Man is born with needs, but he is not born with a knowledge of those needs and of how to satisfy them. Some of his
simpler, vegetative body-maintenance needs are satisfied automatically, given the appropriate physical
environment, by the function of his internal organs—such as the need of oxygen, which is satisfied by the
automatic function of his respiratory system. But the broad range of his more complex needs—all those needs
which require the integrated action of his total entity in relation to the external world —are not satisfied
automatically. Man does not obtain food, shelter, or clothing "by instinct." To grow food, to build a shelter, to
weave cloth, requires consciousness, choice, discrimination, judgment. Man's body does not have the power to
pursue such goals of its own volition, it does not have the power purposefully to rearrange the elements of nature,
to reshape matter, independent of his consciousness, knowledge, and values.
All purposeful action aims at the achievement of a value. Things which can satisfy needs become objects of action
only when they are chosen (in some form) as values.
Value and action imply and necessitate each other: it is in the nature of a value that action is required to achieve
and/or maintain it; it is in the nature of a consciously initiated action that its motive and purpose is the achievement
and/or maintenance of a value.
But values are not innate. Having no innate knowledge of what is true or false, man can have no innate knowledge
of what is for him or against him, what is to be pursued or avoided, what is good for him or evil.
Unsatisfied, unfulfilled needs can set up a state of tension or disquietude or pain in man, thus prompting him to
seek biologically appropriate actions, such as protecting himself against the elements. But the necessity of learning
what is the appropriate action cannot be bypassed.
His body provides man only with signals of pain or pleasure; but it does not tell him their causes, it does not tell
him how to alleviate one or achieve the other. That must be learned by his mind.
Man must discover the actions his life requires: he has no "instinct of self-preservation." It was not an instinct that
enabled man to make fire, to build bridges, to perform surgery, to design a telescope: it was his capacity to think.
And if a man chooses not to