to each of the particular types of life generated on the way: as in
estimating the correctness or beauty of language we appeal to the speech
and genius of each nation at each epoch, without imposing the grammar of
one language or age upon another. It is only in so far as, in the midst of
the flux, certain tropes become organised and recurrent, that any
interests or beauties can be transmitted from moment to moment or from
generation to generation. Physical integration is a prerequisite to moral
integrity; and unless an individual or a species is sufficiently organised
and determinate to aspire to a distinguishable form of life, eschewing all
others, that individual or species can bear no significant name, can
achieve no progress, and can approach no beauty or perfection.

Thus, so long as in a fluid world there is some measure of life and
organisation, monsters and changelings will always remain possible
physically and regrettable morally. Small deviations from the chosen type
or the chosen direction of progress will continue to be called morbid and
ugly, and great deviations or reversals will continue to be called
monstrous. This is but the seamy side of that spontaneous predilection,
grounded in our deepest nature, by which we recognise beauty and nobleness
at first sight, with immense refreshment and perfect certitude.


II

Page 8. _Through Descartes._

Very characteristic was the tireless polemic which Locke carried on
against Descartes. The outraged plain facts had to be defended against
sweeping and arbitrary theories. There were no innate ideas or maxims:
children were not born murmuring that things equal to the same thing were