‘From Adam has sprung one mass of sinners and godless men,” wrote St Augustine, arguably the key architect of the Christian doctrine of original sin. The notion that babies are born with this indelible stain, the residue of Adam’s fall in Eden, can seem one of the most pernicious features of Christian dogma. But as Guy Leschziner argues in Seven Deadly Sins, we could interpret Augustine’s austere judgment as an acknowledgment that we are inherently inclined to do things we shouldn’t. The catalogue of seven direst vices first adduced by Tertullian and immortalised in Dante’s Divine Comedy – pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth – may seem arbitrary, but we can all recognise aspects of them in ourselves.
Leschziner, a consultant neurologist at Guy’s Hospital in London, explores the physiological and psychological roots of these “failings” and argues that, in mild degree, all might be considered not just universal but necessary human attributes. The goal, he implies, is not to renounce them but to align our natural impulses with the demands of living healthily and productively in society. Seven Deadly Sins takes the case-study format pioneered by Oliver Sacks in using dysfunction to explore the neurological origins of behaviour. It is a profoundly humane book, occasionally compromised by excessive clinical detail and perhaps more so by its lack of wider context.
