Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2303

Carbon of letter from Heath to Will Durant, Hotel Sherman, Chicago, Illinois

October 17, 1945

Dear Doctor Durant:

My good friend Dr. Schneidman referred to me your letter of October 9^th written from Chicago. This led me to ascertain through the Leigh Agency that the manuscript, CITADEL, MARKET AND ALTAR, that I had sent to your California address by first class air mail, had been returned here to New York and was being held by them. I am also advised by the Agency that you will be back at the Sherman House in Chicago for the 18th and 19th of October. Noting your expectation of its being forwarded to you from California, I have had the manuscript sent on, using this time the Airplane Express. I hope it will come safely to your hand and that I may have word from you that it has done so.

I anticipate you may find in this manuscript a not-unfruitful attempt to carry the basic conceptions of the natural sciences into the social field and thereby lay ground here also for an expanding rational technology upon the narrow empiricism to which the imperfect functioning of the social organization has been historically confined.

The emphasis is for disclosing how the technique of free enterprise for private recompense and gain is extendable into the public field, and for relying upon that dependable motivation for the development and extension of public services, as of other services, without coercion. Given the necessary new intelligence, the implication of this is profound, — an automatic non-political solution of the critical world-problem of today, namely, by what agency can either a local or a world-wide community secure services without tyranny, the protection of power without need for defense against it? (Ch. 11, 18).

The manuscript proposes a solution believed to correspond in principle with the effective procedures employed by all the natural sciences; requiring no legislation or other coercion, abrogating no liberty or property, creating great incomes and values, yet consonant with all the highest aspirations and social ideals. By way of self-extenuation, if any need be, for this infliction upon you, let me say, in the manner of Emerson: “Senates and sovereigns can confer no compliments and honors like the presenting of worthy thought and presupposing its intelligent examination.

 My compliments, and my best wishes in everything that you pursue.

Sincerely,