ABSTRACT
Unlike the life and work of the usual run of humanity, Santayana's, at first glance, may look all of a piece, and suffused with peace. His militant ordering of his affairs, his discipline, his industry, his deliberate avoidance of immediate family, all seem to point to a man in rare charge of himself. The years 1904 to 1906, nevertheless, were a time of relative freedom. Santayana used his year of leave to travel extensively, although, as ever, he managed to read and write continuously. Santayana's Hyde Lectureship began at the Sorbonne on November 28, 1905, and continued at 5:00 p.m. on Tuesdays and Saturdays until March 17, 1906. His subject, "Contemporary Philosophy in England and America," attracted an audience of between one and two hundred persons, "of whom perhaps half were women and half Americans".
