Spencer Heath Archives

Item 101

Penned letter on Carolina Inn, Chapel Hill, N.C. letterhead from Heath to Laura Jean McAdams, Chapel Hill, NC. Ephemeral material in this letter has been put in 10-point instead of 12 so that it can be the more easily skipped over.

March 5, 1943

 

 

 

Dearest Laura Jean  –

 

      Here I am back at the Inn today. Thought I might get the manuscript back from Mr. Couch /sp?/ today as I could leave it with Dr. Walton for possible reference to Dr. Hart. But Mr. Couch wants to keep it another ten days. Says he has read more of it and finds it highly original and arresting although not in accord with his own personal outlook on things and mode of thinking. (Says, I effect, that he is a follower of Reinhold Niebuhr — imagine!!) None but Mr. Couch, apparently, has seen it. He says he wants one or more of their staff of readers to pass on it. But in any case I’d have to put up the cost of manufacture.

 

      I am very sorry Mr. Couch is not through with it. I did so want to loan it to Dr. Walton. I suppose you are referring more or less to your copy in connection with drawing pictures. But for that I might ask you to lend it to Dr. Walton for a little while. I feel sure he’d love to have it.

 

      Your nice long letter of Tuesday reached me at the Wash. Duke Hotel thisnoon and I had it to read on the bus all the way to Chapel Hill this mid-day. I have seen Mr. Couch and then dropped in on Dr. Leavitt for a few moments. Had a pleasant visit with him and then he went to a meeting of the Chapel Hill Press — said my manuscript might come up for discussion.

 

      When I stop this writing to you I’ll take the next bus back to Wash. Duke Hotel and may likely leave there for Warrenton Va and Washington D.C. tomorrow or Monday at the latest. But address me at Durham until I tell you different.

 

      I had supper Sunday night and a nice evening with the Jordans but somehow we didn’t get around to much talk of philosophic or literary import. He had a typist at work at his house and had to give part of his attention to her. Mrs. Jordan is a librarian and we talked a good deal about books — children’s books especially.

 

But the Waltons are the fine family — and the best kind of friends — genial, jovial, literary, philosophic. I’d love to have them nearby and see them often.

 

      I’ve written in an earlier letter about all those way /sic/ to say about Dr. Hart. But he seemed to me about the most alive sociologist I ever heard of — and I told you the others too – Widgery – Gilbert – Lande – Pilzering /sp?/. Talked some science with Pilzering but he was showing me around the place too much for connected talking. It was he who put me in contact with the M.D. Dr. Manafor /sp?/ at the Private Diagnostic Clinic, Duke Hospital.

 

     Re your philosophic reflections: Man had to discover the rationality of his objective world in order to discover his own rationality. He could weigh and measure objective things but he has had no standards wherewith to weigh and measure his own feelings, sensations, conceptions. That is why his first science had to be abstract — mathematics; his second concrete but remote — Astronomy — etc. etc. The more he finds ratios (quantitative relationships) in his objective environment, the more he acquires standards (units of quantity) for the measurement of his own quantities, relationships — his own ratios, his rationality.

     There’s been so much speculation about matter, space, and time as entities, possible entities or impossible entities apart from man. It doesn^’t register with me. There’s only One Reality. Philosophy calls it God. Science calls it Energy. We cannot prove that it is universal, absolute, infinite, but we can find no shred of evidence to the contrary. We are warranted in treating it as infinite just as we are warranted in treating a man as a gentleman after knowing him only as such for a whole life long — or even a less time. The varied character of experience of it shows that it is not amorphous, not homogeneous but highly differentiate but always compounded as a Unity (Energy or Reality) in three modes which one can conceive and even measure separately but must always experience conjointly, as a unity, never apart. Because of its differentiate character, and for this cause alone, we, as parts of the Universal Reality — Cosmos — can have reactions — experience — of other parts of it, and, indirectly, with it All, includ­ing each other and ourselves. But our only rational experience is in the ratios in which Mass, Space and Time are compounded in specific experiences. In our empirical experience this compounding is not directed (created) by us. But when we discover its ratios (scientific quantitative description — analysis) we can then synthesize and compound Mass, Space, and Time as we wish, dream, plan, aspire them to be. This is qualitative, creative, spiritual, divine. When this is done rationally, by measurement, it is applied science. When done intuitively, by feeling, positive emotion, inspiration it is creative art. And science, applied science, is rational and repetitional, whereas creative art is intuitive, unique. Science is capable of universalizing (objectively), repeating the forms by which the creative spirit expresses itself in art — and giving objective forms to realities only dreamed and expressed in symbols in the arts.

