Bulletin of the Santayana Society, No. 24 Fall 2006

              Mimicking Mrs. Toy
In their occasionally erudite fifty-eight year correspondence, Justice Oliver Wendell
Holmes and Sir Frederick Pollock referred with some frequency to widely-read
writers of philosophy. Among these references one finds a dozen comments on the
work of George Santayana.
It is not too surprising that these gentlemen were familiar with Santayana's
writings, and that they ventured private, casual opinions about his philosophy. Holmes
Is remembered not only for his incisive judicial opinions, but also for his scholarly
bent. As a young man, he showed an interest in philosophy, attending meetings of the
"Metaphysical Club" held at the home of William James. It is also clear that Holmes
and his family were acquainted with Santayana. Pollock still commands a sterling
reputation as a legal scholar and historian, and as an extraordinarily learned man of
broad interests. While Pollock met Santayana at least twice in later years, his
acquaintance with Santayana's work seems to have been prompted by Holmes.
Shortly after Mr. Mark DeWolfe Howe published his Holmes-Pollock Letters,1
Mrs. C. H. Toy wrote to Santayana, Including in her letter pertinent extracts from the
correspondence. Santayana thanked Mrs. Toy a few weeks later, noting that the
Holmes-Pollock comments were "sweet flattery after my Schilpp critics%' (Letters 7:
27). It may be of interest, then, to mimic Mrs. Toy and clip these paragraphs once
more, this time for the readership of Overheard in Seville.
Extracts from the Holmes-Pollock Letters2
Holmes to Pollock, November 23, 1905 (Howe I: 122)
"I am just turning to Santayana's last two volumes of The Life of Reason which I like
better than any philosophy I have read—or nearly so.   But more and more I am
inclined to belittle the doings of the philosophers while I think philosophy the end of
life."
Holmes to Pollock, June 23,1906 (Howe I: 126-127)
*i write to Little Brown & Co. to send you Santayana—~4 vols—but not big ones. My
wife says that the critics are not so warm as I in praise of it. I liked it because the
premises are so much like my own. I always start my cosmic salad by saying that all I
mean by truth is what I can't help thinking and that I have no means of deciding
whether my can't helps have any cosmic worth. They clearly don't in many cases. I
think the philosophers usually are too arrogant in their attitude. I accept the existence
of a universe, in some unpredictable sense, just as I accept yours—by an act of
faith—or by another can't help perhaps. But I think the chances are much against
man's being at the centre of things or knowing anything more than how to arrange his
universe—according to his own necessary order. I dare say you will think Santayana
something of an improvisatore, and say that he talks too much. But to my mind he
talks like a cultivated man, and with a good deal of charm of speech, though that also
may weary, after you have caught his rhythm and trick. At all events his book was one
ed., Holmes-Pollock Letters: The Correspondence of Mr. Justice
Holmes and Sir Frederick Pollock 1874-1932 (Cambridge-Massachusetts, Harvard University
Press, 1941) [hereinafter Howe I and Ho WE II].
2 Passing references to Santayana at HOWE I: 125 and HOWE I: 211 have been omitted from this
compilation.