Books: Cafe Talk of a Sage

THE LETTERS OF GEORGE SANTAYANA (451 pp.)—edited by Daniel Cory—Scribner ($7.50).

Philosophy was George Santayana's shop, and after hours he liked to linger on at the café tables of the mind, sipping moments of beauty and watching the passing show with its persistent drama and recurring vanities. Even if building towers of systematic truths had been congenial to him, Santayana banished it with his basic premise, i.e., "Chaos is perhaps at the bottom of everything." His letters, edited by his longtime confidant and disciple, Philosopher Daniel Cory, cover 66 years, from the year of his Harvard graduation through the teaching days and...