UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 
sense. In a large way human history is under the 
same law as natural history or biological history; is 
subject to the same haphazard, hit-and-miss proc- 
ess, the same waste, delays, failures. The only 
sure thing in either case is the law of progress — 
evolution in a general broadcast way. We do not 
know that the great historical characters appeared 
when most needed. When they did appear, they did 
their work, filled their places, but how many epochs 
have come and gone without their redeemers and 
leaders! In how many cases the great leader and 
savior may have been there, though conditions and 
events have not favored his appearance! Grant 
would have died unknown had not events brought 
him out. So would Washington and Lincoln and 
Lee. Opportunity is half of life. 
We cannot jump off the sphere; no more can we 
free ourselves of the idea of a final cause. This idea 
of causation is developed in us by our experience in 
life; if we forget it, we speedily come to grief. But 
it does not help us in dealing with the final mystery. 
We can find no end to the causal sequence. We 
simply rest in First Cause. 
Two opposites may make a whole. There is often 
the larger truth with the lesser truth inside it. The 
larger truth is the law of causation; the lesser truth 
is the freedom of the will. Fate is true and, within 
limits, freedom of choice is true. If my tempera- 
ment, or that complex of forces and tendencies 
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