The naive victim of the mirage of the for-others, he believes in the being of his parents and teachers. The real world is that of adults where he is allowed only to respect and obey. But if he fulfills this experience in all tranquillity, it is precisely because the domain open to his subjectivity seems insignificant and puerile in his own eyes. In his child’s circle he feels that he can passionately pursue and joyfully attain goals which he has set up for himself. On the contrary, he is allowed to play, to expend his existence freely. That does not mean that the child himself is serious. This means that the world in which he lives is a serious world, since the characteristic of the spirit of seriousness is to consider values as ready-made things. In his eyes, human inventions, words, customs, and values are given facts, as inevitable as the sky and the trees. The child’s situation is characterized by his finding himself cast into a universe which he has not helped to establish, which has been fashioned without him, and which appears to him as an absolute to which he can only submit. And indeed the unfortunate choices which most men make can only be explained by the fact that they have taken place on the basis of childhood. Man’s unhappiness, says Descartes, is due to his having first been a child.
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