title: The Genteel Tradition: Nine Essays by George Santayana
author:  George Santayana 
description: <DIV>"Santayana portrays aspects of American character with an astonishing vividness and pungency which has often been imitated but not equalled by later writers."&#8212;[London] <I>Times Literary Supplement</I></DIV> (<i>Times Literary Supplement</i>)
zlib_text: The Birth of Reason & Other Essays 
  by George Santayana 
  
  The Birth of Reason & Other Essays 
  by George Santayana 
  Edited by Daniel Cory 
  1968 
  COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
  New York & London 
  
  Copyright © 1968 Columbia University Press 
  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 68-28397 
  Printed in the United States of America 
  
  PREFACE 
  in gathering the essays for this book, I have endeavored 
  not to saddle Santayana with anything that might be deemed 
  unworthy of the high level of expository prose he always 
  maintained in many volumes published during a long life of 
  continual writing. After all, I was not ransacking an archive 
  in a desperate quest for bits and pieces that might lead to a 
  belated Ph.D. degree: it was largely a question of exercising a 
  “discretion” that he mentioned in his will as desirable in a lit¬ 
  erary executor. The fact that some of these essays are rather 
  short—extended “notes” rather than full-blown papers—did 
  not deter me: to be long-winded is not an unfail