"FATED TO BE FREE" 



between two objects or two courses of action, no 

 matter how much in reality he may be in the grip 

 of the necessity that rules in the sequence of cause 

 and effect. 



Our relation to the atmosphere well illustrates 

 the principle of fate and free will. We live at the 

 bottom of a great atmospheric sea in which we move 

 with the utmost freedom, but which yet presses 

 upon us with the force of many tons' weight. We 

 are not conscious of this enormous pressure because 

 our organizations are adapted to it; we are born 

 and grow up under its influence as do the fish in 

 the bottom of the sea under water pressure. It is 

 not the pressure of a burden; our freedom is un- 

 hampered; the frailest bubble is not affected by it, 

 because the pressure from within neutralizes the 

 pressure from without. Herein we see the fatalism 

 of nature, which presses upon us so heavily from all 

 sides and yet leaves us with a sense of perfect free- 

 dom and spontaneity because it acts within us as well 

 as without in the mechanism of our bodies and in 

 our inherited traits and dispositions, as well as in the 

 external forces that constantly play upon us. The 

 fatalism of nature working within us does not hamper 

 us because, I repeat, it is a part of our very selves. We 

 are always free to do what we like, because we never 

 like to do what is contrary to the nature within us. 

 In one sense, therefore, we are not free at all, be- 

 cause we are a part of that nature which is greater 

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