UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 
I 
Life and nature and philosophy are full of contra- 
dictions. The globe upon which we live presents the 
first great contradiction. It has no under or upper 
side; it is all outside. Go around it from east to west, 
or from north to south, and you find no bottom or 
top such as you see on the globe in your study, or as 
you apparently see on the moon and the sun in the 
heavens. A fly at the South Pole of the schoolroom 
globe is in a reversed position, but the discoverers 
of the South Pole on our earth did not find them- 
selves in a reversed position on their arrival there, 
or in danger of falling off. The sphere is a perpetual 
contradiction. It is the harmonization of opposites. 
Our minds are adjusted to planes and to right lines, 
to up and down, to over and under. Our action 
upon things is linear. Curves and circles baffle us. 
My mind cannot adjust itself to the condition of 
free empty space. 
Transport yourself in imagination away from the 
earth to the vacancy of the interstellar regions. Can 
you convince yourself that there would be no over 
and no under, no east and no west, no north and no 
south? Would one not look down to one’s feet, and 
lift one’s hand to one’s head? What could one do? 
— no horizontal, no vertical — just the negation of 
all motion and direction. If one rode upon a meteor- 
ite rushing toward the earth, would one have the 
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