4. We may have known, in the course of our lives, a few people who, when we ask them a question, think before they answer. These are the people who habitually say to themselves, "In view of this question and of the truth which I should speak, what words should issue from my lips?"
5. The whole science of logic is the science of seeing truly: in view of certain premises, what is next? What follows and must follow, if we are to be logical.
6. Anybody who has got to a certain point in his profession says, "In view of my successes and my failures thus far, what is the next thing for me to do?" One can say the same, and I imagine that most people have often said it to themselves, in relation to friendships: in view of my present affection or dislike for that person, what next? We have come through the world's most gigantic war: in view of this, what next?
7. I tried to exemplify this principle also in our medical and social history-taking. Our histories should be orderly. There is a thing that rightly comes first and a thing that, in view of this, should come next.
8. When the musician composes or plays, he is guided in the writing-out or in the instrumental expression of his musical idea by his consciousness of the whole piece—what is done and still to be done. "In view of this whole," he asks himself, "what notes come next?"
9. When a man prays he says to himself, "In view of my sins and of God, what next?"
It appears, then, that the most trivial and the highest things that go through the human mind, if they go right, follow that formula, because it is simply a way of putting truth in order, and because order is as fundamental to a human mind that is working right and not wrong, as anything can be. The catastrophic point of view, on the other hand, is the point of view of disorder, the belief that things happen "as the result of accident," come upon us without order, were never in view beforehand, occurred for no known reason.
The principle of order is also closely knit to the principle of independence or integrity, which we want to achieve in social work when we give. Physically we want the person to be independent, not depending upon a drug, not needing to be jacked up by a stimulant, not dependent as a sick man is dependent, on nursing, special diets, and long rests. In the economic field we try to avoid making a person depend on a crutch, a support, a pension, which atrophies his economic powers instead of developing them. At least we desire not to weaken them. We want to give and build, to give something that will go on by itself to make him independent of us.
But independence is not altogether a good phrase. No human being, linked up in a world-order as we all are, is ever independent. What we mean by that not altogether satisfactory phrase is that we want to be dependent only upon something that we can rely upon, only upon permanent, central, orderly powers of the universe. Physical independence does not mean independence of food or of rest; one soon comes to the end of his tether if one attempts such independence. Dependence means hanging. We must all hang. But we want to hang upon something that will not let us down, upon food, air, warmth, exercise, rest, such as are always available in an orderly life, or should be.