Folks are dumb where I come from
They ain 't had any learnin'
Still they 're happy as can be
Do-In What Comes Nat-ur-lly
—Irving Berlin, Doin' What Comes Natur'lly
Smart Americans as well as dumb ones have always held a special belief in what comes natur'lly. That belief appears to grow stronger as society pulls further away from nature. As ever more synthetic artifacts of Western civilization emerge from laboratories and test tubes, a great many people have developed an outright crush on nature. Indeed, the supposedly natural is so warmly regarded nowadays that the artificial is in danger of getting an unjustly bad name.
There is nothing wrong with loving nature. The trouble is that in the commercial rush to exploit this popular sentiment the notion of what is natural is getting stretched absurdly out of shape. It is even possible these days to see references to colors called natural vinyl and natural nylon. Considering nature's own glaring penchant for diverse and gaudy colors, it is illogical that any anemic shade should be called (as convention calls it) natural. And it is preposterous to put that label on synthetic stuff. If man-made plastics possess a natural color, then it is fair to ask: What is the natural color of a Buick?
The results of human artifice are one thing, the effects of nature are another. A raccoon's coat is natural, a raccoon coat is not. Hair grows naturally on the human head, but its naturalness vanishes the instant it is groomed with comb, brush, scissors or curlers. The term natural, in its strictest sense, should not be applied to anything contrived or even changed by man. Some philosophers, to be sure, encourage a soupy sort of reductionism. "Nature who made the mason, made the house," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. That notion is nonsense. It is plain as rain that people invented the house to escape the elements of nature.
Mankind would never have got anywhere without outwitting or overpowering the natural order of things. Early humans invented the arts of agriculture and livestock management to free themselves from dependency on the uncertain bounty of nature. Crucial differences between things devised by humankind and those that issue from Mother Nature often get blurred in the cause of merchandising.
An amazing variety of goods goes to market these days identified either directly or by insinuation as natural, or as nature's, or as conducive to naturalness. Bloomingdale's, that barometer of with-itness, features jeans made of "natural stonewashed denim." Golden Key Creations of Fort Worth urges customers: "Be pure, natural, beautiful with Vitamin E cream!" Breeder's Choice Pet Foods has launched a new line of "all natural" dog food, which is the regular line bereft of additives, and Weleda, Inc., of Spring Valley, N.Y., sells "an all-natural, non-aerosol spray deodorant." Bootstrap Press of Glendale, Calif., offers a book that teaches "the deep natural breathing you were born with."