“FATED TO BE FREE” 
How can we separate the energy that acts within us, 
giving power to our muscles and all our movements, 
that is the source of our weight and the strength of 
our hands, from the energy that acts without us, 
that checks or restrains all our movements? They 
are both one and the same. We overcome gravity 
with gravity. We break its pull whenever we lift 
our feet, or hurl a weight, or raise any object from 
the ground. The cyclone that lifts your house from 
its foundations, and levels forests, and heaps up the 
waves could do nothing without the weight which 
gravity imparts to the air. The force that sets the 
air in motion — thermic or electric, a steep gradient 
of temperature or an electromagnetic strain — is 
probably not of gravitational origin. In vegetable 
life what we used to call a vital force lifts matter up 
in opposition to gravity — lifts tons of water up 
into the trees, and tons of lime and potash and other 
earth salts, but does it by mechanical and chemical 
means. 
The vital and the physical are inseparably united, 
and play into each other’s hands. In animal life, 
mechanical and chemical principles are equally 
active in all living bodies. In the higher forms a 
psychic principle comes into play. The will of man 
through mechanical means reverses or controls the 
action of gravitation and directs chemical reactions 
—in every instance two contraries work together 
and make one whole. 
147 
