3.5 The Instinct to Survive
The Self-Preservation Instinct
The instinct of self-preservation is a law of nature.
Every living being possesses it, whatever its degree of intelligence. In some creatures it operates almost mechanically, as an automatic tendency to avoid destruction and preserve life. In others, it is more reflective and deliberate, joined to thought and intention. Yet in all cases it expresses the same fundamental law: life seeks to continue.
This instinct is not accidental. It serves a purpose within the order of creation.
All beings take part in a providential design, and for that reason they are given the need to remain alive. The drive to preserve life is one of the means by which each being fulfills its role within that wider order.
Life is also necessary for progress. A living existence provides the conditions through which beings develop, mature, and gradually perfect themselves. Even when they do not clearly understand this aim, they are inwardly drawn toward it. The instinct of self-preservation is therefore more than a response to danger. It is one of the natural forces that supports growth, continuity, and the fulfillment of life’s deeper purpose.
The Means of Self-Preservation
The need to preserve life is matched by the means of doing so.
If human beings are given the instinct to live, the conditions necessary for life are also provided. The earth produces what is needed for all who inhabit it. What is truly necessary is useful; excess is not. Want does not come from a failure in creation, but from a failure to understand and rightly use what has been given.
The earth does not fail by nature. More often, people fail through ingratitude, negligence, poor judgment, or lack of foresight. They accuse nature of barrenness when the real cause lies in their own misuse of its gifts. If people knew how to be content with what is necessary, the earth would provide enough. Scarcity is often intensified because so much is consumed in pursuit of superfluous desires rather than real needs.
A simple life makes this clearer. Those who create fewer artificial wants more easily find the means to live. When much of what is produced is wasted on vanity or fantasy, deprivation follows, and the suffering that results is then blamed on circumstances. Nature is not miserly. Human beings too often do not know how to govern their appetites.
The fruits of the earth include more than crops alone. The soil is the first source from which all other resources ultimately come, since what seems distinct from it is, in the end, only a transformation of its products. In that sense, the fruits of the earth are everything in the world that human beings are able to enjoy and use.
Why Some Lack What Others Have in Abundance
When some individuals lack the means of subsistence even in the midst of abundance, the first cause is often human selfishness. People do not always do what they ought to do for one another. Beyond that, human beings themselves are frequently responsible for their own hardship.
To seek is not merely to cast one’s eyes upon the earth and expect provision to appear. It is to labor with persistence, energy, and patience. Obstacles must not lead to discouragement, for they often serve as trials of endurance, firmness, and resolve.
Civilization multiplies needs, but it also multiplies sources of labor and the means of livelihood. Much remains unfinished, yet as social life becomes more orderly and just, fewer will be able to claim deprivation except through their own fault. Many suffer because they choose a course unsuited to their abilities or to the natural place open to them. There is room for all, provided each accepts an honest place rather than trying to seize the place of another. Nature is not responsible for the disorders created by ambition, vanity, and defective social organization.
Even so, real progress has been made. More advanced societies have improved material conditions through the combined efforts of generosity and science. Production has grown, public hygiene has become an object of careful attention, and institutions of shelter and relief have been created for the poor and suffering. Science has been increasingly directed toward the common good. Perfection has not been reached, but what has already been achieved shows what perseverance can accomplish when people seek lasting and serious goods instead of chasing illusions that hinder progress.
Trials of Want and the Duty of Resignation
There are circumstances in which the lack of even the bare necessities does not depend entirely on human will. Such situations may be severe trials. Human beings may find themselves exposed to them despite their efforts.
In these moments, if intelligence and effort do not reveal a means of escape, merit lies in submission to the divine will. If death comes, it should be met without rebellion. The hour of release is not to be darkened by despair, because despair at the final moment can destroy the moral fruit of patient resignation.
This does not praise passivity or excuse indifference. One must still seek every honorable means of preservation. But when no path remains, courage, selflessness, and acceptance have a moral value greater than revolt.
Hunger and Crime
Extreme need does not transform an evil act into a rightful one.
