ninety-nine out of a hundred of the philosophers, reformers,
sociologists, and politicians of the great age in which we live.
My small friend was, in fact, very like the principal modern thinkers;
only much nicer.

. . . . .

In the little apologue or parable which he has thus the honour
of inventing, the trees stand for all visible things
and the wind for the invisible. The wind is the spirit
which bloweth where it listeth; the trees are the material
things of the world which are blown where the spirit lists.
The wind is philosophy, religion, revolution; the trees are
cities and civilisations. We only know that there is a wind
because the trees on some distant hill suddenly go mad.
We only know that there is a real revolution because all
the chimney-pots go mad on the whole skyline of the city.

Just as the ragged outline of a tree grows suddenly more
ragged and rises into fantastic crests or tattered tails,
so the human city rises under the wind of the spirit into toppling
temples or sudden spires. No man has ever seen a revolution.
Mobs pouring through the palaces, blood pouring down the gutters,
the guillotine lifted higher than the throne, a prison
in ruins, a people in arms--these things are not revolution,
but the results of revolution.

You cannot see a wind; you can only see that there is a wind.
So, also, you cannot see a revolution; you can only see that
there is a revolution. And there never has been in the history