Human All Too Human 102

We kill a fly intentionally, to avoid displeasure. The state punishes criminals intentionally and does them harm. All morality allows the intentional causing of harm in the case of self-defence or self-preservation. The avoidance of displeasure & self-preservation are sufficient to explain all evil acts perpetrated by man against man: one desired pleasure or to ward off displeasure; it is always in some sense a matter of self-preservation. `Socrates & Plato are right; whatever man does he always does the good, that is to say, that which seems to him good (useful) according to the relative degree of his intellect, the measure of his rationality.'