Spencer Heath Archive

Item 116

Pencil by Heath on notepad paper

No date

     Man is an unusual, a strange kind of worm, peculiar in this, that among them at times arose one that /believed/ he could become a bird — and his followers with him; so they killed him. But others arose — and a few with him, again and again. They formed a small separate company, dreamed, suffered and died. Still, others arose, sometimes one, sometimes a few, sometimes a tribe or a whole nation, at times vaguely dreamed and so set up monuments to those that had died for what they dreamed. The ages came and fled. Master worms arose and wore bright plumage, red and purple, dyed in blood. In fertile lands their millions throve and died, back into the sodden earth followed slowly by their masters’ crumbling monuments and tombs.

     But the dream, here or there, lived and at last in a great new land it was dreamed that all could be masters and yet none be slaves. That was wormocracy. For a while, each was his own master; yet each was also his own slave; for they all believed in minorities whom they should rule. Notwithstanding this, very many throve. And they built themselves a great land of many wonders. Fields ripened, gardens bloomed and cities rose. But in the midst of plenty, again and again, blights came down and all were dismayed. And then great wars racked the land and great new terrors born of them on screaming wings rode in the air. They almost murdered hope and made a mock of dreams. Yet dreams do not die. Born of highest radiance, they yet haunt the darkest places and they cannot die.

     The dreams of fire from heaven, food and raiment in plenty, even from rocks and air, have all come true. The dream of plenty is no longer how to create it but how it can be shared. Not to create in plenty but to divide and distribute in ways that do not destroy, that is the dream of today.

     There are only two ways to distribute the new earth and the fullness thereof. The one is the old, the other new. One is by the brutal force of authority over others. Its instruments are governments, its consequences wars. The other is by creative force, the exercise in equal freedom of creative authority over one’s self and his acknowledged powers and possessions. Its instruments are contracts, its consequences plenty, peace and love. The one is by the iron rule as old as wars. The other is by the Golden Rule to serve as we would be served. It draws men together in contracts and thus unites them in balanced services and thereby in mutual love, even though they realize it not.

 

     This is the new light that has come into the world: that in freedom and without force we shall serve and thereby love one another. The knowledge of this is the fruit of the Tree of Life, for in the doing of this we create life and have it more abundantly. Too long have we been beguiled by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil whose fruit /is/conflict and death. But the Tree of Life still lives, and we may turn to it and take its fruit when we will. Then and in that degree we shall be creators, preoccupied alone with Life, light that knows no darkness, no conflict of good and evil, no reversion to death.

     Right in our midst are the old rule of iron and the new Rule of Gold. Mankind are pressed down under “principalities and powers” with their burdens of tribute and terrors of war. So far as these distribute the goods of the earth or the products of toil, they take them by force and cause poverty and war.[1] But there is also in our midst a Rule of Gold.

     There is a system of balanced exchange, impartial and impersonal so far as it is free, and as universal on the earth as mankind so far as governments do not by their force forbid. It employs no intimidation; its only instrument is contract without fear, service without force. Nor does it resist evil with violence, force against force. This is the Tree of Life in whose knowledge is ever light and in whose practice, so far as our eye is single in it, lies the life that is our salvation.

     This Golden Rule system in antiquity was but little known. It could only be practiced by men so far as they were at least partly free, and most men were total slaves. But under Western stars the serfs, as real estate, were less abject than chattel slaves. Then trade built the free cities where merchants and journeymen who could come and go so far exceeded the bound man’s produce as to set him free. But none remained free, for rival sovereign powers arose like those of old except that they did not seize men’s bodies and minds but only the produce, the fruits of toil and brain.

     So today we inherit the good and evil of our past. And the knowledge we inherit and cherish and our knowledge of today is so much mixed of good and evil, we are at loss to find our way. With politics, with governments and their wars, we are so obsessed it is not enough that on it our hopes and prayers are set, but many hate and scorn and would destroy the Kingdom of Peace that is also in our midst. They are beguiled by honeyed words that plead for power, that promise good out of evil only to slay all freedom under the iron heel of government and war. And even those who dream high dreams of freedom and riches and beauty put their trust in “laws,” in might of arm to win the prize of peace.

     Yet mankind has traveled far — from hut and cave to cooled and heated homes, and from the Asiatic life of thirty years to a far more than doubled Western span. Surely not the powers of force and death have created this but the power of increasing freedom to produce and create and exchange. What do governments build with powers and products not their own? Monuments and munitions, public works that at last crumble away for want of earnings to sustain them. Only the wealth and works that function freely in Society’s great system of balanced exchange pays its own way.