Abstract

The present collection of essays represents a painstaking effort on the part of the editor to present the reader with an adequate account of the genius of Santayana as a philosopher, critic, and man of letters. The effort is a laudable one but fails primarily because the genius of Santayana simply cannot be adequately represented or reflected in a small volume of collected essays. This edition brings out only occasionally a glimpse of the true qualities of Santayana. The majority of the essays do not reflect his genius and many of them might better have been consigned to whatever literary limbo is proper to such essays. Frequently they are far too brief to have any real worth. For example, ‘Hellenism and Barbarism’ is dealt with in seven pages, ‘Towers’ in four and ‘Idealistic Historians’ in two pages! Regrettably the brevity of these selections and a few others is not compensated for by any striking qualities of imaginative insights or originality. At best most of the essays are innocuous. The few selections on politics are uninspiring and superficial. The philosophical essays, including the title essay on the ‘Birth of Reason’, occasionally offer interesting observations but they lack the forcefulness, originality, and well argued character of Santayana’s more systematic contributions to philosophy. Despite the good intentions of the editor, and certainly a labored effort to do justice to Santayana, their publication constitutes an insufficient tribute to the memory of the man. The best feature of the book is the introduction with its strictures on contemporary British philosophy amusingly described in one instance as a progression from ‘sense-data’ to ‘sentences’. We also appreciated the editor’s attempt to justify many of the essays on the grounds of the importance of the imaginative element in Santayana. However, we felt that even here his case foundered upon the shallowness of many of the selections.