SOURCE: "The Prestige of the Infinite," in Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy, Cambridge at the University Press, 1933, pp. 102-121.

Santayana was a Spanish-born philosopher, poet, novelist, and literary critic who received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard University, where he later taught philosophy. Late in his life, Santayana stated that "reason and ideals arise in doing something that at bottom there is no reason for doing." "Chaos," he had written earlier, "is perhaps at the bottom of everything. "In the following essay, Santayana critiques the ideas advanced in Benda's Essai d'un discours coherent sur les rapports de dieu et du monde.

"The more complex the world becomes and the more it rises above the indeterminate, so much the farther removed it is from God; that is to say, so much the more impious it is." M. Julien Benda is not led to this startling utterance...