B1201 <=> B1203 (BTG XLVIII From the Author, p. 1202)
It was as follows:
“For the definition of man, considered from our point of view, neither anatomical, nor physiological, nor psychological, contemporary knowledge of his symptoms can assist us; since they are inherent in one degree or another in every man and consequently apply equally to all. Hence they do not enable us to establish the exact difference which we wish to establish between people. This difference can only be formulated in the following terms: ‘Man is a being who can do,’ and ‘to do’ means to act consciously and by one’s own initiative.”
And indeed every more or less sane-thinking man who is able to be if only a little impartial, must admit that hitherto there has not been nor can there be a fuller and more exhaustive definition.
Even suppose that we provisionally accept this definition, the question inevitably arises – can a man who is a product of contemporary education and civilization do anything at all himself, consciously and by his own will?
No . . . we answer at the very beginning, to this question.
Why not? . . .
Solely because, as the Institute-for-the-Harmonious-Development-of-Man experimentally proves and from experiments categorically affirms, everything without exception from beginning to end does itself in contemporary man, and there is nothing which a contemporary man himself does.
In personal, family, and communal life, in politics, science, art, philosophy, and religion, in short, in everything entering into the process of the ordinary life of a contemporary man, everything from beginning to end does itself, and not a single one of these “victims of contemporary civilization” can “do” anything.