REASON FOR HOPE

Goodall (Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe, 1990, etc.), with the help of religious scholar Berman, sets down the spiritual and ethical lights that serve as guides in her rather extraordinary life. A couple of questions keep popping up for Goodall: from where does she get her serenity, considering all the cruelty and violence she has seen between humans and humans, humans and animals, and humans and the environment? And is there any hope? This book is an honest and often elegant groping toward an answer to these questions; in it she relates her belief in God—a God both personal and inclusive—and a divine plan. But she isn’t about to foist that notion on her readers; indeed, she has trouble reconciling the coincident presence of evil and an all-good, all-powerful God. Rather, her hope comes from a number of other wellsprings. One is the evolution of human bioethics, which she sees as steadily, if glacially, improving. Another is the frequent display of fundamental values she witnesses in humans: “honesty, self-discipline, courage, respect for life, courtesy, compassion, and tolerance.” Since she has observed some of these traits in chimpanzees, she considers them, and by extension all animals, worthy of our respect and empathy, thus her work to protect animals. Because Goodall is so decent and intelligent a person, she can go out on a limb without concern of ridicule: she speaks of states of grace, merge states wherein she is one with the forest and its inhabitants, quiet ecstasies of timelessness and peace, out-of-body experiences that grant her an appreciation of the potential beauty inherent in the world, and the application of these intuitive capacities for good in science and everyday behavior. She sets all this in the context of her life’s progress. Goodall is a rare creature accomplishing great things. Her last hope is that readers may find here some good to take away. A PBS tie-in will air in the fall of 1999. (16 pages b&w photos) (Author tour)