Cruden

We saw how the interconnectedness of primitive impulse and cultural splendour was less forcefully, indeed almost obscurely, expressed through a scholarly excursus which could hardly compete in impact with the 'magnificent blond beast lustfully prowling after booty and victory'; and we saw how the 'blond beast' image was itself crudened, from meaning a psychological factor in man to meaning primitive man in general.

In passing from 'A Conference of the Powers' to Stalky, then, we see how genuine experience and observations can be crudened and distorted by their conversion or partial conversion into propagandist fable—a process all too frequent in Kipling's art.

The view with the left should theoretically have been more extensive, that eye having greater altitude at the time, owing to the angle of repose of my head; but although that view gave a middle-ground of pale belly beyond the pubis, the breasts now didn't have the clarity of outline and the subtlety of texture of the previous survey: myopia gave just sufficient blur, after eighteen inches or so, to (ha!) cruden the edge and surface.