For each of these decisions some view of the facts is taken
to be conclusive, some view of the circumstances is accepted as the
basis of inference and as the stimulus of feeling. What view of the
facts, and why that one?
And yet even this does not begin to exhaust the real complexity. The
formal political structure exists in a social environment, where there
are innumerable large and small corporations and institutions,
voluntary and semi-voluntary associations, national, provincial, urban
and neighborhood groupings, which often as not make the decision that
the political body registers. On what are these decisions based?
"Modern society," says Mr. Chesterton, "is intrinsically insecure
because it is based on the notion that all men will do the same thing
for different reasons.... And as within the head of any convict may be
the hell of a quite solitary crime, so in the house or under the hat
of any suburban clerk may be the limbo of a quite separate philosophy.
The first man may be a complete Materialist and feel his own body as a
horrible machine manufacturing his own mind. He may listen to his
thoughts as to the dull ticking of a clock. The man next door may be a
Christian Scientist and regard his own body as somehow rather less
substantial than his own shadow. He may come almost to regard his own
arms and legs as delusions like moving serpents in the dream of
delirium tremens.
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