UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 
The belief in free will is like the belief that the 
earth is a plane instead of a sphere. For all practi- 
cal purposes the earth is a plane — a plane which 
has no boundaries; and for all practical purposes the 
will is free. We feel at liberty to do what we like, 
to go here or to stay there, to vote for this candidate 
or to vote for that. We live our lives without any 
sense of the sphericity of the globe, and without any 
sense that our power of choice is not absolutely free. 
But it is as easy to prove that the will is not free 
as to prove that the earth is round. In the realm of 
material things fatalism abounds. Everything is held 
in the iron law of cause and effect. Only life is spon- 
taneous. We speak justly of the spontaneity of the 
great poets, of the great orators, of our own best acts, 
while yet we do not take into account the subtle and 
hidden physical forces at work. The flower blooms 
spontaneously, but not independently of the long 
chain of forces at work there in the soil, in the air, 
in the sun. Heroic deeds and poetic thoughts are 
spontaneous in the same sense. Without thought 
or calculation heroic deeds flash out in the lives of 
men, noble thoughts are born in our minds and 
hearts, as spontaneous as the rain or the dew, — 
and no more so; which is to say that they are the 
result of an intricate complex of causes at work in 
unison with the creative force of Life. 
Something cannot come from nothing. Some 
force in the man impelled him to the heroic act. All 
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