Volume VI, Book Two
Marianne S. Wokeck, Editor William G. Holzberger, Textual Editor
Kristine W. Frost, Associate Editor Johanna E. Resler, Assistant Editor David E. Spiech, Assistant Textual Editor
Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man
Courtesy of Rare Books Collections, Georgetown University Library,
A Critical Selection
Book Two: McCord — Zeller
Edited and with an Introduction by John McCormick
Kristine Walters Frost, Associate Editor
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopy, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions consti-tutes the only exception to this prohibition.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Santayana, George, 1863–1952.
George Santayana’s marginalia : a critical selection / edited and with an intro-duction by John McCormick.
2 v. — (The works of George Santayana ; v. 6) Includes bibliographical references.
Contents: Bk. 1. Abell–Lucretius — bk. 2. McCord–Zeller.
ISBN 978-0-262-01629-2 (v. 1 : hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-262-01630-8 (v. 2 : hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Philosophy. I. McCormick, John, 1918– II. Title.
B945.S2 2011 191—dc22
2010052839
Marianne S. Wokeck Director and Editor Kristine W. Frost Assistant Director and Associate Editor
Martin A. Coleman Associate Editor
Johanna E. Resler Assistant Editor
David E. Spiech Assistant Textual Editor
Elizabeth Garmen Graduate Intern
John Joachim Graduate Intern
Editorial Board Hugh J. Dawson
Matthew C. Flamm Morris Grossman Angus Kerr-Lawson
John Lachs Richard C. Lyon
Douglas M. MacDonald John M. Michelsen
Andrew J. Reck Beth J. Singer
Glen Tiller Henny Wenkart
Consultants Herman J. Saatkamp Jr.
I Persons and Places: Fragments of Autobiography,1986
II The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outlines of Æsthetic Theory,1988 III Interpretations of Poetry and Religion,1989
IV The Last Puritan: A Memoir in the Form of a Novel,1994 V The Letters of George Santayana
Book One: 1868–1909,2001
Book Two: 1910–1920,2002
Book Three: 1921–1927,2002
Book Four: 1928–1932,2003
Book Five: 1933–1936,2003
Book Six: 1937–1940,2004
Book Seven: 1941–1947,2006
Book Eight: 1948–1952,2008
VI George Santayana’s Marginalia: A Critical Selection Book One: Abell — Lucretius, 2011
Book Two: McCord — Zeller
Introduction xi
Editorial Practice xv
List of Authors xix
MARGINALIA 3
Appendix: George Santayana’s Library 427
Listed by Author A : 1–40
John McCormick
In his essay “Imagination,” George Santayana wrote, “There are books in which the footnotes, or the comments scrawled by some reader’s hand in the margin, are more interesting than the text.”1 That
remark might serve to define the quality of a great many of the thousands of marginalia that Santayana never scrawled, but neatly and legibly entered, in the hundreds of books he acquired over the course of a long lifetime. It is not that he was given to buying dull books, but that his com-ments serve to illuminate, to defy, to negate, or interestingly to expand his authors’ thought in routine or surprising or frequently delightful ways. At the same time, the marginalia offer a unique way into the processes of Santayana’s mind, a measure of his undoubted originality as philosopher, imaginative writer, critic, essayist, and as human being.
We look to marginalia for indications of a writer’s development or changes of mind, for a relaxed statement in place of public formality, for unsuspected moods, passions, or enthusiasms, and for otherwise imper-ceptible traces of influence, prejudice, or omission. Santayana’s com-ments offer all that and more, even though he often insisted in letters that his thought did not develop; his claim is borne out for the most part when one pursues the marginalia over a period of years. The process at work is accretion resulting in changes of emphasis or definition of terms (see “essence,” early and late) rather than fundamental change. During his years at Harvard as student and lecturer, another kind of marginalia from the ruminative or critical occurs in passages clearly representing study or lecture notes. Such notes might be compared to a concert pianist’s inter-pretation of a familiar score, so that we hear it anew and vividly: thus the notes on Kant’s work. In another sense, the marginalia can be seen as Santayana’s stylebook; they show us his daily linguistic discipline, his practice in diction that salts his cogent prose.
and sometimes bitchy: only that word will do. He shows full control of the American language despite his preference for British spellings. Often a generalized comment, thought, or meditation occurs on the page, set in motion by the subject at large: e.g., Bultmann, Die Geschichte der synoptis-chen Tradition (The History of the Synoptic Tradition)11 p 110 (1:121). The effort here, then, has been to list alphabetically by author all the books extant that belonged to Santayana; to indicate where each book is located and how extensively annotated; and to reproduce a sufficient number of annotations to be of use to the reader or student of Santayana’s thought, his art, and his life. The professional writer on Santayana will of course want to go directly to the sources listed: no simple task.
The bibliographical listings, as complete as can be ascertained, can answer with reasonable certitude when Santayana read a given text, from date of publication, from changes in his penmanship as he aged, and from secondary sources. In maturity, his habit was to order books from Blackwell’s, Oxford, or from the United States through his nephew and business agent, George Sturgis, or through his publisher in the United States, Charles Scribner’s Sons. He read books so ordered at once. The many books sent by aspiring writers he acknowledged courteously upon reception, so that he would not necessarily have to read them. Santayana led a wandering life from 1911, when he determined to retire from Harvard, to 1940, when he settled in Rome and where he died in 1952. As he acquired books in those peripatetic years, he would deposit them with his lifelong friend Charles Augustus Strong, first in Strong’s quarters in Paris, then in his villa, Le Balze, in Fiesole, Italy. After Santayana’s death, his lit-erary executor, Daniel Cory, who had inherited the library, sold off many of the books in lots to various libraries in the United States, and one lot of some 300 to Blackwell’s, Oxford, which firm in turn sold them to the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario. Because of the war and its after-math, however, Cory had no access to Santayana’s books in Strong’s villa. Strong died in 1939; the Germans were believed to have occupied the villa and to have destroyed the contents. In 1979 Augustus Strong’s daughter, Margaret de Cuevas de Larrain, presented the villa, its contents quite unde-stroyed, to Georgetown University, and Santayana’s part of the library, inso-far as it can be identified, has now been deposited in the Special Collections section of the Lauinger Library at Georgetown University.2
the niceties of English prose as for the placing of Greek accent marks, these the marginalia indicate in abundance. Reputed to be isolated, anti-social, even a recluse, although he had no such attributes, Santayana nev-ertheless, living by choice in celibate solitude, spent a great deal of time talking to, and talking back to, a wonderful miscellany of writers, from Spinoza to Kant to J. S. Mill to Bertrand Russell and Ezra Pound.
After retiring from his Harvard professorship in 1912 and moving back to Europe, Santayana persisted in his habit of marking up the books he was reviewing or texts on subjects he was writing about. Accordingly, the present compilation might well be entitled Santayana’s Critical Marginalia. If only the flavor of those remarks registers as they deserve it should, the edition in hand will have succeeded in fulfilling the editor’s ambitions for it, and the volume will not appear as a mere compromise with the many volumes which would be necessary to publish Santayana’s marginalia in their entirety.
