In my search for answers to life's questions I experienced just what is felt by a man lost in a forest.
He reaches a glade,climbs a tree,and clearly sees the limitless distance,but sees that his home is not and cannot be there;then he goes into the dark wood and sees the darkness,but there also his home is not.
So I wandered n that wood of human knowledge,amid the gleams of mathematical and experimental science which showed me clear horizons but in a direction where there could be no home,and also amid the darkness of the abstract sciences where I was immersed in deeper gloom the further I went,and where I finally convinced myself that there was,and could be,no exit.
Yielding myself to the bright side of knowledge,I understood that I was only diverting my gaze from the question.However alluringly clear those horizons which opened out before me might be,however alluring it might be to immerse oneself in the limitless expanse of those sciences,I already understood that the clearer they were the less they met my need and the less they applied to my question.
"I know,"said I to myself,"what science so persistently tries to discover,and along that road there is no reply to the question as to the meaning of my life."In the abstract sphere I understood that notwithstanding the fact,or just because of the fact,that the direct aim of science is to reply to my question,there is no reply but that which I have myself already given:
"What is the meaning of my life?""There is none."Or:"What will come of my life?""Nothing."Or:"Why does everything exist that exists,and why do I exist?""Because it exists."
Inquiring for one region of human knowledge,I received an innumerable quantity of exact replies concerning matters about which I had not asked:about the chemical constituents of the stars,about the movement of the sun towards the constellation Hercules,about the origin of species and of man,about the forms of infinitely minute imponderable particles of ether;but in this sphere of knowledge the only answer to my question,"What is the meaning of my life?"was:"You are what you call your 'life';you are a transitory,casual cohesion of particles.The mutual interactions and changes of these particles produce in you what you call your "life".That cohesion will last some time;afterwards the interaction of these particles will cease and what you call "life"will cease,and so will all your questions.You are an accidentally united little lump of something.that little lump ferments.The little lump calls that fermenting its 'life'.The lump will disintegrate and there will be an end of the fermenting and of all the questions."So answers the clear side of science and cannot answer otherwise if it strictly follows its principles.
From such a reply one sees that the reply does not answer the question.I want to know the meaning of my life,but that it is a fragment of the infinite,far from giving it a meaning destroys its every possible meaning.The obscure compromises which that side of experimental exact science makes with abstract science when it says that the meaning of life consists in development and in cooperation with development,owing to their inexactness and obscurity cannot be considered as replies.
The other side of science--the abstract side--when it holds strictly to its principles,replying directly to the question,always replies,and in all ages has replied,in one and the same way:"The world is something infinite and incomprehensible part of that incomprehensible 'all'."Again I exclude all those compromises between abstract and experimental sciences which supply the whole ballast of the semi-sciences called juridical,political,and historical.In those semi-sciences the conception of development and progress is again wrongly introduced,only with this difference,that there it was the development of everything while here it is the development of the life of mankind.
The error is there as before:development and progress in infinity can have no aim or direction,and,as far as my question is concerned,no answer is given.
In truly abstract science,namely in genuine philosophy--not in that which Schopenhauer calls "professorial philosophy"which serves only to classify all existing phenomena in new philosophic categories and to call them by new names--where the philosopher does not lose sight of the essential question,the reply is always one and the same--the reply given by Socrates,Schopenhauer,Solomon,and buddha.
"We approach truth only inasmuch as we depart from life",said Socrates when preparing for death."For what do we,who love truth,strive after in life?To free ourselves from the body,and from all the evil that is caused by the life of the body!If so,then how can we fail to be glad when death comes to us?
"The wise man seeks death all his life and therefore death is not terrible to him."
And Schopenhauer says:
