its desires more powerfully than anything it may itself be able to
add to the sum of its likes and dislikes; nevertheless, over and
above preconceived opinion and the habits to which all are slaves,
there is a small salary, or, as it were, agency commission, which
each may have for himself, and spend according to his fancy; from
this, indeed, income-tax must be deducted; still there remains a
little margin of individual taste, and here, high up on this narrow,
inaccessible ledge of our souls, from year to year a breed of not
unprolific variations build where reason cannot reach them to
despoil them; for de gustibus non est disputandum.

Here we are as far as we can go. Fancy, which sometimes sways so
much and is swayed by so little, and which sometimes, again, is so
hard to sway, and moves so little when it is swayed; whose ways have
a method of their own, but are not as our ways--fancy, lies on the
extreme borderland of the realm within which the writs of our
thoughts run, and extends into that unseen world wherein they have
no jurisdiction. Fancy is as the mist upon the horizon which blends
earth and sky; where, however, it approaches nearest to the earth
and can be reckoned with, it is seen as melting into desire, and
this as giving birth to design and effort. As the net result and
outcome of these last, living forms grow gradually but persistently
into physical conformity with their own intentions, and become
outward and visible signs of the inward and spiritual faiths, or
wants of faith, that have been most within them. They thus very
gradually, but none the less effectually, design themselves.

In effect, therefore, Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck introduce
uniformity into the moral and spiritual worlds as it was already
beginning to be introduced into the physical. According to both