Robbins Library Notes

At left: George Santayana (1863-1952)

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

– The Life of Reason, Volume 1: Reason in Common Sense, Ch. XII

One of Santayana’s pupils was the poet, Wallace Stevens, who penned “To an Old Philosopher in Rome” in homage to his teacher.