When religion is between the Scylla of fanaticism and the Charybdis of being replaced by science and philosophy, it is appropriate to look back to the figure of the poet philosopher George Santayana was. Faced himself to the very religious crisis of youth and the rise of positivism in the nineteenth century, however, he never doubted the naturalness of the religious impulse. Hence, when the American critic Logan Pearsall Smith decided, in 1920, presenting the British public an anthology of the already extensive work Santayana has not surprising that one of its sections were these short essays on religion.
With the intensity and pleasantness that characterize any collection, Santayana offered in these twenty trials as many perspectives on religion. Good knowledge of Latin and Anglo-Saxon cultures, exercises between Protestants and Catholic Protestant among Catholics, emulating his admired Hermes. This establishes a dialogue between religion and philosophy that represents one of the timeless postures and, therefore, fully present, in a never closed issue at all. Can not be agnostic, since he had no doubt in the matter, nor a believer, because, for him, God is poetry, Santayana is the most open to religious and more sympathetic to his inner urge message skeptical.
This book, brilliant exercise in irony and extreme lucidity, offers an antidote against all fundamentalism, showing the role that a well-tempered rational discourse can play in the relationship between philosophy and religion.