"The idea that underlay the young Spartans' training was their obligation to maintain the power of the state and ignore everything that did not directly contribute to it. All the other possibilities of life — imagination, love of beauty, intellectual interests — were put aside. The goal of human aspiration and achievement was to uphold the fatherland. Only what helped the state was good, only what harmed it was bad. A Spartan was not an individual but a part of a well-functioning machine which assumed all responsibility for him, exacted absolute submission from him, molded his character and his mind, and imbued him with the deep conviction that the chief end of man was to kill and be killed."