How am I able to say that in my opinion the bedrock of any attitude of mind is that group of unspoken and usually unconscious assumptions in the mind, together with the nervous tension in the body that creates and sustains that attitude? I can say it, because it is what my first book “Man’s Relationship with God” is all about; and the book illustrates how extraordinarily difficult it was to reach this conclusion. When one is oneself part of a process, it is extraordinarily difficult to have any insight into that process. How can one be a detached observer, when one is obviously not detached, but part of the process? No wonder some philosophers say a theory of consciousness always slips through your fingers! My solution was not to look for “permanence”, either in the physics and chemistry of the material world, nor yet in the ideal forms of thought in the mental world, which Plato preferred to physical permanence; but to accept instead that everything changes, even an indwelling with God changes. So I prefer the crude evolution of Heraclitus, to the polished dualism of Plato. And though I accept that there are things in the mind that seem to be innate, like the idea of truth and the ability to think Nature is comprehensible, I tend to think of these as “Assumptions”, rather than as “A priori knowledge”. I looked for “reality” rather than “permanence”; and I hoped to find reality in this mortal world in an indwelling with another human being, which complemented any indwelling I might think I had with God himself. This indwelling between people is so unbelievably rare, that I felt it was the nearest I was ever likely to get to being detached. And the justification for this hope of mine was that in the Army, morale is everything; and the bedrock of morale is comradeship, and regimental spirit. This then for me was reality in this mortal world; not money, nor social position, nor knowing the important people, but comradeship; and I hoped to find its apotheosis in an indwelling with another person.
The first part of “Man’s Relationship with God” was essentially an exploration of this idea, rather like threading one’s way through the hills of our native land in thick mist, even though one has not been among those hills before, something which I have done many times. In Chapter 11 of “Man’s Relationship with God”, I make a declaration of faith: that all true relationships preclude analysis; in other words that falling in love is a reality that is not to be explained away. It is when you “explain” it away, that you rob it of any meaning which it might have; and incidentally demonstrate your own naivety and folly. Part I of the book ends with the picture of the mutual love of man and woman as being an expression of what we as individuals hold most dear; the two ideas of immortality and love of God.
However, although “love” may be what makes the world go round, it is not the fundamental lubricant of society. When you are tying up a boat to a quay, the waterman on the quay does not want to know that you love him, he wants you to throw him a rope so that he can catch it, and tie it to a bollard. In Court, the victim of crime does not want to know that prosecuting counsel loves her, she wants him to present a competent case, so as to give her the best chance of being believed, if she is telling a credible story. Similarly, she does not want to know that the Judge loves her, (he probably doesn’t love anybody); she wants him to conduct a fair trial, which is highly unlikely to attract an appeal, and impose a hefty sentence, if the gravity of the offence justifies it. Then she need not fear the midnight knock at the door, with the accused asking why she had dared to give evidence against him? It is competence and mutual trust that keep the secular world going. And Part II of “Man’s Relationship with God” attempts to explore the inevitable gaping chasm between our ultimate verities and the rough and tumble of our everyday world.