Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2785

Correspondence with Heath’s good friend, Louis H. Solomon, beginning with a 1959 Christmas card greeting from Solomon, followed by a penned draft on notepad paper and carbon of a letter to Solomon of February 5, 1960, eventuating in Heath’s own Christmas card text the following year, 1960, “The Divine Mandate.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greetings:

Out of the depth of his studies of the Torah, the prophet Isaiah pondered the mandate of Moses to the children of Israel, at the foot of Mount Sinai:

“thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” (Lev. XIX: 18)

Here, in this formula for human behavior, the prophet found the promise of universal peace. As he envisioned the ultimate triumph of human understanding, he spoke the prophecy of peace in these classic words:

“and they shall “beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning forks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more.” (Isaiah II; 4)

It is a privilege to find shelter in the abiding faith of a slow, but inevitable, expanding horizon of understanding among men, and, in the holiday spirit, to utter a meek and humble prayer for an end of hate, for good will among men, and to send to a friend these greetings of the Holiday Season – a Merry, Merry Christmas and the bounties of a Happy, tranquil New Year.

___________­_____________________

/Draft/

Dear Mr. Solomon:

Again and again I ponder the loveliness of your greeting for the new year — “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” As a sentiment and among those who are intimate or dependent, its fruits are enjoyed consciously and are of great personal value and beauty. Only as it manifests itself in some outward form, when love becomes service, when the command is taken as a command to serve, then only is it the “formula for human behavior” — to serve others in the same manner one would be served. When this is done reciprocally in the modern system of exchange it ceases its dependence on love as a personal sentiment. It becomes impersonal, without discrimination as to religion or race and thereby universal, partaking of the Divine — motivated almost unknowingly by a God-given instinct in man.

 Moreover, through it keeping of accounts, it operates with the same impersonal rationality, the same balance and beauty that the natural sciences discover in all other created and evolving realms.

 See what a train of thought your “formula for human behavior” inspires. It is the central idea around which everything in that book of mine revolves, the practical large-scale application of which that Foundation of mine is designed to promote.  …

 

_________________________________

 

February 5, 1960

Mr. Louis H. Solomon

5 East 10th Street

New York 3, N. Y.

Dear Mr. Solomon:

Again and again I ponder the loveliness of your Greeting for the New Year, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Here is the divine command, the “formula” for human behavior. Or is it? To many, love is a senti­ment — not necessarily any kind of behavior at all. But a certain kind of behavior is implied. This is what we may call the objective side of love. And in a later ver­sion it is not a mere sentiment that is enjoined, beauti­ful as that may be. It is a specific mode of action — that ye do unto all others as ye would have them do unto you. Here is given to us the way of life, the passport to that kingdom of the Spirit on the earth wherein all things shall be added, even unto ever more abundant life.

 These fruits of the Spirit are not for those who only profess the sentiment of love, but for the doers of the word. And this doing must not be directed only to intimates or a chosen few; it must be towards all others, of whatever condition, color, race or creed.

 The kind of the action, the manner, the how of the love, is very specific. It must be done in the same man­ner as one would be done by. It must be done in a oneness of mind, a mutual accord of consent and desire on both sides, pursuant to a meeting of their minds. When the sentiment or spirit of love manifests itself in service in a general system of mutual exchange it is impersonal. It thereby transcends all narrow limitation, becomes universal, partaking of the nature of the Divine. In the democracy of the market in which all things are done “by consent of all and coercion of none,” it is a balanced, rational system determined by the equivalence of numbers, the balancing of accounts. It is thus a high creative technology among men, the same, in principle, as that practiced in the natural sciences for the transformation of the material world.

 The free enterprise system in which each is equal in his determination and jurisdiction over his own person and possessions — so far as it has developed and evolved — is the rational, self-consistent, concrete and universal practice of the Golden Command that we do unto all others in the same manner we would be done by. When the real owners — owners of the realty — in public communities merge their titles and act unitedly for the benefit of their inhabi­tants, then will the public business become truly a public service. The free enterprise principle then will be ex­tended to all business, public as well as private, without any cause or occasion for either taxation or its correla­tive — war.

Cordially,

 

Spencer Heath

 

SH/m

 

_______________________________

 

/Heath’s Christmas card for 1960/

 

 

THE DIVINE MANDATE

Spencer Heath

Again, Isaiah pondered the loveliness of

Moses’ mandate to the children of Israel

      (Lev XIX:18):

 

       Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

Here is the divine command, the formula for human behavior. To many, love is a sentiment — not necessarily any kind of behavior at all. But a certain kind of behavior is implied. This is what we may call the objective side of love. And in a later version it is not a mere sentiment that is enjoined, beautiful as that may be. It is a specific mode of action — that ye do unto all others as ye would have them do unto you. Here is given to us the way of life, the passport to that kingdom of the Spirit on the earth wherein all things shall be added, even unto ever more abundant life.

     These fruits of the Spirit are not for those who only profess the sentiment of love, but for the doers of the word. And this doing must be directed not only to intimates or a chosen few; it must be towards all men.

     The kind of action, the manner, the how of the love, is very specific. It must be done in the same manner as one would be done by. It must be done in a oneness of mind, a mutual accord of consent and desire on both sides. When this sentiment or spirit of love manifests itself in a general system of mutual exchange, it is impersonal. It thereby transcends all narrow limitations and becomes universal, partaking of the nature of the Divine. In the democracy of the market, in which all things are done “by consent of all and coercion of none,” it is a balanced, rational system determined by the equivalence of numbers, the balancing of accounts. It is thus a high creative technology among men, the same, in principle, as that practiced by the natural sciences for the transformation of our material world.

     The free enterprise system, in which each is equal in his self-determination and in his sole jurisdiction over his own person and possessions, is — so far as it has developed — the rational, self-consistent, concrete and universal practice of the Golden Command that we do unto all others in the same manner we would be done by. When the real owners — owners of the realty — in public communities merge their titles and act unitedly for the benefit of their inhabi­tants, then will the public business become truly a public service. The free enterprise principle then will be ex­tended to all business, public as well as private, without any cause or occasion for either taxation or its correla­tive — war.

 

 

/Note: MacCallum modified this text for inclusion in a projected publication provisonally titled “Economics and the Spiritual Life of Free Men,” by omitting the last two sentences, thinking it too much to introduce two radically new ideas in this short piece./