These three types of aggressive non-conformity overlap and blend, of course. As a rule students of the investigator type are moved by dissatisfaction with the _status quo_; they investigate in order to find the road towards some ideal. Not seldom the applier type discovers the fascination of social statistics and even of history. The attacker, in turn, will usually be found working for specific reforms. All three types make freedom their common cause--freedom to think without fear of consequences; freedom to speak with sincerity upon great issues; freedom to listen to speakers who represent disagreeable minority positions; freedom to participate in the determination of the conditions under which they shall live. In these youths who really transcend conventions we have a hint of what might be, what ought to be, the normal place of young people in society. Yes--let me answer your doubt before you state it--there is danger that, taking advantage of the questioning mood, the dissenting mood, or the consciousness of freedom, wayward impulse will make the worse appear the better reason. There is danger in asking questions, but God took this risk when he created man; and by far the greater danger is that we shall not ask questions enough, nor questions that go deep enough. By far the greatest evil in the youth-life of today is that so few young men and women find any antidote to the way men imitate themselves and one another--any antidote, that is to say, to the pseudo-wisdom of age. PART IV HOW CAN THEY BE RELEASED? XXVI THE INESCAPABLE TASK Capacity for high motivation, but doubt of the existence of such capacity because our performance is low; low performance due, not chiefly to external obstacles nor to remains of the beast in us, but to self-imposed bondage to our past and present selves, the instrument that binds us being that which is high, not low, in us, even our intelligence and reason--this is what we behold. The same intelligence that masters external circumstance by looking behind and before, by the same process subjects us to ourselves. On the other hand, intelligence chafes at the bondage that it has created, and knows itself as the agent of emancipation. Such is our self-imprisoning, self-releasing, deeply paradoxical human nature. But there is a difference. We imprison ourselves automatically, but we do not automatically release ourselves. The door closes with a spring lock; it opens only by directed effort. At least, adherence to the _status quo_ requires as a rule little reflection, while release from it into something better requires much. In particular, the _habit_ of releasing myself from what I am and have been depends upon continuous alertness joined with self-detachment or objectivity with respect to myself.