259. We said that every person is born into this faculty, or into rationality, but we mean every person in whom the external elements have not been injured by incidental conditions, whether in the womb, or after birth as a result of disease, or owing to the infliction of a head wound, or to some insane love bursting forth and loosening restraints. Rationality in these cases cannot be elevated. For the life which belongs to the will and intellect does not have in such people terminal vessels in which to rest, vessels so disposed that it can perform orderly outward acts. For life operates in accordance with outmost terminations, though not as a result of them. On the impossibility of rationality in little children and preadolescents, see below at the end of no. 266.