Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1434

Carbon of a letter to Eugene Davidson, Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut

August 29, 1945

 

 

Dear Mr. Davidson:

Following the kind suggestions made by you and Mr. Chamberlain, I placed, shortly thereafter, a copy of my MS., Citadel, Market and Altar, in the hands of Mr. John Davenport, Irwin Edman and Max Eastman.

Mr. Davenport indicated a very earnest — almost an eager — interest in what I told him about it and volunteered the suggestion that it might be made the basis of an article for his magazine. He purposed to spend a week or more on it and then report to me.

Professor Edman preferred to postpone discussion until after reading. John Chamberlain had written him quoting Edman as having said that Aristotle called pro­perty the surrogate of virtue but that in his view my contribution had made property the instrument of virtue and might therefore be taken as the “Deweyization of Aristotle.” Edman’s reaction, as a follower of Dewey, should be interesting.

I did not succeed in making personal contact with Max Eastman; so after some days, I sent copy of the MS. to his summer address, Chilmark, Massachusetts, by registered mail, with notes from Mr. Chamberlain and myself enclosed.

Another carbon copy I am hoping to place in the hands of either Dr. Geoffrey Brunn, who I believe is eminent as a historian, or Dr. Will Durant. I will be lunching with Dr. Brunn tomorrow. He is quite taken with Isabel Paterson’s The God of the Machine. (I dare to hope he will find Citadel, Market and Altar going forward from where she left off — showing how energy, truly social-ized, flows creatively out of the administra­tion of property contractually by its owners, as capital, and that the owners of communities, large or small, when enlightened and organized for the purpose, can become fountains of creative energy as public services, both positive and protective, and be rich in their spontaneous revenues, voluntary recompense, therefor.

I am indebted to you and Mrs. Davidson for your personal as well as intellectual hospitalities and look forward to encouraging responses and gratifying events.

Sincerely,