Spencer Heath Archive

Item 922

Pencilings in a notebook

Fall 1950?

Original -> 912

 

 

 

 

 

A human life is not a mere object or thing; it is an event. It is a very complex event, an occurrence in a succession of similar yet individually (or separately) unique events, each following its predecessors and linking them to those who follow it.

     And just as it is a single rhythmic beat in a great orchestration, so it has a complex orchestration of its own. It is a complex of lesser events, of all its heartbeats and hungers, its goings and comings, the rhythm of its moments, days and years.

     A life is a vastly complex event. It is, in principle, the same as any other flow of energy — the flight of an arrow or a bird, the fall of an apple, spin of an electron, the revolving of a planet or a star. Thus a life as an event has three and only three basic dimensions: mass (or force), motion (of the mass or force) and time (the rhythm and continuity of mass and motion). But the greatest of these is time — that succession of lesser events in which life as the greater event endures and abides, towards which immortality aspires.

     Like the cosmic ray, the form or mode of life that has the highest frequency of succession is the least evolved. It has the shortest period, the least dimension of time. Its energy in relation to time is high, but for want of duration its quantity is low.

     So it is with the lives of men and with the races of men and the generations of men. Those least frequently replaced longest abide. Though its energy per unit of time should be no greater, yet in its achievement of time as duration the quantity of the energy per life or per generation is great as its frequency is low, and therein its abiding and thereby its creative power.

     Among the many races of men, as among the generations of men, there are differences in many respects: form, color, customs, language, traditions. And for every race living today perhaps a hundred have flourished in the interminable past and perished from the earth. Yet it is no mere accident that these have survived. Nature shows great partiality towards those who, however fortuitously, or instinctively, follow her secret precepts, her hidden but still wholly discoverable code.

     The instincts and traditions of men prompt them to works and ways that tend to shorten their lives and also others that serve the lengthening of their days, the duration of their race. Yet how often do they give honor and worship to that which destroys while they dishonor that which serves and saves. The way of life among men, in their relationships among themselves, is the way of peace; not peace as a condition or mere negation of war, but a process, a carrying on. The peace of life is a form of energy, a mode of action among men that gives them security of life and length of days for them and for their race or nation. It consists in what men do for each other, their mutual services, the objective side of love, the golden rule of impersonal cooperation through the modernly worldwide system of measured exchange. In this system of creative energy in action transforming the conditions of their lives and thus lengthening their term do nations and men owe their life-giving /?/

Jews:  Race — longest laboring, least rewarded race of men. Will they be the most immortal? Reap their reward

In a race (contest) it is the judges, not the contestants, who mark the course and make the rules, award the prize. So in human destiny the spirit, the principle, of the cosmos sets the rules and endows the prize

Many called but few were chosen to survive and abide