Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1291

Carbon of letter from Heath to Jean Cox, 122 Bank Street, New York City

December 28, 1939

Dear Miss Cox:

It was very nice to receive your cordial letter of the 23rd and to be so graciously assured that my calling you by telephone was not the intrusion that I feared it might be. I was prompted by the mes­sages that Jean Freeman was so kind to convey and which I appreciated very much. It is always an inspiration to make contact with those who have similar serious interests. The seekers and searchers are all too few.

I will be in New York (Kings Crown Hotel, 420 West 120th Street) next Saturday, December 30th and remain over January fourth and perhaps some daye longer. I am pre-dated for the evenings of the 30th, 2nd, 3rd and 4th. Shortly after the fourth I will go to Boston to remain about a week and then return to New York

I shall be delighted, indeed, if we can have some further conversations, either alone or in company with some of your friends whom you might like to have. If I do not hear from you I will probably take the liberty of calling you again.

I suppose you have enjoyed the study of law, for all the drudgery involved. There is a vast and shadowy background to it that is only partly reflected in the narrow records of particular cases or in the hard and occasionally polished faces of the text-books that are designed to anticipate future particulars more than for the illumination of the past and its meaning. Even from the standpoint of private and individual rights as against others — the customary point of view — legal origins are of great interest. When looked at from the standpoint of public or community rights, and the spontaneous and unconscious customs that tend to conserve them, then legal origins possess the utmost fascination and their examination a high sociological value and importance. In fact, when one views human life as, fundamentally, a stream of energy possessing a unity out of which all its variant manifestations arise and in which they flow, then it is possible to see all persisting customs and institutions in correlation together, and this is what gives them the kind of interest and meaning — of understanding, that lights the path to fulfillment of human hopes and dreams.

But more, and more specific, anon, if it please you.

                                          S.H.