Obviously literal independence is also impossible in moral and personal relations. We are never independent of society, never capable of going it alone. The only question is, On what do we depend? Do we depend on one person, or one particular kind of entertainment or stimulation? Or can we find our food in any of a vast number of places and persons which in the natural order are fairly sure to be available? Or in the absence of all finite persons can we find our food in God? That is the fundamental question in relation to personal independence. Its answer states the degree in which our personal history is orderly and not catastrophic. If one is habitually trying to order his own life in this way, the principles by which he lives will guide his attempts at social treatment and give him continuity and steadiness. 2. _Presence of mind in social treatment_ All our diagnostic duties, whether as doctor or social worker, are part of our search for truth, physical, economic, mental, and moral, as the basis for medical-social treatment. I have used again and again the figure of chains, each of them starting with the individual's present misfortune, need, or sorrow, as a central link, and radiating in different directions as we trace out the relevant physical and economic facts, the chain of the patient's relationships to family and friends, some of whom he is apt to forget, and finally the chain of mental and moral causes which lead up to the present moment. I believe in that method with all my heart. I also believe it can be employed so one-sidedly, so exclusively, as to spoil social work. The criticism of social work which recurs most often and most justly, I think, is that we are not human enough, not big enough people to do social work, that we have not vision, that we get into mechanical and routine methods which spoil the whole adventure. I know that this is true. We fail because it is difficult for us to drive in span two strongly contrasted ideals only one of which I have yet laid great stress on. Truth and the following out of the links of truth, physical, economic, etc., is a process which we might call looking for the _background_ of the fact that presents itself close to you. We need to see that background. We must not get our perspective distorted. It is the doctor's commonest fault, that he sees only the disease that is just now before him, and nothing of its "background," economic, mental, or moral. Hence he does not make a fundamental diagnosis or prescribe fundamental treatment.