It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak. [...] To say that one persons desires and fee… - John Stuart Mill

It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak.

So true is that unnatural generally means only uncustomary, and that everything which is usual appears natural.

Supposing it true that contrary to appearances these horrors when perpetrated by Nature, promote good ends, still as no one believes that good ends would be promoted by our following the example, the course of Nature cannot be a proper model for us to imitate. Either it is right that we should kill because nature kills ; torture because nature tortures ; ruin and devastate because nature does the like; or we ought not to consider at all what nature does, but what it is good to do. If there is such a thing as a reductio ad absurdum, this surely amounts to one. If it is a sufficient reason for doing one thing, that nature does it, why not another thing? If not all things, why anything?

No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.