As a natural being and as a living natural being he is on the one hand endowed with natural powers, vital powers – he is an active natural being. These forces exist in him as tendencies and abilities – as instincts. On the other hand, as a natural, corporeal, sensuous objective being he is a suffering, conditioned and limited creature, like animals and plants. That is to say, the objects of his instincts exist outside him, as objects independent of him; yet these objects are objects that he needs – essential objects, indispensable to the manifestation and confirmation of his essential powers. In the Grundrisse Marx says his nature is a "totality of needs and drives". In The German Ideology he uses the formulation: "their needs, consequently their nature". We can see then, that from Marx's early writing to his later work, he conceives of human nature as composed of "tendencies", "drives", "essential powers", and "instincts" to act in order to satisfy "needs" for external objectives. For Marx then, an explanation of human nature is an explanation of the needs of humans, together with the assertion that they will act to fulfill those needs. (c.f. The German Ideology, chapter 3). Norman Geras gives a schedule of some of the needs which Marx says are characteristic of humans: ...for other human beings, for sexual relations, for food, water, clothing, shelter, rest and, more generally, for circumstances that are conducive to health rather than disease. There is another one ... the need of people for a breadth and diversity of pursuit and hence of personal development, as Marx himself expresses these, 'all-round activity', 'all-round development of individuals', 'free development of individuals', 'the means of cultivating [one's] gifts in all directions', and so on. Marx says "It is true that eating, drinking, and procreating, etc., are ... genuine human functions. However, when abstracted from other aspects of human activity, and turned into final and exclusive ends, they are animal." Productive activity, the objects of humans and actualisation Humans as free, purposive producers In several passages throughout his work, Marx shows how he believes humans to be essentially different from other animals. "Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical