Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1355

Carbon copy of a letter to William Newcomb, 8 East 30th Street, New York, New York

February 19, 1941

Dear Mr. Newcomb:

     I am quite pleased and interested to receive today your long letter of the 17th. It is heartening to know that you can be placed among that very small company of persons who are primarily interested to acquire an under­standing of the actual operation day by day and minute by minute of our existing economic system, rather than among those who ignorantly condemn it outright as the Marxians do, or in some of its most fundamental aspects, as most of the Henry George people do.

     My own interest in the whole matter is to under­stand the social world in the same manner and by the same process that modern science is an understanding of the natural world. The fact that civilization and society is a new form of order of existence in the living world, accounts for its immaturity — for its being less than complete in all of its structures, and less than 100% efficient in all of its functions. However, it does live and exist and it does this by its parts working together, in a definite manner properly called their functioning and not by their failure so to do. What interests me most is to observe in society as elsewhere what things do happen and how they happen — what results we do accomplish and how we do accomplish them. Once we have an intellectual apprehension of realities; once we have mental illumination as to any field of experience; once our minds have grown into the pattern of the pro­cesses which prevail in the field of our experience from which alone we can learn, then it is impossible for us to act otherwise than in accordance with the light we then have. It is then as unnecessary as it is stupid to try to pummel and propagandize and politicize ourselves into a rational course of action. Men are bound to take false steps while they are in the dark; they not only will not, but they are so constituted that they cannot take false steps when they are in the light. And the light is not beautiful because it is useful; it is useful because it is beautiful. The spiritual world is the world of quality, value and beauty. It is the world of freedom; of the emancipated will in which alone the spiritual avails itself of options and alternatives, and thus grows into the practice and the being of highest beauty.

     Now, about your motion picture project: I have long looked upon the cinema technique as having vast and but little used educational potentialities. I have often deplored that it has not been more extensively developed in this direc­tion than it has. And I believe the public is always ready to respond to a higher and finer service as fast in propor­tion as those who offer it have skill, intelligence and widely enlightened minds.

 

     For myself, there is no technological field with which I have had less connection or concerning which I have less information. It is one in which I am in position to be served but no wise to serve. I do hope, however, that men like you who are engaged in it and who are skilled in it will go on using it for the finer and better service of mankind, and I hope to avail my­self of much and many of its services. For my own part (repeating), I am something like Wellington Wells, a merchant in potions and spells, but I have nothing but ideas to sell, and ideas must always be sold without value and without price for, like all spiritual value, they grow with the giving, and no measured recompense is required. It is only material things that must be exchanged, for it is only in these things that the giving of them would otherwise leave us with less.

     I note you say that certain pictures you have in mind offer an alternative to Statism. If this is true, and if the alternative is so well offered as to become intellectually acceptable, it is bound to become practi­cally so forthwith. I would love to see such a work of the intellect so merged into a work of art.

     Frankly, I must say I know nothing of your particular interests and ambitions beyond what your letter reveals. It sounds interesting, and I would like to know more about it.

     I am going to be in New York next Monday, February 24th, and for several days thereafter. As usual, I will be at the Woodstock Hotel, 127 West 43rd Street (Bryant 9-3OOO). Please get in touch with me there.

                                     Yours very truly,

 

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