Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1665

Carbon of a letter from Heath to F.A. Harper, The William Volker Fund, Post Office Box 113, Burlingame CA.

November 11, 1958

 

 

Dear “Baldy”:

 

     I am terribly sorry I can’t seem to locate the quotation from Emerson about Scroggs and his beer. I have searched through all of the volumes of Emerson’s “complete” works, but in vain. It must be in one of his journals or many miscellaneous writings from which I obtained it, probably at second hand. I was so impressed by it years ago that I wrote it down and memorized it with great care, as follows:

 

“My friend, the prohibitionist, would deprive Scroggs of his beer, and make him feel the poorer for it, but I, for my part, shall not be content with myself until I have so inspired him that he will give up his beer and know himself the richer for it.”

 

     Very many thanks for sending Prof. Sorokin^’s apostrophic panegyric to altruistic (self-sacrificing — “opposite to individualism”) Love as the Universal Solvent — everything else having failed. This turning away from previous dogma marks quite a happy advance beyond his published dicta in the thirties wherein he lugubriously argued that the then “crisis” in world affairs was the necessary result of the modern contractual relationship having so far taken the place of medieval “status.” To show how vicious this can be, he cites a hypothetical “contract” between two men to murder a third. — A smallish book published about 1933 under some such title as The Crucial Crisis. For remedy, he prescribed with vaguely ponderous certitude some kind of religion, apparently private to him, the nature of which he left entirely undisclosed, except that it might get us back on “status” again. In his recent /argu/ment (none too original) he seems, like Toynbee, to rely upon the cultivation of religious and altruistic sentiments without specifying any technique for their objective implementation, beyond the range of immediately personal contacts and affairs. I am sending this to Spencer as you suggest, but without any comment by me. He can make is own.

     Spencer and his brother’s family in New Mexico urge me to visit them. I may do so before the winter is over, and possibly see you and some of your new associates, especially if I visit also that very scholarly grandson in Seattle, as he urges me to do.

     Printed matter as per enclosed has gone out to 10,000 scholars and scientists, supposedly the most eminent in their various fields, as compiled in the Bowker directories. Ninety thousand are to follow if results warrant.

 

     On November 14^th I will begin a week’s visit at a small college in North Carolina at the invitation of its president, who has heard something about my Citadel, Market and Altar and says he wants to start a department of philosophy.

 

     After that, I must spend a week or so in New York and then, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . we shall see.

 

     Many best wishes to you and to that very fine family of yours. Please remember me to all of them.

 

                        Cordially,

 

 

Encl: 4 Circulars

      2 Return Envelopes — Coupon

      2 Summary of Principal Theme and Reviews

      1 Purposes of Science of Society Foundation