"But perhaps I have overlooked something,or misunderstood something?"said to myself several times."It cannot be that this condition of despair is natural to man!"And I sought for an explanation of these problems in all the branches of knowledge acquired by men.I sought painfully and long,not from idle curiosity or listlessly,but painfully and persistently day and night--sought as a perishing man seeks for safety--and I found nothing.
I sought in all the sciences,but far from finding what I wanted,became convinced that all who like myself had sought in knowledge for the meaning of life had found nothing.And not only had they found nothing,but they had plainly acknowledged that the very thing which made me despair--namely the senselessness of life--is the one indubitable thing man can know.
I sought everywhere;and thanks to a life spent in learning,and thanks also to my relations with the scholarly world,I had access to scientists and scholars in all branches of knowledge,and they readily showed me all their knowledge,not only in books but also in conversation,so that I had at my disposal all that science has to say on this question of life.
I was long unable to believe that it gives no other reply to life's questions than that which it actually does give.It long seemed to me,when I saw the important and serious air with which science announces its conclusions which have nothing in common with the real questions of human life,that there was something I had not understood.I long was timid before science,and it seemed to me that the lack of conformity between the answers and my questions arose not by the fault of science but from my ignorance,but the matter was for me not a game or an amusement but one of life and death,and I was involuntarily brought to the conviction that my questions were the only legitimate ones,forming the basis of all knowledge,and that I with my questions was not to blame,but science if it pretends to reply to those questions.
My question--that which at the age of fifty brought me to the verge of suicide--was the simplest of questions,lying in the soul of every man from the foolish child to the wisest elder:it was a question without an answer to which one cannot live,as I had found by experience.It was:"What will come of what I am doing today or shall do tomorrow?What will come of my whole life?"
Differently expressed,the question is:"Why should I live,why wish for anything,or do anything?"It can also be expressed thus:"Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?"
To this one question,variously expressed,I sought an answer in science.And I found that in relation to that question all human knowledge is divided as it were into tow opposite hemispheres at the ends of which are two poles:the one a negative and the other a positive;but that neither at the one nor the other pole is there an answer to life's questions.
The one series of sciences seems not to recognize the question,but replies clearly and exactly to its own independent questions:that is the series of experimental sciences,and at the extreme end of it stands mathematics.The other series of sciences recognizes the question,but does not answer it;that is the series of abstract sciences,and at the extreme end of it stands metaphysics.
From early youth I had been interested in the abstract sciences,but later the mathematical and natural sciences attracted me,and until I put my question definitely to myself,until that question had itself grown up within me urgently demanding a decision,I contented myself with those counterfeit answers which science gives.
Now in the experimental sphere I said to myself:"Everything develops and differentiates itself,moving towards complexity and perfection,and there are laws directing this movement.You are a part of the whole.Having learnt as far as possible the whole,and having learnt the law of evolution,you will understand also your place in the whole and will know yourself."Ashamed as I am to confess it,there wa a time when I seemed satisfied with that.It was just the time when I was myself becoming more complex and was developing.My muscles were growing and strengthening,my memory was being enriched,my capacity to think and understand was increasing,I was growing and developing;and feeling this growth in myself it was natural for me to think that such was the universal law in which I should find the solution of the question of my life.But a time came when the growth within me ceased.I felt that I was not developing,but fading,my muscles were weakening,my teeth falling out,and I saw that the law not only did not explain anything to me,but that there never had been or could be such a law,and that I had taken for a law what I had found in myself at a certain period of my life.I regarded the definition of that law more strictly,and it became clear to me that there could be no law of endless development;it became clear that to say,"in infinite space and time everything develops,becomes more perfect and more complex,is differentiated",is to say nothing at all.These are all words with no meaning,for in the infinite there is neither complex nor simple,neither forward nor backward,nor better or worse.
Above all,my personal question,"What am I with my desires?"