Marginalia are customarily published in one of two ways: either in multivolume sets, faithful to every utterance and punctuation mark of the given writer; or in single volumes embracing all the marginalia of a given writer on a single work.3The volume in hand, obviously, does neither. It is rather an attempt to accommodate the financial realities of the day, which rule out multivolume sets, without sacrificing a reasonably exten-sive and usable compilation. In the same vein, marginalia already pub-lished includes Paul Grimley Kuntz’s edition of Santayana’s Harvard dissertation, Lotze’s System of Philosophy, Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1971, Appendix, 95105, and Kuntz, “Santayana and Lotze,” Southern Journal of Philosophy,Summer 1972, 115–21.
and Manuscript Collection, Butler Library, Columbia University; to the Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin; to the librari-ans of the University of York, Yorkshire; to the founding General Editor of the Santayana Edition, Professor Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., and not least to the tireless and precise work of Kristine W. Frost, Associate Editor of this volume.
York, U.K.
September 2007.
1Soliloquies in England(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922), 124.
2Early lists of books in the villa presumably belonging to Santayana were in fact
Strong’s; such is the opinion of the librarians at the Lauinger Library, and the editor’s.
3E.g., George Remington Havens, Voltaire’s Marginalia on the Pages of Rousseau
The following enumeration of pages does not reflect the relative importance of a given work sub specie aeternitatis;the numeration of mar-ginalia in each volume indicates only the degree of attention that Santayana paid to that specific work.
The selected texts from Santayana’s personal library are listed in alphabetical order by author (or by title if the work is “edited by” rather than authored) and then, most often, by date of publication. Editions of standard writers are listed by that writer, not by the editor; e.g., Lucretius, but not Munro, editor of the edition in question. Pseudonymous works are listed by pseudonym, followed by the author’s authentic name. A work in two or more volumes is most often treated as one book; there are a few exceptions.
A headnote for each text includes the author’s name in bold face type, the title of the work in italics, brief publication information (place and date), library location of the text, and the number of marginalia con-tained within the text (or by an indication of lack of importance in the editor’s view). Publisher or printer is not included in the headnote. Anonymous works are listed alphabetically by title.
Not all marginalia within a given text have been selected for inclusion in this edition. Text is chosen for content and style. Paraphrase occurs to save space. Crucial phrases or entire passages are given in the original language other than English, followed by translation in a footnote. Translations, which are literal, not literary, are the editor’s, unless other-wise indicated.
Each marginalia from a particular text is numbered consecutively, fol-lowed by the page number(s) and any other information regarding Santayana’s markings (‘marked’, ‘marked Z’, ‘underlined’, etc.) or place-ment (top, bottom).
Flyleaf matter is indicated as such, but presentation messages are not considered to be marginalia.
Marginalia within Santayana’s own works are not included here, since they are incorporated in the complete critical edition.
Key to location of texts: Columbia
Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York City
Georgetown
Special Collections, Lauinger Library, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
Harvard
Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts Le Balze
Georgetown University, Villa Le Balze, Fiesole, Italy Texas
Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin Waterloo
Rare Book and Manuscript Room, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario
Key to symbols and typefaces within the edition:
The reproduced text taken from a particular book is in regular ten-point typeface from margin to margin. It is not within quotation marks, but material quoted within the selected text is so marked.
Literal translations (in place of reproduced text) from another language into English are in italic typeface from margin to margin. When the text is reproduced in its original language, a translation is given in a footnote, in italic.
Text which has been paraphrased by the editor is placed within double vertical bars || … || and aligned from margin to margin.
Editorial comments are a smaller, nine-point size text within square brackets [ … ] and block indented. Comments or clarifying words within the text or marginalia also are placed in square brackets and in the smaller font size.
Santayana’s marginalia, which normally follow a block of text, are in bold ten-point typeface and block indented.
Footnotes immediately follow the text to which they refer within each numbered entry.
Any underlined text reflects underlining done by Santayana. A single slash through a character, as well as strikethroughs and insertions (marked by inferior carets) within the reproduced text or within the marginalia itself, reflect Santayana’s markings.
The term ‘marked’ indicates that Santayana drew a vertical line in the margin next to the lines of text reproduced (‘doubly marked’ indicates two vertical lines). ‘Marked X’ indicates that Santayana wrote an ‘X’ in the margin next to the text. ‘Marked Z’ indicates that he drew a wavy vertical line (probably for emphasis) next to the lines of text. ‘Underlined Z’ indi-cates a wavy horizontal line drawn under a word or words.
The “List of Authors” on the following pages informs the reader of authors of books in Santayana’s personal library which the editor has included in this volume, whether or not they contained marginalia. Authors of books in Santayana’s library which are not included in this vol-ume are noted at the end of the list. Book Two of George Santayana’s
Marginaliacontains an appendix with a complete listing of all of the works
Abell, Walter Acton, Harold Adam, Antoine Adam, James Aiken, Conrad
Ainger, Arthur Campbell Alain [Emile Auguste Chartier] Albert, Thomas
Alonso, Dámaso
Amery, L[eopold] S[tennett] Ames, Van Meter
Archer-Hind, R. D. [Editor] Aristotle
Asín Palacios, Miguel Atkinson, Brooks Babbitt, Irving Bacon, Francis Bailey, Cyril Bailly, Auguste Bainville, Jacques Balfour, Arthur James Barbusse, Henri Baring, Maurice Barnes, William Bartlett, Alice Hunt Bates, Ernest Sutherland Bede, Cuthbert
Blanshard, Brand [Editor]
Garbe, Richard von
Irazusta, Julio La Batut, Guy de [Editor]
La Fontaine, Jean de
Mann, Thomas
Montesquieu, Charles Louis de Secondat More, Paul Elmer
Neilson, W. A. and A. H. Thorndike Nevill, Ralph
Pilar, Princess of Bavaria and Desmond Chapman-Hutton Pizá, Pedro Antonio
Pound, Ezra Loomis
Royal Society of Literature of the United Kingdom Royce, Josiah
Sellars, Wilfrid and John Hospers [Editors] Semon, Richard
von Hagen, Victor Wolfgang Walden, Selma
Warren, Edward Perry [pseud. ALR] Waterman, Charles
Watson, John Broadus Weber, Alfred Weyl, Hermann Wheelock, John Hall Whitehead, Alfred North Whitman, Walt
Williams, Oscar [Editor] Williams, William Carlos
Winchester College Archaeological Society Woodbridge, Frederick J. E.
Woods, James Haughton Worth, Claud Alley Wycherley, William Young, George Malcolm Zeller, Eduard
Authors not included in the volume: Alexander, Samuel
Bonitz, Hermann Brooks, Van Wyck Drake, Durant Fadiman, Clifton Fairbanks, Arthur
Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier de Huysman, J.-K.
A L’Ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs
Courtesy of Rare Books Collections, Georgetown University Library, Special Collections Research Center,
Williamsburg, Virginia: 1951. Waterloo. No marginalia.
Hugh McCulloch Written in Florence: The Last Verses of Hugh McCulloch
London: 1902. Waterloo. No marginalia.
Niccolo Machiavelli Erotica
Milano: 1924. Waterloo. No marginalia.
Frederick Walter Macran English Apologetic Theology
London: 1905. Georgetown. Sixty-two marginalia. [Signed and dated 1905. Several passages are illegible.]
