Humanists focus upon potentials. They believe that humans strive for an upper level of capabilities. Humans seek the frontiers of creativity, the highest reaches of consciousness and wisdom. Maslow has set up a hierarchic theory of needs. All of his basic needs are instinctoid, equivalent of instincts in animals.
Humans start with a very weak disposition that are then fashioned fully as the person grows.
If the environment is right people will grow straight and beautiful, actualizing the potentials they have inherited. Maslow has set up a hierarchy of five levels of basic needs. Beyond these needs, higher levels of needs exist. These include needs for understanding, esthetic appreciation and purely spiritual needs. In the levels of the five basic needs, the person does not feel the second need until the demands of the first have been satisfied, nor the third until the second has been satisfied, and so on.