o 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
equal to one another: and an urchin knew that pain was caused by the
paternal slipper before he reflected philosophically that everything must
have a cause. Again, extension was not the essence of matter, which must
be solid as well, to be distinguishable from empty space. Finally,
thinking was not the essence of the soul: a man, without dying, might lose
consciousness: this often happened, or at least could not be prevented
from happening by a definition framed by a French philosopher. These
protests were evidently justified by common sense: yet they missed the
speculative radicalism and depth of the Cartesian doctrines, which had
struck the keynotes of all modern philosophy and science: for they
assumed, for the first time in history, the transcendental point of view.
No wonder that Locke could not do justice to this great novelty: Descartes
himself did not do so, but ignored his subjective first principles in the
development of his system; and it was not until adopted by Kant, or rather
by Fichte, that the transcendental method showed its true colours. Even
today philosophers fumble with it, patching soliloquy with physics and
physics with soliloquy. Moreover, Locke's misunderstandings of Descartes
were partly justified by the latter's verbal concessions to tradition and
authority. A man who has a clear head, and like Descartes is rendered by
his aristocratic pride both c