the realm of action or intended action - it follows that you and he will always tend to be at cross purposes in anything you do. Not in polite social life, but in any joint activity. You and he will not think as one: you will not be a team. To be a team, you must think as one. So if you want to join up with him for any purpose, you are compelled for the sake of mutual co-operation to subject your consciousness to the same fears and deformities as his. Similarly he is compelled to do the same with you. The process is instinctive and unconscious.

Of course the adaptation need only be temporary. Once out of his company you can return to your former confidence (the absence of the fear of death). But if the process is unconscious, you may not do so; and will not do so unless part of your experience teaches you again to believe in immortality. The only beliefs you really believe are the ones you put into practice, and which experience confirms. Team-work in a secular society is a crucible which purges a man in the end of all beliefs, which are not confirmed by experience.

Before deciding whether friendship is inherently immortal, or whether a man is compelled to believe that all life and all friendship end in death, it is necessary to study more closely the team relationship; because a team relationship may impose limitations on what a man is capable of believing.