Maybe this world is another planet's hell. - Aldous Huxley

Generalities are intellectually necessary evils.

The firelight touches and transfigures her face, and we see, concretely illustrated, the impossible paradox and supreme truth — that perception is (or at least can be, ought to be) the same as Revelation, that Reality shines out of every appearance, that the One is totally, infinitely present in all particulars.

By those who get a kick out of this sort of thing (and they are very numerous) inhumanity is enjoyed for its own sake, but often, nonetheless, with a bad conscience. To allay their sense of guilt, the bullies and the sadists provide themselves with a creditable excuses for their favorite sport. Thus, brutality toward children is rationalized as discipline, as obedience to the Word of God - "he that spareth the rod, hateth his son". Brutality toward criminals is a corollary of the Categorical Imperative. Brutality toward religious or political heretics is a blow for the True Faith. Brutality toward members of an alien race is justified by arguments drawn from what may once have passed for Science. Once universal, brutality toward the insane is not yet extinct - the mad are horribly exasperating. But this brutality is no longer rationalized, as it was in the past, in theological terms. The people who tormented Surin and the other victims of hysteria or psychosis did so, first, because they enjoyed being brutal and, second, because they were convinced that they did well to be brutal. And they believed that they did well, because, ex hypthesi, the mad had always brought their own troubles upon themselves. For some manifest or obscure sin, they were being punished by God, who permitted devils to besiege or obsess them. Both as God's enemies and as temporary incarnations of radical evil, they deserved the be maltreated. And maltreated they were - with a a good conscience and a heart-warming sense that the divine will was being done on earth, as in heaven.