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And as the average mind found itself forbidden to think on certain of the most important lines in life, and unable to think logically on such bases as were allowed, it simply accepted them as “unthinkable” and so admitted in the common stock of ideas these disconnected heaps of arbitrary statement. Our natural tendency to relate and connect our percepts and concepts in logical sequence, so as to form a rational collection agreeing with itself and with our behaviour, has been not only neglected but prevented; and this arbitrary disconnection of mental processes has been so thorough and universal that we have grown to expect what we call “inconsistency” in human action.

Yet consistency is one of the brain’s most essential laws. We expect things to be consistent, we demand it. Talk disconnectedly to the most ordinary person and he soon cries, “What on earth are you talking about? I don’t see what that has to do with it!” And we all know how busy our brains are, trying to make out to ourselves that our own conduct is consistent. We are naturally consistent, but the unbroken centuries of violent insertion and compulsory retention of irreconcilable statements in the young brain have perverted natural action and trained us in an artificial inconsistency.