Dominations and Powers: Reflections on Liberty, Society, and Government [1 ed.] 1560008202, 9781560008200

Citation preview

JUJE S With a new introduction by John McCormick

^H

II^UM >^ AND Reflections on Liberty, Society

and Government

r/

/^^0^/ry: JC\ ^^?- 3?c?

y^y

"Z

DOMINATIONS AND POWERS

*

By George Santayana AND

GOVERNMENT THE IDEA OF CHRIST IN THE GOSPELS OR GOD IN MAN PERSONS AND PLACES: THE BACKGROUND OF MY LIFE THE MIDDLE SPAN VOLUME TWO OF PERSONS AND PLACES :

REALMS OF BEING

THE REALM OF SPIRIT THE REALM OF TRUTH THE PHILOSOPHY OF SANTAYANA: SELECTIONS FROM THE WORKS OF GEORGE SANTAYANA OBITER SCRIPTA: LECTURES, ESSAYS AND REVIEWS THE LAST puritan: A MEMOIR IN THE FORM OF A NOVEL SOME TURNS OF THOUGHT IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY THE GENTEEL TRADITION AT BAY THE REALM OF ESSENCE

THE REALM OF MATTER PLATONISM AND THE SPIRITUAL

LIFE

DIALOGUES IN LIMBO

POEMS SCEPTICISM AND ANIMAL FAITH SOLILOQUIES IN ENGLAND AND LATER SOLILOQUIES CHARACTER AND OPINION IN THE UNITED STATES THE SENSE OF BEAUTY INTERPRETATIONS OF POETRY AND RELIGION

THE HERMIT OF CARMEL AND OTHER POEMS WINDS OF DOCTRINE THE LIFE OF REASON OR THE PHASES OF HUMAN PROGRESS Introduction and Reason in Common Sense I. :

II.

III.

IV.

V.

Reason in Society Reason in Religion Reason in Art Reason in Science

LITTLE ESSAYS

By Logan

DRAWN FROM THE WORKS OF GEORGE SANTAYANA

Pearsall Smith, with the collaboration of the author.

GEORGE SANTAYANA With a new introduction by John McCormick

DOMINATIONS AND POWERS Reflections on Liberty, Society,

and Government

o Transaction Publishers

New Brunswick (U.S.A.) and London (U.K.)

I

New material this edition copyright © 1995 by Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903. Originally published in 1950 by Charles Scribner's Sons. Excerpts from this book were originally published in The Atlantic Monthly, The "Introduction to the Transaction Edition" originally appeared (in longer form) as chapter 33 of

George Santayana: A Biography by John McCormick, published 1987 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

in

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Transaction Publishers, Rutgers The State University, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903. Conventions. in

—

This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. Library of Congress Catalog Number: 94-46394

ISBN: 1-56000-820-2 Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Santayana, George, 1863-1952.

Dominations and powers ernment / George Santayana cm. p.

reflections

:

;

on

and govby John McCormick.

liberty, society,

with a new introd.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1. I.

1-56000-820-2 (pbk. alk. paper) Philosophy. 2. :

Political science

McCormick, John.

JC251.S33 1995 320'.01— dc20

—

II.

Liberty

— Philosophy.

Title.

94-46394

CIP

CONTENTS Introduction to the Transaction Edition

Preface

xi

xxi

,

PRELIMINARIES Title

and Subject of This Book

The Sphere

i

of Politics

3

Naturalism

The Roots The Agent

6 of Spirit in Matter in Politics Is the

Whether Naturalism

10

Psyche

14

Is Irreligious

17

Composition and Plan of This Book

22

BOOK FIRST THE GENERATIVE ORDER OF SOCIETY

PART ONE GROWTH

IN

THE JUNGLE

Chaos and Order

33

The

35

Birth of Liberty

Primal Will

37

Needs and Demands

41

Liberty Lost

Vacant Freedom

44 46

Logical Liberty or Contingency

49

"Liberty of Indifference"

..

52

Captive Spirit and Its Possible Freedom

§§

Vital Liberty

Necessary Servitude

57 60

Servitude to Society

64

Servitude to Custom

67

Natural Selfishness and Unselfishness

71

CONTENTS

vi

Slavery

73

Transition from

Custom

to

Government

PART

78

TWO

ECONOMIC ARTS

The

Birth of Art

87

Claims and Conflicts of the Arts

92

Ambiguity of "Spirit"

96

The Ethos

in the Arts

of Agriculture

97 102

Domestic Morality

Monarchy Moral Vicissitudes of Monarchy Independence and Fusion among the Arts Intrinsic Values of Government

107

Psychology of the Directive Imagination

125

Radiation of Political Life

128

Ideal

iii

118 121

PART THREE THE LIBERAL ARTS Play

135

Music

138

Words, Words, Words

140

Language and Ideas Symbolic

143

Mythical Domination of Ideas

145

Economic and Liberal

148

The Dependence

How

Religion

Interests in Religion

of Morality on Religion

May Become

Political

155

160 168

Liberal Arts Liberate Spirit

BOOK SECOND THE MILITANT ORDER OF SOCIETY

PART ONE FACTION

Wars Wars

of

Growth

of Imagination

i77 I79

CONTENTS Private

Judgment Ignorant but Inescapable

Militant

Mind

The Mirage

vii

184 189

of Politics

194

Propaganda

198

Vicissitudes of Faith

202

The

204

Disappearance of Chivalry

Realpolitik

208

The Sentimental Bandit The Ravages of War The Secret of Tyranny

212

220

Revolutionary Liberty

223

Alien Domination

225

Dominant Crime

227

Distinction between

215

Crime and Madness

231

Ruling Madness

233

The

"2.^^

Paradise of Anarchy

PART

TWO

ENTERPRISE Degrees of Militancy

245

The Romance The Middleman

247

in

Moral

Trade

254

Radiation of Enterprise

261

of Enterprise

Ejffects of

249

Compound Units

Instability of

Domination

Trade

as

267

an Art

271

Dissolution of the Arts

275

The

278

Decline of the Great Powers

Natural and

Artificial

Allegiance

Militant Religions

281

284

BOOK THIRD THE RATIONAL ORDER OF SOCIETY The

Status of

Relativity of

Reason

in

Nature

Knowledge and

of

Morals

295

300

CONTENTS

viii

Masks

of Vice

and Virtue

303

Relativity of Reason in Politics

307

Rational Authority

310

Rational Reforms

315

Rival Seats of Authority

321

Utility of

The Irony

Government

325

Government

330

Confusions about Progress

334

Public Opinion

341

Spontaneous Democracy

344

Absolute Democracy

348

Moral Unanimity Impossible Restricted Democracy

352

of

355

The American "Melting-Pot"

No

359 362

Fixed Ideal of Society

Equality Not Conducive to Peace

365

Mystical Equality

366

Representative Government I

Only Generated Organisms Can Live

or

Think

370

Representative Government II

Moral Representation in Nature Representative Government III Moral Representation in Society Representative Government IV Should It Obey Public Feeling or Public Representative Government V Actual Functions of Parliaments

On

the Subjects and Objects of

Government

373

376 Interest?

382

384 391

"Government of the People"

395

Who

397

Are "The People"?

"Government by the People"

I

How Possible "Government by the People" II Psychology of Agreement

402 405

1

CONTENTS

IX

"Government by the People" III Ethics of Compromise

410

"Government by the People" IV Acquiescence

415

"Government for the People" I First Aims Proper to Government

421

"Government for the People" II Governments Cannot Serve All

425

"Government

Rational Limits of

Government

Liberalism in a Thankless

War

vs.

Interests

for the People" III

43

World

436

Order

Suppression of

438

War

440

False Escapes from Domination

445

The

447

Price of Peace

Many

Nations in

Through

Whom

The United

One Empire Might Wisdom Rule

States as

Leader

449 the

World?

453

Conclusion

456 461

Index

467

INTRODUCTION TO THE TRANSACTION EDITION

George Santayana's final work on Dominations and Powers continued throughout most of 1950. That the manuscript did not take even longer than forty-five years is tribute to his fidelity to his own thought and habits in the face of a multitude of interruptions. It was no easy task.

