 Consider again the payphone and seminarian studies. It may seem obvious that one cannot respond to all appeals for help, and it may seem doubtful that any reflective person thinks one should. This suggests that being a helpful person requires some thinking about what is most important in one’s life, for calls of help can justifiably go unanswered if the individual believes that responding will interfere with her doing something else that she takes to be of higher moral importance. So we should not expect helping behavior to be wholly consistent, given the complex situations in which persons find themselves. Some of the philosophers discussed in this entry, such as the natural law theorists (in section 3.1) and Kant (in section 3.2), might make this point by reminding us of the distinction between perfect and imperfect duties. Unlike perfect duties, which require that we take or forego certain actions, the duty to assist others in need is imperfect, in that how, when, and whom we assist is not precisely specifiable and so is within the individual’s discretion. The general point, on which most of the ancient and modern moralists would agree, is that being helpful cannot be understood in isolation from other values, aims, and traits that the individual has. (For discussion of how values can be unified, see Wolf 2007.)