It
is the insertion between man and his environment of a pseudo-environment.
To that pseudo-environment his behavior is a response. But because it
_is_ behavior, the consequences, if they are acts, operate not in
the pseudo-environment where the behavior is stimulated, but in the
real environment where action eventuates. If the behavior is not a
practical act, but what we call roughly thought and emotion, it may
be a long time before there is any noticeable break in the texture of
the fictitious world. But when the stimulus of the pseudo-fact results
in action on things or other people, contradiction soon develops.
Then comes the sensation of butting one's head against a stone wall,
of learning by experience, and witnessing Herbert Spencer's tragedy
of the murder of a Beautiful Theory by a Gang of Brutal Facts, the
discomfort in short of a maladjustment. For certainly, at the level of
social life, what is called the adjustment of man to his environment
takes place through the medium of fictions.
By fictions I do not mean lies. I mean a representation of the
environment which is in lesser or greater degree made by man himself.
The range of fiction extends all the way from complete hallucination
to the scientists' perfectly self-conscious use of a schematic model,
or his decision that for his particular problem accuracy beyond a
certain number of decimal places is not important.
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