Your book, for which many thanks, has kept me browsing agreeably for a week. I confess that I was more interested in gathering your own opinions than those of the innumerable professional psychologists whom you review and whose theses seem to me almost entirely verbal. In describing or judging a person or his life each epithet we use has slightly different connotations but is there any reason for trying to define exactly what each of these epithets ought to indicate everywhere? I doubt that particular instincts or organs need be found in people for each conventional quality. Still in proposing to limit each to specific function we may make many subtle observations and clarify many a judgment that we should otherwise have left vague. This is the chief interest which has kept me reading your book almost from beginning to end. The chief place that attracted my theoretical attention was where you invoke the organic source and function of character. Two words which as far as I remember you never use are those that come to me most naturally in this matter: the psyche, and idiosyncrasy. The psyche is the life of the body with all its functions more or less combined to evoke consciousness and action; and idiosyncrasy is a name for the marked special habit of any individual. With this literary psychology of men and nations I should be content, if in describing this the observer did not call in any disembodied power to direct either thought or action.

As to what you wish to call character, I am interested but not able to join you in giving to that special virtue any exclusive or supreme respect. You know perhaps that I am not a dogmatist in ethics, aesthetics, or politics. What you admire is stoical and certainly imposing, when genuine; but a thousand Combinations of other virtu arise in the world which appeal to me more. At least you select personages as occasional examples of the "highest" character who do not figure in my personal pantheon. But you know what our friend Spinoza says to the effect that Peter's idea of Paul expresses the nature of Peter better than that of Paul; and I see especially in your last pages, that you are a champion of the spirit of your time ("my" time was rather the secure 1890's) and that your ideal of the "highest" character is precisely that which the coming days seem to demand.   With renewed thanks, yours sincerely   G. Santayana

Ralph, Barton Perry, Edgar pierce Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, was a student and colleague of Santayana's for more than 16 years, and shared a place with him in Harvard's--and America's--Golden Age of Philosophy, the years when William James and Josiah Royce also taught at the college.

Perry recalled that: "I saw Santayana some years ago in Fiesoli, where he was visiting his fiend, Charles A. Strong. Santayana was, at that time, living in a hotel in Rome, and I remember his saying, with some pride, that months would pass without his speaking to anyone except the headwaiter. It was evident that he prided himself on his solitude.

"He was my teacher from 1896 to 1899, and colleague in the department of Philosophy from 1902 until he left Harvard in 1912. I remember his as a brilliant teacher who gave polished lectures but also enjoyed informal meeting with his students in the rooms which he than occupied on the corner of Brattle and Hilliard Streets. When he left Cambridge I inherited the pulpit desk before which he was accustomed to stand when he wrote.

"He always took a somewhat Olympian view of human affairs, refusing himself to engage in the struggle between opposing ideologies. He was, in my judgment, one of the half-dozen most distinguished thinkers of his day, and one who knew how to make literature out of philosophy."

During his undergraduate days Santayana worked for the Lampoon and "The Harvard Monthly," a literary periodical. He was elected to the humor magazine on the basis of two cartoons he had submitted at the start of his freshman year. One of them depicts two young ladies depositing their luggage in Holyoke House (then a dormitory), and reprimanding the "clerk," a Harvard senior, for inefficient service in "this hotel." He never did ay writing for the Lampoon, because, he remarked, his style was"too literary, too ladylike, too correct."

While he was on the 'Poon staff, Wil- liam Randolph Hearst '88 became business manager. According to Santayana, many students resented Hearst's habit of smoking long cigars while strolling through the Yard; they considered it a tasteless exhibition and a showing off of his wealth. Hearst did, however, provide the Lampoon with a luxurious new building, and Santayana notes that "he could sell ads."

Taste for Puns

Santayana appears to have had a taste for puns, not always of the most hilarious sort. One of his cartoons shows an undergraduate and a young lady sitting primly on a couch; the student is telling his girls, "If I look a little sheepish Miss Roseleaf, and all my friends tell me I do, it is because my clothes are all wool."

In another of his drawings a mother and daughter are staring at a handsome young minister walking down the street; the mother says, "Rosalie, don't you think Mr. Aureole is a real ministering angel?" Her daughter replies, "No, mamma, but I think he's a real angelic minister."

A bit of slang is used in one of his cartoons in the 'Poon's 1885 volume, which depicts a matronly woman pointing with pride to a portrait of a sanctimonious-looking minister. She is saying to the young man with her. "And this is my son the canon." The young man "becoming a bit bored," replies, "Ah yes, I have always heard there were a great many big guns in your family."

Perhaps the most famous of Santayana's Lampoon drawings is one which appeared as the lead cartoon in one issue. Entitled "Catechism Modernized," it shows a stern teacher testing a boy of about eight on his catechism. The dialog runs:

Teacher: What is the difference between the body and soul?

Johnny (vacantly): The body is mortal and material, the soul --