     As to matter, space, time, we as portions of the infinite (presumably) totality are compounded of these in ever-varying kaleidoscopic combinations. So is the rest of the infinite totality (which is not infinite without us). In abstract thinking — conception — and thus alone, we can separate these three aspects of Reality — Energy, and we can experience them in varying proportions, but never separately or otherwise than in unity of the three in some proportion — ratio. This is the rationale, rationality of Reality in mass, space and time — having no objective reality except in unity and none but what we may call a conceptual reality when abstracted from their unity in the imagination of man.

     And reason and experience alike combine them, for each depends on the other two both in experience and in thought. Mass is without dimension except in space or motion (space depending on motion). Together they are power, potential, but not Action, without Energy, without time which (for us) is the ratio (measurement of change) between other repeated (rhythmic) changes and the periodic (rhythmic) changes in position of the earth. Time or duration is not, as some seem to suppose, a fixation, an absence of change, but the periodicity of change. Without change (action) there would be no reference for time — no unit (like seconds) possible.

     You are perfectly right: Space has no existence alone; ‘twould be like an alphabet without letters, just as you say — separately it can exist only in conception of the mind — it cannot be inferred of anything but Reality (as in physio­logical or other mechanism blended with mass and time).

 

     Yes, “true space is motion space,” also time space and mass space. The three dimensions — much confused with the three aspects or elements of Energy, Reality — are only three spaces, motions, directions, having equality of deviation one from another and the third from the other two — the mutual perpendicularity of two lines and of the third to both of them. Dimensions are not merely three; there are as many dimensions as there are directions. It is only a matter of convenience to refer all others to a given three. Unequal deviations — angles — are compared conveniently to the equal angles that make a straight line — just as unequal numbers, in a ratio, are compared to equal numbers whose ratio is unity. There has been all too much fuzzy (and fussy) speculation about there being three dimensions as though they were three different entities or anywise different from each other than one direction is different from another. This entity notion about directions is responsible for all the bosh about a 4th and so on …….up to an nth dimension. Reality, Energy has only three elements, aspects; dimension, direction, motion, space is only one of them — and, even so, it has no real existence except in unity with the other two — mass and time. The so-called Euclidean space is just space (motion); that is all; and a non-Euclidean geometry would be a non-space geometry — that’s all. And the Euclidean geometry is only conceptual for the reason that it deals only with space (motion) to the exclusion of mass and time — and therefore of all objective reality. The Cartesian geometry annexed time but still remained only conceptual for lack of mass. The geometry of Energy, however (mathematics of Energy) is the measurement (by reference to standards) of the magnitudes of the three elements of reality and of their ratios to each other in present experience or in experience rationally anticipated (predicted) and coming or to be brought to be, which last is creation — the logos (reason) being made manifest in the world — the word made flesh.

     Yes, as you say, “Experience does …. prove to us that it results conveniently to attribute to it (space) three dimensions.”

     So much for the “deep water.” It is late for me too now — I must hie me back to Durham and go on and get things done so I can come quickly back to you. Soft palate still sore. Hurts to swallow. Cough not continuous, and still mild — except late at night — then rather severe.

          And more heaps of love

                                  s