1 pp 98–99, marked
Just as a watch from the skill of its contrivance, and the elaborate con-struction of its mechanism, inferred an intelligent maker, so, only in a higher manner, did that vast machine the universe […] imply that it was the product of a vast and wise intelligence.
I wonder if the ingenious mechanism of the artist’s mind, too, must prove another artist, and so ad infinitum.
2 p 150, marked
More dangerous [to faith than materialism], because more subtle, is that pantheistic idealism which, starting from apparently the opposite pole of thought to materialism, issues in results scarcely less hostile to religion and morals.
3 p 150, marked
||The problem of reconciling the truth of the divine immanence with that of the personality of both God and man|| can be answered […] by the assertion of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity which, while maintaining firmly the
^im^personality of God, asserts that the nature of the Divine existence is not fully expressed by that term, […] He is supra-personal.
course, in individuals. Individuals alone are facts. The question then becomes: Find the divine persons.
4 p 153
||The moral difficulties posed by the Old Testament anthropomorphic notions of the deity.|| But in the case of a progressive revelation, as in all other developments, we can only judge of it as a whole and with refer-ence especially to its final goal
^in Tennyson and Browning^.
5 p 165, marked
||Tennyson’s “Nature, red in tooth and claw” quoted as evidence of the evolutionists’ disparagement of the theory of Divine origin.|| Their ethics were decidedly utilitarian, and the theory of Herbert Spencer, that truths which seem to us intuitive are really an inheritance transmitted from the slowly formed habits of our forefathers, was eagerly taken up by the school of sense philosophers.
A man who grasps at every sophism supporting his preju-dices naturally thinks his opponents will do likewise.
6 p 169, underlined
||Paradoxically, evolution has affirmed man’s dignity and made his posi-tion as the crown of creaposi-tion more certain than previously.|| It further proves […] that on this earth, as it now exists, there can never be a higher creature than man, and thus goes a long way towards restoring to him that place as the head and crown of creation, of which science since the days of the Copernican theory, to say nothing of the various forms of materialism, had tended to deprive him.
!
7 p 169, marked
Finally, the development of personality and character is seen to go hand in hand with that of the religious consciousness, and man can read in his own constitution and possibilities the assurance of his own immortality.
Can twiddle twaddle do and escape whipping?
8 p 173
||Macran finds a relationship between Christianity and the cosmic.|| What has Christianity ever had to do with “the cosmic”?
9 p 187, underlined
10 p 193, underlined
Champions, however, were not wanting for the defence of the doctrine of the incarnation, and the creed of Nice, at this critical juncture.
Does he think it was at the Riviera? How English!1 1The creed of Nicaea was proclaimed in
A.D. 325 at that city in Asia Minor, not at Nice on the Riviera.
11 p 204, marked
It may thus be quite true that, while Cerinthus and the Ebionites held humanitarian notions concerning the Person of Jesus, Theodotus and Artemon were the first heretics who denied the Divinity of Christ. If this view of the belief of the primitive Church be accepted, Priestley’s theory, that Christian dogma originated in the influence of the Platonic philosophy upon the faith of the early Church, falls at once to the ground.
[From “If this view”:]
Suavity and the desire to deceive are real gifts in the clergy. Of course, Greek philosophy admitted the divinity of the intellect and of the god, but why say these were in Jesus in particular? That was the christian and new ele-ment in Gnosticism. They were christians by accident.
12 p 211, underlined
[Fairbairn, Christ in Modern Theology,p. 17, quoted:]
“[…] a strange and significant thing: so much speculation about Christ, so little earnest inquiry into His actual mind; […].”
As if Christ had an “actual mind”! Conceive a psychology of the Holy Ghost and his hot feelings when his lineage from both Father and Son is called into question!
13 pp 218–19
||Macran lists at length the achievements of modern theology, saying that one can look to it|| […] for the presence with us of a Divine Spirit and Person; for that sacrifice was not merely the assurance of Divine forgiveness, but contained in its bosom the seed which was to blossom forth in a regenerated and purified humanity
^:of the time of King Edward VII
^.
14 p 237
[On the moral excellence of Christ:]
Didn’t Jesus see through “sin” altogether? In a clear mind repentance is only sadness, and one is nothing but the “son of man”.
15 p 241, marked Z
[Charles Gore, Bampton Lectures,p. 169, quoted approvingly:]
In past ages, “the versatility and intellect of the Greeks, the majestic discipline of the Romans, the strong individuality of the Teutons—each in turn has been able to find its true ideal in Jesus of Nazareth, […].”
Bosh!
16 pp 251–52, marked
For in our age men are more logical in their deductions, and more determined to draw inferences and extend the circle of results con-tained in any primary truth or idea.
Listen to this.
17 p 262, marked
[A quotation from Edward Caird, Evolution of Religion,Vol. II, p. 222:] “While the individual influence is very limited in its operation, and the bare universal is like a disembodied soul that has lost the power of action in the finite world, the individual who is regarded as the organ of a universal principle […] which has incarnated itself for perception or imagination in an individual life, takes hold upon man by both sides of his nature, and works with irresistible force upon all his thought and life.”
This is good. When a man has a certain talent, as the Master of Balliol has, it comes out even through the mists of a perverse phraseology.
18 p 267, underlined and marked
The great texts which assert the Deity of our Lord or His oneness with the Father may be forced into statements of the Divine immanence which found in Him its highest manifestation, and thus be deprived of all their significance. It would seem then advisable […] to direct attention rather to statements concerning the office, than those with regard to the Person, of Christ. Thus, He claims to stand in a peculiar
^!^relation to the human race as the Son of Man.
what he was talking about when he said “The Father” etc. The prophets had meant something, too.
19 p 271
||Macran ventures that half a century after his death was necessary for the transformation of Jesus into Christ, the Messiah.||
Three weeks would suffice. These good people have evi-dently no experience of a “religious” atmosphere. They should read the Lives of the Saints, or hear the pious gos-sip about a convent.
20 pp 272–73
||The Jews had no reason to think that Jesus would be born of a virgin.|| At least this would seem to be the case, judging from the dialogue of Justin Martyr with the Jew Trypo, when he endeavours to prove to the latter that the “prophecy had been spoken not with reference to Hezekiah as ye were taught, but to this my Christ”.
What a world these Jews and Christians lived in! What assumptions! What standards!
21 p 274, marked
||Pagan links to the accounts of Christ|| have been adduced, such as the Buddhist legend, are not by any means so close as is sometimes sup-posed, and really bear a stronger resemblance to the stories contained in the apocryphal gospels than to the narrative of our Lord’s birth as contained in St. Matthew and St. Luke.
There are connecting links.
22 p 299, underlined and marked
Paley, the one great theologian of that epoch [the 18th century], was a dis-ciple of the school of sense philosophy, a Utilitarian, if not a Hedonist, in his ethics, […].
“Cindy, don’t be vulgar.” [End-papers:]
Things learned from this book. 1. The incorruptible nature of parsons.
3. That the High Church party, in building up its defences again, has not thought of their foundation, but that its apparent return to catholic doctrine is a merely literary and pietistic pose. The whole pantheistic and evolutionist doctrine has been let in underneath, only an exception, honoris causa,1 being made for the person of
Christ.
