If this inquiry tends to vacate the whole notion of a “lower nature” that acts as a drag upon us, it tumbles us into a problem with respect to the existence of a “higher nature.” Are any of our drives good _simpliciter_, or, is the clue to goodness as well as badness to be looked for in habits of organization rather than in particular and ineradicable impulses? It is, in fact, easy to show that even within our better conduct the same sorts of floundering occur as in our worst behavior, so that the same problem of the organization of a self and of selves is everywhere present. We have, as gifts of our nature, neither radically bad drives against which we should arm ourselves, nor yet radically good drives to which we can fly for effective protection. No _vis a tergo_ will either ruin us or save us. The thing upon which the issues of life depend is what I have called the motive that is in all and through all, the desire to be a self in a world of selves. The real nature of our bondage can be illustrated by a chain of examples that reaches all the way from our handling of physiological good and evil to our prayers. All along the line we shall find that the good and the evil, the failures and the successes, depend upon the organization of life as personal, and specifically upon the degree in which, consciously and deliberately, we face situations, with their alternative values, as wholes. We shall see that we are missing on an enormous scale good things of life that are not beyond our reach--things unquestionably good, unquestionably within our reach, unquestionably more important than the things towards which we do stretch ourselves. And all this is true of our more idealistic as well as of our less idealistic interests. Now for the examples: Let us begin with health and bodily vigor. We put up with physical limitations that are entirely unnecessary--limitations that hygiene and medical science can remove. It would be economical in the financial sense to remove them, because our productive power would thereby increase along with the joy of living. Why do we persist in this conduct? We have everything to lose and nothing to gain by it. We may phrase the answer in many ways, as inattention, distraction by immediate stimuli, not connecting effects with causes, doing as everybody else does; but all real explanations come down to this, that we do not put enough of ourselves--our comprehending, difference-perceiving, organizing selves--into the matter.