How easy is one to neglect the obvious?
I liken this idea to that adage about people who cannot “see the forest for the trees.”
For, how can people hold two contradictory viewpoints – on the same subject – at the exact same time?
Or, not see their own shortfall.
Maybe it’s low intellectual power, willful delusion, or something else?
I don’t even know.
Maybe – sometimes – we just don’t want the truth.
Aggravate that most useful human characteristic, the horror and neglect of the obvious. You must bring him to a condition in which he can practise self-examination for an hour without discovering any of those facts about himself which are perfectly clear to anyone who has ever lived in the same house with him or worked in the same office.
–C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
