Freud wrote of the "beast within," Conrad of the "heart of darkness."
Suppose for a moment that the blackness in man's heart is like cancer
cells: a person can have 10 such cells or a million---either way, one
still has the cancer, right?
So all hearts have a measure of this cancer, and consistent with the
nature of the disease, the cells at all times have the potential for
multiplying furiously, causing such noxious outbursts as fornication, adultery, perversions, divorce, alchoholism, fraud, robbery, torture, pedophilia, rape,
persecution, murder and war.
Where the cancer cells are not yet as numerous, one finds "merely"
selfishness, quarreling, cheating, lusting, deceifulness, gossip,
malice, and other such "minor" infractions. But notice how the "minors"
are seed versions of the "majors"! Unbridled, deceitfulness and
cheating grow into fraud and theft; lusting into fornication, adultery,
or pedophilia; gossip into persecution; malice into torture or murder;
quarreling into divorce or war, and so forth.
What treatment for this disease? A very distinct form of radiation
therapy: massive doses of light, perhaps? And a heart transplant. The
human soul needs a complete dialysis to cleanse it of the old
impurities.