“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 under the tree wants to eat it?
Nothing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of
conditions in which all vital organic elemental events occur. And the botanist who says that the apple feel because the cellular tissue decays and so forth, is equally right with the child who stands under the tree and says that the apple fell 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 desired his destruction...
In historic events the so-called great men are labels
giving names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself.”