"Men, considered collectively, are at all times the same animals,
employing the same organs, and endowed with the same faculties:
their passions, prejudices, and conceptions,
will of course be formed upon the same internal principles,
although directed to various ends, and modified in various ways,
by the variety of external circumstances operating upon them.

Education and science may correct, restrain, and extend;
but neither can annihilate or create:
they may turn and embellish the currents;
but can neither stop nor enlarge the springs, which,
continuing to flow with perpetual and equal tide,
return to their ancient channels,
when the causes that perverted them are withdrawn."

Richard Payne Knight
On the Worship of Priapus (1786)