spread of a doctrine. They both involve a belief in government and a
life against Nature. This view, though I have called it mechanistic, is
as old as religion, though mechanism has given it new and more virulent
forms. The first of Chinese philosophers, Lao-Tze, wrote his book to
protest against it, and his disciple Chuang-Tze put his criticism into a
fable[38]:--

Horses have hoofs to carry them over frost and snow; hair, to
protect them from wind and cold. They eat grass and drink water,
and fling up their heels over the champaign. Such is the real
nature of horses. Palatial dwellings are of no use to them.

One day Po Lo appeared, saying: "I understand the management of
horses."

So he branded them, and clipped them, and pared their hoofs, and
put halters on them, tying them up by the head and shackling them
by the feet, and disposing them in stables, with the result that
two or three in every ten died. Then he kept them hungry and
thirsty, trotting them and galloping them, and grooming, and
trimming, with the misery of the tasselled bridle before and the
fear of the knotted whip behind, until more than half of them
were dead.

The potter says: "I can do what I will with clay. If I want it
round, I use compasses; if rectangular, a square."

The carpenter says: "I can do what I will with wood. If I want it
curved, I use an arc; if straight, a line."