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The following excerpt is from "The Idiot" by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Wordsworth Classics (2010 paperback edition), pg. 339. The moral sentiment expressed in the passage is put in the mouth of Lebedyev, who by certain observable tests would be deemed very much immoral.
See also: The Modern Madness and Comment.
For a more poetic articulation that brings this sensibility at our doorstep see Janane ka Haque (Right to Know).
'A shrewd and insinuating thought!' Lebedyev approved 'But, again, that's not the point. Our question is whether the "springs of life" have not grown weaker with the increase of ...'
'Railways?' cried Koyla.
'Not railways communication, young but impestuous youth, but all that tendency of which railways may serve, so to speak, as the artistic pictorial expression. They hurry with noise, clamour and haste, for the hapiness of humanity, they tell us. "Mankind has grown too noisy and commercial; there is little spiritual peace," one secluded thinker has complained. "So be it; but the rumble of the wagons that bring bread to starving humanity is better, maybe, than spiritual peace, another thinker who is always moving among his fellows, answers him triumphantly, and walks away from him conceitedly. But, vile as I am, I don't believe in the waggons that bring bread to humanity, without any moral basis for conduct, may coldly exclude a considerable part of humanity from enjoying what is brought; so it has been already ... '
'And so it has been already,' repeated Lebedyev not deigning to notice the question. 'We've already had Malthus, the friend of humanity. But the friend of humanity with shaky moral principles is the devourer of humanity to say nothing of his conceit; for, wound the vanity of anyone of these numerous friends of humanity, and he's ready to set fire to the world out of petty revenge --- like all the rest of us, though, in that, to be fair; like myself, vilest of all, for I might well be the first to bring the fuel and run away myself. But that's not the point again!'
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