verneSpencer Heath Archive.

Item 383

Taping by Spencer MacCallum unbeknownst to Heath of Heath’s words through the bathroom door to MacCallum while shaving, at the home of Frances Norton Manning, 312 Halesworth Street, Santa Ana, California, subsequently titled by Heath. Subtitle are Heath’s words spoken as an aside.

July 28, 1954

WORDS MORE PROM THE HEART,

THAN JUDICIOUS, ON BEAUTY

     Which is perhaps, after all,

    appropriate to Beauty

The only absolute is Beauty. The Good is only how you feel about it.  The Good for you is what feels good to you, and for the other fellow, what you feel is good for him. Anyhow, Beauty does not have to be enforced, and the only force that enforces Good is brute force. Truth is a little better, but not much. There are so many kinds of Truth, both good and bad, that to say merely something is true, and to praise it for that, is to lack discrimination.

Goodness is the virtue of slaves, Truth the color of the chameleon, but Beauty is as the song of the lark and the nightingale. It is the source of inspiration. It cometh from above, and never sets one man above or below another, as do Goodness and Truth. Without it, men would be forever as worms and slaves.

 

                        /Heath slightly amended this                                   as follows:/

 

The only absolute is Beauty. The Good is only how you feel about it. The Good for you is what feels good to you, and for the other fellow, what you feel is good for him. Beauty is spontaneous — it does not have to be enforced.  The only force that enforces the Good is brute force. Truth is a little higher, but not much; for there are many kinds of Truth, both good and bad. To say merely that something is true, and to praise it for that, is to lack discrimination.

 

Goodness is the virtue of slaves, Truth the color of the chameleon. But Beauty is as the song of the lark and the nightingale. It is the source of inspiration. It cometh from above, and never sets one man above or below another — as do Goodness, and Truth. Without it, men would be forever as worms and slaves.³⁸³