“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 
143 
