"Sure."
"In our first few weeks—as babies, we react according to the fact of our vision. We want to grab the top of something—but we reach for the bottom—because human vision is inverted."
"It is."
"We learn—by experience—that we see upside-down. As we age—month by month—we develop a 'mind' that makes the correction for us. By the time we're some months old, everything 'looks' rightside-up. And only once in a while, under peculiar conditions, does anybody's mind ever glimpse the world the way his eyes see it—inverted."
"So what?"
"So—that is an example of useful autohypnosis. An immensely potent example. It shows how the 'mind' can establish a set of facts directly opposite to those observed by the eyes. A mind that can go through life looking at an inverted world but 'seeing' it the way it is—manifestly is capable of accepting almost any degree of suggestion from its other parts, and its various senses—of accepting true suggestion or false suggestion. Manifestly, it isn't necessarily 'right' or 'wrong' about anything not proven."
"An argument for empiricism."
"Sure. But for psychological empiricism. That is—an argument for refusing to take for granted any human descriptions of the nature of mind, personality, spirit, psyche, soul—call it what you will—until the descriptions have been pragmatically checked. Take my proposition that all ideas of personal survival after death are misconstructions of an instinct designed to apply to the psychological and biological future of men on earth. Then look over some people who, as a group, reject the idea of Heaven. The communists, I mean.
"I've pointed out—and brighter men have pointed out before me—that when the materialist dialectic was applied on a mass of people, it became a religion. Reason and logic departed. Dogma, orthodoxy, emotion, creed, saints, apostles, holy orders, a Bible with gospels—the whole, compulsive paraphernalia of religion burst into being. What was intended as an abstract, atheistic, scientific, materialistic pattern for living turned into the most fanatical evangelism, the most bigoted crusade, the least logical movement the earth has seen for ages. Lately, where the facts of the science of genetics have proven contrary to communist dogma, the Soviet has abolished science. The Roman Catholic Church never did anything more religious, in the worst sense of that word—more superstitious—more compulsive—or more absurd."
"What are you driving at?"