Philosopher's Tower

From his cool and shabby room behind the mellowed walls of Rome's Convent of the Little Company of Mary, the 80-year-old philosopher spoke sparingly last week of things beyond the noise of war. George Santayana's fame as a poet, philosopher, novelist (The Last Puritan) made the newsmen listen to him respectfully. The old philosopher's aloof attitude was bound to irritate men who were very near to war. But his words were worth listening to.

"I shall never leave here," said Santayana, looking about the place where he has been in retreat since 1941. "There has been so much killing and so much suffering in the world's history."

The newsmen asked him what he thought of Communism and Fascism.

"Doubtless there are good things in both, as well as bad," he replied. "I think it is right that there should be new movements, suitable to new generations and periods. They shock and disturb those who are attached to the old institutions, but they are not meant for them. It is true, of course, that although they are intended to be 'for the people,' they end up by being for those who are running the State."

Old Philosopher Santayana had long ago rendered his verdict on the age that caught up with him in Rome last week: "In solitude it is possible to love mankind; in the world, for one who knows the world, there can be nothing but secret or open war." "Perhaps," he added, "the universe is nothing but an equilibrium of idiocies."

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