Whale in the sky

“People find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this. Accordingly, with admirable - though misdirected - intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease; they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease. The try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive, or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor. But this is not a solution. It is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible, and the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim.”