If someone, driven by hunger, sacrifices another human being in order to survive, the act remains a homicide and an offense against nature. Necessity does not erase its character. Greater merit belongs to the one who endures the trial of life with courage and self-denial rather than preserving life through violence against another.
Nourishment on Other Worlds
Living beings on worlds of a purer physical condition also require nourishment, but it is suited to their nature.
Their food is more refined, just as their bodily organization is more refined. What nourishes them would be insufficient for dense earthly bodies, and earthly food would be unsuitable for them. Nourishment exists everywhere in harmony with the condition of the beings who receive it.
The Enjoyment of Material Things
The use of the fruits of the earth belongs to all human beings.
That right follows from the necessity of preserving life. No duty would be imposed without the means to fulfill it. Since human life must be sustained, the resources needed for that sustenance are rightly available for human use.
The enjoyment connected with material things is not accidental. It has been made attractive for a purpose.
Pleasure encourages human beings to make use of what is necessary for life and to carry out their earthly mission. Attraction to enjoyment helps move them toward the fulfillment of the larger order of existence. Without that attraction, indifference might lead them to neglect what is required, and the harmony of life would suffer.
Yet that same attraction also serves as a trial.
Temptation develops reason by teaching restraint. Human beings are not meant to be dragged blindly by appetite, but to learn how to govern desire. Enjoyment has its place, but reason must prevent it from becoming excess.
The Natural Limit of Enjoyment
Nature itself marks the boundary of what is necessary.
There is a proper measure in the use of material things. When that measure is exceeded, the result is satiety, and this satiety becomes a form of self-inflicted punishment. Excess carries its own consequences. What was given for support and balance turns into a source of discomfort, weakness, and suffering when used without moderation.
The law written into nature shows both permission and limit: material things may be enjoyed, but not without measure.
The Abuse of Pleasure
Those who seek to satisfy their tastes through every kind of excess are not to be envied, but pitied.
Their condition brings them close to death in both senses, physical and moral. Physical decline follows from abuse of the body. Moral decline follows from surrendering reason to appetite. The more a person yields to excess, the more dominion is given to the animal side of nature over the spiritual.
In this respect, unrestrained indulgence lowers human beings beneath the animals, for animals at least stop when their needs are met. Human beings, endowed with reason for their guidance, degrade that gift when they use it to multiply cravings instead of mastering them.
The illnesses, ailments, and even death that result from excess are not merely accidents of behavior. They are consequences built into the violation of divine law. Abuse becomes its own punishment.
Material enjoyment, then, is neither evil nor absolute. It is a rightful part of earthly life, given to sustain existence and support human activity. But it must remain within the bounds of necessity and be governed by reason. Only then does pleasure serve its true purpose instead of becoming a cause of ruin.
Necessary and Superfluous Things
The boundary between what is necessary and what is superfluous is not always easy to define.
A sensible person often perceives it by intuition. Many others learn it only through experience, sometimes after suffering the consequences of excess, waste, or false wants.
Nature itself has marked out the limits of genuine need in the human body. Physical organization shows what is required for life and health. Yet human beings are often not content with these limits. Their vices distort their habits and create artificial needs that do not arise from nature, but from appetite, vanity, or indulgence.
For that reason, what is called necessary cannot be measured by a rigid and universal line. Much depends on condition, circumstance, and degree of social development. Civilization has introduced needs that do not exist in more primitive states of life, and this does not mean that people should abandon civilization and return to simpler forms of existence. Everything must be judged relatively, with reason assigning each thing its proper place.
Civilization, rightly used, refines moral feeling as well as material life. It can deepen charity and strengthen the sense that human beings should support one another. When that happens, progress serves the good.
The abuse of civilization appears when some people use its advantages only for themselves, while others are deprived even of what is necessary. To monopolize the fruits of the earth in order to secure superfluity for oneself, while others lack the essentials of life, is a violation of divine law. Such conduct shows a failure to understand justice and responsibility. Those who cause these privations will answer for them.
