Spencer Heath Archive

Item 785

Recording of the first of two talks on parliamentary procedure Heath gave to a ladies ‘group in Waterford, Virginia (see next Item 786 for the second talk).

November, 1955

Now there are two kinds of knowledge. There is a kind of knowledge that is related more to feeling than to anything else. That kind of knowledge, while it gives us activity, and causes us to get busy, it doesn’t always “do the business.” There is another kind of knowledge, though, that goes by various names more or less suitable. One of those names is rational knowledge. Not many people know what we mean by rational. We know what our “rations” are when they are measured out to us in times of famine or something like that /chuckling/. We call that “rations” because it is measured out. Knowledge that is rational, is so because it deals in quantities expressed in numbers. It is sometimes called mathematical knowledge. It is the kind that is used by all successful technologies. All of our great industrial technologies these days are stated in quantitative terms. It is all worked out in figures beforehand — and not afterwards. /Chuckling/ The measuring is done before-hand.

As Galileo laid it down a long time ago, rationality is at bottom a matter of “ratios” — relations between quantities that are expressed in numbers. So the old Greeks were hitting at something, and Socrates is quoted as saying the best knowledge is the knowledge of numbers. Whether he knew what he meant by that, or not, I’m not sure. Maybe he just had a feeling of it. I have often had a feeling, and sometimes it is right. Not infrequently it is a sound feeling, but I can’t justify it because I can’t explain it to myself — much less to anybody else.

A peculiarity about this rational knowledge is that it is knowledge that almost invariably works. When the means are rational, they bring you out at the end that you intended them to bring you out to. They get the desired ends. There is another peculiarity about rational knowledge, and that is that it isn’t private and particular — individual. What I feel, I alone feel, and I can’t make you feel it except by a kind of vague contagion, perhaps; and get you alarmed because I am alarmed /chuckling/ or something of that sort.

But when I understand anything in terms of quantities, so I can state it mathematically or in any other terms that are specifically quantitative, then I can communicate that to anybody. All persons understand it alike. And if I found out that 2 and 2 makes 4, I can easily convince you of the same thing. In fact I couldn’t convince you of anything else /chuckling/, because when we think quantitatively, or rationally, we always think alike. We don’t think differently.

I heard a man say many years ago, though, that everybody thought exactly alike. He said, “I know a lot of people don’t think as much as I do, but they think the same way, I mean so far as they do any thinking at all — just as they digest their food exactly as my food. But they may digest it more than I do, or maybe not so much.” So he said our thinking, our real thinking, is all done the same way. Of course, he had reference then to thinking, and not to feeling; he was talking about rational knowledge, which is communicable because we all think quantitatively, or rationally — reasonably — in the same manner. That’s why we say that reasonable people are people that think — well, we usually say, that think the way I do. But what we properly should mean is, they think rationally; that is, in terms of numbers, or quantities.

So when we find out things that there is a reasonableness about them, we sometimes use the French word, rationale — what is the rationale about the thing. We’ve been doing something at the cook stove, maybe, and sometimes we hit it and sometimes we miss it; and finally, we say, well what’s the rationale of all this? What’s the reasonableness about it? Well, the rationale is something that you can tell somebody else. The empirical cook can’t tell anybody else about it. But the rational cook knows what the quantities are.

Now, as I say, twice two is four. And that’s a law, because it always happens that way; you can’t make it happen some other way. Now we are getting around to law. Nature, from whom we derive our reasoning power, is really rational. She works in specific quantities. There is a fundamental reason for all that makes it necessary that it should be so. It is called the Quantum Principle, That is the fundamental reason why nature goes in quantities — because there is a unit quantity below which she doesn’t divide anything up. Everything that we have in physical science is some one of those units or some even multiple of that, and so all the physical world is based on whole numbers. That’s where it gets its rationale.

So this law that Roberts and Cushing have been telling us about, this law that was found by something like “calling in the neighbors:” How did you succeed with your quilting party or whatever it was? /Chuckling/ What did you do that enabled you to get these results which you desired to have? And that is what all law is, and, specifically, that is what Parliamentary Law is.

And so Mr. Roberts and Mr. Cushing, they laid down these rules much as the jurors used to come in and tell the magistrate what was the law, how they were in the habit of getting along, the custom or law in that community.

So the customs of parliamentary procedure contemplate first that there has to be some person as a presiding officer. Someone offers himself as a temporary chairman, because he has not been chosen, and a permanent chairman is elected. The chairman takes the chair, and then he says, “What is your pleasure?” /And the meeting is/ open for motions.

Unless /otherwise provided for in the/ by-laws, /there is/ no limit to how long a person may speak once he is recognized. Cloture rule limits /the/ time he may speak. He may be cut off, however, by other motions that are in order.

Generally speaking, a man who proposes a thing has the right to close the debate. That is almost a general rule (just as committee reporting on a thing always has right to open discussion and to close discussion).

The chairman, by the way, never makes any motion. He is only there as the servant. In all law, the person in authority is the servant of the community and of the body of people, the population; he is not the ruler — in all law. In politics he is the ruler.

A motion that has been seconded cannot be withdrawn unless the seconder also withdraws his second.

