For wisdom brightens as they fade away.

For the second volume of the Monthly, issued in the spring of 1886, he wrote an article on "The Ethical Doctrine of Spinoza," and a sonnet, the later an early example of his non-conventional spirituality. It ends:

Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine

That lights the pathway but a step ahead

Across a vied of mystery and dread,

Bid then the gentle light of faith to shine

By which alone the human heart is led

Unto the thinking of the thought divine.

Constant Criticism

Among his teachers, and later his associates, were George Palmer, James, and Royce-all of whom he vigorously criticized; this criticism continued after he was elevated to a professorship in Philosophy in 1907.

When Santayana was first appointed to a teaching position at Harvard, the eminent historian Henry Adams cautioned him: "I tried to teach history there, but I couldn't. You can't teach anything there."

Santayana evidently shared Adams' belief, for after 23 years of the scholarly life in Cambridge, he withdrew from the world to his convent in Rome