4. That the contradiction between creation and redemption is not yet perceived, but is horribly trouble-some none the less, the incarnation (both philosophical and traditional) being made, as far as possible, a substitute for both doctrines. But in orthodox doctrine it is not a sub-stitute but a link.
(over)
5. That religion is always several thousand years behind conscience. Personal immortality, that flatulent exaggeration of selfishness, is called the “chief hope of mankind”, in an age when unselfishness is the virtue best felt and best practised.
1For reason of honor.
James J. Mallon and E. C. T. Lascelles Poverty Yesterday & Today
London: 1930. Waterloo. Three marginalia.
1 p 85, marked
||The measure used to define poverty is a very low standard.||
2 p 94, marked
Family Endowment cannot fail to interest anyone whose object is the reduction of poverty.
Guido Manacorda Benedetto Croce, ovvero: Dell’improntitudine
Firenze: 1933. Waterloo. No marginalia.
Thomas Mann Der Zauberberg
1 p 58, marked
Dem einzelnen Menschen mögen mancherlei persönliche Ziele, Zwecke, Hoffnungen, Aussichten vor Augen schweben, aus denen er den Impuls zu hoher Anstrengung und Tätigkeit schöpft; wenn das Unpersönliche um ihn her, die Zeit selbst der Hoffnungen und Aussichten bei aller äusseren Regsamkeit im Grunde entbehrt, wenn sie sich ihm als hoff-nungslos, aussichtlos und ratlos heimlich zu erkennen gibt und der bewusst oder unbewusst gestellten, aber doch irgendwie gestellten Frage nach einem letzten, mehr als persönlichen, unbedingten Sinn aller Anstrengung und Tätigkeit ein hohles Schweigen entgegensetzt, so wird gerade in Fällen redlicheren Menschentums eine gewisse lähmende Wirkung solches Sachverhalts fast unausbleiblich sein, […].1
Style & philosophy slump together.
[Santayana’s comment may be unfair. Mann gives us Hans Castorp’s meandering reflections, meandering in part because he suffers the con-stant fever of a man slowly dying of tuberculosis; hence “slump.” But if the comment describes Mann’s own style, it is mistaken, surely.]
1To the solitary man, various personal aims, purposes, hopes and prospects might
dangle before the eye, prospects in which to find the impulse to greater striving and achievement. But with impersonality all about him, and according to all signs the time itself of hopes and prospects were lacking, when those signs made it clear to him that they were hopeless, unpromising and hidden, and some manner of known or unknown question posed, after a final, more than personal, unconditional sense of all striving and activity were opposed by a hollow silence, so directly in the instance of honest humanity a certain paralyzing consequence of such circumstances virtually constant ….
Hugo Manning The Crown and the Fable: A Poetic Sequence
London: 1950. Waterloo. No marginalia.
Fosco Maraini Segreto Tibet
Bari: 1951. Waterloo. Eight marginalia.
1 p 116, marked
||The relationship between westerners and the Tibetans is compared to high officials at the circus; they the circus, we the onlookers.||Dante, Bach, the Roman Empire, the renaissance, Shakespeare, Leonardo, the Gothic cathe-drals, St. Francis? Only the slightest impression; but a Kodak, how portentous!
2 p 176, marked
Ho pietà di colui che non sa liberarsi dal proprio egoismo,
nella città incendiata dei desideri […].1
1I pity him who is not free from / His own ego, / In the burning city of desires …. 3 Table 50
So once the starlight drank the fire of love And spirit knew the flesh that it was of.
Jacques Maritain Art et scolastique
Paris: 1927. Waterloo. Thirty-four marginalia.
1 p 14
[Summary and critique:]
Is the separation of entelechies from their organs counte-nanced by Aristotle? All this is a view of the forest from the air, and [illegible]the roots. All habits are habits in mat-ter, though they may be sciences & arts of the spirit.
2 p 19
||Manual dexterity has no part in art; it is only a material, extrinsic quality.|| Art being a good, the agility is not more than a means to the pre-ordained degree of excellence. You may trill too much.
3 p 31, underlined
||The scholastics saw the virtue of the artificer not as muscle work or suppleness of fingers. It was no more than pure empirical agility|| which is formed in the memory and in the animal reason, which imitates art and dont l’art a absolument besoin.1
This ought to be looked up, to see how near the Aristotelians come to recognising the genetic order of things.
1Which art absolutely needs.
4 p 36, underlined
La beauté est essentiellement objet d’intelligence, car ce qui connaît—au sense plein du mot, c’est l’intelligence, qui seule est ouverte a l’infinité de l’être.1
“intellection”. The point is the beauty is an essence & can lodge only in essences.
1Beauty is essentially an object of intelligence, for whoever understands—in the full
sense of the word, it is the intelligence which alone is open to the infinity of being.
5 pp 36–37, marked
[…] our intelligence is not so intuitive as that of the angels; […]only the sensi-tive understanding perfectly possessed in man is required for the perception of beauty. Thus man may doubtless enjoy purely intelligible beauty, but the beauti-ful co-natural to man is that which comes from the delectation of the intelligence by sense and intuition. Such, also, is the distinctive beauty of our art, which oper-ates through tangible matter to cause joy to the mind. He would also thus believe that paradise is not lost. He has the taste for an earthly paradise, the peace and delight simultaneously of the intelligence and the senses.
Excellent.
6 p 39
[Santayana’s gloss:]
What a pity that an actual correspondence with spirit should be attributed to an origin in spirit! As if spirit were matter, power, or potentiality, and not the actuality & fruition of everything else.
7 p 45fn1, underlined
Ajoutons, s’il s’agit de la “lisibilité” de l’oeuvre, que si l’éclat de la forme peut paraître dans une oeuvre “obscure” comme dans une oevure “claire”, l’éclat du mystére peut paraître dans une oeuvre “claire” aussi bien que dans une oeuvre “obscure”.1
“Phèdre!”2
1Let us add that if it is a question of the “readability” of a work, if the brilliance
of the form may appear in an “obscure” work just as in a “clear” work, the bril-lance of the mystery may appear in a “clear” work just as well as in an “obscure” one.
2Santayana’s favorite play, which he tells us he recited to himself when, in
old age, he slept little.
8 p 46, marked
||On the attributes of beauty in a work of art|| […] it is the reflection on those attributes of a man’s thought or of a divine thought; it is above all the splendor of the soul which shows through, of the soul, principle of life and of animal energy, or the principle of spiritual life, of pain and of passion.
9 p 49, underlined
Dieu est beau. Il est beau par lui-même et en lui-même, beau absolument.1
Pure Being is absolutely fitted for intuition, each essence being so, & all their external relatives.
1God is beautiful. He is beautiful by himself and in himself, beautiful absolutely.
10 p 52, underlined
As soon as one touches upon the transcendental, one touches upon l’être1 itself, upon a likeness of God, upon an absolute[…].
Pure being, i.e. essence.
1Being.
11 p 99
[Santayana’s gloss:]
In the senses usually employed in action essence is unsat-isfying; the psyche requires truth. This is a practical man’s prejudice. Beauty, in nature and in pure art, is non-significance.
