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In what can a person become entrapped? Basically and foremost, he can become entrapped in ideas. In view of the fact that freedom and ability can be seen to be somewhat synonymous, then ideas of disability are first and foremost in entrapment. Amongst men the incident has probably occurred that a person has been sitting upon a bare plain in the total belief that he is entirely entrapped by a fence. In Lake Tanganyika where the sun’s rays, being equatorial, pierce burningly to the lake’s bottom, the natives fish by tying a number of slats of wood on a long piece of line. They take either end of this line and put it in canoes, and then paddle the two canoes to shore, the slatted line stretching between. The sun shining downward presses the shadows of these bars down to the bottom of the lake and thus a cage of shadows moves inward toward the shallows. The fish seeing this cage contract upon them, which is composed of nothing but the absence of light, flounder frantically into the shallows where they cannot swim and are thus caught, picked up in baskets and cooked. Yet there was nothing to be afraid of but shadows.
When we move out of mechanics, man finds himself on unsure ground. The idea that ideas can be so strong and pervasive is foreign to most men. For instance, a government attacked by the communists does not perceive that it is being attacked only by ideas. It believes itself to be attacked by guns, bombs, armies and yet it sees no guns, bombs, armies. It sees only men standing together exchanging ideas. Whether these ideas are sound or not is beside the point, they are at least penetrative. No sixteen-inch armor plate could possibly stop an idea.
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