Human Capacity for Deliberate Malice and Compassion

When Lear cries—Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?—we could reply, on one level, yes—a defect in the right prefrontal cortex. But that just illuminates the fact that cruelty does not exist in nature : only humans with their left prefrontal cortex have the capacity for deliberate malice. But then only humans, with their right prefrontal cortex, are capable of compassion.

The Master and His Emissary