George Santayana is an unequaled champion of emotional life and the value of pure contemplation and imaginative play. In his first philosophical book, The Sense of Beauty, Santayana elucidates how the contemplation of beautiful ideals invests our lives with meaning. His great achievement is to offer a way of retaining the significance of spiritual and moral values in the context of a predominantly materialist and scientific world. This seminal work explores aesthetics, the psychological and cultural importance of art, and the relationship between the humanities and the sciences.