“An establishment may . . . be the occasional, but not the efficient cause of mischief. The machine may be faultless; but exposed, as it must be, while the species lasts, to the intromission of hands, which to a certain degree will taint and vitiate all that they come in contact with. The remedy is not to demolish the machine, and transfer the hands which wrought it to other managements and other modes of operation—There will still be corruption notwithstanding.” And even a reformed establishment can be re-corrupted: “The human nature which you thus transfer, will carry its own virus along with it” (Thomas Chalmers, Works 11:454).
Or, in other words, bad men can make a bad use of good things.
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