  The relationships between literature, art, religion and philosophy are prominent themes throughout Santayana’s writings. The Sense of Beauty (1896) is a primary source for the study of aesthetics. Philip Blair Rice wrote in the foreword to the 1955 Modern Library edition: “To say that aesthetic theory in America reached maturity with The Sense of Beauty is in no way an overstatement. Only John Dewey’s Art as Experience has competed with it in the esteem of philosophical students of aesthetics and has approached its suggestiveness for artists, critics and the public which takes a thoughtful interest in the arts.” Santayana’s groundbreaking approach to aesthetics is emphasized in Arthur Danto’s “Introduction” to the 1988 critical edition. Danto writes that Santayana brings “beauty down to earth” by treating it as a subject for science and giving it a central role in human conduct, in contrast to the preceding intellectualist tradition of aesthetics. “The exaltation of emotion and the naturalization of beauty — especially of beauty — imply a revolutionary impulse for a book it takes a certain violent act of historical imagination to recover” (Sense of Beauty, xxviii). This naturalistic approach to aesthetics is expanded in his philosophical explication of art found in The Life of Reason: Reason in Art (1905).