The Realms of Being was published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in four volumes: The Realm of Essence (1927), The Realm of Matter (1930), The Realm of Truth (1937), and The Realm of Spirit (1940). Together they constitute Santayana’s mature philosophical system — the ontology toward which Scepticism and Animal Faith had pointed.
Santayana distinguishes four domains of reality, each with its own mode of being. The Realm of Essence comprises all possible qualities, forms, and patterns — everything that could exist, whether or not it does. Essences are eternal, infinite in number, and have no causal power; they simply are what they are. The Realm of Matter is the domain of physical existence — the flux of energy and substance that constitutes the actual world. Only matter exists in the full sense; only matter has causal power. The Realm of Truth is the totality of facts about matter — everything that has happened, is happening, or will happen. Truth is not a set of propositions we discover but the complete description of what actually occurs. The Realm of Spirit is consciousness itself — the awareness that arises in certain material organisms and that contemplates essences while being determined by matter.
The system is both materialist (only matter has causal power; spirit is epiphenomenal) and pluralist (the four realms are genuinely distinct and irreducible to one another). Santayana regarded his philosophy as the reconciliation of what was valid in materialism (Democritus, Lucretius, Spinoza) with what was valid in idealism (Plato, Aristotle, the Indian traditions) — a reconciliation achieved not by compromise but by giving each tradition its proper domain.
Collecting The Realms of Being
First editions (Scribner’s, New York, 1927–1940): Four volumes, cloth bindings.
Market values:
- Complete set of four first editions: $200–$500
- Individual volumes: $30–$80 each
- One-volume edition (1942): $25–$60