The duality of human nature can be separated in several different categories including good and evil, male and female, and right and left hemispheres. For the sake of this blog post, I'd like to consider the duality of human nature as being between good and evil.
As I ponder the topic of the duality of human nature I automatically imagine the scenes in The Emperor's New Groove where Kronk has a white angel on his right shoulder and a red devil on his left shoulder arguing over decisions Kronk must make. This image takes the duality of human nature and makes it outwardly visible and easy to understand.
A piece of literature that undeniably illustrates the duality of human nature is The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. In Chapter 10, Jekyll writes clearly about the dual nature of human beings. He says that, as a young, educated man from a respectable family, he maintained an appearance of good behavior at all times. But he says this was a fraud - no one suspected his true nature, which was at times extremely immoral. Jekyll's experiments began in an attempt to separate the two sides of human nature and destroy the evil one. He discovered that the evil part of his nature was, indeed, part of himself, and therefore, in some sense, natural and part of the whole.
We, as human beings, all have both good and evil inside of us. According to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, it is natural for there to be conflict between the forces of good and evil within us. The novel also argues that the duality of human nature is unable to be separated. I agree that the duality of human nature is natural, however, I'd like to believe that we are able to separate it.
Good, just no specific societal connection
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