In the first place we find that the vital activities are primarily concerned with _self-preservation_, that is with the preservation of the individual and the race. One has but to notice the ever-present manifestation of the "race instinct" which draws the males and females of the several species together, that they may mate and bring forth the young needed to keep alive the species. The parental devotions, with its many sacrifices of personal pleasure for the young, are instances ever before us. And no less striking is the companion activities which make for the preservation of the individual. The instinctive tendency toward self-preservation is so strong that it overpowers the reason in the majority of cases. Men may decry the value of life, but let their life be threatened and the instinctive protective feeling causes them to fight for life against all odds. "All that a man hath will he give for his life." And this instinctive activity is manifest not only in the individual as a whole, but in every cell of his body. Every cell is striving hard for the welfare of the community of which it forms a part. Even in disease it strives to throw off the abnormal conditions which afflict the body, and failing to do so it hobbles along doing the best it can under the circumstances. The tiny seed sprouting in the ground, and lifting weights a thousand times that of itself, shows the self-preservative energies and activities of the mind principle within it. The healing work of the cells in the case of a wound, or of a broken bone, as described elsewhere in this book, gives us another example. The healing efforts of the organism striving to throw off the morbid substances within the body, purging them away in a flux, or burning them up with a fever, show the operations of the same principle. This, we have seen, is called the _vis medicatrix naturae_, or "healing power of nature," which operates in man as well as in the case of the lower animals--but it is really but the operations of the great Subconscious Mind of the individual. As Dr. Murphy, previously quoted, says: "Certainly all experience declares and all physicians will admit that where vital power is abundant in a man he will get well from almost any injuries short of complete destruction of vital organs; but where vitality is low, recovery is much more difficult, if not impossible, which can only be explained on the principle that vitality always works upward toward life and health to the extent of its ability under the circumstances, because, if it worked downward, the less vitality, the more surely and speedily would death result."