Discussion method, even in its present forms, is a clear addition to the tools of reason. For it does not endeavor to make one’s initial position prevail. Rather, its attitude is that of seeking to know rather than seeking to convince or to win. It is a method of mutual self-modification. It smooths the path towards the larger truths, which are always the potentially common-to-all rather than the particular-tome. Its hardest task and its severest test will be found in the necessity, ultimately, of submitting to mutual scrutiny our basic assumptions, which represent our deepest-rooted and most persistent desires. Cooperative revision of conduct in the realm of basic desires through analytical thought! Release from our self-bound selves by what one may dare call the intellectual love of one another! This is the goal towards which cooperative thought must move. In the end, nothing less will suffice. We shall be tempted to content ourselves with a less radical good, a less radical rationality than this. We shall be tempted not only by timidity and desire for special privileges, but also by our regard for what is really good within one another. The evil in life is due chiefly to misplaced and displaced desires that are not fundamentally evil but fundamentally good. There is reason, always, for respect, considerateness, gentleness, therefore. Any attempt to think cooperatively must rely upon bringing the reasonableness of such attitudes to clear consciousness. But at once we are tempted, even out of regard for one another, to soften issues, or to pool interests rather than weigh our wants, or to equilibrate our present views instead of deepening our problem and obtaining fresh data. There is no painless operation that can cure us of our deeper irrationalities. Discussion, when it is good, does not anesthetize its participants, nor make them dozy with the sweet food of specious solutions for problems, but keeps them awake by the prick of self-criticism. When discussion is at its best it treads the dangerous edge where intrenched interests and supposedly sacred convictions practice the philosophy of preparedness. Sometimes cooperative thinking must manifest its virtues by producing repentance. For, though a kernel of good impulse can be found in our conduct, the direction that conduct takes often is destructive. I can administer spiritual poison to myself through my love of life; when I pursue my just rights I can become insensitive and cruel; I can become so absorbed in the mechanisms and immediate motives of my occupation that I fail of ethical perspective. For me, in such situations, there is no salvation into rationality without an about-face.