Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1423

Carbon of a letter from Heath to Dr. Perlzweig, Head of Biology Department at Duke University.

January 28, 1944

 

 

 

 

 

My dear Dr. Perlzweig:

 

     Your letter of a month ago was a most delightful response to my happy and grateful memories of you, — even though my joy in its loving kindness is a little shaken by my own sense of undeserved praise. It makes me feel like repeating Socrates’ invocation in the grove, “Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who here abide, grant me to be beautiful in the inner man and all I have of outer things to be at peace with those within.” I’m sure your “religious Pagan” John Donne, knew and loved this. I am wondering about your quotation from him. It seems strange he is so little referred to by writers of today. I feel that he will be better loved when there are better men to love him. Speaking of loving one an­other, I think it would be equally or more precise to say that we love the same things, especially the things that ever lure yet never cloy and are never lost but as we are torn or turn away from them. The intuitions of high re­ligion and all creative art, in the light of abstract rationality, are ever now, as once they were in Genesis, the re-creators of the physical and ephemeral world.

     I most heartily reciprocate your wish for renewal of contact and trust it may be fully realized. Dr. Widgery has been so kind as to make me acquainted with his friend and former student, Dr. Walter Cutter who happens to be living near me. This has been delightful. I should love also to meet any special friends of yours who may be within reach.

     Your own field of research must be filled with mys­tery and charm — bio-chemistry — chemistry as the ser­vant of life — the imponderable guiding the ponderable to do its will. I like to observe how each science, in its turn, has become servant to these yet to be. The science of number — abstract quantity — serves all other sciences; from the mechanical on through the elec­trical, chemical, biological and psychological. And each of these serves its successors as its predecessors serve it. (Yet none of them become deceased.) I suspect that the advance of biology depends much on chemical research, as the advance of modern psychology has so much resulted from biological investigation. Who shall say that a true science of society may not be inherent in the sciences of life and mind? — just as psychology inheres in biology and biology, genetically at least, in chemistry and electri­city. If each higher science becomes more inclusive, takes in wider territory, it follows that, ultimately, science and philosophy, including religion and the arts, must be one. The next emergence, it seems to me, must be a Science of Society founded on and served by each and all of the others, and especially by its nearest predecessors, biology and psychology. And since the Society is the only organism that has the power and the over-all function of re-creating its own environment, we may well hope to find inherent in a science of society an even yet higher and more universal science — a truly spiritual science because in the realms of intellect, intuition and the inspirational arts will have discovered conscious and rational techniques for a continuous creation of the world. The divine nature of man makes the kingdom of heaven potential in him. His creative power manifests its self in the golden rule of exchange. Only as potential is the kingdom within the individual; as an activity, a creative activity, it is within the social-ized (exchanging) group.

     I think it must uplift your spirit to feel yourself and your entire department so surely raising the horizons between the living and what we consider the non-living world — endowing with ever higher anabolisms the tree of certain knowledge that alone can bear celestial bloom. No doubt there are many obstacles and disappointments, but the seeking after creative (spiritual) power is a birthright too precious to exchange for ephemeral things. Many give all but life to save their lives, and they give reluctantly, but those who are inspired to seek the beauty and wonders of the organization of the world of nature and of man have no higher use for life but to give it, and with joy. But it is as you say: the esteem and loving-kindness of fellow-seekers crowns it all. Your letter is an inspiration that will long endure.

     I hope you gave or will give to Dr. Menefee some further expression of my obligation to him for his help­ful advice as a physician and for the pleasure of a most entertaining visit with him.

     And to you, Dr. Perlzweig, my best and sincerest compliments and my very great hope of a more extended visit with you. I should love to see you in New York and could even put you up, if no better accommodation should be available. Is there any possibility of your coming this way before the first of July?

Sincerely yours,