Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1502

Carbon of a letter from Heath to Edward McCrady, The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee.

December 2, 1953

 

 

Dear Dr. McCrady:

It seems quite a long time since I saw you or heard anything from you, But my daughter, Mrs. Irvan O’Connell of Winchester, Virginia, has been telling me of meeting you in Richmond and of the very great interest with which some of the Episcopal church organizations have been hearing your very inspiring syntheses of sound scientific and authentic religious conceptions. I am happy to know that the inspiration that you were to one of my grandsons in Princeton University still goes on as I hope in wider and wider fields.

Por my own part I have lately been immensely edi­fied by Russell Kirk’s recent publication, The Conservative Mind. It is a wonderful revelation of the immense background of sound conser­vative thinking, especially by Edmund Burke and his con­temporaries and near contemporaries including Tocqueville and Lecky, that has persisted through more than a century of so-called “Liberal” political and economic indoctrination. I am exceedingly impressed with the role that such Conservatism as that of Burke has played in keeping the totalitarian wolf somewhat at bay. I have sent a copy of Dr. Kirk’s book, considerably annotated, to a very thoughtful and scholarly friend who I am sure will be delighted with it, and who I think will approve my brief commentary on it as follows:

As human society evolves, all unconscious, now in triumph, now in decline, towards its destined organic norm, two tendencies, one to save, the other to waste and destroy, appear. The one is called Conservatism, the other Radicalism.

In times of growth and gain Conservatism stands motionless on guard. In times of fear and loss, when growth declines, Radicalism rides high and Conservatism only seeks to retard the downward trend.

Conservatism saves and conserves. Its power is in the brake, for it is the stator, not the motor, of social organization and advance. Radicalism, born of frustrations, is explosive. But for the brake of Conservatism it would completely destroy.

Conservatism, inert and potential, affords no release, gives no forward guidance to the social power. The task of the “Conservative Mind” is to find the rationale implicit in the organic rela­tionships among men. It must develop a positive, non-political dynamism of its own.

     Advance in social organization awaits a Dynamic Conservatism that will have motor power as well as braking power, that finds the forward way and sets foot in it.

All hail to an enlightened, to a rational, to a Dynamic Conservatism.

    

     November 13, 1953                                       S. H.

 

My dear Dr. McCrady, may it not be possible that a proprietary (and thereby contractual) administration of public and community affairs may be the dynamic with which a positive Conservatism might go forward in some of the fields now dominated and devastated by political administration?

You will perhaps recognize proprietary administra­tion as the central theme of the middle section of my manuscript, Citadel, Market & Altar, a further evolution of property in land being a key to a contractual and non-political administration of the public capital. It seems to me that this might afford a sound basis for a Conser­vatism that not only conserves but goes forward with a positive and constructive program. With this in view we might be on the eve of an emergent step in social evolution even greater than the social mutation that oc­curred in the late 18th and early 19th century, when pro­perty in land became divested of all tax-taking and war-making power and took its place side by side with other free enterprise in serving instead of ruling mankind.

It seems to me that this institution in its evolu­tion is a focal point towards which the method of the natural sciences, the lesson of history and the spiritual aspirations of mankind all converge.

I am wondering if you are acquainted with Dr. Kirk as you are with Dr. Sinnott, whom I had the pleasure of visiting a short time ago.

 

Sincerely yours,

SH:sm