the minds of men and allow reason to shine there. I think this is actually happening. What is thought and said in America now, for instance, especially since the crisis, seems to me far less benighted than what was thought and said when I lived there. People—especially the younger people—also write far better English. If I had the prophetic courage of a John the Baptist I might cry that the kingdom of heaven is at hand; by which I don’t refer to a possible industrial recovery, or to a land flowing with milk and honey, but to a change of heart about just such matters and the beginning of an epoch in which spiritual things may again seem real and important. The modern world is loudly crying peccavi, but we know that this is not enough. There must be a real conversion or redirection of the affections. I think this may actually ensue, in the measure in which such revolutions are compatible with human nature.

From The Letters of George Santayana:  Book Five, 1933-1936.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Unknown.

To George Sturgis
Hotel Bristol
Rome. May 14, 1925

The Spring here has been unusually cool and rainy. I am still wearing winter clothes, and expect to stay at least until June 1st when I shall go to Paris; but all my plans are unsettled, owing to the instability of the female will, on which for the moment I seem to be dependent. I was going to England to stay with the Chetwynds—but Mrs Chetwynd is going to Dartmoor—no, on the whole, to Ireland. I was going to Switzerland to see Mrs Toy (who has suddenly invaded Europe) but Mrs Toy has grown homesick and doesn’t know what she will do or where she will be. I was going to Spain, but heaven knows what may happen first. In any case, Mercedes, with three lady-friends and the unhappy husband of one of them, announces that she will arrive in Rome on a pilgrimage on May 23rd. I am clay in the potter’s hand; but I daresay in time I shall recover my independence and return to my natural and reposeful level.

Strong is already in Paris, having gone in his motor-car from Florence in 8 1⁄2 days, and says he is expecting me at the apartment, where he is much enjoying the electric heating which his daughter Margaret had installed there against his will: but probably I shall go to a hotel, as Margaret herself may turn up at any moment—another case of La donna è mobile, especially with an auto-mobile, if you will excuse an Italian pun. For Margaret has one of her own much better than her father’s.

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.