 Murdoch generally presents seeing moral reality as a difficult and lengthy mental, emotional, and spiritual achievement, never able to be fully accomplished. The defeat or transcendence of the ego is something the agent must continually work at. This idea of a spiritual journey toward moral seeing looms even larger in Metaphysics. However, Murdoch also wants to leave room for rare persons for whom appreciating the Good and the reality of other people is not achieved primarily through struggle and challenge. As she says in a oft-quoted passage, “[I]t must be possible to do justice to both Socrates and the virtuous peasant” (IP: 2/300). (The latter is not an auspicious formulation, as “peasants”, even if uneducated, can still be reflective and intentional in seeking the Good.) Murdoch follows Schopenhauer, an important historical figure for her, in marveling at meeting that rare someone in whom “the anxious avaricious tentacles of the self”, so ubiquitous in human nature, are absent [SGC: 103/385]. Of course, this is not to deny that any virtuous person must sometimes have to suppress anti-moral desire, or to struggle to see other persons in their full reality. Even if the difference is one of degree, the “constant struggle” image is quite different from the virtuous peasant, and Murdoch wants to leave room for both.