There are people who enjoy the outward polish of civilized life while lacking its true moral substance. They possess only the appearance of civility, just as others possess only the appearance of religion. Real progress is not measured by refinement in comfort, but by the wise use of what one has and by a sincere concern that no one is deprived of what is needed to live.
Voluntary Privations and Mortifications
The law of self-preservation requires care for the body as well as the soul.
Physical needs are not opposed to spiritual life. Energy and health are necessary for work, and work is part of human duty. Seeking well-being is therefore not a fault in itself. The desire for well-being is natural.
What is condemned is abuse. Well-being becomes disordered when it is pursued at another person’s expense, or when it weakens moral or physical strength instead of sustaining them. True balance does not reject legitimate human needs, but governs them.
Voluntary Privations
Voluntary privation has value only when it serves a real good.
There is little merit in suffering for its own sake. Greater merit is found in doing good to others. The most worthy renunciations are those that free a person from enslavement to matter, restrain excess, and loosen attachment to useless pleasures. Such discipline can elevate the soul when it is sincere and measured.
Its highest form appears when a person gives up part of what is personally needed in order to help someone in greater need. Then privation becomes charity.
When self-denial is only outward appearance, however, it loses all value. If it is a display, a pose, or a way of seeming more virtuous than one is, it becomes empty pretense.
Mortifications
Ascetic practices and bodily mortifications have appeared in many times and cultures, but their worth depends entirely on their usefulness.
If they benefit only the person who practices them, and especially if they hinder that person from doing good to others, they remain a form of selfishness, whatever noble name may be given to them. Real mortification is not found in deliberate harshness toward the body, but in sacrifice accepted for the sake of serving others. To endure privation while laboring for others is a truer discipline than any severe austerity performed in isolation.
God is not pleased by what is useless, and still less by what is harmful. What matters is not external suffering but the inner disposition that raises the soul toward what is good. Progress comes through living in harmony with divine law, not through violating the body in the hope of becoming holy by pain alone.
Mutilations practiced on human beings or animals have no spiritual merit. What is useless cannot be pleasing, and what is harmful is contrary to the order established for life.
Food and Abstinence
No food is forbidden in itself when it can be taken without harm to health.
Human beings may eat whatever their physical constitution allows without injury. Some religious or civil laws have prohibited certain foods for practical reasons, and these rules were often given sacred authority in order to secure obedience. Their origin may therefore be social or hygienic rather than absolute.
The use of animals as food is not contrary to the law of nature under present human conditions. Human bodily organization requires nourishment suited to it, and the duty of self-preservation includes maintaining the strength needed for labor and life.
Abstaining from food, whether animal food or any other kind, has merit only when the deprivation is serious, useful, and directed toward the good of others. If a person deprives himself or herself in order to give to others, that renunciation has value. If the abstinence is only apparent, symbolic, or empty of practical good, it becomes hypocrisy rather than sacrifice.
Suffering and Progress
Not every suffering contributes to spiritual growth.
The sufferings that help a person advance are the natural trials of life, especially when they are borne with patience, courage, and moral insight. These belong to the human condition and can become occasions for purification and progress.
Intentional sufferings that serve no one do not have the same value. To shorten life by excessive austerities, to impose pointless hardships on oneself, or to seek pain as though pain itself were holy does not lead upward. Such practices are barren when they are disconnected from charity.
A more fruitful path is clear: visit the poor, comfort those who mourn, work for the sick, and accept privations in order to assist the unfortunate. Suffering accepted for others becomes charity. Suffering invented for oneself alone tends toward selfishness.
The Right Mortification
Human beings are not asked to invent new torments for themselves, but neither are they told to neglect prudent care in the face of danger.
The instinct of self-preservation was given to all living beings so that they might guard themselves against suffering and destruction. Foreseen dangers should therefore be avoided when possible.
The truest discipline is inward. One must whip the spirit rather than the body, mortify pride rather than the flesh, and stifle selfishness, that inner serpent that consumes the heart. Conquering vanity, self-love, and attachment to excess does more for real progress than bodily self-inflictions.
Spiritual growth is not measured by how much pain one can impose on oneself. It is measured by sincerity, self-mastery, useful sacrifice, and charity.