Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1304

Carbon of a letter from Heath to F. Morgan Barr, 720 Cater Avenue, Baltimore MD

June 8, 1940

 

 

 

Dear Mr. Barr:

 

I am terrible sorry that I must be in New York next Tuesday evening and will not be able to lead the St. John’s College Adult Seminar Extension for that evening. As one of the more active participants, I hope you will not mind acting for me upon this occasion and trust you will do so. But in case of your unavoidable absence I have asked Miss Hughes to select another member.

The Library has been kind enough to assign to us
Dr. Wheeler’s room again for our next meeting and after
that the Assembly Room on the third floor for the balance
of the summer (if we so desire). Mr. St. John has notified his associates of this arrangement and given instruc­tions to the Guardian of the Door to give the proper direc­tions to any who may inquire as to our place of meeting. I have expressed my appreciation to Mr. St. John and assured him that all the members of our group feel likewise indebted to the Library and its fine public spirit. He tells me that his delay in notifying me was due to his hope of being able to obtain Dr. Wheeler’s room continuously for us.

I am quite distressed at being absent next time. Education, I believe, is perhaps our very most fruitful topic. I hope it will come up further in our later discussions and that we will get some clear views upon it as an esthetic art serving to liberate the human spirit into the joy of creative endeavor and activity. I am sure our group will enjoy Dr. Barr’s recent report and I hope the discussion will bring out in full some of its very profound implications. I believe that religion, in its creative and inspirational aspects, is the mother of all the esthetic arts, that all the muses were born in the temple, and education is always seeking and must always find its own authentic muse. President Barr’s report seems to bid her a special welcome at St. John’s. His in­sistence that the crafts and techniques must be subordinate to the free spirit of education is well in line with my be­lief that all of the fine arts are the mothers to whom are born all of the sciences that transform the mere empiricism of raw experience into highly rational and constructive technique.

Please be sure to have the Group select a topic, with appropriate reading or reference, for the meeting of June 18th.  I enclose some possible suggestions. 

 

                     Sincerely,