Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

 From Soliloquies in England (1922): Santayana was part of a world that was rubbing its eyes after the end of what they called the Great War, wondering what it all meant and where civilization can go from here. The moment produced some fine (one might even say 'stellar') intellectual work. Hold that metaphor. Santayana, in Soliloquies , gave us this aphorism. "It would seem that when a heavenly body ceases to shine by its own light, it becomes capable of breeding eyes with which to profit by the light other bodies are shedding: whereas, so long as it was itself on fire, no part of it could see." What does that mean? I think I know, at least vaguely. And it is a better piece of work than some other famous Santayana quotes, including the condemned-to-repeat-it thing. On one level, Santayana means here what he says. When earth (and possibly other analogous planets) cooled a bit it became a host for life, and some of the lives made possible by this contain eyes capable ...

I've just read a fine essay by Christopher Reid about the journalist/essayist John Jay Chapman (1862-1933). Here's the link, if you would also like to dip into it. And here's a link to one of Chapman's essays, Professorial Ethics (1910). In that essay, Chapman writes that the type of men who become the presidents of colleges are those who, a rule, began life with ambitions in scholarship, "but their talents for affairs have been developed at the expense of their taste for learning, and they have become hard men. As towards their faculties they have been autocrats, because the age has demanded autocracy here; as toward the millionaire they have been sycophants, because the age has demanded sycophancy here." Nowadays the word "millionaire" doesn't work well in this context. A million won't go as far in buying sycophants as once it did. Billionaires, though? Make that change and the passage likely still works fine. Chapman certain...