Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1682

Carbon of a letter from Heath to George S. Montgomery, Jr., 488 Madison Avenue, New York 22, New York

1959

 

 

Dear Mr. Montgomery:

 

Many thanks for your kind letter of February 26th and for the gift of your Why Bertrand Russell is not a Christian.

 

I have read this little book of yours at one sitting and with exceedingly great interest, especially the veritable prose poem on pages 6-10, “The Magic Valley,” which is to me a thing of purest beauty and inspiration.

Bertrand Russell has been to me for many years the black sheep par excellence of scientific materialism both intellectually, except perhaps in mathematics, and morally in all his conceptions concerning the nature and the social organization of mankind, without necessarily making any reference to his crude notions and personal intransigency concerning sexual relations.

The rest of your book, though very competent both in substance and form, seems to me almost wholly negative, depending for its value and beauty on the worthlessness of what it exposes and deplores. I could not but feel a little guilty at the satisfaction that I got out of it. Yet after all, when evil is imminent or upon us we must resist lest we be destroyed. Here we have no option or alternative but are pro tanto enslaved, and in this we cannot worthily exult. For it is only in the remaining realm of freedom that any creative alternative, not to destroy but to transcend and supervene upon the evil, can be sought, chosen and exultingly pursued.

Please try to pardon the above somewhat hi-hat homily and take a glance or two at my own little screed, The Inspiration of Beauty, which I enclose, if you have the time.

Again with many thanks and cordial regards,

Sincerely,

Enc.