There is a distinction, additional to those so far made, between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial,’ for among the antonyms of ‘natural’ is ‘artificial,’ and the conceptual grammar of this distinction is very different from that of any of the other distinctions so far made. Something is artificial if it is made by an human artificer or group of artificers: to bring something into being in this way requires effort and time by human agents other than and external to what is made; and the success of the artificers is contingent on local variables. The house, in this sense, is artificial: there are architects and builders. The tree is not: it grows, other things being equal, spontaneously from seed in response to the presence of sunshine and water and soil. There is no human artificer, no human agent to bring the tree to maturity. All that’s needed for the tree to grow in the wild wood is the seed-in-its-environment. Notice that the conceptual grammar of the artificial has to do only with human agents: there are of course other agents who make things—birds and their nests, ants and their hills, spiders and their webs. But in thinking of the natural as opposed to the artificial, we typically include these agents and what they make under the former rather than the latter heading. To say that something is artificial is, ordinarily, to say that it is made by us; that is, anyway, the sense of ‘artificial’ in play here. I also exclude from consideration the Lord as maker: although we call him that, the grammar of his makings is analogically related to ours, as can be seen by the fact that he creates out of nothing, while we never do. What the Lord makes is, then, not artificial according to the sense in play here. On this understanding, the natural world, understood with the artificial or made world as its antonym, is massively present independently of us; its workings have nothing to do with us and are, for the most part, beyond our capacity to influence or otherwise affect. The natural world can easily enough be thought of as if it had no human agents in it; and when it is so thought of it is understood absent the artificial.
Given this construal, natural desires may be distinguished from artificial ones. One way to do this is by appeal to spontaneity: a desire is natural rather than artificial, it might be said, to the extent that it occurs spontaneously, without anyone other than the one who has it having to do anything to bring it about, to make it operative. There are few occurrent human desires natural in this sense. This can be seen by the following thought-experiment: imagine a newborn given the nourishment it needs to survive, but otherwise kept from contact with other human beings. The child is, perhaps, fed by intravenous drip in a comfortable crib in a sterile environment, and its bodily wastes efficiently and gently removed by machine. What we know of human development strongly suggests that such a child will soon die no matter how efficiently its need for food and drink is met, and no matter how carefully protected from illness it is: we appear to need physical contact with and nurture by other human beings in order to grow and flourish. This need we share, by and large, with other mammals. If it is not met we will ordinarily die; and if we do not die, we will be stunted in all kinds of ways. About the only occurrent desire such a child will have is that for food: the sucking reflex is immediately present in most newborns, and there is no reason to doubt that it would also be in our machine-treated baby. All other desires will remain inchoate: that for the mother’s flesh and smell and touch will never be identifiable as such because the mother will never be present; that for the human face and its expression will never be actualized because there will be no human faces; and so, ad infinitum, for the language-appetite, the desire for sexual intimacy with other human beings, and the desire for the Lord.
The thought-experiment shows, I think decisively, that almost all our occurrent desires are artificial in the sense given. That is, they are not spontaneous: they require the intentional actions of human agents other than ourselves in order that they occur. We are, in this sense, more like the house in the subdivision than the tree in the wild wood: food and drink and sunshine won’t suffice; our desires have the artificing of others among the necessary conditions for their occurrence. Notice that saying this is compatible with saying that we are naturally—non-artificially, spontaneously—disposed to have many desires, including that for the Lord. But being disposed to have a desire is very different from having it, in much the same way as your automobile’s having the capacity to be driven down the road is different from its being driven down the road. In a world without drivers your car will go nowhere, no matter its mechanical excellence. So also for our desire-dispositions: without artifice, they will not occur. If, then, to call a desire natural is to say that it is not artificial, that it does not have the work of other human agents among the necessary conditions for its occurrence, the proper conclusion to draw is that there are almost no natural desires, and that desire for the Lord is certainly not among them. We are, so far as occurrent desires go, beings who eagerly await the work on us of others like ourselves; without that work, we remain, so far as desires go, all potency and no act. The same is not true, for instance, of snakes: most of them can come to maturity with all the occurrent desires proper to snakes, without the work of other snakes. It is especially characteristic of humans naturally to have almost no occurrent desires; and this, perhaps, is one trace of the imago dei in us.
