IX 
“FATED TO BE FREE” 
I 
HE question of fate and free will is hoary 
with age. In touching upon the subject here, I 
have little hope that I can put a youthful face upon 
it. But it seems to me that the question has been 
discussed mainly on religious and metaphysical 
grounds. I have in mind to see what light can be 
thrown upon the subject from the consideration of 
our relation to the natural world around us and 
within us. The moment we think of ourselves as a 
part of this natural world, with its laws and forces 
vital within us and an innate part of our essential 
being, the problem takes on a new aspect. The neces- 
sity that rules us is no longer foreign to us, but is the 
essence of our own wills. Our sense of freedom is 
as clear and secure as our own eyesight. 
The phrase “fated to be free,”’ is Emerson’s, and 
well expresses the kind of contradiction and mar- 
riage of opposites that we find everywhere in nature 
and in life. “Man is fated to be free.” The deter- 
minism of the nature within him and without him 
does not blunt or abridge his sense of absolute free- 
dom of choice. He always feels himself free to choose 
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