It is only the concept of Life that makes the concept of Value possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil. It has no power to extend its knowledge or to evade it. In conditions where its knowledge proves inadequate, it dies. But so long as it lives, it acts on its knowledge, with automatic safety and now power of choice, it is unable to ignore its own good, unable to decide to choose the evil and act as its own destroyer.
Man has no automatic code of survival.
His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice. He has no automatic knowledge of what is good for him or evil, what values his life depends on, what course of action it requires. An instinct of self-preservation is precisely what man does not possess. An instinct is an unerring and automatic from of knowledge. A desire is not an instinct.