Conceptual knowledge is not acquired in a state of total ignorance or from a vantage point of omniscience. At any stage of development, from child to sage and from savage to scientist, man can make conceptual differentiations and integrations only on the basis of prior knowledge, the specific limited knowledge available to him at that stage. Man's mind functions on the basis of a certain context. The context, states Miss Rand, "is the entire field of a mind's awareness or knowledge at any level of its cognitive development.