Friedrich Nietzsche's eerie discussion of the invisible hand:

"If I wanted to shake this tree with my hands I should not be able to do
it.  But the wind, which we do not see, tortures and bends it in whatever
direction it pleases.  It is by invisible hands that we are bent and
tortured worst ....  It is with man as it is with the tree.  The more he
aspires to height and light, the more strongly do his roots strive
earthward, downward, into the dark, the deep -- into evil."  [Nietzsche
1954, 154]

Nietzsche, Friedreich. 1954.  Thus Spoke Zarathustra . In  The Portable
Nietzsche , edited by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking).


Michael Perelman