  Santayana cherished academic life for its freedom to pursue intellectual interests and curiosity, but he found that many aspects of being a professor infringed on that freedom. Faculty meetings and university committees seemed primarily to be partisan heat over false issues, so he rarely attended them. The general corporate and businesslike adaptation of universities was increasingly less conducive to intellectual development and growth. He expressed concern about the evolving Harvard goal of producing muscular intellectuals to lead America as statesmen in business and government. Were not delight and celebration also a central aspect of education? He wrote to a friend in 1892, expressing the hope that his academic life would be “resolutely unconventional” and noted that he could only be a professor per accidens, saying that “I would rather beg than be one essentially” (GS to H. W. Abbot, Stoughton Hall, Harvard, 15 February 1892.  Columbia).