Philosopher Without Quest

DIALOGUES IN LIMBO (249 pp.)--George Santayana--Scribner ($3).

In 1942, an old Spanish philosopher living in Rome had completed the first volume of his autobiography. In the midst of a world war, both the U.S. State Department and the Vatican thought the book important enough to be smuggled out of Italy in a diplomatic pouch. When Persons and Places was published in the U.S. in 1944, it became the second book of Philosopher George Santayana to win the popular accolade of the Book-of-the-Month Club (the first: his only novel, The Last Puritan). Readers who couldn't be bribed to look at a book of philosophy were beguiled by a style so urbane and a wit so civilized as to make even the cloistered life of a Harvard professor (Santayana taught there from 1889 to 1912) seem freighted with inner excitement.

Last week in Rome, 84-year-old Santayana had two more books in completed manuscript and one in the polishing stage; but he was determined that the publication of all three would have to wait till after his death. One is a book of allegorical verse, emphatically entitled Posthumous Poems. Another is the final volume of his autobiography, in which, his friends believe, he has discussed other persons and places with an old philosopher's candor. The third is Dominations and Powers, a long-awaited philosophical study of politics, and the only one of his books he believes to have been inspired. Says Santayana: "It is not likely that I shall live long enough to finish it, and if I did I should be left without any serious work to do."

The Insurance of Death. If he sticks to his purpose, the only new work from Santayana ip what remains of his lifetime may well be the three new chapters he has added to Dialogues in Limbo, a book first published in 1926 and re-issued last week. It is one of the few of his books that Santayana himself now finds pleasure in rereading. On these dialogues, as a philosopher, he is willing to stand or fall: "They are the truest interpretation of my philosophy. If anyone understands them, he understands me." In prose so immaculately manicured that only the polish is apparent, Santayana descends to the oblivion of limbo and seeks out his beloved, smooth-talking heroes: Socrates, Democritus, Alcibiades, Dionysius, Aristippus. The litmus with which he tests the worth of their ideas is The Stranger, a visiting earthly spirit who sounds suspiciously like a traveling Harvard professor.

As in all of Santayana's philosophy ("My system is not mine, nor new") pragmatism, naturalism, hedonism and materialism leap into the philosophical arena flashing beautifully tempered verbal weapons, gracefully swipe at each other with sardonic wit and brilliant exposition--until all fall back exhausted by their civilized exhibitionism, each one's argument largely canceled out by all the others. There can be little doubt that Santayana is speaking for himself as referee when The Stranger says: "A good life seems to me a good, and a bad life an evil; but life and death simply are neither good nor evil in my eyes. Life is an opportunity or occasion for good and evil alike, and death is an insurance against both." If Santayana has a "system," it is hopelessly lost among the flourishes of such adroit naturalistic fencing.

"Tell Them to Come." For many years he has lived in Rome, making his home in the convent of the Little Company of Mary, on Celian Hill, not far from the Coliseum. The streetcars clanging past his window disturb him not at all as he sits in his simple room, writing in a hand still firm. A Catholic living in a Catholic retreat, he calls his religion "a matter of sympathy and traditional allegiance, not of philosophy." Says he mischievously: "I believe I am the despair of the nuns here, who hope I'll become pious on my deathbed."

When he settles down in his armchair to read, he turns to old masterpieces (two recent exceptions: the poetry of Pulitzer-Prizewinning U.S. Poet Robert Lowell, which he admires, and a German biography of Albert Einstein, for whom he has great regard). Santayana is never too busy to see visitors, but has little time for other people's opinions. To his New York editor he wrote: "Visitors do not need letters of introduction. Tell them all to come and see me; I shall be delighted to see them, on one condition: that I do all the talking and they the listening."

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