12 p 119, marked
||Christianity does not make art easy, but while it raises difficulties, it solves others, and makes known hidden beauties.||
13 p 181, underlined
||God prefers the charity of one soul to the greatest works of art.|| […] les âmes, sa nourriture à lui, la pâture de son amour.1
How sentimental the axiom of the democracy of spirit becomes in modern Catholicism!
1… souls, his best and only nourishment, the pasture of his love.
Jacques Maritain Réflexions sur l’intelligence et sur sa vie propre
Paris: 1930 (3rd edition). Waterloo. 126 marginalia.
1 p 20, underlined
Je peux savoir par la raison que Dieu existe, mais à condition de partir de l’être que je touche et je vois.1
i.e. in animal perception, not in intuition.
1I may know by reason that God exists, but on condition that such knowledge is
apart from the being that I touch and see.
2 p 21, marked
Pure Being = the Realm of Essence: as for Existence, it is many, essentially because in flux.
3 p 25, underlined
J’ai parlé de la vérité de à l’intelligence. L’intelligence est vraie, selon qu’elle juge la chose comme elle est. Mais les choses aussi sont vraies, selon qu’elles sont conformes à l’intelligence dont elles dépendent:1[…].
Translate: Things are true (there is a truth of things) as they possess essence.
1I have spoken about the the truth of the intelligence. Intelligence is true according
to how it judges the thing as it is. But things are also true, according to how they conform with the intelligence on which they depend.
4 pp 37–38, marked
Nietzsche’s madness is the consummation in a human body of everything awry in the spirit since Luther and Descartes. He was a lamentable victim! A great and generous writer who foundered in dementia because he wanted, in order to live, to improve on the truth. After believing that he could regenerate the world by the suppression of the ascetic ideal, and possessing a lively hatred for chris-tianity, he wrote a madman’s letters, signed THE CRUCIFIED, believing himself to be at the same time the Antichrist and the successor to Christ […].
5 p 41, marked Z
[Maritain quotes I. J. Marechal, Le Point de depart de la Métaphysique,
cahier II, 1923, p. 78.]
[L]e “contenu objectif de la conscience considéré en lui-même, abstrac-tion faite de son inhérence à un sujet psychologique et de sa valeur représentative d’un objet ontologique, le contenu de conscience consid-éré comme objet phénoménal.”1
Almost essence but not quite, since “content of conscious-ness” is an adventitious circumstance.
1The “objective content of the consciousness considered in itself, an abstraction made
of its inherence in a psychological subject and of its representative value as an onto-logical object; the content of consciousness considered as a phenomenal object.”
6 p 45
[Santayana’s gloss:]
Given essences are terms, not objects, in perception or opinion. They become objects only in pure intuition, if this fills the mind.
7 p 48–49, marked
qu’il y a de plus élevé dans la nature, secundum modum infimarum
creatu-rarum, quæ sunt corpora,parce qu’ils ont confondu les choses du connaître
avec les choses de l’action transitive.1
Which transitive action is only the physical basis of knowl-edge.
1Descartes and Kant were both wrong, because they conceived of intellectual
knowl-edge, which is the highest order in nature, to be the second mode in low beings, which are bodies, because they confounded things [objects]of knowledge with those of transitive action.
8 p 58
[Summary:]
Essence defined in intuition.
Intuition is not knowledge.
9 p 62, marked
||God, according to Cajetan on Aquinas’s Summa,has endowed us with certain kinds of perfection.||
Life is the deity that has worked this miracle.
10 p 67, marked
||Post-Kantian commentators on Aquinas believed consciousness derived from an automatic process.||
[Santayana summarizes:]
Imagery without intelligence.
11 p 68
[Santayana’s free translation of St. Thomas, de Veritate,I, 3:]
Description is on a different plane—the spiritual plane— from existence. But it is true description—partakes of truth—when it borrows the essence of the thing and asserts it of that thing.
12 pp 73–74, marked
||Kant was correct to wish, contrary to Hume and Leibniz, to restore the progressive and “synthetic” movement of reason. Of synthetic judgments
a priori,||he searched in them for the full law and complete regulation in the sub-ject and its alleged forms a priori,rather than believing them to reside completely in the object[…].
13 p 74, marked
[Of Maritain’s phrase, “spontanéité vitale”:]
14 p 148, marked
Nous rendons grâces à Pascal d’avoir rappelé à tant de baptisés en par-tance pour les paradis de la science humaine, et à certains théologiens qui plaquent les vertus chrétiennes sur l’homme de la nature comme un peu d’or sur du cuivre, que ce n’est pas une chose plus ou moins difficile, comme d’être un Archimède ou un César, mais bien une chose entière-ment impossible à la seule nature que d’être chrétien: ex Deo natus.Nous lui rendons grâces d’avoir affirmé magnifiquement la surnaturalité de la foi.C’est à la lumière de cette doctrine qu’il faut considérer les Pensées.1
What Cory means by “supernatural”.2But being Christian
is horribly human. The irrational force in conversion or faith is an animal force, common to all religions and all madmen.
1We give thanks to Pascal for having recalled to so many of the baptized leaving for
the paradise of human science, and to certain theologians who plate Christian virtues on natural man rather like gold on copper, that it is not so difficult to be an Archimedes or a Caesar, but something entirely impossible to the solely natural as to be a Christian, born of God. We thank him for having magnificently affirmed the supernaturalism of the faith. It is in the light of this doctrine that we must consider the Pensées.
2Daniel Cory, Santayana’s literary executor, read proofs and did
occa-sional jobs for Santayana while regarding himself as a philosopher and
viveur.
15 p 199, underlined
||Physical reality, which is the subject matter of natural science|| is observed, weighed, measured, and noted; then it is translated into algebraic sym-bols: but it is not sue,1in respect to its physical reality.
i.e. it’s intrinsic essence is not specified. Can the essence of matter in existence be specified?
1Known.
16 p 200, marked
||Moderns investigating matter|| continuent pourtant de l’appeler «sci-ence,» parce que ce qui leur importe ce n’est pas ce qui importait aux Anciens: la conquête intellectuelle et spéculative de la vérité procurée à des hommes libres par des qualitésperfectionnant leur intelligence et surélevant intrinsèquement leur humanité; mais c’est avant tout, depuis Bacon et Descartes, la conquête pratique du monde sensible, pour la béatitude temporelle du genre humain, qui usant de méthodes
dépendance à l’égard de celles-ci, et entrera sous la loi de fer du
factibilematériel).1
[At top:]
Quote in Americanism
This is all true, but expressed unamiably. The quality expressed in modern reflexion is not cognitive dogmati-cally, but aesthetic and emotional. We are satisfied with practice and poetry.
1… moreover continue to name their activity “science,” because what concerns them
is not that which concerned the ancients: the speculative and intellectual conquest of truth, procured for free men through qualities which made perfect their intelligence and intrinsically elevating their humanity. But since Bacon and Descartes above all, the moderns would conquer the sensible world for the temporal beatitude of the human race, using methods automatically infallible, and would control matter and physical forces,—(and in consequence would indefinitely increase their dependence on those forces, and would subscribe to the factitious iron law of materiality).