His

assistant,

Daniel Cory, wrote to Santayana's editor in

York, John Hall Wheelock, from

Rome on December

New

30, 1949, that

Santayana was blind in one eye and needed a magnifying glass to read with the other. He complained at times of being "desperately tired. No wonder, at 86!" Cory could "honestly say that I am really of Thank heavens I am steeped in his phiconsiderable use to him losophy, and feel so completely at home! But at times I am fearful of saying anything, as the old boy out composing a brand sell

new

sits

down and nearly knocks himself As ever, Cory was trying to

chapter!"^

himself and to allay what he assumed to be Wheelock's impa-

tience to receive the completed work; hence the variations in tone of his unduly exclamatory letter.

Santayana was unaware of impatience on Wheelock's part, and still of two minds about Cory. He had sent him back to England in the summer, where Cory was told he had a duodenal ulcer. Upon being informed of the fact, Santayana instructed Wheelock to send Cory a handsome check; "it might cheer him up now and accustom him to a milk diet. In Rome," he added heartlessly, "he can recover on spaghetti and beer."^ When Cory returned to Rome in the winter, Santayana found him "for the first time in his life ... proving

he was

really useful, as well as stimulating

— his doctor recommended — and he seems actually to have

total

abstinence from alcohol and nicotine

followed

this advice,

with the result of making him clear-headed and

ready to work." Cory came to tea three times a week, then worked on the revisions.^ XI

INTRODUCTION

xii

According to Cory, Santayana relied on him increasingly during components of the book; but Santayana 's instructions leave no doubt about Cory's function: it was to call to Santayana 's attention to repetition of idea or awkwardness of style. "...I expect you to remove anything that is the long period of re-writing and re-ordering the

troublesome, but not to substitute anything else without consulting

Santayana declared the book finished at the end of July 1950, remarking that now he had no further need to keep alive to finish it.^ Nevertheless, he continued fussily to revise bits and pieces in the typescript that the faithful Miss Tindall delivered, and later, on the Scribners galley proofs.^ He felt logey, he told Rosamond, as after a surgical operation, but the operation was his completing Dominations me.""*

and Powers? His editors on both sides of the Atlantic were full of praise for Santayana 's work, Wheelock and Kyllmann for Constable in London. Wheelock found himself "overwhelmed ... it contains surely the finest thinking and writing [Santayana] has ever done. He makes of his interplay of ideas an angelic discourse and divine music almost contrapuntal in

its

effect."^

uncontrolled: "I found

could say

it

it

Kyllmann 's report to his editor was equally Briefly, one

absorbing and enthralling

deals with the 'Mystery of Being.'

It is

beautifully writ-

He is never violent or dictatorial." Kyllmann added that although much of it was beyond his comprehension, "I know it is great." Any

ten.

incomprehensibility was that of a Beethoven symphony, which he does not "understand" either. "This may be his 'Swan Song,' he concluded, "but what a Song!"^ The editors' views so lyrically expressed were written to convince themselves and others. Santayana was gratified at Wheelock's praise, but he found the comparison of his work to music meaningless. ^° Dominations and Powers had caused Santayana difficulties that he had experienced in no previous book. He was candid about it in a letter of 1946: "The proposed book on politics which you ask about is amorphous; like some others of mine ... it has been on my hands for many years since before the other war. A mass of manuscript exists, and I have now to impose a plan on it which, through after-thought, I think will help me to arrange and rewrite the whole, if I live long enough. It was always called "Dominations and Powers," the point being to dis tinguish beneficent from vexatious government. This evidently involves defining first who is to be benefited, or vexed; so that much

—

u

/>fe

^

/^///r

INTRODUCTION

xiii

philos ophy precedes and accompanies the parts that ought to be, but are not^leamed/'"

His

title first

occurs in the correspondence in a

letter to

Mrs.

