The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 01/Book 2/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV.
THE GENERAL RELATION OF SUPPLY TO WANT.
We find in Nature that every want is naturally supplied. That is, there is something external to each created being to answer all the internal wants of that being. This conclusion could have been anticipated without experience, since it follows from the perfections of the Deity, that all his direct works must be perfect. Experience shows this is the rule in nature. We never find a race of animals destitute of what is most needed for them, wandering up and down, seeking rest and finding none. What is most certainly needed for each, is most bountifully provided. The supply answers the demand. The natural circumstances, therefore, attending a race of animals, for example, are perfect. The animal keeps perfectly the law or condition of its nature. The result of these perfect circumstances on the one hand, and perfect obedience on the other, is this,—each animal in its natural state attains its legitimate end, reaches perfection after its kind. Thus every Sparrow in a flock is perfect in the qualities of a Sparrow, at least, such is the general rule; the exceptions to it are so rare they only seem to confirm that rule.
Now to apply this general maxim to the special case of Man. We are mixed beings, spirits wedded to bodies. Setting aside the religious nature of Man for the moment, and for the present purpose distributing our faculties into the animal, intellectual, affectional, and moral, let us see the relation between our four-fold wants and the supply thereof. We have certain animal wants, such as the desire of food, shelter, and comfort. Our animal welfare, even our animal existence, depends on the relation of the world to these wants, on the condition that they are supplied. Now we find in the world of Nature, exterior to ourselves, a supply for these demands. It is so placed that man can reach it for himself. To speak in general terms, there is not a natural want in our body which has not its corresponding supply, placed out of the body. There is not even a disease of the body, brought upon us by disobedience of its law, but there is somewhere a remedy, at least an alleviation of that disease. The peculiar supply of peculiar wants is provided most abundantly when most needed, and where most needed; furs in the North, spices in the South, antidotes where the poison is found. God is a bountiful parent and no step-father to the body, and does not pay off, to his obedient children, a penny of satisfaction for a pound of want. Natural supply balances natural want the world over.
But this is not all. How shall man find the supply that is provided? It will be useless unless there is some faculty to mediate between it and the want. Now Man is furnished with a faculty to perform his office. It is instinct which we have in common with the lower animals, and understanding, which we have more exclusively, at least no other animal possessing it in the same degree with ourselves. Instinct anticipates experience. It acts spontaneously where we have no previous knowledge, yet as if we were fully possessed of ideas. It shows itself as soon as we are born, in the impulse that prompts the infant to his natural food. It appears complete in all animals. It looks only forward, and is a perfect guide so far as it goes. The young chick pecks adroitly at the tiny worm it meets the first hour it leaves the shell.[1] It needs no instruction. The lower animals have nothing but instinct for their guide. It is sufficient for their purpose. They act, therefore, without reflection, from necessity, and are subordinate to their instinct, and therefore must always remain in the instinctive state.[2] Children and savages—who are in some respects the children of the human race-act chiefly by instinct, but constantly approach the development of the understanding.
This acts in a different way. It generalizes from experience; makes an induction from facts; a deduction from principles. It looks both backwards and forwards. The man of understanding acts from experience, reflection, forethought, and habit. If he had no other impelling principle, all his action must be of this character. But though understanding be capable of indefinite increase, instinct can never be wholly extirpated from this compound being, man. The most artificial or cultivated feels the twinges of instinctive nature. The lower animals rely entirely on instinct; the savage chiefly thereon, while the civilized and matured man depends mostly on understanding for his guide. As the sphere of action enlarges which takes place as the boy outgrows his childhood, and the savage emerges from barbarism, instinct ceases to be an adequate guide, and the understanding spontaneously developes itself to take its place.[3]
In respect, then, to Man's animal nature, this fact remains, that there is an external supply for each internal want, and a guide to conduct from the want to the supply. This guide is adequate to the purpose. When it is followed, and thus the conditions of our animal nature complied with, the want is satisfied, becomes a source of pleasure, a means of development. In this case there is nothing miraculous intervening between the desire and its gratification. Man is hungry. Instinct leads him to the ripened fruit. He eats and is appeased. The satisfaction of the want comes naturally, by a regular law, which God has imposed upon the constitution of Man. He is blessed by obeying, and cursed by violating this law. God himself does not transcend this law, but acts through it, by it, in it. We observe the law and obtain what we need. Thus for every point of natural desire in the body, there is a point of natural satisfaction out of the body. This guide conducts, from one to the other, as a radius connects the centre with the circumference. Our animal welfare is complete when the two are thus brought into contact.
Now the same rule may be shown to hold good in each other department into which we have divided the human
faculties. There is something without us to correspond to
each want of the Intellect. This is found in the objects of
Nature; in the sublime, the useful, the beautiful, the common
things we meet; in the ideas and conceptions that
arise unavoidably when man, the thinking subject, comes
intellectually in contact with external things, the object of
thought. We turn to these things instinctively, at first,
“The eye,—it cannot choose but see,
We cannot bid the ear be still;
Our bodies feel, where'er they be,
Against or with our will.”
Man is not sufficient for himself intellectually, more than physically. He cannot rely wholly on what he is. There is at first nothing in Man but Man himself; a being of multiform tendencies, and many powers lying latent—germ sheathed in germ. Without some external object to rouse the senses, excite curiosity, to stimulate the understanding, induce reflection, exercise reason, judgment, imagination,—all these faculties would sleep in their causes, unused and worthless in the soul. Obeying the instinctive tendency of the mind, which impels to thought, keeping its laws, we gain satisfaction for the intellectual desires. One after another the faculties come into action, grow up to maturity, and intellectual welfare is complete with no miracle, but by obedience to the laws of mind.
The same may be said of the affectional and moral nature of Man. There is something without us to answer the demands of the Affections and the Moral Sense, and we turn instinctively to them. Does God provide for the animal wants and no more? He is no step-father, but a bountiful parent to the intellectual, affectional, and moral elements of his child. There is a point of satisfaction out of these for each point of desire in them, and a guide to mediate between the two. This general rule may then be laid down, That for each animal, intellectual, affectional, moral want of Man, there is a supply set within his reach, and a guide to connect the two; that no miracle is needed to supply the want; but satisfaction is given soon as the guide is followed and the law kept, which instinct or the understanding reveals.
- ↑ See Lord Brougham, Dialogues on Instinct, for some remarkable facts.
- ↑ Whewell, ubi sup., Vol. II. Pt. i. Book ix. Ch. iii. Man may subdue the instinct of an animal, and apparently improve the creature, by superinducing his own understanding upon it. The pliant nature of dogs and horses enables them to yield to him in this case, But they are not really improved in the qualities of a dog or a horse, but only become caricatures of their master's caprice.
- ↑ See some profound remarks on the force of the instinctive life among savages, Bancroft, ubi sup., Ch. XXII.