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23032 | What is distinctive of human life is the desire for self-improvement [Green,TH, by Muirhead] |
Full Idea: All that is distinctively human in the life of man springs not from the desire to possess this or that object, and so far to realise a better, but to be something more and better than he is. | |
From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |
A reaction: An example of Victorian optimism, I think. I'm guessing that people who are not motivated by this impulse are not behaving in a way that is 'distinctively human'. That said, this is an interesting aspect of human nature. |