Winslow from Oxford, dated April 6, 1918. So much for the plan. (Santay ana's procedure was like Balzac's in his Human Comedy: the long sequence of novels was well on its way before he found that he had a plan. The same was true of Faulkner's "plan" for his Yoknapatawpha County series.) Santayana hoped that his book would satirico-tragic impressiveness (as in Don Giovanni) about the total view of human society given there. "^^ When he had indeed finished the book, he told Onderdonk that "it is a complete v iew of h uman life and politics a little, in that respect, like Nietzsche's Gaia Scienza. You can read a chapter, a paragraph, or a sentence, and rest until the next Sunday. "^^ That was excellent advice, but few if any people read Dominations and Powers in the mood of Don Giovanni, or as though it were cousin to Nietzsche's intellec-

have "a certain

—

The Gay Science.

tual frivolity in

The book is beautifully written, but it is d iminished by having been revised durin g the colde st years of the cold war. Santayana was aware of th e fact but unable to cope with it. The cold war underlined his scepticism about politic ians and politics in any society after that of fifth-

century Athens, and he had doubts even about

that.

The

subtitle.

Re-

on Liberty, Society and Government, was added late in the day, and must recall Santayana 's pungent explanation to Cory of his / y conceplion of freedom^ one which involves obligation: "You stumble,"^^^^^^^^ like Roosevelt, on the double meaning of 'free. 'You are free to breathe, if not throttled, but are you free not to breathe ? The bridegroom is free, but also obliged, to slee p with the bride."^"* That conception underlies the entire work It at once indicates a central aspect of Santayana's political philosophy and identifies a source of difficulty on the part of many readers to sort out the nature of his political thought. Having begged in his preface to be judged in the aspect of eternity, he was instead judged in the aspect of Stalin, Adenauer, and Truman. The gentleminded liberal was put off when in the same preface Santayana de-

flections

.

clared his possession of prejudice, in particular a prejudice for "har-

mony

in strength," as a

form of

lived. "LxDngevity is a vulgar

with eternity.

.

.

.

The gods love and keep

beauties that die young. lion to the

aesthetic perfection,

good, and vain after

vermin in the

I

in their

all

however

short-

when compared

memories the

prefer the rose to the dandelion;

I

rare

prefer the

lion's skin. In order to obtain anything lovely.

INTRODUCTION

xiv

would gladly extirpate all the crawling ugliness in the world.'*^^ In 1951, references to "vermin" and "extirpation" evoked the diction of Stalinist accusations against capitalism and other enemies of the Sovi-

I

Cold warriors everywhere were unaccustomed to Santayana's belief in a liaison between aesthetics and politics. Dominations and Powers is a fascinating demonstration o f Santay ana's strengths and weaknesses. Here he carried forward into ets.

politics

his fundamental

naturalism; in novel historical applications

psyche^ spirit^ and essence; and in one of schoolboy metaphors, he produces a pudding stuffed with stylistic plums: lovely insights, witty epigrams, in balanced, Johnsonian syntax. The book as a whole recapitulates previous positions without merely repeating them, a tribute to his philosophy and to his prose. The wealgiesses derive from the forced imposition of order on a mass of materia l written over a very long time.^lthough the three major sections, or books, are logical and just, with their titles the Generative, the Militant, and the Rational orders of society parts of the parts are interchangeable, the three orders melt and mingle on occasion, and the appearajice of order in the table of c ontents is deceptive. Prolixity, always a vice of Santayana!s-and often

he

his

re- states his allianc e of

own

— —

indulged,

is

abundant.

man

book

a rare achievement for a and reflecting his kind of scholarship. Dominations and Pow-

Prolix or not, Santayana's last

is

of eighty-eight. Steeped in tradition

half-professional, half-intuitive

ers in the best sense

is original.

One

premise, that

human

societies

by geography and climate, derives from Herder, ^^ but Santayana's applications of that premise are his own, providing sup-

are influenced

port for restatement of his thesis that the psyche, material rather than

metaphysical,

is

rooted absolutely in nature. His originality appears

we inherit will change in accordance with our tastes and associations, ultimately to form "political circumstances" (p. 5) when human ambition arises.*^ The redefinition of psyche leads logically to a re-examination of Will, of self-consciousness, which he asserts is "not self-knowledge" (p. 53), and of his familiar enemy, egotism. Again the doctrine of spirit lies at the center, and definition is essential: "I understand by 'spirit' only the awakened inner attention that suffuses all actual feelings and thoughts, no matter how scattered they may be and how momentary, whether existing in an ephemeral insect or in the eternal omniscience of God. Spirit so conceived is not

further in his demonstration that the psyche

INTRODUCTION an individual but a category:

it is

life in

xv

so far as

it

reaches pure

actuality in feeling or in thought." Spirit is thus the antithesis of self,

yet allied to

it.