What I’ve just been saying about the distinction between natural and artificial desires should direct our attention away from claims in the order of being—claims, that is, about what we are—and toward claims in what I’ll call the order of formation—claims, that is, about how it is that we become desirous of anything at all, about how our appetites are formed. If all or almost all our occurrent desires are artificial, then we need to attend closely to the artificing by which they become occurrent, or, if you prefer, the artificing by which they are moved from potency to act. This artificing can best be summed up in the portmanteau-word catechesis: we are catechized into our active desires, and because of our inchoateness as desirers, we can be catechized into almost anything.
This perhaps seems obvious. It certainly seems obvious to me. But it can easily be forgotten, and its importance needs to be underscored in order to discourage ourselves from talking in ways that suggest its falsehood. The effective absence in us of non-artificial desires means that calling some desires natural in the order of being, as when we distinguish natural from unnatural or abnormal desires, has almost no implications for how we should think about our desires as natural-opposed-to-artificial. That is: we can coherently hold together the following two claims: first, that there are many desires natural to us, in the sense that they are not unnatural, which is to say appropriate to our nature, and that these include the desire for the Lord; and second, that we have no occurrent natural desires, and certainly not the desire for the Lord, absent the artifice of catechesis. (The distinction between natural and supernatural desires lies transverse to this matched pair of claims; exploration of it would require another discussion.) Claims in the order of being, like the first in this matched pair, have in this case, as is usual, not much to do with claims in the order of formation, like the second in this matched pair. It is not uncommon to hear, or at least for me to imagine that I hear, Catholics, and perhaps especially Thomists, speaking and writing in ways that ignore this important and fundamental distinction. Just as normative claims about what is natural to us in the realm of desire have few implications for which desires are common or rare for us, so claims about which desires are proper to us have little or nothing to do with claims about how any desires, whether natural or unnatural, become active in us.
A further and final point on the grammar of the natural/artificial distinction, this one rather more speculative. It is that the degree and kind of catechesis needed to make a natural (in the sense of normatively appropriate to the kind of being we are) desire occurrent for any particular human being or group of such is very likely the same as the degree and kind of catechesis needed to make an unnatural (in the sense of normatively inappropriate to the kind of being we are) desire occurrent. That is, less technically, we don’t need more instruction to have desires we ought not to have than we do to have desires we ought. You’ll need to work just as hard to activate desire for the Lord in someone as you will to activate desire for world-domination. It’s no harder to become a Nazi than a Christian. Our deep inchoateness as desirers is what makes this true. If it is true, then expectations that it should be otherwise will be disappointed. Catechizing children into love for the Lord may in some ways be harder than catechizing them into desire to dominate and injure their peers. Much depends here upon ambient cultural factors; but in any case, if the point is true, or approximately so, it should make the Church attend even more closely than she does to the importance of catechesis.
That we are creatures of inchoate desire has been strongly affirmed by the Catholic tradition, and this is easiest to see in its embrace of the idea of habit as centrally important to an understanding of human action. Habits are acquired by repetition over time, which is also to say that their acquisition has a narrative arc and that such acquisition requires extended and repeated catechesis. To come to have a habit of being (and recall that the term habitus is linked etymologically to the verb habere) requires time, and this is as true for a habit that includes occurrent desire for the Lord as for a habit that includes knowing when to genuflect in church. Almost all our desires are habituated in this sense, which is to say that almost none is spontaneous: artificiality and habituatedness are inseparable. This is not true, or at least much less true, for nonhuman animals: a vastly higher proportion of their occurrent desires are not habitual in this sense than is the case for us. It is a corollary of the tradition’s emphasis on the importance of habit that our natural desires require catechesis in order to become operative as elements within a habit of being.
