UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 
not a matter of chance; other than physical causes 
have determined the journey. Their desire to make 
the journey has its physical basis, but the journey 
itself was not inevitable like the flow of water down- 
hill, or like the geometric forms of the rocks them- 
selves. A psychic principle played a part. 
Man’s freedom is not that of the wind which 
bloweth where it listeth, but freedom to go against 
the wind, or to conquer and use the forces that 
oppose him. There is no movement in inanimate 
nature that typifies human freedom; only living 
beings withstand and turn to their own account the 
forces of dead matter. 
Man’s work is geometric; he runs to angles and 
right lines; in other words, to parts and fragments. 
The circuitous method of Nature — her waste, her 
delays, her confusion, her endless seeking, her sur- 
vival of the fittest, her all-around-the-horizon activ- 
ities — he seeks to avoid, because he is not con- 
cerned with the All, but with a part. He aims at 
victories now and here, and not in the next geologic 
age. He would eliminate the element of chance. He 
does not wait for the winds and the floods to sow his 
seeds or plant his trees, or for the storms to trim and 
thin his forests; he takes short cuts, he saves time 
because he has not all time; he selects and abridges 
and cuts out, and reaches his ends by direct, geo- 
metric methods. 
The red-thorn in the pasture is constantly 
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