Spencer Heath Archive

Item 478

Penciling on notepad paper for an incomplete essay. The order of Heath’s transitions was not always clear and could use study.

No date

 

 

THE CHRISTIAN AND

THE PAGAN WAY OP LIFE

In any large organization of men there are two, and only two, kinds of relationships among them with respect to those portions or things of this material environment upon which their welfare and happiness, even their existence, depends. These necessary portions or things are (l) natural, unmodified by any positive human action upon them, and (2) artificial, having been purposefully modified by human action and design. The first, which consist of sites and natural resources, are called land. The second consist of human improvements in or of land and the artificial products thereof and are called wealth.

When the separate holding or possession of either land or wealth is by a social convention of common will and consent

When, by a social convention of common will and consent, portions of land and of wealth are appropriated to and thus held or possessed by particular persons, then such persons have ownership therein and title thereto and the land and wealth so appropriated become and are called property. Property may be defined as that which is or may become the subject-matter of contract. And such particular persons are called proprie­tors. This social convention of property and proprietorship is the divine relationship of non-aggression among men with respect to one another and to their environment under which they have equal “rights” or jurisdiction, equality of authority, over themselves and their respective properties — the equal rights and authority under the exercise of which alone they can practice the Golden Rule of contract, of creative services in mutual freedom without coercion, and thus establish in place of the political a free society, a “Kingdom of Heaven” on the earth.

 

The other and opposite kind of relationship among men with respect to their environment is not proprietary or social. It is political, the Imperial or Sovereign power. Its author­ity rests not on any social or voluntary convention of right and title to property but upon the physical power and “right” of ex-propriation. Its jurisdiction over persons and property is not social but coercive and political. Its jurisdiction is not evolved but imposed. And because from its very nature it cannot practice the Golden Rule of contract and exchange it is bound to the Iron Rule of expropriation and destruction both in peace and in war.

The juridical terms for these two kinds of relationships among men with respect to their environment — property by agreement and ex-propriation by force — are: “The Proprium” and “The Imperium.” The evolution of Society is the evolution of the Proprium out of the Imperium, the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven, the spiritual birth and growth of mankind into the use and beauty of creative relationships and thereby towards immortality through security and peace.

Imperial Rome

As Imperial Rome impoverished the nations united under the Pax Romana, the Roman tribute depopulated cities and towns. With the values of community life destroyed their inhabitants fled to the Barbarians and became, as Gibbon says, more barbarous than they. The Church took on the trappings of the Empire and in an age of universal faith and of almost universal violence laid on the Western world a weaker and perforce a milder rule. Though she repudiated the gospel vision of a Heavenly Kingdom for this world and assumed full jurisdiction over the faith of men in this world and their fate in the world to come, still in charities and alms she accepted a degree of responsibility for their condition in this world. But above all through a thousand years of violence she was firm in the Christian precept that /all men fundamentally and potentially are of equal worth/.

After a half-millenium of pagan darkness under the imperial bonds of temporal and ecclesiastical power combined, a new renais­sance of freedom, like that of Saxon England under Alfred came upon the Western world. But this later Proprium was founded only on the ownership and contractual administration of goods and products instead of communities and lands. The local com­munities and lands and all the common properties and services appurtenant to them remained under the Imperium of political instead of proprietary administration. There was a new free­dom of ownership and administration of goods but no restoration of non-political (allodial) ownership and administration of sites and lands. For yet another half-millennium land holding was to remain a governmental and coercive instead of a social institution as in the least backward and more advanced of modern lands. Yet the revival of…

Despite persisting pirates on the seas and increasing tribute to the growing territorial sovereignties and kings, this world of free relationships with its ___________ in land created vast new wealth and values for mankind. But the growth of trade could not keep pace with the aggressive power of empire. The Proprium fell subject to the Imperium with its weapons of force and war. The nationalistic states continued growing on their tribute from the towns and trade. And in the logic of international wars they grew fiercer and larger and became colonial and imperial powers that fattened on tributary trade until freedom of property and contract became, as now it is, largely outlaw on land and sea. Thus arose…