this is a fact of crucial significance. One would not learn that man's biologically distinguishing attribute and his
basic means of survival is his rational faculty.
The relation of man's reason to his survival is the first of two basic principles of man's nature which are
indispensable to an understanding of his psychology and behavior. The second is that the exercise of his rational
faculty, unlike an animal's use of his senses, is not automatic—that the decision to think is not biologically
"programmed" in man—that to think is an act of choice.
This principle was formulated by Ayn Rand as follows:
The key to... "human nature"... is the fact that man is a being of volitional consciousness. Reason does not work
automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process; the connections of logic are not made by instinct. The function of your
stomach, lungs or heart is automatic; the function of your mind is not. In any hour and issue of your life, you are free to think or
to evade that effort. But you are not free to escape from your nature, from the fact that reason is your means of survival—so that
for you, who are a human being, the question "to be or not to be" is the question "to think or not to think."^1In her subsequent writing, Miss Rand does not provide a theoretical elaboration of this statement. Let us proceed to
provide it here.
A full exposition of the principle of volition requires that we begin by placing the issue in a wider biological
context—that we consider certain basic facts about the nature of living organisms.
An organism's life is characterized by and dependent upon a constant process of internally generated action. This is
evident in the process of growth and maturation, in the process of self-healing—and in the actions of the organism
in relation to its environment. The goal-directedness of living action is its most striking feature. This is not meant
to imply the presence of purpose on the non-conscious levels of life, but rather to stress the significant fact that
there exists in living entities a principle of self-regulating action, and that that action moves toward, and normally
results in, the continued life of the organism. For example, the complex processes involved in metabolism, or the
remarkable self-repairing activities of living structures, or the integrated orchestration of the