DARK NATURE — A NATURAL HISTORY OF EVIL, by Lyall Watson; Hodder & Stoughton, 1995; $19.95
The book has been divided into three parts, Dark Nature, Human Nature and Evil Nature, and is extremely easy for any lay entity to read. It’s also gratifying that Lyall seems to be back on track after his divergence into the “other world”.
Lyall Watson’s reason for investigating evil was its constant presence throughout time and the world. For anything to have existed for so long there has to be an evolutionary part for it to play, but what?
The book takes the reader on a personal ancestral journey from the beginnings of life up to the present day looking at the power of the genes. It is Lyall’s theory that the gene is the reason we exist at all and is the probable cause of the evil present in us all. Robert Louis Stephenson was right on target with his Jekyll and Hyde. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn says “If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his heart?” — The Gulag Archipelago.
Regardless of whether you subscribe to his theory when you finish reading there is no doubt that it’s thought provoking. Genetically speaking, it’s the best non-fiction I’ve read since Genetic Prophecy.
