BOOK REVIEWS
THE AROMA OF EVANESCENCE
Soliloquies in England, and Late Soliloquies. By George Santayana. 12mo. 254 pages. Charles Scribner's Sons. $3.50.
MR SANTAYANA'S Soliloquies are somewhat melancholy reading, although he is too philosophic to be melancholy himself. The things he loves in England are all rapidly disappearing, and being replaced by things which no contemplative spirit can admire. The England of Mr Santayanas affections centres about the well-to-do unintellectual undergraduate, and includes the country-house from which he comes, the sports which are his most serious pursuit, even—with some reserves—the dons by whom he is taught, provided they are sufficiently mellow and remote from modern research. This is the England which was fashioned in the time of Queen Anne—a land of leisure and beauty, of aristocratic culture, of tolerance and good humour. But Queen Anne is dead, and the civilization inherited from her time is dying. Its destruction was begun by the industrial revolution, and greatly hastened by the late war. Very soon the little that survives must perish.
Mr Santayana is a true philosopher, in that he views everything sub specie aeternitatis. "In so far as the mind conceives a thing according to the dictate of reason, it will be equally affected whether the idea is that of a future, past, or present thing." So says Spinoza; and accordingly these soliloquies are not unduly disturbed by the fact that the things which their author values are past or passing. It would be unfair to call Mr Santayana a conservative, since he does not wish, like a conservative, to preserve the things he admires, but is content with the thought that their essence is eternal though their existence is fleeting. Their existence in the past has enabled us to contemplate their essence, and that is what really matters. His philosophic detachment, however, has its limits. Modern liberalism is abhorrent to his soul, and some of the best writing in the book
