Nature
The Mule's name is a reference to the sterility of mules, since he too is genetically sterile. Without a child available as a successor, the Mule's empire ends soon after his death. No reference is ever given about any other name for him besides "The Mule", a name he apparently gave himself.
Physically, the Mule is a freak, with a long nose (at least three inches) tightly stretched facial skin, and a spindly body. His joints jut out from his diminutive musculature. The Mule's meagerness is glandular and untreatable. Furthermore, his limbs meet at awkward angles, giving the general impression of a scarecrow assembled poorly. His eyes are described as deep brown and perpetually sad. In Second Foundation, it is revealed that the Mule dies in his thirties as a result of his poor health.
As a result of the Mule's freakish appearance, his childhood is one of torment and alienation. The Mule becomes aware of his great mental powers in his twenties, and develops a desire to compensate for his earlier life by taking revenge on humanity.
Read more about this topic: Mule (Foundation)
Famous quotes containing the word nature:
“For Nature ever faithful is
To such as trust her faithfulness.
When the forest shall mislead me,
When the night and morning lie,
When the sea and land refuse to feed me,
‘Twill be time enough to die.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Westminster Abbey is nature crystallized into a conventional form by man, with his sorrows, his joys, his failures, and his seeking for the Great Spirit. It is a frozen requiem, with a nation’s prayer ever in dumb music ascending.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“Since everything in nature answers to a moral power, if any phenomenon remains brute and dark, it is that the corresponding faculty in the observer is not yet active.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)