Self with

its

intuition of free will nevertheless decides

matters "contingently and inexplicably"

work

tism, contingency, all

"as in a hooded lantern, to guide

And

(p. 54).

Primal Will, ego-

against spirit and monopolize it

some

in

that fatal adventure is the Militant

fatal

its light,

adventure"

(p. 55).

Order of society, detestable

but completely comprehensible.

Within this context, Santayana wrote a most impressive chapone essential to comprehension of his politics: the chapter on "Vital Liberty." Here he asserts that the terms "liberty" and "free- /ve^y^>^ dom," often used interchan geably, are distinct. "Freedom," deriv- ^ ing fro the German FreiheiU idiomatically in English means "free-/ y d om from" n ot "freedom to." In passing Santayana takes a swipe ^^^^^ Franklin Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms," all "freedoms from." "Liberty," de riving fr om the Latin libertas, is closer to an absolute, tp a "vi tal" state or exercise. "Freedom," he maintains, "is more than a demand for liberty; for it demands insurance and protection by provident institutions, which imply the dominance of a paternal government, with artificial privileges secured by law." Such freedom negates a free life and "shows us liberty contracting its field and bargaining for safety first." The great question then in morals andjioliter,

m

/

tics is

"What^^herty.mll

short, partial

answer

is

bfin^^^t^^

that vital liberty requires forjthexreature a

med ium fit to entertain and develop his natural powers. is

not vacant

Hnm^n

Vital liberty

liberty.

higtnry hag

hf^pti he^rf^ft

of liberty pf f^py Hpgrriptinn^ for

most part, thanks to the predominance of the Militant Orde.rs-of various kinds: theocracies, tyrannies, monarchies, democracies, comthe

munistic and fascistic militancies,

upon various

cultures,

and

all

of which orders were imposed

irrational therefore. Political philosophies

flounder in "the treacherous waters of passion"

cism displaces

rationality:

"The

often a hypocrite in practice"

(p. 195),

fanatic is a tyrant

on

and

fanati-

principle,

and

(p. 200). Society, Santayana says, "ex-

by a conspiracy of physiological forces" (p. 203), thus stoutly maintaining his allegiance to naturalism. Such forces give rise to faith ists

and

mad loyalties,

eliminating individual inspiration and "Chance which he compares to "a hoop which outruns the child that has set it rolling; its very speed-Condemns it, when left to itself, to meander and to flop." But if a chance impulse is taken up, "it is more to

loyalties,"

INTRODUCTION

xvi likely to

be maintained; for its cause recurs. Embody

that

madness

in

some institution, book, or sect, and each victim is recalled to it by the example and countenance which the rest give him; and his delerium is canalised, reasoned out, and turned into a little orthodoxy" (p. 203). Santay ana's views on wars past would not engage the pacifist. He distinguishes between "chivalrous wars" and modem wars conducted by Realpolitiker, supermen, as when he asks, "are they nothing but ill-bred little boys?" (p. 211). Chivalrous wars were fought to impose justice and in the consciousness of the imminence of death; "the knight always preferred death to dishonour."

"When death is habitually

defied, all the slavery, all the vileness

A

smiling and mystic neighbourliness of life is defied also with death, as with one's own shadow, intensified life enormously in the dramatic direction; it kept religion awake; it gave a stiff lining to wit, to love, to fashionable swagger; and it concentrated the

whole gamut of human passion and fancy within each hour.

