“But are you not being a trifle naive? It sounds as if
you supposed that argument was the way to keep him out of the Enemy's clutches.
That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier. At that time the humans
still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved
they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to
alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning. But what with the weekly
press and other such weapons we have largely altered that. Your man has been
accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies
dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily “true”
of “false”, but as “academic” or “practical”, “outworn” or “contemporary”, “conventional”
or “ruthless”. Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church.
Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is
strong, or stark, or courageous — that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort
of thing he cares about.

The trouble about argument is that it moves the whole struggle onto the Enemy's own
ground. He can argue too; whereas in really practical propaganda of the kind I am
suggesting He has been shown for centuries to be greatly the inferior of Our Father
Below. By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient's reason; and once it is
awake, who can foresee the result? Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted
so as to end in our favour, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient
the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the
stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the
stream. Teach him to call it “real life” and don't let him ask what he means by “real”.”