Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1945-04-22
Reviewing I he New Books
George Sontoyono
Presents Part II
OF His Memoirs
THE MIDDLE SPAN
By George Santayana. (Scrib-
ners;: $780,
Bv Marv.Carfer Roberts

By Mary.Carfer Roberts
THE second volume of George
Santayana's autobiography, this
work has more significance for the
reader than had its predecessor
Persons and Places" 1t also is
persons and places; it is concerned
almost altogether with stating the
responses which certain persons and
places evoked in its author But its
material comes more into the gen.
eral understanding than did that of
its predecessor. The responses
which it reports are of the period
of Mr.. Santayana's maturity and
so are related comprehensibly to
the experience of cultivated men
generally. Those which went into
the preceding volume were taken
from childhood and youth and
somehow remained altogether spe-
cif1c. They told one the circum-
stances of Mr.. Santayana's early
years, but failed to attain any touch
of the universally of youth. Read
ing them became an act of faith
in his long record of literary
achievement. But The Middle
Span" vindicates the confidence.
1t is a record solely of intellectual
interests. 1t covers the nearly 80
years of Mr.. Santayana's connection
with Harvard, beginning with 1886,
when he went on a travelling fell
lowship to Germany to study for
his doctorate. There is no con-
tinuity in the narrative. The period
was broken with travel and the
form of the book is to select certain
times of residence in different
countries and offer the memories OF
scenes and men connected there
with. The characteristic of all these
memories is the denial of most OF
the normally esteemed satisfactions.
Mr.. Santayana writes neither OF
work or social pleasures with any
relish. His teaching years he refers
to as "somnambulistic period" in
which economic necessity COM
PEELED him to go through certain
routine to which he gave as little
of himself as possible. His social
relations, except for intellectual
companionships with men, seemed
to have been merely onerous. And
those companionships, moreover,
were of the ivory tower; they Gen.
tered on accumulated cultures of
the past, not on any of the living
interests of the present. But as
against these negatives he had his
great positive-the development
within himself of balanced view
and a free mind.
He gives chapters to Boston So
ciety and Harvard life with find
ings largely condemnatory in both
cases. Another chapter deals with
his acquaintance with Earl Russell, |
the grandson of Lord John Russell,
with whom he had long, but as
he describes it, curiously harsh
friendship. Of Americans generally
he says he made friends only with
those whose sympathies and out
look were predominantly European.
When he writes of the affairs of
his family in Avila, Spain, however,
he has only such types of small
town reportage to give as might be
brought forth from any Main street
quarrels, money trou-
bles. At no point does he admit
recognition of any class but his
own or of any kind of humanity
beyond the intellectuals.
It is perfectly authentic record
Of the intellectual preoccupations Of
a generation ago, time much more
distant from us in custom than IN
years.