Shakespeare's theatre (not to speak of the Spanish)

monument to the mentality of chivalry.

is

a living

In contrast with that free-

dom and richness we can see to what a shocking modem society has condemned the spirit." (p. 207)

degradation

These are the words of a man who never fought in a war and who rode a horse only once, as a young man in Avila. The view of chivalrous war is idealistic and theatrical, even though he had been reading Stephen Runciman's The Crusades, as well as Shakespeare and Calderon. "The will to live," he remarks in his discussion of Realpolitik, "could be the basis of morals only for a brute that had not discovered that he was mortal. ." The authentic Epicurean voice of Santayana speaks when he adds, "Survival is something impossible: but it is possible to have lived and died well" (pp. 209-210). Santayana believed that the French Revolution was a special kind of madness leading to all manner of nastiness in the modem world. It was "not liberal except verbally and by accident"; it was a product of "the whole tender school of Rousseau... politically the Revolution led to nationalism, industrialism, and absolute democracy, intellectually it ended in romantic egotism" (pp. 224-225). These views pre. .

pare the

way

for his suspicion of

modem

democracies, the bases of

which he finds philosophically unsound, and the practice of which is distorted by the stupidities, folly, and villainy of political leaders, which lapses become another form of militant repression of minority views.

INTRODUCTION It is

xvii

native to spirit to love anarchy, but anarchic spirit

tion, for "Its

own anarchy would kill

self-government." "To live without

it,

let

indeed, and so the spirit actually lives in

a contradican exercise in

is

because life is or hindrance would be

its

life

happier moments, in laugh-

quick thought. Yet there is a snare in this vital anarchy. It is like the liberty to sign cheques without possessing a bank account. You may write them for any amount; but it is only when a precise deposit limits your liberty that you may write them to any purpose" (p. 241). Communism and fascism, on the other hand, cannot build anything permanent, for they do not "reckon with [their] host, which is the human psyche" (p. 274). Here we have the most optimistic •/ / statement in Santayana's entire sceptical treatise. The third and longest section of Dominations and Powers dis- ^^^ plays a change in tactics. Now Santayana changes from criticism ofr^o^J^^ past Of ftYiRting modfts of government to presentation of a philosophicalj rational ideal for government. That ideal begins, like the Scepticism and Animal Faith of a quarter century earlier, in a distinction between animal and human psyche subject to primal Will. "Good and evil, in a dumb imquestioned immediacy, exist for the beasts. They are moral creatures vitally, though not intellectually; and their vital virtue creates a genuine moral criterion for their lives, which we can appreciate in their strength, ingenuity, courage, and beauty." Here speaks Santayana the visitor of zoos and close observer of beasts. "Yet those virtues, divorced from transcendent reason and justice, seem vices to us" (pp. 304-305). Here speaks Santayana the philosopher, who proceeds to define "reason": "It signifies a conjunction and mutual modification of impulses or impressions in a man ter or in

or in a society: a

life

led in the light or

shadow of

the past and the

(p. 307). At once one must note that Santayana writes "posand not "future." His ideal society is frankly ideal. HeisJiot prescribing medicine for any actual po liticaljsy stem at any particular tinie. A major axiom of his definition of reason is his statement that "Circumstances render one action rational and another irrational" (p. "the universe is inhuman," man 313). And with three further axioms possesses a vital imaginative nature, and "The great moral error is not to admit authority at all" (pp. 313-325) Santayana is on his way. His ideal system is more than a little Platonic. He describes the outlines of a form of world government presided over by benevolent rulers, benevolent in that their training and identity with their various societies would permit them to bring to light the best qualities, the

possible" sible,"

—

—

INTRODUCTION

xviii

fullest potential merits of their populations. Such an order would be both flexible and authoritarian, always capable of imposing sanity upon our temptations to madness. In this Santayana is as much the student of his countryman, Francisco de Quevedo, as of Plato the Quevedo who wrote, **Hay en el corazonfiirias y penas ("The heart is burdened with pain and fits of madness"). Ancient Greece and Spain predominate, finally, over empirical Britain and pragmatic America. Santayana 's rational order is very like that of Machiavelli. Not the

