eglamkowski's Journal: General Reflection on Man

It needs twenty years to lead man from the plant state in which he is within his mother 's womb, and the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of the reason begins to appear. It has needed thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him.

-The Philosophical Dictionary by Voltaire

Yes, but here's the crux of the matter

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Are human beings finite or infinite? If finite, then all human beings must be somewhat similar, within a small variation in talent and ability. If infinite, then no two humans are alike enough to build a civilization that is not based on fraud, on the basic lie of all men being created equal. So which is it? If human beings are finite, then the chaos of the free market treating them so incredibly differently is a huge miscarriage of justice that requires government to correct. If human beings are infin