We should organise a legitimate channel for instincts so profound as
these, just as we have found it necessary to do with lust and revenge by
the institutions of marriage and the law courts. This is the _raison
d’être_ of the church. You kill a man just as much whether you murder
him or hang him after the formalities of a trial. And so with lust and
marriage, _mutatis mutandis_. So again with the professions of religion
and medicine. You swindle a man as much when you sell him a drug of
whose action you are ignorant, and tell him it will protect him from
disease, as when you give him a bit of bread, which you assure him is the
body of Jesus Christ, and then send a plate round for a subscription.
You swindle him as much by these acts as if you picked his pocket, or
obtained money from him under false pretences in any other way; but you
swindle him according to the rules and in an authorised way.