ful disintegration, the act of subverting the proper function of consciousness, of setting the cognitive function in
reverse and reducing the contents of one's mind to disconnected, unintegrated fragments that are forbidden to
confront one another.
Man's life and well-being depend upon his maintaining a proper cognitive contact with reality—and this requires a
full mental focus, maintained as a way of life.
The act of focusing, as a primary mental set, must be distinguished from the act of problem-solving. Problem-
solving entails the pursuit of the answer to some specific question; as such, it presupposes a state of focus, but is
not synonymous with it. For example, a man who goes for a walk on a sunny day, intent only on the enjoyment of
his activity, with no immediate concern for any long-range problems, may still be in mental focus—if he knows
clearly what he is doing, and if he preserves a fundamental alertness, a readiness for purposeful thought, should the
need for it arise.
To be in focus does not mean that one must be engaged in the task of problem-solving every moment of one's
waking existence. It means that one must know what one's mind is doing.
The more consistently and conscientiously a man maintains a policy of being in full mental focus, of thinking, of
judging the facts of reality that confront him, of knowing what he is doing and why, the easier and more "natural"
the process becomes. The steadily increasing knowledge he acquires as a result of his policy, the growing sense of
control over his existence, the growing self-confidence—the conviction of living in a universe that is open to him—
all serve to put every emotional incentive on the side of his continuing to think. Further, they reduce the possibility
of an incentive that could even tempt him to evade. It is too clear to him that reality is not and can never be his
enemy—that he has nothing to gain from self-inflicted blindness, and everything to lose.
No, this does not mean that, for such a man, the policy of rationality becomes automatic; it will always remain
volitional; but he has "programmed" himself, as it were, to have every emotional incentive for rationality and none
for irrationality. To borrow a phrase from Aristotle, he has learned to make rationality "second nature" to him. That
is the psychological reward he earns for himself. But—and this must be emphasized—his psychological state