AN UNHISTORICAL MIND
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able if not pleasant to listen to him.... To listen was profitable
because his comfortless dissatisfaction with every possible idea
opened vistas and disturbed a too easy dogmatism."
It is not apparent that Santayana has here incidentally produced a
very significant statement about himself until we stop to contrast this
intellectual restlessness of Royce with Santayana's own assiduously
worn mask of classic and Olympian serenity. Then we realize that
this
"comfortless dissatisfaction" with ideas is precisely the great, the in–
dispensable quality which Santayana himself has lacked as a phi–
losopher.
A mind without restlessness, without intellectual
anxiety,
reposing
easily in its doctrines with assumptions that have remained virtually
stationary over a lifetime-such is the resultant image which pro–
longed exposure to him leaves us. And is it not clear that this is a
deficiency less of the intelligence itself than of the human psyche
enveloping the intelligence? Santayana's intelligence has always
shown itself as acute as it needed to be for
his
purposes; if we are
repelled by the superior tone towards James and Royce, we also feel
a real superiority in the mind that could put so sharp and surgical
a finger to the weak points in his teachers. But where James and
Royce belong to their subject, this possibly superior mind was blocked
from a fruition equal to its powers: to. become a permanent reminder
(should we need one) of how delicate and pliable a growth the mind
is in relation to its total human soil, so that we could almost wish
every important philosopher the chastening experience of writing
his
autobiography.
