breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end.
Somebody wrote a work called "The Loves of the Triangles";
I never read it, but I am sure that if triangles ever were loved,
they were loved for being triangular. This is certainly the case
with all artistic creation, which is in some ways the most
decisive example of pure will. The artist loves his limitations:
they constitute the THING he is doing. The painter is glad
that the canvas is flat. The sculptor is glad that the clay
is colourless.

In case the point is not clear, an historic example may illustrate
it. The French Revolution was really an heroic and decisive thing,
because the Jacobins willed something definite and limited.
They desired the freedoms of democracy, but also all the vetoes
of democracy. They wished to have votes and NOT to have titles.
Republicanism had an ascetic side in Franklin or Robespierre
as well as an expansive side in Danton or Wilkes. Therefore they
have created something with a solid substance and shape, the square
social equality and peasant wealth of France. But since then the
revolutionary or speculative mind of Europe has been weakened by
shrinking from any proposal because of the limits of that proposal.
Liberalism has been degraded into liberality. Men have tried
to turn "revolutionise" from a transitive to an intransitive verb.
The Jacobin could tell you not only the system he would rebel against,
but (what was more important) the system he would NOT rebel against,
the system he would trust. But the new rebel is a Sceptic,
and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he
can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts
everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything.
For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the