Some men do not get beyond this very low level, but for ever remain mere shuttlecocks driven hither and thither by more or less contradictory impulses.
The germ of the higher world that resides within him may sometimes make itself felt, but "so long as there is a confused welter of higher and lower impulses, ...

so long is there an absence of anything essentially new and lofty." Man's aspirations for things that are higher, are at the outset very sluggish and vague, for a being that is so much dominated by the natural world is apt to concentrate its attention upon it and to remain contented with it.
But there comes a time in the lives of perhaps most men when a distinct feeling of dissatisfaction is felt with the life of natural impulse and of convention.

The man feels--perhaps in a vague way at first--that there is something too merely animal in the sense world, or that there is an intolerable emptiness and hypocrisy in a life of slavish devotion to the opinions of society.

Perhaps he feels that his passions govern him, and not he his passions.

The higher life stirs within him, and he begins to question the rightness of things.