Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1948

Exchange between Heath and Loren C. Eiseley, Box 14, Bennett Hall, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 4, Pennsylvania.

May 12, 1960

 

 

 

Dear Dr. Eiseley:                      May 12, 1960

 

     I have just finished reading your address, “The Image of a University,” and am profoundly impressed. It reaches far beyond the veil of flesh, statistics and things temporal, releasing the human spirit towards its infinite dimensions.

     It refreshes my own conception of the objective world which sends messages to us through our sensory systems which are also part of it — that this sensory world is perhaps a tiny octave in an infinite cosmos of events ranging from the infinitely small to the infinitely large, between two opposite but equally unattainable extremes wherein the threads and lines of the spirit may endlessly reach and range.

     Sensing the quality and capacity of your cultivated mind — “which, in its broadest sense, also contains the spirit” — and perhaps a further rapport with it, I am sending you herewith a copy of my own attempt to broaden and deepen in a practical way our understanding of that manifestation of the spirit which we call culture and civilization even as it so darkly and obscurely unfolds.

With all good wishes,

                            Sincerely,

 

SH/m

Encl: “The Inspiration of Beauty”

I am sending a copy of your “The Image of a University” to my friend, Dr. Joseph B. Platt, whose spirit and ambition on behalf of the Harvey Mudd College of Science and Engineering, Claremont, California, I greatly admire.

______________________________

Dear Mr. Heath:                       May 18, 1960

     Thank you very much for your generous remarks about my New York University address, “The Image of a University.” It is always a pleasure to find that something one has written has reached out and touched another.

Our trustees are meeting this week, and I am heavily involved in preparing agendas for this meeting. As a consequence, I am saving your paper, “The Inspiration of Beauty,” to peruse in the quiet after these matters have been attended to. I know I shall enjoy it greatly.

Thank you for sending it to me and for your kind remarks. With kindest regards,

 

Sincerely,

 

/s/ Loren Eiseley