Honesty seemed to be a value that could promise some relief from a confused bouncing between opposing states. In this he naively assumed that every state was built around a defence of some cherished illusion. That there was some naivety seemed certain, but it may have been rather in his notion of honesty. Either way his attempts at honesty only opened onto to further mess and confusion. He lived in a messy world and no clear distinction could be made between the inner and the outer. The endless disputes between superficially plausible and utterly incompatible positions, each wielding the badges of good-faith, was in the very atmosphere of the times. Honesty and truthfulness was claimed as an attribute, a matter of tone, of key, of gravity, and could be at the same time aesthetically satisfying and overbearing. This added up to very little; but what did remain was an unglamorous going on, a kind of proceeding without an agent or subject, and without reflection or looking back.