But this first teaching of our individual experience is by no means so
simple as it seems. For the question arises: What is it, on the whole,
that I choose to do? And, as we saw very early in these discussions,
each of us is by nature so full of caprices and of various aims, that,
left to ourselves, we live not only narrowly but inconsistently. Hence
we spend much of our lives in finding out, after the fact, that what
we chose to do at one moment of our lives has hopelessly thwarted what
we intended to do at some other moment. Self-will then, left to
itself, means self-defeat. That is the lesson of life. And the
question: What is it that, on the whole, I would choose to do if I had
the power? is a question that individual experience, taken by itself,
never answers in any steadily consistent way. Therefore, as we all
sooner or later come to see, one of our most persistent limitations is
not our physical weakness to accomplish what we choose, but our
incapacity, when left to ourselves, to find out what it is that we
propose and really choose to do. Therefore, just because individual
experience, taken by itself, never gives steady guidance, we have to
look elsewhere for a rule.

The question: What am I to do? is never in practice answered without
consulting, more or less persistently, our social experience. Being
what we are, naturally gregarious, imitative, and, when trained,
conventional creatures, who, indeed, often fight with our kind, but
who also love our kind, who not only {185} cannot bear to be too much
alone, but are simply helpless when wholly isolated from our fellows
(unless we have already learned in their company the very arts that we
may be able to use while we are alone), we can give no answer to the
question: What is to be my choice? without pretty constantly
consulting our social interests. And these interests are indeed
plentiful and absorbing. But they too are naturally conflicting. And
so, taken as they come, they give us no rule of life.

To be sure, the social will in general says to us: "Live with your
fellows, for you cannot do without them. Learn from them how to live;
for you have to live more or less in their way. Imitate them,
co-operate with them, at least enough to win such ideas as will help
you to know what you want and such skill as will make you best able to
accomplish whatever, in view of your social training, you are led to
choose. Do not oppose them too much, for they are many, and,