Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/166

Rh 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. 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. 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.