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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of
its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it
is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes
it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it?
Nothing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of conditions
in which all vital organic and elemental events occur. And the
botanist who finds that the apple falls because the cellular tissue
decays and so forth is equally right with the child who stands under
the tree and says the apple fell because he wanted to eat it and
prayed for it. Equally right or wrong is he who says that Napoleon
went to Moscow because he wanted to, and perished because Alexander
War and Peace |