—

**

Machiavelli of the Elizabethans, an lago figure, but the Machiavelli of Isaiah Berlin's portrait: a supreme political realist trying to see what is there and to work with it, whatever it might be, and at the

same

time, holding forth an ideal based in historical research and

observations of the contemporary

Italy. ^^

Where Santayana 's outlook

from Machiavelli 's is in the respect in which, as Michael Oakeshott wrote in a review, "his attitude is at bottom aesthetic" and his fullest affinity is with Spinoza. ''^Dominations and Powers is an achievement of philosophical imagination such as we have become unaccustomed to in these days of minute dissection. "^^ Leonard Woolf wrote a hostile review, saying that Santayana 's book "may be anything from the communal actions of the fairies to the one thing which it canthe ethical consistency of Peche Melba not be is politics."^^ On the American side of the Atlantic, reviews typically were respectful of the first two books and dubious about the third, Santayana 's ideal state. Sidney Hook reviewed the book in his best hectoring manner, remarking Santayana 's "lapidary" prose, accusing him of "lordly ignorance of contemporary fact"; he saw Part Three as "a kind of neo-Fascist corporativism." Santayana could propose a benign authoritarian system because of his "assumption that most people are either children or idiots," and in his disinterestedness. Hook saw only a lack of compassion.^^ Reviews in the Spanish press were uniformly uncritical and self-congratulatory that a Spaniard could write such a book.^^ Santayana was pleased when the British reviews came out, especially by Oakeshott's, but he complained earlier that no serious or adequate review of his book had appeared, "because it is not a book to read at one sitting or to place at once in the school-master's list of graded praise and blame, which seems to be what critics think their vocation."^^ Nevertheless, he asked Wheelock to send any notable reviews, "whether favourable or hostile, more to feel the pulse of America than to read my own doom."^"* He was put out that people differs

—

INTRODUCTION

xix

read his book in exclusive consciousness of contemporary politics, "On which every body should be on the right (one's own) side."^

Sidney Hook displayed ignorance of Santayana's awareness of contemporary fact. He had read John Hersey's Hiroshima; the Soviet Union and Korea were much on his mind. At a low point for the United States, in the Korean War, he dreamt of a new landing of American troops, causing the journalist to whom he described the dream a sensation of metaphysical queasiness a few hours later when he heard newsboys shouting of the landing at Inchon.^^ In a letter written seven months before his death, Santayana said that although he rarely went out in the city, "I was never more conscious (or studious) of what goes on in the world, and there is nothing monastic about

my

daily

life,

in spite of living in a nursing

home where

the sisters

[British for nurses] are nuns."^^

Hook's response

is

comprehensible, however, in the face of the

disparity in Dominations a nd Powers between the

and a nalytical

parts,

first

two historical

and the third, which unwittingly invited

unphilosophical readers to apply the writer's words to contemporary

a purpose remote from Santayana's intention. One result is book has never had the readership it deserves. Not only did a

realiti es,

that the

professor-journalist such as

Hook miss his idiom, but so did the profes-

sors of philosophy pure who contributed to a special issue of the

Colum-

bia University Journal of Philosophy mainly given over to reviews of Dominations and Powers. In one of Santayana's last letters to Rosamond Little, written

four months before his death, he said that "American

professors [and] advanced students

. .

.

are so full of the controversies

of the day that they have no eye for history or anthropology; and this at the

moment when

the weight of the East

is

bearing

down the Asiatic

pan of the sempiternal balance between tradition and impatience. The orientals have caught our impatience, but we have no[t] caught their experience."^^ o

John McCormick

November 1994

Notes 1.

Cory to Wheelock, Rome, December 30, 1949. Scribners Archive. Daniel Cory's

GS consisted of friend, intermittent assistant, dependent, surrogate errant son, and literary executor. John Hall Wheelock was Santayana *s editor

relationship with at Scribner's 2.

GS

to

Sons, his U.S. publishers.

Wheelock, August

14, 1949. Scribners Archive.

INTRODUCTION

XX 3.

4.

