Spencer Heath Archives

Item 780

Random taping by Spencer MacCallum from conversation with Heath

March 14, 1956

In all conscious-membership organizations, in which the bond of union is feeling, or emotion, such as friendship, adventure, artistic or scientific interests, in all these the tendency is to distribute all benefits equally to all in virtue of their membership rather than in proportion to individual contribution. The usual ideal is to treat all alike, regardless of other considerations.

In the all-inclusive social organization, however, in which the individuals interfunction unequally, nature provides for the rational distribution of results to each in proportion to his contribution. This is the great function of the basic social institution — the institution of contract, or of the market. It provides for the numerical valuation of everything that is done for or delivered to others. In this way, and by the keeping of accounts, the distribution to each is in exact ratio and proportion to his contribution to all.

Thus does the process of human society transcend the mere emotional processes of the animal and the sub-societal world. The social man is the regenerate man, because he has been born into a rational world through the practice quantitatively of the Golden Rule of doing unto others not only emotionally but quantitatively as he would have others do unto him. This quantitative cooperation admits to membership all those who practice it, without regard to any other qualification. It thus brings man into a creative and thereby into a spiritual communion with all other men so acting. And this is the foundation of the spiritual world that through the ages has been inviting the spirits of humbly aspiring men.