Killing With Kindness

"There is kindness in Love: but Love and kindness are not coterminous, and when kindness ... is separated from the other elements of Love, it infolves a certain fundamental indifference to its object, and even something like contempt of it. Kindness consents very readily to the removal of its object - we have all met people whose kindness to animals is constantly leading them to kill animals lest they should suffer. Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering. As scripture points out, it is bastards who are spoiled: the legitimate sons, who are to carry on the family tradition, are punished."

C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain p. 36