knowledge a person must have, before he or she can play a constructive part in any community. This essential knowledge is how to meet the reality of evil, when it appears in its various disguises. The solution when evil appears is not to fall on one's knees and say, “I am a miserable sinner, but Christ by his once for all passion has saved me from my sin”; the solution quite simply is to recognise evil for what it is, from whatever quarter it may appear, and resist it.
Evil is a part of life; not perhaps life as it should be, but of life as it is. And it follows that no description of human nature is complete unless it takes account of evil. The moment a psychologist convinces himself that there is no part of human nature which defies analysis, he eliminates evil at one stroke. He does not eliminate it from the world of course, where it remains as militant and rampant as ever. He does not eliminate it from himself. But he eliminates his consciousness of evil. If evil exists, he is unaware of it; at least in his theories and in his advice, even if his own feet are still firmly on the ground. Most of us face the realities of life as they really are; and in twentieth century commercial England one of those realities is evil. One may resist evil, one may welcome evil with open arms; but to deny its existence is to display a naivety which is truly staggering. In my idiom, it betrays a deformity in one's own consciousness.
So it is only in Part III of this book that it is possible to get down to anything like a satisfactory study of human nature. In Part I, it is true, the idea of righteousness was introduced, and it was found that it provided the only path to a perfectly relaxed consciousness. In Part II this desire for perfection was watered down, and the highway of righteousness became the dynamic co-ordinates alongside which an honest man measured his own conduct. But even here we are still in the context of a man putting his fantasy world into practice. It is only when a man has put his fantasy world into practice, and has found out…