Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3178

Typed page by Spencer MacCallum casting Heath’s ideas in his own words and then revised in pencil by Heath

No date

Separately, the Citadel gives men protection, the Market gives them subsistence, and the Altar gives them inspiration, but the three functioning together as a unit give men increasing life.

     The order of their genesis and development in a community is: Citadel, Market and Altar, but their value from the human point of view is in the reverse order, Altar coming first, Market second and Citadel last.

In the order of their development, each proceeds in consequence of the one before and progressively diminishes the place of it. The Market develops in the primitive community as a part of men’s energies is diverted from the Citadel. Contractual practices and ethics gradually replace and make unnecessary the practice of compulsions, both as aggression and as resistance to aggression.

The Altar, or the non-necessitous life, develops as a part of men’s energies are freed from necessitous operations by cooperating in the market. The researches of the Altar and the psychology there developed so refine and increase the efficiency of the market that less and less energy has to be employed toward providing mere sub­sistence for the community. Thus an increasing proportion of men’s energies is liberated for the pursuit of transcendent and spiritual values — for recreations and the development of art, science, religion and philosophy and the cultivation of aesthetic human relationships — all falling within the province of the Altar.