When we build excellences into human persons, Victor, we do not build up or upon. We build down, which is another way of saying that we refine. We cu… - R. A. Lafferty

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When we build excellences into human persons, Victor, we do not build up or upon. We build down, which is another way of saying that we refine. We cut down. We carve out. We sculpt.’
‘From what stones do we sculpt, Swing? Is it from the ‘Magnificent Blanks’ that you sometimes speak of?’
‘Yes, and there are such things, though you all smile at such statements from me as though I were concealing something behind a fanciful notion. There were even some Magnificent Blanks on this world once. The Cro-Magnons were such, and most of the people still carry some of their blood. The essence of the ‘Magnificents’ is that they should be large-brained and long-lived and vigorous; and that they should have a certain style, which is the same thing as grace, or as power-in-balance. And the essence of the ‘Blanks’ is a sort of hairy invisibility, a condition in which nobody will look at them twice, in which nobody will pluck or plunder them before their time.