chef; the chef controlled the preparation of food but not its serving,
which was the butler's domain.^1
What is truly impressive about this system is how invisible it
remained to the denizens of upstairs rooms, especially to house guests.
Food and drink would appear magically at the appointed time, freshly
shined boots would be brought to bedrooms in the morning. Even the
owners of such places had but a vague notion of the complicated hier-
archy and distribution of tasks, which was the steward's full-time occu-
pation. As a guest, you would not even perceive any of this but only
marvel at how efficiently it all seemed to work. However, another feel-
[94] ing (commonly evinced by visitors to such places) was that getting
everything you could possibly need is not quite the same as getting
what you want. For the complex hierarchy came with a certain mea-
sure of independence and rigidity. Footmen were not supposed to do a
valet's work and vice versa. Kitchen maids who cleaned floors would
not make breakfast for you. Your boots would be shined, but only in
the morning—the relevant people were busy at other times. So master
and guest could certainly nudge this organizational juggernaut in cer-
tain directions but they could neither really direct it nor in fact clearly
understand how it worked.
THE GUEST'S VIEW OF THE MIND
It is unfortunate, and almost inevitable, that when we talk about reli-
gion we quite literally do not know what we are talking about. We
may think we know our own thoughts ("I know what I believe; I
believe that ghosts can walk through walls"), but a good part of reli-
gious concepts is hidden from conscious inspection: for instance the
expectation that ghosts see what is in front of them, that they remem-
ber what happened after it happened, that they believe what they
remember and remember what they perceived (not the other way
around) and so on. This is so because a good part of what makes all
concepts remains beyond conscious access.
Another misconception is that we can explain people's having par-
ticular thoughts if we can understand their reasonsfor holding them.
("They believe in ghosts because they cannot bear the grief of losing
people"; "they believe in God because otherwise human existence
does not make sense," etc.) But the mind is a complex set of biological
machines that p r oduce all sorts of thoughts. For many thoughts thereRELIGION EXPLAINED