awareness, which he shares with animals—is inadequate to solve it. To remain alive, man must think—which
means: he must exercise the faculty which he alone, of all living species, possesses: the faculty of abstractions, of
conceptualizing. The conceptual level of consciousness is the human level, the level required for man's survival. It
is upon his ability to think that man's life depends.
But to think is an act of choice. 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."^8A being of volitional consciousness, a being without innate ideas, must discover, by a process of thought, the goals,
the actions, the values on which his life depends. He must discover what will further his life and what will destroy
it. If he acts against the facts of reality, he will perish. If he is to sustain his existence, he must discover the
principles of action required to guide him in dealing with nature and with other men. His need of these principles is
his need of a code of values.
Other species are not free to choose their values. Man is. "A code of values accepted by choice is a code of
morality."^9
The reason of man's need for morality determines the purpose of morality as well as the standard by which moral
values are to be selected. Man needs a moral code in order to live; that is the purpose of morality—for every man as
an individual. But in order to know what are the values and virtues that will permit him to achieve that purpose,
man requires a standard. Different species achieve their survival in different ways. The course of action proper to
the survival of a fish or an animal, would not be proper to the survival of man. Man must choose his values by the
standard of that which is required for the life of a human being—which means: he must hold man's life (man's
survival qua man) as his standard of