Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1481

Letter to Edwin R. Walker, Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida

May 20, 1953

Dear Dr. Walker:

     Though considerably delayed, I wish to express to you my very great pleasure in making your acquaintance and exchanging ideas, especially in the realm of educa­tion and the other fine arts. I was greatly honored by your invitation to communicate further along similar lines of thought in company with a number of your leading adminis­trative and faculty associates and by the generous hospitality of your home for that occasion.

     The liberal arts college plays, of course a major part and, ideally at least, performs a very specific func­tion in what we may call the cultural as distinguished from the necessitous or economic department of the organic society. Being an agency for the development of total personalities through awakening individual potentialities and creative powers, liberal education is not discipline to a prescribed conformity but most definitely a spiritual process of unfoldment and growth. It thus falls into the third of those functionally distinguishable divisions of the social organism that are symbolized as Citadel, Market and Altar. It has to do not directly with the maintenance of the social body but rather with its florescence and growth, the advancement and elevation of all its units and parts. It can therefore be ideally or adequately con­ceived only in its social context, its place and part in the threefold interfunctioning divisions of the integrated society.

     Should further opportunity arise I would be very happy to communicate, in faculty seminars or by informal talks to advanced students, somewhat of the inspiration that I have found in my researches and discoveries con­cerning the parts and the functioning of the non-political social structure that only in recent or modern times has so wonderfully though as yet so incompletely evolved. This might become the nucleus around which a college depart­ment for study of the existing voluntary society could be established and endowed. I would suggest none but very tentative beginnings, in view of the great potential for growth involved in a positive and authentic approach. Nor would I suggest any financial commitment or similar obli­gation on the part of the College being incurred.

     On driving north from Florida I detoured by way of Tennessee and had a very happy visit with Dr. Edward McCrady of whom doubtless you know and who entertains con­ceptions of Society that are almost if not quite identical with mine. Since my letter of May 12th to Dr. McCrady sets out some of these conceptions as I drew them from his writings and talks, I am enclosing for your reference a copy of this letter to him.

     Please remember me cordially to Dr. Hanna and to Dr. Fort and your other associates and again let me thank you for your many courtesies and for the hospitality of your home and of your mind.

Sincerely,