Man is not merely an animal of nature, like a skylark or a bear. He is also an animal of culture, whose race can subsist only within the development of society and civilization, he is a historical animal: hence the multiplicity of cultural or ethico-historical patterns into which man is diversified; hence, too, the essential importance of education. Due to the very fact that he is endowed with a knowing power which is unlimited and which nonetheless can only advance step by step, man cannot progress in his own specific life, both intellectually and morally, without being helped by collective experience previously accumulated and preserved, and by a regular transmission of acquired knowledge. In order to reach self-determination, for which he is made, he needs discipline and tradition, which will both weight heavily on him and strengthen him so as to enable him to struggle against them — which will enrich that very tradition — and the enriched tradition will make possible new struggles, and so forth.
— Jacques Maritain, Education at the Crossroads (Clinton, Mass: The Colonial Press, 1960), 2.
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