What then is left of man? Bundles of data? One trait, at least, remains: the blankness of the state itself! Adaptability, flexibility, a chameleon power of reflecting the surroundings, the protean, protozoan capacity to assimilate. And one trait more: man’s social desire and social capacity to modify himself as well as his environment. Given flexibility and the communal power of control, nullity is left behind; there is a new basis from which to build; optimism again becomes the mood. Of that mood Robert Owen wrote the shibboleth: Any general character, from the best to the worst, from the
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