If human beings have no power to initiate change they are mere 'playthings' of forces impinging upon them, and to be a plaything, 'is a dismal, oppressive thought,' amounting to ' an eternal slavery, an artificial .... wretched brutishness.'

Instead, we should place the capacity to act at the centre of our conception of the human being:

'action, action, is the soul of the world, not enjoyment, not sentimentality, not ratiocination ... '

Lenz