GS to Rosamond Little, December 13, 1949. GS to Cory, July 28, 1950. Columbia. Cory quotes a portion of this letter in

The

Later Years, p. 302, thus shooting down his own implication that he was virtually co-author of Dominations and Powers. Santayana was unaware that Cory had offered to Wheelock to "intercede like Mary with The Most High** if "there are any passages that might arouse animosity ... as the political conscience is very touchy at the moment." Cory to Wheelock, April 25, 1950. Scribners Archive. Cory repeated the offer on October 1, 1950, and expressed hope that the Book-of-theMonth Club would select Dominations and Powers. 5. GS to Wheelock, August 4, 1950. Scribners Archive. 6. Miss Undall was the English typist of GS*s manuscript in Rome. 7. GS to Rosamond Little, October 16, 1950. Rosamond was the wife of GS*s nephew, George Sturgis, and beloved correspondent from 1929 untile GS*s death in 1952. She married David Little after Sturgis 's death. 8. Wheelock to Cory, April 21, 1950. Scribners Archive. Wheelock had received I before completion of the whole in July. O. Kyllmann, "Reader *s Report on Dominations and Powers, by George Santayana," January 23, 1951. Harvard. 10. GS to Wheelock, May 12, 1950. Scribners Archive. And to Cory, May 10, 1950. Columbia. 11. GS to Professor Hexner, April 21, 1946. Pennsylvania State University. 12. GS to Cory, Rome, November 26, 1934. Columbia. 13. GS to Onderdonk, July 31, 1950. Columbia. 14. The Later Years, p. 299. 15. Preface, pp. viii-ix. Dominations and Powers (New York: Charles Scribner*s

Part 9.

Sons, 1951). All references are to this edition. 16. Herder, IdeenzurPhilosophiederGeschichtederMenschheit, 4 woh. (1784-91). Professor John Yolton emphasized in his article on Dominations and Pow"The Psyche as Social Determinant," Journal of Philosophy, XLIX (March

As

17. ers,

1952), 232-239. 18. Isaiah Berlin, Against the Current

(New York: Viking, 1980), "The Originality of Machiavelli," pp. 25-80. 19. Michael Oakeshott, "Philosophical Imagination," Spectator, November 2, 195 1, 578. 20. Leonard Woolf, 6, 1951,

"The Nature of Politics," New Statesman and Nation, October

385-386.

Society, and Mr. Santayana," New York Times Book Review, 1951, p. 1 ff. Santayana remarked that Hook, "whose early books about the Russian Revolution instructed and pleased me, disappoints me a little by develop-

21. S.

Hook, "Liberty,

May 6, ing his

own

current opinions instead of considering mine."

GS

to

Wheelock,

May

11, 1951. Scribners Archive.

22. E.g., Joaquin Rodriguez Castro, "El ultimo libro de Jorge Santayana," Alcala

(Madrid), nos. 18-19 (October 1952), 19. GS to Clemens, June 4, 1951. Duke University.

23.

GS GS

to

25.

28.

GS

to

Wheelock, May 11, 1951. Scribners Archive. Wheelock, November 23, 1951. 26. George Waller, Boston Daily Globe, September 30, 1950. 27. GS to Miriam Thayer Richards, February 7, 1952. Letters,

24.

to

Rosamond

Little,

May

4, 1952.

p.

428.

PREFACE

Many drew

volume of The Life of Reason^ I by the ethics of Plato and

years ago, in the second

a sketch of

human

society inspired

was then a judicial moralist, distinguishing the rational uses of institutions and deciding which were the best. If now I submit to the public some subsequent thoughts on the same subject, I do so with a more modest intention. I have become aware that anyone's se nsQ of what is good and beautiful must have a somewhat narrow foundation, namely, his circumstances and.Jiis__particular br and of human nature f and he should not expect th e good or the Aristotle. I

beau tiful after

own

heart to be greatly prevalent or long mainPlato taine d in the world. and Aristotl e spoke with authority for the his

ancient city then in

its

decline 5 their precepts are

still

pertinent to

the art of government j but they hardly consider non-territorial

powers, such as universal religions, nor the relation of the State to the non-political impulses of

human

nature.

What

to

them seem ed

abso lute and permanent was in fact relat ive and temporary.

Circu mstances from the beginning had prepared limitation in al l

moral dogmatism.

mora.) climates, amidst peopl£J)f

me

'