"It strikes me that men who are accustomed to contemplate the active or passive extirpation of the weak, the unfortunate, and the superfluous; who justify that conduct on the ground that it has the sanction of the cosmic process, and is the only way of ensuring the progress of the race; who, if they are consistent, must rank medicine among the black arts and count the physician as a mischievous preserver of the unfit; on whose matrimonial undertakings the principles of the stud have the chief influence; whose whole lives, therefore, are an education in the noble art of suppressing natural affection and sympathy, are not likely to have any large stock of these commodities left. But without them, there is no conscience, nor any restraint on the conduct of men, except the calculation of self interest, the balancing of certain present gratifications against doubtful future pains; and experience shows us how much that is worth. Every day, we see believers in the hell of the theologians commit commit acts by which, as they believe when cool, they risk eternal punishment; while they hold back from those which are opposed by the sympathies of their associates."
T. H. Huxley
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