Character and Opinion in the United States
by . New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1920. 8vo, x+233 pp. $3.50.
EXCEPT for proficients in philosophy, Santayana’s book on America may prove baffling. The last two of his seven chapters are the least hard instantly to grasp. There he sets forth first the typical characteristics, as he sees them, of our present country, and secondly the relation of OUR present life to that of the England from which it springs in the spirit. His account of our moral antecedents, however, faithful though it be, leaves an uninitiate reader breathless, and so do his chapters on Harvard as an academic environment, his over-studied portraits of William James and of Josiah Royce, and his account of the little thinkers who are now following these two — in comparison memorable, if not great. Like all honest books, the while, this makes, even upon those who cannot profess fully to understand it, a distinct impression. As one puts it down, one feels that it is admirably sincere, admirably written, and admirably unsympathetic.
Whoever has known Santayana, as a writer or as a man, must have been sure, from the very beginning, that the most extraordinary and beautiful phase of his extraordinary and beautiful intelligence is its flawless candor. Whether what he says seems true for others or not, you may always be sure that it is true for him — and positively true, as well, in some such sense as that which makes us hold true the images presented to skilled eyes by the most exquisite instruments of science. This inestimable virtue is here inestimably evident throughout.
Again, from the moment when, as an undergraduate at Harvard, he first appeared in print, more than thirty years ago, there has never been room for doubt that he is a born master of language. The precision of his style makes unusual demand on attention: every word must be read, and recognized in the place where he has put it. But all you ever need do is to attend. He is incapable either of obscurity or of such vulgar brilliancy as distracts attention from what words mean to the words themselves. Though he would not be himself if he were scrupulously to avoid occasional epigram, his epigram is always a part of the thought wherein it lies imbedded; you no more think of it separately, except afterwards, than you think separately of the perfect lines here and there immortal amid the human imperfections of poetry. He can do with language anything which language can be made to do.
Yes, even though Santayana be beyond compare for honesty of thought and for mastery of style, you can hardly help feeling him deficient in the humanity of greatness. And here, the accident of his history may remind us why. Born a Spaniard, he was by chance educated mostly in New England; and after years of academic drudgery at Harvard, he has now betaken himself to the England foreign alike to the traditions of his birth and to the atmosphere of his previous habit, themselves mutually alien. He has never been where he incontestably belongs; and indeed, there is no such place anywhere. Inevitably, he must see other men, particularly when they group themselves together, as different from his fatally solitary self. He can observe every aspect of them; he can conjecture what they feel; but what they feel he can never quite know from experience. So the deepest significance of his work, here and always, must be found in its implicit revelation of the loneliness inseparable from tragic solitude of the spirit. B. W.