Robert Dawidoff teaches history and directs American studies at the Claremont Graduate School in California. He is completing a book about the interpretation of democratic civilisation. The Genteel Tradition and the Sacred Rage.
George Santayana made himself anything but plain in his writings. Even when he was memorably, aphoristically direct, he toyed with the contrary, the piquing, the enigmatic, the confounding, and got into the habit of regarding even his own obscurity as an emblem of his integrity, as his boast. He meant it to be impossible to lay a glove on him.
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