17 p 200, underlined
Or la «Physique» des modernes, si elle ne nous apprend rien sur l’être de son objet, sur la nature de la réalité physique comme telle, nous met en état d’utiliser merveilleusement cette réalité; aussi pour ceux qui jugent des choses au point de vue utilitaire et pratique, mérite-t-elle par excel-lence le nom de «science».1
1Now modern “Physics,” if it teaches us nothing about the being [or essence]of its
object concerning the nature as such of physical reality, permits us wonderfully well to use that reality; for those who judge things from the point of view of utility and practicality, it superbly merits the name of “science.”
18 p 205, marked
[…] when we set out in quest of verifying experimentally if two masses are or are not equal, we do not know at the outset, or by another method, what it is that con-stitutes equality.
The verification itself must be intuitive. The essence is given both to thought and to sense.
N.B. as if that didn’t touch the substance of things.
19 p 218
[Santayana summarizes and comments on a long footnote relating to P. Langevin, La Physique depuis vingt ans:]
20 p 222, marked
||Maritain considers Einsteinian relativity in space-time with reference to simultaneity of thought between two minds.|| […] I am in the presence of a major event, unknown until now, the relativity of identity. Each system of reference has its own truth; and it is not even possible to conceive of a thought that is what it is independently of a system of reference. What I think varies with the relative speed of the apparatus that registers thought […].
Capital. But while the essences of thought are determi-nate, the essences of instants are identical. All, therefore, in pure time, are the same instant!
21 p 252, marked
||On Einstein’s concept of time; it is not mathematical:|| separated from things and independent of all real movement, from rational mechanics, but it is none the less real time, the time of the philosophy of nature or of physics in the Aristotelian sense of the word, the continuity of impermanence in movement […].
22 p 252, marked
All that reminds one that Einsteinian physics is a mathematics of phenomena based on an integral empiricism.
23 p 253, marked
||It would be ridiculous not to admire Einstein’s scientific work. It is the end-product of the research of Maxwell, Lorentz, and Poincaré, and of the entire secular effort in modern quantum physics.||
24 p 298, marked
||Of the Thomist idea of man; Kant and Rousseau were anomalies.|| Man an omnipotent spirit in chains!
25 p 307, marked
||Rousseau confounded pessimism with Christian dogma, and rational-ism with art and civilization. But as for Aquinas, the love of God which infuses and creates the good in all things|| inclines toward all existence because all that exists is good exactly in its place; an optimistic metaphysical formula to which, this time, it is Rousseau who would counter [with]the motto of romantic pessimism: […].
26 p 310, underlined
||Maritain represents as Manichean|| certains grands artistes modernes, comme Baudelaire ou Oscar Wilde.
!
27 p 325, marked
||Thomist and modern idealism contrasted in terms of mental activity and spontaneity.|| While Kant affirms mental activity only in the course of destroying objectivity, because he has in view only fabricated activity, Thomism, because it sees mental activity truly immanent and truly vital, makes the objec-tivity of the understanding reason itself and the purpose [fin] of its activity.
Aristotle is a moralist in metaphysics.
28 p 326
||Thomism “drains” modern idealism insofar as the interiority of con-sciousness is concerned. The Thomists say|| que l’intelligence est une fac-ulté attirant les choses à soi d’une façon parfaite, «perfecte trahens res ad se».1
That is, things are conceived as their essences: the matter is accidental to their “being”. Yet makes possible their existence. This existence, however, ought to be included in the “thing”.
1… that intelligence is a faculty that draws things to itself in a perfect manner.
Jacques Maritain Sept leçons sur l’être,
et les premiers principes de la raison spéculative
Paris: n.d. (c. 1933–34). Waterloo. 151 marginalia.
1 p 14, marked Z
Progress by substitution is appropriate to the natural sciences; it is their law. The more purely they realize their type, the greater their progress. But that progress is not the law of wisdom. Its progress is a progress of deepening, of progress by adhesion and of the most profound union, of increasing intimacy.
Good science does this too.
2 p 26, marked
The essence of existence is a definition: essence caught in non-essential relations. This does not exist except when exemplified.
3 p 33
||Maritain quotes St. Thomas on necessity and on knowledge or cognition.|| Poor stuff.
4 p 34
||It is an error of many contemporaries who confound being [être]||, le sens commun et les sciences de la nature,1||with metaphysics.||
Etre = substance rather than essence.
1… common sense and natural science, ….
5 p 37
[Santayana tersely paraphrases:]
Animal faith excited by sense-data.
6 p 41
Terms. “Being” or “reality” as a mere term.
Logic, according to this, treats of terms only, not of essences. It is properly only a grammar.
7 p 42, underlined
||Pure Being is not a substance.|| Voilà la différence entre l’être du logi-cien et celui du métaphysilogi-cien, il est considéré là dans l’esprit […].1
There is an equivocation here. The terms, in their essence, are not “in the mind”: they exist only as objects of thought—as non-existent objects.
1There lies the difference between the logician’s Being and the metaphysician’s; it
is considered in the mind ….
8 p 46 note 1, underlined
[Aquinas on what Maritain calls the old meaning of the term, dialectic, in which Aquinas distinguishes between dialectic and philosophy.]
Dialecticus auter circa omnia prædicta procedit ex probabilibus; unde non facit scientiam, sed quamdam opinionem. Et hoc ideo est, quia ens est duplex: ens scil-icet rationis et ens naturæ. Ens autem rationis dicitur proprie de illis intention-ibus, quas ratio adinvenit in rebus consideratis; sicut intentio generis, speciei et similium, quæ quidem non inveniuntur in rerum natura, sed considerationem rationis consequuntur.1
i.e. are attained. If you see “yellow” it would mean that intent creates essence when it selects it: which would defeat all dialectic since it would have no constant terms.
1Dialectic, however, in all predictions proceeds from the probable, thus it does not
produce knowledge, but mere opinion. This idea derives from the two-fold nature of being: obviously, rational being and natural being. Being, however, is properly said to be rational by intention, as if reason found things by reflection, and the purpose of genera, species and the like were not found in the nature of things, but resulted from human thought.
9 p 54, underlined
||Concerning intuition:|| […] dans un moment d’émotion décisive et comme de feu spirituel l’âme est en contact vivant, transverbérant, illu-minateur, avec une réalité qu’elle touche […].1
Is there any such rot as this in St. Thomas?
1… in a moment of decisive emotion and like a spiritual fire, the soul is in living
contact, reverberating, alight with a tangible reality ….
10 p 55, underlined
||More concerning intuition: Intelligence and the concept of being [être] respond to such rat-like intuition [as above, 9 p 54].|| […] il faut toute la métaphysique non seulement faite mais à faire et dans toute sa croissance future pour savoir ce que contient de richesses virtuelles le concept d’être.1
Are you talking of the universe?
1… all metaphysics already known but also to be known, as well as complete future
faith are necessary in order to realize the potential richness of the concept of being.
11 pp 56–57
||On the relationship between spirituality, intellect, and readiness to rec-ognize metaphysical and natural reality.||
This is a notion of a divine plan or will behind the natural world; something truly “metaphysical and oracular”. It is not the object of philosophy but only of the metaphysics of the Socratic school.
12 p 61
||Of the perception of the ineffable:|| Here we come to the first root of the whole of intellectual life, discovered finally in itself.
