“When they went down to the bunkhouse for dinner the vaqueros seemed to treat them with a certain deference but whether it was the deference accorded the accomplished or that accorded to mental defectives they were unsure.”

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Suldrun's Garden (1983), Chapter 25, section 1 (p. 270)

Source: Class and society (1959), p. 46 as cited in: Harold Entwistle (2012) Class, Culture and Education.

A Poisoned Arrow (1962) (excerpts)

At the Root (1918)
Non-Fiction
Context: Man's respect for the imponderables varies according to his mental constitution and environment. Through certain modes of thought and training it can be elevated tremendously, yet there is always a limit. The man or nation of high culture may acknowledge to great lengths the restraints imposed by conventions and honour, but beyond a certain point primitive will or desire cannot be curbed. Denied anything ardently desired, the individual or state will argue and parley just so long — then, if the impelling motive be sufficiently great, will cast aside every rule and break down every acquired inhibition, plunging viciously after the object wished; all the more fantastically savage because of previous repression.

"The Quantum State of the Universe", Nuclear Physics (1984) <!-- B239, p. 258 -->
Context: Many people would claim that the boundary conditions are not part of physics but belong to metaphysics or religion. They would claim that nature had complete freedom to start the universe off any way it wanted. That may be so, but it could also have made it evolve in a completely arbitrary and random manner. Yet all the evidence is that it evolves in a regular way according to certain laws. It would therefore seem reasonable to suppose that there are also laws governing the boundary conditions.

Compare Gottfried Leibniz argument for the "best of all possible worlds" in his Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil
Ch.12
Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III
Context: Galen, in the third section of his book, "The Use of the Limbs," says correctly that it would be in vain to expect to see living beings formed of the blood of menstruous women and the semen virile, who will not die, will never feel pain, or will move perpetually, or shine like the sun. This dictum of Galen is part of the following more general proposition:—Whatever is formed of matter receives the most perfect form possible in that species of matter; in each individual case the defects are in accordance with that individual matter.

The Apprentice, Series 4

The Expelled (1946)