Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2297

Carbon of letter to Eugene Davidson, Yale University Press, New Haven 7, Connecticut

September 21, 1945

 

 

 

Dear Mr. Davidson:

 

     I must thank you for your kind note of August 31 and say that I have delayed report because I have not been able, so far, to get report from any of the three to whom the manuscript, “Citadel, Market and Altar” was submitted shortly after we talked about it.

 

     Messrs. Edman and Davenport, particularly the latter, expected to report within a week. Just then, I was obliged to go down to Washington and Virginia for a little over two weeks but upon my return each of them asked for two or more weeks’ extension of time; so I have as yet nothing from either of them.

 

     Max Eastman could not be located in or near New York, so I sent it to his home address, Chilmark, Mass., with a personal note from John C. and a few words from me. Only yesterday he wrote me that he was returning the manuscript, since he had not been at home when or for some time after it arrived and, “I simply have not time to read it in the coming months, when my mind is to be engaged with a wholly different subject.”

 

     However, in the meantime I was able to interest a professional historian, Geoffrey Bruun, and he has written me at some length concerning the manuscript. He exhibits a warm emotional reaction, somewhat favorable, I think, but with no great attempt at intellectual analysis or appraisal. He volunteered, in conversation, that the book was of such a kind as might become a landmark but I notice he did not include that in his letters. I am sending his three letters to you.

 

     Through an old-time acquaintance of Will Durant, I am preparing to send a copy to him (to Durant) where he is now, in California. His volume, PHILOSOPHY AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM, certainly does bring to a focus the need for some basic generalizations in the social realm before there can be in that field either a science to describe it or a philosophy to correlate it with other fields.

 

I thought our friend Chamberlain’s note to Erwin Edman was striking. After recalling Edman’s remarks that to Aristotle property was the surrogate of virtue, he stated that in this manuscript property is made the instrument of virtue. He then suggests that Edman, as a Deweyite, should give good welcome to this “Deweyization of Aristotle.”

 

     I am disappointed that our two “fair-haired boys” in New York are taking so long. I was telling John Chamberlain today that I’m impatient to be doing something on behalf of basic social thinking. He says it is important that the book should be talked about but that there is little I can do to arouse discussion until after publication. My mind hungers for thoughtful criticism, either to accept if need be, or justly to refute.

 

     Many thanks to you for your kindly personal considerations. I shall be most happy to see you again.

 

Sincerely yours,

 

 

 

Encl.

Letters from Dr. Geoffrey Bruun

Dated September 7, 8, and 16, 1945.