13 p 74, underlined and marked Z
[Santayana criticizes Maritain:]
[…] (dès que je réfléchis sur l’être, je le vois clivé en types d’être qui diffèrent selon tout leur être: être créé et être incréé, être substantiel et être accidentel); mais encore, en vertu de sa structure essentielle elle-même, le concept de l’être enveloppe en lui d’une manière indis-sociable, à tous les degrés de sa polyvalence […] les deux termes liés et associés de la dualité essence-existence, […].1
[To “elle-même”:]
No criticism of grammar or myth. [At “termes liés”:]
Only if by being we mean existent being.
1… (as soon as I reflect on being, I see it cleaved into types of being which differ
according to their accidental make-up: created being and uncreated being, substan-tial being and accidental being; but again , by virtue of its essensubstan-tial structure, the concept of being contains in itself an inseparable manner, in all the degrees of its ver-satility, the two terms implicit in and associated with the duality essence-existence.
14 p 75
[Reconciliation:]
[…] l’essence et l’existence, qui hors de notre esprit sont réellement dis-tinctes.1
You come out all right, but after some confusion.
1… essence and existence, apart from our minds, are really distinct.
15 p 76, underlined
[…] toute chose est bonne (métaphysiquement bonne, nous ne parlons pas ici du bien moral), toute chose est bonne ou propre à être aimée, à être l’objet d’un amour, dans la mesure même où elle est.1
[At “bonne”:] say perfect.
1… everything is good (metapysically good; here we are not discussing moral good),
everything is good or proper to be loved, to be an object of love, in the exact measure that it is [exists].
16 pp 76–77
[Santayana’s generalized comment:]
17 p 77
||The Thomists follow the words of St. Thomas Aquinas:||“Every form fol-lows an inclination”; they say that is a truth evident in itself to which the meta-physical intuition of being applies.
This is the consequence of the Socratic origin of “meta-physics”. The good explains the real.1
1See Santayana’s comment to 11 pp 56–57, above.
18 p 78
[Santayana paraphrases a turgid paragraph of Maritain’s:]
Sympathy with existence (& motion) is natural to life, because it excites: cf. children. But it very easily turns to hate when it over-excites or hurts.
19 p 84
||The idea of being implies movement toward desired perfection.|| […]
wherever there will be an inclination in the entire universe of things which are not God, and which need to perfect themselves in some fashion,—and above all in the material world, a place metaphysically indigent,—there will be movement, change.
Myth with a vengeance.
20 p 84, underlined
||Two theories of movement were classically opposed: that of Heraclitus and that of Parmenides.|| C’est cette distribution de l’être sur […] ces deux plans, acte et puissance, sont eux-mêmes essentiellement ana-logues, c’est d’une manière analogue que les notions d’acte et de puis-sance se réalisent en ceci et en cela.1
Cf. Heidegger, “Je”.
1It is this distribution of being … according to two plans, action and power, which
are in themselves essentially analogous, it is in an analogous manner that the notions of action and power are realized in this and that.
21 p 85
[Sub-chapter: Extensive and Intensive Visualisation.]
We have here simply the accession to the order of the intelligible and the universal in general; […].
“cows”
22 p 85
After that a second step must come: the accession to the order of universal type and of essential intelligibility, in which the typical form is expressly unmasked and clear.
23 p 93, top
Scholasticism is myth denuded of poetry and reduced to grammar.
24 p 94
Excellent: metaphysics is pure intellectual fiction.
25 p 109
Rationalistic axiom: All being must be open to thought.
26 p 110, top
That all Being is “true” is known by definition, truth being the description of existence. But it does not follow that all Being is intelligible, or all truth rational: the surds are true too and intellect must bow to them. Power is before truth.
27 p 111, underlined
[…] l’essence de Dieu est raison de son existence, on dit qu’il est a se, il est à lui-même la propre raison de son esse, la raison de son existence, parce que son essence est précisément d’exister.1
ou plutôt de connaître, être esprit.2
1… the essence of God is the reason of His existence; one says that He is unto
Himself, He in Himself the pure reason of His Being, the reason of His existence, because His essence is precisely to exist.
2Or rather to know, to be spirit.
28 p 111, marked
||Descartes was wrong to oppose divine existence with the doctrine of efficient cause.|| Quelle philosophie rampante! L’existence divine est infiniment plus que cela, elle est acte d’intellection, c’est une existence de connaissanceou d’intellection,c’est pourquoi dire que Dieu existe n’est pas énoncer un simple fait empirique ni une simple position, même néces-saire, mais une éternelle justification intelligible, une éternelle et infinie satisfaction d’une infinie exigence intelligible, une plénitude infinie de repos pour l’intelligence.1
Yes: a hypostasis of the satisfaction of seeing necessity in things. But this is sophistical, because existence is neces-sarily contingent and unintelligible.
1What a crawling philosophy! Divine existence is infinitely more than that. It is
29 p 112, underlined
||God’s knowledge of Himself: in knowing Himself,|| il se veut, il s’anime,1[…].
The universal Narcissus.
1He wills Himself, He animates Himself.
30 p 112, marked Z
It is possible to reduce the principle of the reason of Being to the principle of iden-tity: by reduction to the absurd.
There is a reason for everything, because philosophers look for some reason for some things!
31 p 113
If the truth be the standard of rationality, everything is reasonable. But the truth is contingent.
32 p 114
[…] le principe de raison ne joue nulle part plus magnifiquement que dans le cas du libre arbitre.1
“Free will” is a moral not a physical indetermination. It is a physical determination on grounds morally insufficient.
1The principle of reason plays no part more magnificently than in the case of free
will.
33 p 116
[Santayana’s comment on Maritain’s scholastic logic:] A caused being must have a cause!
34 p 128
||On the distinction between action and agent:||It is clear that if an agent brings about a certain action, produces a certain effect, there exists a reason of being; that is to say, it is determined before the action has produced one effect and not another. We come to see—it is the principle of finality—that the agent has an order, which is an appetite or a love, it has a relation to such a good or it perfects itself or otherwise, which is its action.
Le feu parfait le bois en le brûlant?1
1The fire perfects the wood by burning it?
35 p 128, underlined
Not their essence: because if there were no O, water would not be produced (or desired) by H. It is part of the truth about H & O in this world.
1Which is their very essence.
36 p 128–29, marked Z
Poursuivons cette suite de réflexions. Peut-il y avoir une relation ou un ordre entre deux choses qui ne sont en aucune manière, entre deux néants, ou bien entre une chose qui est et une chose qui n’est pas? Pour qu’existe la relation ou l’ordre entre deux termes il faut que ces termes en rapport soient là tous les deux; il faut donc que l’effet ou l’action soit là de quelque manière pour que l’agent s’y trouve déterminé, ordonné, ou enclin. Qu’est-ce que cela veut dire? Il faut que l’action ou l’effet soit là avant d’être produite ou réalisée.1
Scholasticism at its worst.
1Let us pursue these reflections. Is it possible to have a relation or an order between
two things that do not exist in any manner, between two zeros, or even between one thing that exists and one that does not? In order for a relation to exist between two terms, it is necessary that both terms be in rapport; the effect or action must in some way be such that an agent may find it determined, ordered, or so inclined. What does that mean? It is necessary that the action or effect be present before being achieved or realized.
37 p 130, top
We name fire; the name connotes what fire does. Therefore fire could not have acquired its properties unless it had been first conceived to connote them, and so named FIRE.
