Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1487

Letter to Heath from Edward McCrady, Office of the Vice-Chancellor, The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee

July 27, 1953

Dear Mr. Heath:

     Thank you for your letter of July 27. I remember with a great deal of pleasure the interesting visit which we had in my office and I only wish it might have been longer. I did receive your manuscript, and I have it in my office now, but I think I remember telling you that I would be away from Sewanee giving a series of lectures in the early part of the summer and that I doubted that I would have a chance to read it before August or early September. I look forward with pleasure to studying it soon.

     Thanks also for the copy of your letter to Dr. Sinnott. The latter sent me a copy of his latest book, Two Roads to Truth, which I read with a great deal of interest and sympathy. I certainly appreciate and share most of his conclusions, though it seems to me I differ rather funda­mentally on one point. The major theme of his book seems to be that reason and intuition constitute two independent and equally important roads to truth, both of which must be cherished and cultivated if we are to preserve Western civilization. If he means merely that science and religion must both be cultivated, I fully agree, but I do not believe that the difference between them is the difference between reason and intuition. I believe that reason is utilized to the full in both scientific and religious thought, and that the only real difference between the two is that in the first case reason is applied to sensory data, whereas in the second case it is applied to spiritual data. Both kinds of data are the fruit of experience and an adequate philosophy of life must deal with the whole of experience rather than with one reaction or another.

     I will write you again after I have had a chance to study your manuscript.

                   Cordially yours,

                     /s/ Edward McCrady

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