At all events, cocks and quails,
although they have no understanding of virtue as man has and know neither the
good nor the just and strive for none of these things, nevertheless fight
against each other and even when maimed stand up and endure until death so as
not to submit the one to the other.
I never
cease to be amazed at the perseverance and resilience to be found in other
living creatures.
I have
seen a cat torn and bloodied while fighting off a group of dogs to protect her
kittens. I have seen tiny birds dive-bombing the toughest cats to keep their
nests safe. I have seen plodding turtles crossing busy traffic to make it back
to their ponds. I have seen a mangy old dog refuse to leave the body of his
homeless master, who had died of cold on the streets of Boston.
I have
seen columns of ants piling up and pushing through to overcome most any
physical barrier. I have seen people ripping up, cutting down, burning, or
poisoning the plants they call weeds, and then another round of those determined
plants slowly but surely growing right back in the same place.
I
understand quite well that animals and plants do not act from abstract judgment
as humans do, but this does not make the power of their instincts any less
remarkable.
There
are some people who try to convince me that the universe is just a mindless
mechanism, and that the action of all life is merely a function of pleasure and
survival. Yet so many things I see in the world around me, if I only look with
open eyes, reveal another sort of design.
Watch an
animal acting on its nature, and you will recognize that it will often be moved
to suffer pain rather than receive gratification, or face death over clinging
to life. It may not have a mind to understand this, but it is still ordered by
Mind, as all things in Nature must be.
It is
joined to something greater than the immediacy of its own comfort or existence;
it acts as a part within a whole, and it fights for more than feeding and fornicating.
Now give
a man the freedom of his own judgment, and he will not merely be ruled by his
impressions. He may choose to understand his nature and embrace it, or to be
ignorant of his nature and reject it.
Still,
what can be best in a man who thinks will share something in common with a
beast that doesn’t need to think at all: that what it means to be itself is
about more than just to be for itself.
It is
precisely because I am rational that I can follow my own path, and it is
precisely because I have a will that I can pick wisely or poorly. Depending on
my choices, my humanity will become either a blessing or a curse to me. An
animal does not share in that responsibility; otherwise it would be other than
an animal.
Still,
when I see an animal endure suffering, or charge headlong toward its own
extinction, I can find the deepest inspiration. It may not be a human sort of
bravery, but it is a model for human bravery nonetheless. It may not be a
conscious sacrifice, but it is an encouragement for conscious sacrifice
nonetheless.
What man
and beast can share together is that each, in a distinct way, to whatever
degree of awareness, expresses a purpose of giving, and not simply of
receiving. The animal may have the instinct to save its young, and the man may
make the promise to love his neighbor as himself.
The
animal will give life and limb to achieve this, and the good man should also
give life and limb to achieve this. The hardship is an opportunity, since by
the struggle Nature is served. The one is always fulfilled through the many, never
in separation from the many.
So some
men commit to wisdom and love; they know what it means to bear hardship to
achieve what is good.
Other
men settle for feeding and fornicating; they know only how to consume what
tickles their fancies.
Written in 8/1999
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