Art or Instinct?

Doing What Comes Naturally?

In all human activities there are two levels – the basic animal level, and its refinement through thought and experience.  Animals eat and drink, and so do we. However, a great deal of art and refinement go into the way in which we prepare our food, and the way we serve it and eat.These refinements do not come from natural instinct, but from learning and experience – not only our own, but that of many other  people and of generations before us.

Furthermore, we do not consider it a virtue if a person eats in a manner similar to that of an animal. We expect any civilised human being to eat and drink in an organised and orderly manner, with food properly selected, cleaned, prepared, cooked, and served.

Similarly in the matter of sexual relations, for a man to approach his wife in the way a bull mounts a cow, or a dog mounts a bitch is not acceptable. There are all kinds of thing needed that do not come by instinct, but have to be learned. So, just as there is an art to food preparation, there is an art to sexual relations.

However, just as in the matter of food it is not necessary to learn Haute-Cuisine, so also people can have a perfectly satisfactory sex-life without having to cultivate the more esoteric Arts of the Bedchamber that are to be found in Tantric and Taoist traditions. Nonetheless, for those who wish to do so,  these things are there. They are also a less expensive source of pleasure than many of those that are more commonly pursued.