A man puts his beliefs into practice in relation to his fellow man; not alone or in isolation. So when I suggested that it was only the beliefs put into practice regularly in a man's life which were really worthy of the name belief, or were retained very long, I was considering an artificially narrow situation. From the community point of view the idea is modified as follows: a man expresses in action (and words may be action, they are for the lawyer) such shared beliefs as his relationship with his immediate companions allows.

For instance, this is the whole basis of questioning witnesses. In the examples I have given of cross-examination in jury trials, the jury would have resented the questioning intensely if they had felt it involved lawyer's trickery; they convicted in every case, so presumably they did not. In every case the accused walked into the pit dug for him, of his own free will. You can use the same technique in defence. In a case of blackmail, it was common ground that there had been a homosexual relationship and that money had passed for years; the question was whether threats had been uttered and it had turned to blackmail? And the accused had been lured into making threats in temper and receiving marked money, with the Police hiding behind the door at the top of…