“Rights” and “privileges” are not rights and privileges of individuals but are of the meeting. To adjourn is one of them. The meeting has a right to adjourn if it wants to, and in execution of that right you would make this privileged motion.

When the chairman proposes anything, and they have all heard it, and he says, “Is there any objection?,” and there being silence, says, “There being no objection, it is so ordered,” that is perfectly and completely correct. It is just as though they had voted unanimously or any other way on the thing, and the secretary writes it down as an act — as a measure that is passed by the meeting.

How about where the chair refuses to hear motions from the floor or members obstruct the meeting? I have seen this happen where the chairman refused to “put a motion.” It was made by the opposition. There were two factions of the organization, and the chairman was with faction #1. Faction #2 was opposed to what was being done, and he made a motion and the chairman refused to recognize his motion — refused to accept it. He couldn’t do it legally. He should have recognized it. What did happen in this case was that the man who wanted to make this motion on the opposition arose and said, “The chairman refuses to put this motion. I put the motion from the floor.” And he said, “It is moved so-and-so. Is there a second?” And he just usurped the place of the chairman. Of course it took some fortitude to do that, and a loud voice. And so it happened that way.

There may be nothing to do but for the meeting to adjourn or walk out and call itself again or something of the kind. But the Parliamentary Law only happens where people are willing to abide by the custom — which is the law. That is why the law enforces itself; there is no way to enforce law. God or Nature does all the enforcing there is, and the penalty of having a meeting break up like this is that their desires are not accomplished. Whatever people wanted to do doesn’t get done.

Notice these rules here are for a group of people to enable them to do something jointly, which they can’t do as individuals separately — for something that requires joint action. Because if I can do it on my own, I don’t have to have any truck with anybody else. I don’t have to have a meeting. You only call a meeting because you can’t get it done yourself; you have got to get other people to work with you on it. And so when you get that meeting called, then you can do things you couldn’t do in any other way. But you can’t legislate for anybody but yourselves. This is law. This is natural law. In King Alfred’s time, the Witangamot passed a measure (that was the House of Lords; that is, the House of Land Lords) providing that no lord shall take from a freeman any more rent than the freeman is willing to pay. Now that was legislation for their own governance — of themselves. And so this meeting can legislate for itself, but it cannot legislate for anybody else. This body cannot. It may have members who will be bound by it, who are free to come here and who are duly notified of the meeting and who may not have come. It will bind them. But under natural law rather than under the Roman type of imperialistic law, the measures of any meeting or any body do not bind anybody but the members of that body itself. Whereas under Roman, imperialistic law and back in Egypt and Babylonia and so on, the ruling authority or the legislative power was imposed upon other persons than those who were in the meeting. Now we have a revival of Common Law in our corporate meetings. In the corporate meetings, only those persons who are owners of the corporation vote, and they vote by property qualification. — How much did you put into this meeting? If you put in twice as much as I did, you have twice as much voting as I did. So it is a property qualification. And the measures that are passed only affect that corporation, its personnel and its properties. They don’t affect anybody outside of that corporation. And that is the way with a parliamentary body under law as against under politics. Their measures are not effective on anybody but the organization itself which makes the measures.

At the meeting I spoke of just a moment ago (it was many years ago), I was recording secretary, and the two factions were very bitter toward one another. The question was whether this club should go into some practical politics, getting some candidates elected or not. It was a sort of economic club and not a political club, primarily. The one faction did not want the club to go into politics, and the other faction, the political faction, had the majority votes in the meeting. But the administration, the officers, were of the first faction who did not want to go into it. And so I as recording secretary, how I recorded this event that I described a moment ago would be on the record as the doings of the concern and was a matter of considerable concern to each faction how I wrote that down. And so I was appealed to by both sides most earnestly before the next meeting to disclose how I had written it — how it would appear in the minutes. I didn’t tell either side how it was going to appear in the minutes, but I wrote it in this way, that “Mr. Cooley arose at the floor, and himself put the motion and declared it carried.” /Chuckling/ I simply stated the facts, without giving any interpretation of their legal or other significance. /Chuckling/ The secretary is there to record, not to decide. Of course, I could have ignored that in the meeting, or I could have said that it was carried. I said, “he declared it carried.” I simply stated the facts. The secretary could have slanted it, you see, by being prejudiced on the matter. I was really equivocal. I didn’t know myself whether it was a good thing for the club to go into politics or not. So it wasn’t difficult for me to straddle. /laughing/

To what extent are you bound by the resolutions of a body of which you are a member, and what does and does not constitute membership to the extent of being bound by its resolutions. It comes down to this — whether it is a voluntary organization to which you are free to belong or not to belong. If it is a political organization — I mean one that has sovereign powers, taxing or war-making powers — then you are bound by it and you have no freedom in that respect. But if it is not, you are not bound by it. So in some churches, scoffers have gone at great length to get themselves unhitched from the church, and they had a lot of trouble doing it, because churches have a political slant too, you know. But in all voluntary organizations, you can resign. Labor unions won’t accept your resignation. The Communists won’t accept a resignation. Your state or county, you can’t resign from that. You are in whether you like to be in or not, and you are bound by whatever is /done/ by those, and they represent you unless you come and actively speak up for yourself.