I now understand Santayana, the man. I never understood him before. But what a perfection of rottenness in a philosophy! I don't think I ever knew the anti-realistic view to be propounded with so impudently superior an air. It is refreshing to see a representative of moribund Latinity rise up and administer such reproof to us barbarians in the hour of our triumph. I imagine Santayana's _style_ to be entirely spontaneous. But it has curious classic echoes. Whole pages of pure Hume in style; others of pure Renan. Nevertheless, how fantastic a philosophy!--as if the "world of values" _were_ independent of existence. It is only as _being_, that one thing is better than another. The idea of darkness is as good as that of light, as ideas. There is more value in light's _being_. And the exquisite consolation, when you have ascertained the badness of all fact, in knowing that badness is inferior to goodness, to the end--it only rubs the pessimism in. A man whose egg at breakfast turns out always bad says to himself, "Well, bad and good are not the same, anyhow." That is just the trouble! Moreover, when you come down to the facts, what do your harmonious and integral ideal systems prove to be? in the concrete? Always things burst by the growing content of experience. Dramatic unities; laws of versification; ecclesiastical systems; scholastic doctrines. Bah! Give me Walt Whitman and Browning ten times over, much as the perverse ugliness of the latter at times irritates me, and intensely as I have enjoyed Santayana's attack. The barbarians are in the line of mental growth, and those who do insist that the ideal and the real are dynamically continuous are those by whom the world is to be saved. But I'm nevertheless delighted that the other view, always existing in the world, should at last have found so splendidly impertinent an expression among ourselves. I have meant to write to Santayana; but on second thoughts, and to save myself, I will just ask you to send him this. It saves him from what might be the nuisance of having to reply, and on my part it has the advantage of being more free-spoken and direct. He is certainly an _extraordinarily distingué_ writer. Thank him for existing! As a contrast, read Jack Chapman's "Practical Agitation." The other pole of thought, and a style all splinters--but a gospel for our rising generation--I hope it will have its effect. Send me your Noble lectures. I don't see how you could risk it without a MS. If you did fail (which I doubt) you deserved to. Anyhow the printed page makes everything good. I can no more! Adieu! How is Mrs. Palmer this winter? I hope entirely herself again. You are impartially silent of her and of my wife! The "Transcript" continues to bless us. We move from this hospitable roof to the hotel at Costebelle today. Thence after a fortnight to Geneva, and in May to Nauheim once more, to be reëxamined and sentenced by Schott. Affectionately yours, W. J. _To Miss Frances R. Morse._