Success Instinct

A squirrel does not have to be taught how to gather nuts. Nor does it need to learn that it should store them for winter. A squirrel born in the spring has never experienced winter. Yet in the fall of the year it can be observed busily storing nuts to be eaten during the winter months, when there will be no food to be gathered. A bird does not need to take lessons in nest-building. Nor does it need to take courses in navigation. Yet birds do navigate thousands of miles, sometimes over open sea. They have no newspapers or TV to give them weather reports, no books written by explorer or pioneer birds to map out for them the warm areas of the earth. Nonetheless the bird "knows" when cold weather is imminent and the exact location of a warm climate even though it may be thousands of miles away.

In attempting to explain such things we usually say that animals have certain "instincts" which guide them. Analyze all such instincts and you will find they assist the animal to successfully cope with its environment. In short, animals have a "success instinct."

We often overlook the fact that man too has a success instinct, much more marvelous and much more complex than that of any animal. Our Creator did not short-change man. On the other hand, man was exceptionally blessed in this regard.

Animals cannot select their goals. Their goals (self-preservation and procreation) are pre-set, so to speak. And their success mechanism is limited to these built-in goal-images, which we call "instincts."

Man, on the other hand, has something animals haven't Creative Imagination. Thus man of all creatures is more than a creature, he is also a creator. With his imagination he can formulate a variety of goals. Man alone can direct his Success Mechanism by the use of imagination, or imaging ability.

We often think of "Creative Imagination" as applying only to poets, inventors, and the like. But imagination is creative in everything we do. Although they did not understand why, or how imagination sets our creative mechanism into action, serious thinkers of all ages, as well as hard-headed "practical" men, have recognized the fact and made use of it. "Imagination rules the world," said Napoleon. "Imagination of all man's faculties is the most God-like," said Glenn Clark. "The faculty of imagination is the great spring of human activity, and the principal source of human improvement... Destroy this faculty, and the condition of man will become as stationary as that of the brutes," said Dugold Stewart, the famous Scottish philosopher.