What human beings do is readily evident. Human beings move about (travel) over short and long distances. They create, devise, build, and operate. They also destroy things, both through the process of consumption, and wantonly.

Human beings form relationships with others of their kind. They also disrupt relationships they have formed earlier. They engage in procreative activity, by which the species is perpetuated. Constructively or destructively, human beings act in an effort to procure the satisfactions they seek.

Human beings may act alone, and to some degree, must act alone. For the most part, however, human beings communicate with each other, in a constant effort to explain their actions, to obtain cooperation from others, to explain their goals, and to justify what has been done before. Human beings are communicators.

Human beings are also believers. Each believes certain things to be true. Each acts at all times consistant with their deepest convictions or beliefs.

This dependence upon belief is an important distinction. Most organisms apparently act from "instinct", or inherited patterned responses. So far as we know, other living organisms don't use a reasoning process in determining their responses or behaviours. Therefore, we refer to the human animal as a "rational" organism, and all other organisms as "instinctive".