Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1317

Carbon of a letter to Crane Brinton, c/o Harvard University, Cambridge MA

May 15, 1939

Dear Professor Brinton:

Please let me present myself as a non-academic student, an amateur in the best and proper sense of the word, in the study of society and social organization as a natural phenomenon and as a form of life. With this self recommendation, there should be no mystery about my very great appreciation of your article in The Saturday Review of Literature of May 6th, reviewing one of the recent contributions under your title of “What’s the Matter with Sociology?” I think you have “told Off” as the English say, and to the Queen’s taste that whole company of limelight seekers and ‘intellectual’ Muses, who are trying to sell the tawdry technique of tyranny for leading all of the oppressed out of their modern bondage. On general principles, I do not think very much of destructive criticism or, as Harry D. Gideonse says “Judgments that define error without revealing any yardstick of truth.” I don’t think very much can be done to reform Lynd and Company, nor does the gazetting of their gaudy pretentions afford very much aid to constructive thinking, but such a blast as you have handed them in this review, certainly does clear the air and remove some of the obstacles to intellectual respiration. I have read and re-read your review with delight and amusement, that certainly refreshes me for further attempts at the serious examination objectively of the social structure and the functions performed by its several parts.

As a foundation for this process, I have found what I call “The Energy Concept of Population” a most valuable aid. Believing that the positive things of life may also appeal to you, I am enclosing a typed outline of this concept in the hope that you will find it worthy of consideration and comment. I am sending you also a printed pamphlet which seeks to interpret the institution of private property in land as one of the structures or institutions of society in the light of this dynamic conception of population. This institution, private property in land, is one of the uniformities that seem to be manifested in every society above the nomadic level. It is one of quite a number of uniformities which all history of social and political organization reveals. Looking at history as the behavior of men, I am struck by your recommendation of the “Useful Task of Observing that Behavior and Finding Useful Uniformities in It.” Is it too much to hope that when history centers its attention upon these uniformities, whose essentials appear in the social organization of all times and places, there may be laid the ground for a real science of history revealing the natural laws and uniformities that have been found in and can be predicated of the phenomena which constitute society?

Whether my approach to the study of society and my ideal of history as a natural science interest or not, you, at any rate, have my applause for a thoroughly good job of destructive criticism artistically done.

Very truly yours,

Enc.