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Mr. Franklin Day has honored me with the above extensive comment on the last chapter of my Mind, Medicine, and Man. It is good to read his earnest considerations, because when people discuss politics or religion they usually become emotional and carping; Mr. Day avoided this pitfall to a great extent, and one feels grateful. His words therefore doubly deserve serious consideration.
Mr. Day raises objections to my objections to Freud by way of predicting the future of psychoanalysis and religion; he makes a serious attempt to show that psychoanalysis and religion reached the parting of their ways at the very outset, and that they will never meet again—as friends, at any rate. Such a pronouncement is so definite and apparently so irrevocable that one cannot pass it by without notice merely as another opinion. It strikes very deeply into certain human problems, so deeply that whatever errors there might be must be corrected with utmost efficiency and dispatch, lest many more errors be committed and hopeless confusion ensue.
We all know, of course, that man cherishes nothing more passionately than his errors. But the removal of an error does something more than clear a little the arduous road toward truth; it does away with a great deal of irrational passion and intolerance. Were I to accept Mr. Day's argument, I would have to accept his views and admit to being in error. This I would gladly do—if I were convinced. I have read Mr. Day's statement carefully, I have endeavored to be as judicious and earnest about his opinion and argument as he is about mine—and I have failed to be convinced. I shall, therefore, restate my views by way of response to Mr. Day's critique. Perhaps in doing so I may successfully meet his objections, or else become enlightened as to my own error, which I would then gladly acknowledge.