Giving merely that glance, we may then leave them to themselves.
Encouraging them to become mechanized, we should use these mechanized
trains in the higher ranges of living. The cure for self-consciousness
is not suppression, but the turning of it upon something more
significant.



VI

Every habit, however, requires perpetual adjustment, or it may rule us
instead of allowing us instead to rule through it. We do well to let
alone our mechanized trains while they do not lead us into evil. So
long as they run in the right direction, instincts are better than
intentions. But repeatedly we need to study results,--and see if we
are arriving at the goal where we would be. If not, then habit
requires readjustment. From such negative control a habit should never
be allowed to escape. This great world of ours does not stand still.
Every moment its conditions are altering. Whatever action fits it now
will be pretty sure to be a slight misfit next year. No one can be
thoroughly good who is not a flexible person, capable of drawing back
his trains, reexamining them, and bringing them into better adjustment
to his purposes.

It is meaningless, then, to ask whether we should be intuitive and
spontaneous, or considerate and deliberate. There is no such
alternative. We need both dispositions. We should seek to attain a
condition of swift spontaneity, of abounding freedom, of the absence
of all restraint, and should not rest satisfied with the conditions in
which we were born. But we must not suffer that even the new nature