Many thanks for the generous comment on P.V.! When it is all boiled down, I believe there is a residual idea of importance, and one that is certainly being overlooked. For some years, in fact since 1912, I have been reading scientific works as they floated in the stream of books, and I have noted the astonishing growth of the mechanistic view and the corresponding increase of pessimism and flippancy and cynicism. It is now a march of sophistication to hold nothing as good. There is the closest relationship between those facts, of course. I am sick of their goddamn twaddle about mechanism. It's insane in the larger analysis. They name + classify + think they have eliminated mystery; and they have merely ignored mystery. The mellower scientists know this well; and I know their views. But the world does not know, and Science is regarded as supreme in our world. Why can't they see that their method gets no farther than to that by which a curious man in a sand waste might plot the characteristics and formations, forgetting the fact of the mind always blowing across the waste?
It's the fashion of the moment, and it's no more. In their rebound from superstition they have fallen into a different phase of superstition. The contemporary hallucination is in keeping with the whole trend toward animality; and democracy, "as is", not the ideal but the fact, is an allied phenomenon.
By God, I'd rather go over to any religious sect than swallow the narrow "scientific" view of humanity + the cosmos. But I'll do neither; and in P.V. I have at least suggested why I will do neither. It is not intelligent to do either.
Say, Comrade, since you are to be in New York, could you not plan to meet Latham as my friend + get acquainted? It would no doubt prove to be good for both of us. And when your book is ready, you might be glad for the connection. Let me know and by the way, Latham [wants?] my short stories to publish + I'll get them ready at once. Proofs of Collected Poems should be here now any day.
Jno.
If by any miracle, P.V. should gain any special attention, which is highly improbable for the very reason that compelled me to write the little book, I can in two months produce a book of practical application that would have ten times the power this one may have. Much of it written. It's called The mood of the moment.
Don't be discouraged! I don't look for any such encouraging reception.
Jno.
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M.M.
