Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1389

Carbon of a letter from Heath to Schuyler N. Warren, 1148 Fifth Avenue, New York City

July 3, 1941

Dear Mr. Warren:

     I returned here only yesterday from Pennsylvania where I have been most of the time since leaving New York. I have visited some of the Quaker camps and con­ferences, particularly at Pendle Hill and at Bryn Mawr College where they have been having a nine-day confer­ence on our old friend “democracy” and international affairs. The conference had the usual stereotyped procedure. For politicians they had Senator Wheeler and Norman Thomas with their customary platitudes and condemnations and sure-fire gags for applause. I got wedged in where I couldn’t get out easily and had to hear Wheeler through but I was able to dodge most of Thomas. Wheeler was redolent of the soap-box, most plainly designed for home consumption in Montana — his speech, I mean. It would be funny if his constitu­ents should go pro-war on him suddenly. Then there were some Protestant evangelical ministers fervent with good intentions but with no ideas as to how to carry any of them out except by passing more and more laws to change the “system.” Then there was a pundit from India with a lot of mystical turbulence under his turban and no high regard for Western ways. And there was a high professor of sociology from German and Austrian univer­sities waging a blitzkrieg on Uncle Sam’s vernacular with much brow-raising and facial contortions. He was quite generally commented on as the most brilliant mind at the conference, so great was his unintelligibility. But one thing was clear; every last one of the speakers (teachers all) wants more laws or at least different laws under which the present or some new crop of politicians will polish us off better and more benevolently under some new dispensation of State power.

     The Quakers have a theory of getting things done without resort to violence or State power, and it must be said in their favor that they are not quite so hot as most other sectarians are for State slavery as an es­cape from poverty and war.

I am much pleased to find here the Encyclicals sent by Miss Frances Quinlan. I am reading them. I quote from a handwritten letter of thanks I am sending her:

Very properly, I think, the Encyclicals seem to set out aims and ends rather than with any spec­ific means for attaining them, except to urge upon us the Christian and godly spirit in which we must seek the appropriate means. I am glad to find myself a seeker whose quest has not been without gratifying results. The light as it comes to me teaches that divine ends can be attained only by spiritual means. By this I mean ways that are creative without being destructive, that are cooperative without being compulsory. I have great faith in the free and contractual relationships and processes between men becoming better understood and thereby being easily extended into the field of public services and relations that are now so sadly dominated by the un-spiritual compulsions of government. I have no faith in the reverse process of extending the com­pulsions of government further and further into the now-diminishing field of freedom in which men are trying to serve each other by the voluntary engage­ments of contract and consent and exchange. Public authority remains today, in principle and method, just what it was in the stone age. It needs to be spiritualized by abandonment of force and deceit and substitution of contract and consent for the sake of the profits made and the values to /be/ created for all in that way and never in any other way. I feel that much light concerning this matter has come into my mind. Let us all hope and pray for much more.

     Well, my very good friend, I have truly enjoyed the frequent opportunities I have had of discussing these matters with you and with the various other delightful persons with whom you have made contact for me. I hope to be able to draw more and competent minds in the dir­ection of understanding the virtue and fruitfulness of voluntary relationships /Words missing? check original/ the essentially creative and therefore spiritual nature of the golden rule as expressed and performed, whether we realize or not, in all free contractual engagements of service by exchange, and how the institution of private property in land stands waiting to be understood and then to be automatically employed, peaceably and creatively and profitably for all concerned, in the administration of public affairs. This is quite a task for one man, especially for one who has little or no skill as either author or publicist. The theme would be worthy of the energies and capacity of an H. G. Wells or, preferably, Hillaire Belloc. I do have a considerable gift for teaching but only small opportunity for exercising it. I wish I might be equally capable and industrious as an author. I am still working, though at rather brief and infrequent periods, on a considerable elaboration of the “Energy Concept of Population” as the foundation of a new Science of Society. But I find it hard to write without importing new ideas rather than elaborating those already there. This makes it too compact for most readers. Perhaps it will have to remain only a skeleton or a seed bed from which in future a great deal more can be drawn.

     Some matters of business in Baltimore and Washington will be keeping me here for at least a week or two and I hope to get a bit of writing done meantime. It is always a pleasure to see you in New York and I hope to do so again before very long.

     Please remember me most kindly to your entire household.

 

Sincerely,