「自我」、「本我」與「超我」

AS I CAME home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw; not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness which he represented. Once or twice, however, while I lived at the pond, I found myself ranging the woods, like a half-starved hound, with a strange abandonment, seeking some kind of venison which I might devour, and no morsel could have been too savage for me. The wildest scenes had become unaccountably familiar. I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good. The wildness and adventure that are in fishing still recommended it to me. I like sometimes to take rank hold on life and spend my day more as the animals do. Perhaps I have owed to this employment and to hunting, when quite young, my closest acquaintance with Nature. They early introduce us to and detain us in scenery with which otherwise, at that age, we should have little acquaintance. Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and others, spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Nature themselves, are often in a more favorable mood for observing her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than philosophers or poets even, who approach her with expectation. She is not afraid to exhibit herself to them. The traveller on the prairie is naturally a hunter, on the head waters of the Missouri and Columbia a trapper, and at the Falls of St. Mary a fisherman. He who is only a traveller learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience.

德人佛洛依德言「自我」調合「本我」與「超我」，而求其平衡；然而梭羅卻反其道而行。梭羅鼓勵年輕人在成長的過程中藉著打獵來認識森林，他說，人類在經過了輕狂的年少時期後，便不會輕易傷害任何和他自己一樣享有生命的動物。把時光像動物那樣渡過、讓自己的野性得到充份的發展後，就會對生命產生敬畏。

中國《易經》坤上六爻辭釋義有：龍戰于野，其血玄黃。指的即是靈肉之交戰。文言傳釋義有：夫玄黃者，天地之雜也，天玄而地黃。是為交戰後身心恢復平衡。那麼靈肉交戰發生於何時呢？即陰爻居上位之時，也就是人的野性發展到極致之時。