First Step

Everything was held in reserve. That is to say, the first step was untaken, for once that step was taken all would be determined. Though perhaps not exactly determined, but one would have moved in a certain direction. The final destination might be uncertain but the direction of the first step could not but be certain, which is not to imply that any second and subsequent steps need be duty bound to continue on in the direction of the first. Instead the vista of movement is open, if not quite the full 360 degrees, though the taker of the steps could proceed backwards at strange angles I suppose if desired, however unlikely and awkward such movement would be.

So anyway, man is not a taut piece of string, a movement between a set beginning and end; though if you were to quibble, you could say, yes, in a certain sense he is a movement between a set beginning and end, but only in the general sense; the precise end can hardly be looked on as a direct consequence to the precise beginning; and as regards movement of the man between the two points, this could hardly be likened to the monotonous journey along a taut piece of string. Perhaps the longer one proceeded in the same direction as the preceding movement the more likely a next step could be said to follow on in the same vein, but regardless of the number of these steps likelihood is about as much as one could say, for at each step the way lies open. One can veer off if one wishes. This, that which is moving, to say it again or an approximate of it, is not a clockwork mechanism we are dealing with but something else altogether, potentially in any case. If this mover, this person, does chain himself to some kind of a clockwork mechanism, then he may indeed give the impression of being one himself, or a component of such - such a mechanism - but you can't go always trusting appearances.

So it's likely, as an hypothesis anyway, that such was the fear of the first step: a horror of an absolute fate irrevocable once set in motion; but if this were the case - that this remorseless, unswerving road must ensue, deviation impossible - then surely this could only be so because it appears to be so, is believed to be so. Man lays down his rights convinced they aren't his rights, are merely his own imaginings; but it is the lack of his rights that are really his imaginings.

And so the lack of a first step out of fear of its implications - of enslavement to all necessary subsequent steps. What was that law again? - that without some contrary force something set in motion in a certain direction would continue infinitely along that direction if not for some other force working contrary to that movement - gravity or density of air being the contrary force presumably. Something like that. But it takes more, or less, than mere gravity or air to stop a man in motion. Maybe there's even a definition in there. Man: a contrary force to his own motion. Mind: that which impedes the free movement of matter, or is it unfree movement, for what's so free about infinite movement along a straight line? I suppose someone else might claim that it is matter which impedes the free movement of mind, and someone else again that matter is merely a word used by mind, as is mind.