A large proportion of his mental activity was concerned with the logistics of purposes. The purposes were given as self-evident corollaries of desires, and the desires themselves treated as ideals - in the sense that denying them was seen as being untrue to himself. This equation of desires with the cultivation of authenticity with ultimate value was founded on nothing more than the spirit of the times. To have questioned the truth inherent in this spirit would be to make himself ridiculous. Nonetheless, in spite of their naturalness, there was a plethora of desires and their goals were frequently in conflict, hence the complex logistics required to balance their demands and meta-demands - some desires seeking not so much gratification as legitimation in order to attenuate their clamour. Another fraction of mental activity was concerned with managing the moral implication of the actions mediated by the former kind of activity. The object of this moral deliberation was himself and his legitimate freedom. Here again he would borrow figures of thought from the culture, from its rich veins of evaluation and judgement and apply them to himself. Where the first kind of mental activity was directed to the future, the second surveyed the past. Here, for example, was the notion that confession was a cleansing, and thus that self-examination should be ruthlessly objective. It was not that such devices were ineffective, but rather that their very success reinforced, by means of positive feedback, a thoroughly illusory metaphysics.