Ideally, man should remain receptive to new stimuli and situations in order to continue to develop. In practice, however, the ability to perceive the external world with freshness decreases as the senses and the mind are increasingly conditioned in the course of life.
Complete receptivity is the prerogative of the child and of the few privileged adults who have retained or recaptured the directness of perceptions which enables most children to see “things as they are”. Hence the deep biological truth of Baudelaire’s arresting image, “Le genie c’est l’enfance retrouvee” (Genius is childhood recaptured).
To live is to struggle. A successful life is not one without ordeals, failures, and tragedies, but one during which the person has made an adequate number of effective responses to the constant challenges of his physical and social environment.
Human need is not a fixed quality. As stated by Gordon Childe:
“No doubt the efficiency of the automobile industry to satisfy the need for transport under specific conditions can be determined with mathematical accuracy. But is a man’s need for transport a fixed quantity in any real sense. Did a deer hunter in 30,000 B.C or an Ancient Egyptian in 3000 B.C or an Ancient Britain in 30 B.C, really need or want to travel a couple of hundred miles at 60m.p.h?
Man makes himself.
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