38 p 130, marked Z
Mais poser cette chose que je nomme feu c’est précisément poser un ordre, une préordination ou une détermination radicale à l’action de brûler, action conçue par une pensée comme à produire, à accomplir par cette chose-là.1
N.B. Cf. note above.
1To set forth this thing which I call fire is exactly to set forth an order, a
preordi-nation or a radical determipreordi-nation in the action of burning, an action conceived by a thought to bring about, to accomplich that particular thing.
39 pp 130–31, underlined
To be fit to do that which you are fit to do is true teleology.
1But what is it to be a bird? It is exactly to be organized to fly, and there lies the
basis of the principle of finality.
40 p 132
||Maritain’s involved, mystical statement of the nature of God’s love.|| He loves & creates to satisfy his artistic essence.1
1Surely irony?
41 p 133, marked
[…] Dieu veut que le monde physique soit pour l’homme et que l’animal soit pour l’acte de voir et d’entendre […] il veut que les choses soient pour sa bonté et pour la communication de sa bonté.1Vult ergo hoc esse propter hoc; sed non propter hoc vult hoc.2
Yes: he wishes things to find satisfaction: he doesn’t wish the satisfaction first. I.e. the goods are good only for those natures. (God, here, is a name for the truth.)
1God wills that the physical world be for man, and He wills that animals exist to
see and to hear … He wills that things exist out of His goodness and for the com-munication of His goodness.
2He wills this, therefore it is by reason of His willing; but not by reason of this does
He will it.(Summa Theologica,I, 19, 5.)
42 p 135
Things must be preordained: else there would be no rea-son why they are as they are? And why were they preor-dained in that way rather than in another? Because that is what, in fact, comes. So that your principle of finality is merely a façon de parler.1
1Manner of speaking.
43 p 137
||Concerning finality (purpose) and the difficulty of accounting for fortu-itous elements involved, for|| tout agent agiten vue d’une fin, pour une fin, […].1
Each wind has a purpose, but the resultant currents of air have none? Or is it only air and heat that have a purpose, & are all winds (and vapours) fortuitous?
44 p 137, underlined
The only unity that [fortuitous events]can have is in a thought.
Then the whole material world threatens to be fortuitous: it would be a medley of accidents produced by moral agents at cross purposes.
45 p 139, underlined
Le Dieu de Spinoza, ce Dieu très imparfaitement immanent et pensée et étendue, comme serait une Géométrie subsistante; […].1
Excellent
1Spinoza’s God, this God very imperfectly immanent and intellectual and
extended, as the shreds of a geometry might be; ….
46 p 144, underlined
[On the contingency of being:]
L’être contingent, l’être qui n’est pas par soi, […].1
Note the notion of contingency, as derivative being.
1Contingent being, being that cannot exist by itself.
47 p 149
[…] si nous comparons ces deux notions d’être contingent et d’être causé, ou ayant en un autre la raison de son existence, nous voyons que le sujet propre de ce qui a en un autre la raison de son existence, c’est précisément l’être contingent.1
Hardly, since its cause is self-evident in itself and in its operation to produce this effect. The contingent could be necessary!
1… if we compare the two notions of contingency and cause, or finding in another
the reason for his existence, we see that the real subject of the reason for another’s existence is precisely contingency.
48 p 153
[On chance:]
||Among the ancients, chance results from several factors coming together in an unforeseeable moment. But a chance event might be fore-seen if the factors involved are sufficiently simple.||
49 p 155
||A man killed by thieves:|| il n’y pas une nature, un agent naturel qui soit de par sa structure préordonné à cette chose-là, préordonné à ce fait de la rencontre de ces trois événements, […].1
2
1… it is not nature, a natural agent which by its preordained structure,
preor-dained by the fact of the coming together of three circumstances.
2First falsehood (or premise).
50 p 155, underlined
||The meeting with thieves had no êtrebecause it is not a thought; it exists but is not|| une essence.
Not a Socratic nature.
51 p 162, top
Note the radical incapacity to conceive that the thought is a hint only because the organism is unified in its functions. This unity is indeed requisite to a unity in the action or product: the thought is only a dramatic transcript, and often mythical.
Marriage Ceremonies and Priapic Rites in India and the East
By a member of the Royal Asiatic Society n.p.: 1909. Waterloo. No marginalia.
Gerald Marsh Prairie Grass Poems
Dallas: 1947. Waterloo. Three marginalia.
1 pp 26–27
I am a follower after the demagogues,
Those who pass in kaledioscopic caravans, spotlighted one after another,
I crowd around bandwagons, shouting madly for them -When you look for me, you’ll find me standing By the rostrum of a windy politician,
Enclosed in the triumphant mob, the flurry and confusion, A part of the shuffling, noisey [sic] pulsating
Good: but some features are not characteristic of the “people”, except in rural America. The people are essen-tially the Poor. They are unhappy They are, at bottom, the beggars, those that society has found no place for.1
1Santayana’s comment on this parody or pastiche of Walt Whitman is his
only remark, to my knowledge, on “rural America,” of which he seemed to know little or nothing.
John Masson Lucretius: Epicurean and Poet
London: 1907. Georgetown. Three marginalia.
1 p xxxi
[Introduction.]
Inspiring all his merciless war with ‘Religion’ (by which he [Lucretius] means superstition), there is a deep and true love of man. Yes, and an essential reverence also, for he would have men ashamed to believe that the Gods can be propitiated by casting to them one of their fellows as a victim.
So the author not a christian after all?
William Maxwell The Folded Leaf
New York and London: 1945. Waterloo. No marginalia.
A. L. Maycock An Oxford Note-book
Edinburgh and London: 1931. Waterloo. No marginalia.
Lorenzo de’ Medici Poemetti
Edited by Emilio Cecchi Milan: 1943. Columbia. Fourteen marginalia. [Stanzas 78, 81, 108, 112, 113, 116, and 117 are marked. At 117:]
anti climax
1 p 25
Erich Meissner Confusion of Faces: The Struggle between Religion and Secularism in Europe
London: 1946. Waterloo. Seventy-five marginalia.
1 p 8, marked
||The main fact in European history for the past 400 years is the secular-ization of life.||
2 p 11, marked
[Meissner quotes Goethe:]
‘There is only one interesting thing about the Reformation and that is Luther’s character. That is what people admire. All the rest is but a muddle that is still worrying us daily.’
This is true intellectually, but not biologically.
3 p 12, underlined
The forces working for disunity, notably modern nationalism, proved infinitely stronger than any kind of secular humanism.
4 p 15, marked
||The many undercurrents of heresy in Europe were very strong in Germany.|| An ‘age of faith’ has never existed: […].
Nor a land of faith. Look at Ireland, & Spain.
5 p 15
||But there was|| an almost mystic fervour and desire to introduce Christianity into everyday life, into all secular spheres so that Christian men would behave and act differently from non-Christians.
Latent insanity in inspiration.
6 p 16
The anticlericalism of the illiterate was different in character from the eloquent and sarcastic criticisms of the Humanists. Erasmus and his fol-lowers mocked at the monks and clerics, attacking their ignorance and corruption, […].
The hard headed man sees that he is being deceived; yet his heart may be religious.
7 p 20
