only a very extreme instance of
the general state of affairs, that there may be finer and subtler
differences of level between one term and another, and that terms may
very well be thought of as lying obliquely and as being twisted through
different levels.

It will perhaps give a clearer idea of what I am seeking to convey if
I suggest a concrete image for the whole world of a man's thought and
knowledge. Imagine a large clear jelly, in which at all angles and in
all states of simplicity or contortion his ideas are imbedded. They are
all valid and possible ideas as they lie, none incompatible with any. If
you imagine the direction of up or down in this clear jelly being as it
were the direction in which one moves by analysis or synthesis, if you
go down for example from matter to atoms and centres of force and up
to men and states and countries--if you will imagine the ideas lying
in that manner--you will get the beginnings of my intention. But our
instrument, our process of thinking, like a drawing before the discovery
of perspective, appears to have difficulties with the third dimension,
appears capable only of dealing with or reasoning about ideas by
projecting them upon the same plane. It will be obvious that a great
multitude of things may very well exist together in a solid jelly, which
would be overlapping and incompatible and mutually destructive when
projected together upon one plane. Through the bias in our instrument
to do this, through reasoning between terms not in the same plane, an
enormous amount of confusion, perplexity, and mental deadlocking occurs.

The old theological deadlock between predestination and free will serves
admirably as an example of the sort of deadlock I mean. Take life at
the level of common sensation and common experience and there is no more
indisputable fact than man's freedom of will, unless it is his complete
moral responsibility. But make only the least penetrating of scientific
analyses and you perceive a world of inevitable consequences, a rigid
succession of cause and effect. Insist upon a flat agreement between the
two, and there you are! The instrument fails.

So far as this particular opposition is concerned, I shall point out
later the reasonableness and convenience of regarding the common-sense
belief in free will as truer for one's personal life than determinism.

1.10. PRACTICAL CONCLUSIONS FROM THESE CONSIDERATIONS.

Now what is the practical outcome of