The Mind and Emotions Are Naturally Wild and Resist Taming
In The African Queen, Katharine Hepburn upbraids Humphrey Bogart by telling him that “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.” Not surprisingly, Hepburn’s character is a missionary, and as such holds dear a belief congenital to Western religion that spiritual life should take us up and out from nature, that it’s the antidote to our instincts and emotions, our animal wants and sensual passions. But the term “human nature” admits that the two are inextricably entwined. We’re a subset of the larger category called Nature, which isn’t out there somewhere, or left behind in the past, or, as Hepburn’s character would have it, beneath us. It’s in us, body and mind. “Our instincts, our motives, our biology, our basic needs, our struggles over status, resources, attachments—pure animal,” says Diane Ackerman in A Natural History of the Senses. That pure animal’s brain spent 99 percent of its developmental time in the wild kingdom—and wild things are, by definition, those we don’t control—but we never seem to tire of trying …
