03762cam a22003613u 450000100060000000300070000600500170001300600020003000700050003200800410003701000130007804000110009104100170010205000060011910000340012524500320015926400510019130000470024233600260028933700260031533800360034150000940037750000310047150508260050250802060132852016400153453400670317465300210324165300150326285600610327785600430333899900190338177155UtSlPG20260610134804.0mcr n260607r2025||||utu|||||o|||||||||||||| d  a23010671  aUtSlPG 7aen2iso639-1 4aB1 aSantayana, George,d1863-195210aScepticism and animal faith 1aSalt Lake City, UT :bProject Gutenberg,c2025  a1 online resource :bmultiple file formats  atextbtxt2rdacontent  acomputerbc2rdamedia  aonline resourcebcr2rdacarrier  aWikipedia page about this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scepticism_and_Animal_Faith  aRelease date is 2025-10-300 aThere is no first principle of criticism -- Dogma and doubt -- Wayward scepticism -- Doubts about self-consciousness -- Doubts about change -- Ultimate scepticism -- Nothing given exists -- Some authorities for this conclusion -- The discovery of essence -- Some uses of this discovery -- The watershed of criticism -- Identity and duration attributed to essences -- Belief in demonstration -- Essence and intuition -- Belief in experience -- Belief in the self -- The cognitive claims of memory -- Knowledge is faith mediated by symbols -- Belief in substance -- On some objections to belief in substance -- Sublimations of animal faith -- Belief in nature -- Evidences of animation in nature -- Literary psychology -- The implied being of truth -- Discernment of spirit -- Comparison with other criticisms of knowledge.  aTim Lindell, David King, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries.)  aScepticism and Animal Faith (1923) is a later work by Spanish-born American philosopher George Santayana. He intended it to be "merely the introduction to a new system of philosophy," a work that would later be called The Realms of Being, which constitutes the bulk of his philosophy, along with The Life of Reason.
Scepticism is Santayana's major treatise on epistemology; after its publication, he wrote no more on the topic. His preface begins humbly, with Santayana saying:

Here is one more system of philosophy. If the reader is tempted to smile, I can assure him that I smile with him...I am merely trying to express for the reader the principles to which he appeals when he smiles.
Moreover, he does not claim philosophical supremacy: I do not ask anyone to think in my terms if he prefers others. Let him clean better, if he can, the windows of his soul, that the variety and beauty of the prospect may spread more brightly before him.
While Santayana acknowledges the importance of skepticism to philosophy, and begins by doubting almost everything; from here, he seeks to find some kind of epistemological truths. Idealism is correct, claims Santayana, but is of no consequence. He makes this pragmatic claim by asserting that men do not live by the principles of idealism, even if it is true. We have functioned for eons without adhering to such principles, and may continue, pragmatically, as such. He posits the necessity of the eponymous "Animal Faith", which is belief in that which our senses tell us; "Philosophy begins in medias res", he assures us at the beginning of his treatise. (This summary is from Wikipedia.)  pOriginally published:cNew York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923  aBelief and doubt  aSkepticism4 uhttps://archive.org/details/scepticism00santuoft/page/n340uhttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77155  c117877d117877