Genes plus Conditioning

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I'd known bad men in Paris, and when I got back to Chicago I knew more, but for the most part their badness was due to heredity, which they couldn't help, or to their environment, which they didn't choose. I'm not sure that society wasn't more responsible for their crimes than they were. If I'd been God I couldn't have brought myself to condemn one of them, not even the worst, to eternal damnation... After all He created men: if He so created them that it was possible for them to sin, it was because He willed it. If I trained a dog to fly at the throat of any stranger who came into my backyard, it wouldn't be fair to beat him when he did so.

- Larry Darrell in W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge

Comments

  1. shival2:47 am

    This book is such a gem. And guess what! I *accidentally* found it on a used booked sale for $0.5 (50 cents). GREAT to see you back on the net :).

    ReplyDelete

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