Some Wisdom with More Style
Obiter Scripta. By George Santayana. (Constable. 10s. 4.) Tins book consists of a number of lectures, essays and reviews delivered and written by Santayana during the past thirty years. They have been collected and edited by two admirers, Justus Buehler and Benjamin Schwartz, who maintain that, in spite of the range of subjects covered,, the papers which they have selected "complement one another in the manner peculiar to their author."
A word, first, about "the manner peculiar to their author." Santayana has a deserved reputation as a polished stylist. He writes at all times with elegance and occasionally, when his theme demands it, with eloquence. Reproving himself fOr the casualness of nmeh of his writing, he criticises himself with some justice for never having taken the pains or the thought to produce " a straight philosophy," which might have suggested a new mode of living or a new scale of values to his contemporaries. The criticism is exquisitely phrased : a long life," he remarks, "has hardly -sufficed to uncover" this "straight philosophy" ; "and a second life would be necessary to clear away the works of the first and compose instead a single book perfect in style, sure and rich in familiar learning, and flowing in one jet from the suffering spirit of man." The defect of Santayana's style is a certain lushness. He does not always resist the temptation of overwriting, and loads his sentences with such a wealth of 'simile and metaphor, introduces into them allusions so coyly remote, that it is at times extraordinarily difficult to make out what lie is trying to say. Take for example the following sentences : "Reason needs to be defended by the secular arm. Sacred material foundations must be laid and preserved at all costs, if ever the spirit is to be at home in this world and not merely a. captive or a fugitive."
These two sentences conclude his Preface, in which Santa- yana has assured us that a rational way of living for mankind is not impossible. The sentences are, then, presumably telling us what conditions must be satisfied, if the possibility is to be realised, and, for my part, I simply do not know what tls conditions are; What; for example, are "sacred material foundations ? " Foundation stones of cathedrals, blessed by popes and cardinals ? I imagine not. But if not, what arc they ?
The essays, which deal with a variety of subjects ranging from Hamlet" to " Sonic Meanings of the Word Is" and from Literal and Symbolic Knowledge " to "Proust on Essences," are informed by a distinguishable philosophical attitude, which .Santayana terms "Naturalism." Naturalism is, in its most obvious sense, a denial, a denial of absolutes. There is, it asserts, no absolute standard of good or evil external to men's minds ; good is, in the last resort, simply the name which men give to what they happen to approve, true to what they happen to believe to be true, and they believe things to be true, not because they are true, but because to believe that they are has a biological value and serves the interests of the believer.
In an essay .on Plótinni, Santayana seeks to evade 'tins somewhat extreme conclusion, so far as the meaning of good is concerned. It is extreme since, if good is simply a name we give to what hakiens to suit us, one good is as good as another, provided that it suits us as well, the 'conclusion being that, in Santayana's own words, "a perfect glove is as truly perfect as a perfect family." Santayana is not happy with this conclusion. Having laid down the naturalist prin- ciple that "good and evil are relative to finite interests necessarily at war in this crowded world," he yet claims to measure the worth of .different goods by the standard of the interests they Serve. Some interests are deeper and more important than 'others, and goods that are relative to them are proportionally more valuable than other 'goods, so that the family's perfection is after all more perfect than the glove's. But what, one wonders, does the expression. "deeper arid more important" mean ? It can only mean, surely, that one interest is more worth while than another, and the old absolute meaning of good so ceremoniously expelled through the front door is reintroduced through the back. Similarly with truth. In a celebrated Essay entitled "Philosophical Heresy" Santayana seeks to convict all philosophers, with the possible exception of Hume and Socrates, of being*" persohal heretics," heretics, that is to say, by comparison with the orthodoxy of the plain man, which i4 defined as- " something traditional, Conventional, incoherent, and largely erroneous, like the assumptions of a man who has never reflected, yet something ingenuous, practically acceptable, fundamentally sound, and capable of correcting its own innocent errors."
The essay proceeds to develop the familiar theme that philosophy is merely a projection of the tastes, interests and limitations of the philosopher. When the philosopher sits back in his chair and.begins to speculate about the universe at large, the results, Santayana implies, tell us i good deal about the philosopher but little or nothing about the universe. Interesting to the psychologist and to the historian, they are valuelesslo the seeker after cosmic truth.'
Well and good ! It is always advisable to make our bow to this hypothesis, but inadvisable to elaborate it. For the argument that denies the objective validity of philosophy is itself philosophical, and is mown down, therefore, by the sickle of its own denial. In other words, if what Santayana asserts is true, his assertion while telling us much about Santayana, tells us nothing about the subject to which it purports to apply. I infer that it is as autobiography and not as philosophy, that their author would wish us to read
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