One conceives systems of thought best in mathematics and science. Euclid’s geometry, based on its axioms, is the most perfect system, and cannot be improved upon, if one confines oneself to Euclid’s 3-dimensional space. This is good enough for ordinary purposes, but even looking at an ordinance-survey map its inadequacy shows in the deviation between grid-North and true-North. And in the navigation of aircraft on inter-continental flights it is useless. So it does not fit in perfectly with human experience. Another system is Newton’s theory of gravitation; this again is a perfect system and cannot be improved upon. It is satisfactory for large areas of science, and good enough to get men onto the moon, but proved unable deal with electro-magnetic fields and light and radio waves. Its application was more widespread than Euclid, but still did not fit in perfectly with experience. Einstein’s system did not modify Newton; it was a new Relativity system, and fitted in better with modern astronomy. And so we go on. But these are small systems, and every country develops its own vastly bigger system that embraces language, what it regards as common-sense, art, science, and all its spiritual values. The scientific systems exist within it, and often influence it profoundly. Newton’s system did in Britain and France; the encyclopaedists may even have helped to trigger the French Revolution.
The same is true of the mental or spiritual world: psychology and theology. These systems too never fit in perfectly with experience, and always need to be refined. For the Church to claim that its Creeds were immortal truth, as it sometimes has done, is just nonsense. It is as absurd as claiming to have plumbed reality on finding a new sub-atomic particle that exists for a fraction of a second. And Man’s Relationship with God is simply my exposition of the new and unconventional system of thought, that my spiritual adventure demanded.
All conventional thought takes place within the well-tried system of thought that a community has evolved, of which the conventional thinker is a member. It is extraordinarily difficult for anyone to think thoughts right outside the culture and the system of thought, in which he, or she, has been brought up. Even rebellious children end up being like the parents from whom they have rebelled. Partly this is genetics, no doubt; but partly it is the influence of the culture and the system of thought in which they have lived. One may momentarily be able to voice some outlandish idea. But the ability to live out that idea in one’s daily conduct is quite a different matter, because it demands a system of thought to back up the outlandish idea; and that system simply does not exist until you create it. Every distinct society has its own system, and a language to accompany and accommodate that system, which have evolved over a long period of time. None of these cultures and systems of thought will fit in perfectly with the reality of the created world, anymore than scientific systems do. They will have their good points, and their bad ones. And there is nothing whatever wrong in convention, indeed most people depend on it to lead their lives, except that in time a conventional society will ossify or stagnate. New thinkers are vital to the life of any community, though always opposed.
Both in my experience and from my reading, I reckon an individual needs an apprenticeship of three, four, or even five years really to think up something new, and think it through. And of course conventional people will look askance at him. Scientists have usually greeted new ideas with cautious opposition, until the idea appears to be confirmed by experimental proof; but then science’s approach to life is comparatively superficial. In religion, where ideas mean life and death, new ideas are met with diabolical fury. As St.Paul wisely says, it is best to make sure that having preached to others, one is not oneself a castaway. And it is probably right that Jesus was tempted in a way few of us can appreciate, and as none of us could have withstood.