pretending that these phrases were learning. Sonorous inanities, Lord Denning called them. Foreseeability too depends how far ahead you look. If you only look one step ahead, you ought to able to see the obvious. It is when you look further ahead that the obvious is not so apparent. Yet Lord Reid in Carmarthenshire County Council v. Lewis took foreseeability one step at a time, found each step foreseeable, and then found the end result foreseeable. Everything is foreseeable on this basis; and we are back with Laplace's infinitely patient mathematician. And Lord Reid was one of the very best judges. Cause and effect is just a particular example of function; it is a linear function. To try to describe human affairs in terms of cause and effect is like trying to describe events in three dimensions or more, but limiting yourself to a vocabulary appropriate to events in one dimension only. It is inadequate.
Spengler says that the rock bottom of thought in any culture is the idea of space and the idea of number; and in Western mathematics space means infinite space with its lines of force and induction, number means a point in space with the appropriate number of co-ordinates, real and complex. The two ideas are linked by the idea of function. Indeed it may not be going too far to say that the idea of function is the greatest contribution of the Western mind to the structure of thought. How foolish it would have been of me not to use it, particularly when it was ideal for my purposes.
What I have written may be reasonably competent, but is it the truth? Yes, and no. It certainly represents my view of man, and his place in society, stripped of everything except the bare essentials of spirit. It is only the tip of the iceberg, and represents that part which I have been able to reduce to form and coherence. So in that sense, there is truth in what I have written. And it may be that some of those who read this will say, “Yes, my experience fits in with bits of this, although I would not have expressed it in the same way”. In that sense there may be considerable truth in it. But it is not “The Truth”.