George Santayana
Soliloquies in England, and Later Soliloquies
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664591302
Table of Contents
PREFACE
Many of these Soliloquies have appeared in The Athenaeum and one or more in The London Mercury, The Nation, The New Republic, The Dial, and The Journal of Philosophy. The author's thanks are due to the Editors of all these reviews for permission to reprint the articles.
For convenience, three Soliloquies on Liberty, written in 1915, have been placed in the second group; and perhaps it should be added that not a few of the later pieces were written in France, Spain, or Italy, although still for the most part on English themes and under the influence of English impressions.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE SOLILOQUIES IN ENGLAND, 1914–1918 1. ATMOSPHERE 2. GRISAILLE 3. PRAISES OF WATER 4. THE TWO PARENTS OF VISION 5. AVERSION FROM PLATONISM 6. CLOUD CASTLES 7. CROSS-LIGHTS 8. HAMLET'S QUESTION 9. THE BRITISH CHARACTER 10. SEAFARING 11. PRIVACY 12. THE LION AND THE UNICORN 13. DONS 14. APOLOGY FOR SNOBS 15. THE HIGHER SNOBBERY 16. DISTINCTION IN ENGLISHMEN 17. FRIENDSHIPS 18. DICKENS 19. THE HUMAN SCALE 20. ENGLISH ARCHITECTURE 21. THE ENGLISH CHURCH 22. LEAVING CHURCH 23. DEATH-BED MANNERS 24. WAR SHRINES 25. TIPPERARY 26. SKYLARKS 27. AT HEAVEN'S GATE LATER SOLILOQUIES, 1918–1921 28. SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE 29. IMAGINATION 30. THE WORLD'S A STAGE 31. MASKS 32. THE TRAGIC MASK 33. THE COMIC MASK 34. CARNIVAL 35. QUEEN MAB 36. A CONTRAST WITH SPANISH DRAMA 37. THE CENSOR AND THE POET 38. THE MASK OF THE PHILOSOPHER 39. THE VOYAGE OF THE SAINT CHRISTOPHER 40. CLASSIC LIBERTY 41. GERMAN FREEDOM 42. LIBERALISM AND CULTURE 43. THE IRONY OF LIBERALISM 44. JOHN BULL AND HIS PHILOSOPHERS 45. OCCAM'S RAZOR 46. EMPIRICISM 47. THE BRITISH HEGELIANS 48. THE PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY 49. THE PSYCHE 50. REVERSION TO PLATONISM 51. IDEAS 52. THE MANSIONS OF HELEN 53. THE JUDGEMENT OF PARIS 54. ON MY FRIENDLY CRITICS 55. HERMES THE INTERPRETER
PROLOGUE
The outbreak of war in the year 1914 found me by chance in England, and there I remained, chiefly at Oxford, until the day of the peace. During those five years, in rambles to Iffley and Sandford, to Godstow and Wytham, to the hospitable eminence of Chilswell, to Wood Eaton or Nuneham or Abingdon or Stanton Harcourt,
Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe,
these Soliloquies were composed, or the notes scribbled from which they have been expanded. Often over Port Meadow the whirr of aeroplanes sent an iron tremor through these reveries, and the daily casualty list, the constant sight of the wounded, the cadets strangely replacing the undergraduates, made the foreground to these distances. Yet nature and solitude continued to envelop me in their gentleness, and seemed to remain nearer to me than all that was so near. They muffled the importunity of the hour; perhaps its very bitterness and incubus of horror drove my thoughts deeper than they would otherwise have ventured into the maze of reflection and of dreams. It is a single maze, though we traverse it in opposite moods, and distinct threads