Miguel de Cervantes Quotes
Every man is as heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse.
Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote. Translated by Charles Jarvis, Oxford University Press, 1992, p. 468.
See {587546} for a more modern German version of this thought.
Without free will, it would be futile for priests, ministers, rabbis or imams to preach morality to try and get people to behave in certain ways. The concept if sin and morality breaks down, and the clerics lost most of their power and influence. Cave was very concerned with the fact that a number of scientists were arguing that human behavior is caused by neurobiology, genetics and conditioning. They question whether an individual can be held accountable for his actions by the society that raised him, educated him, influenced him, and if the individual seemed aberrant relative to all that, it must be because of his particular neurology which enables him or prevents him from being influenced by the society, or allows him to be influenced by the "darker" aspects of society.
There are many who disagree with this notion. They instead believe that circumstances and conditions will shape a great person’s actions. If character determined action and behavior, it would be very difficult to explain a great man who changes his mind on a major issue. Was the flip-flop the result of a radical character change? If not who would the same character produce two different outcomes with the same person?
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language, and one of the world's pre-eminent novelists. He is best known for his novel Don Quixote, a work often cited as both the first modern novel and one of the pinnacles of world literature.
