it, yet still hoped something of it.
And all this befell me at a time when all around me I had what
is considered complete good fortune. I was not yet fifty; I had a
good wife who lived me and whom I loved, good children, and a large
estate which without much effort on my part improved and increased.
I was respected by my relations and acquaintances more than at any
previous time. I was praised by others and without much self-
deception could consider that my name was famous. And far from
being insane or mentally diseased, I enjoyed on the contrary a
strength of mind and body such as I have seldom met with among men
of my kind; physically I could keep up with the peasants at mowing,
and mentally I could work for eight and ten hours at a stretch
without experiencing any ill results from such exertion. And in
this situation I came to this -- that I could not live, and,
fearing death, had to employ cunning with myself to avoid taking my
own life.
My mental condition presented itself to me in this way: my
life is a stupid and spiteful joke someone has played on me.
Though I did not acknowledge a "someone" who created me, yet such
a presentation -- that someone had played an evil and stupid joke
on my by placing me in the world -- was the form of expression that
suggested itself most naturally to me.
Involuntarily it appeared to me that there, somewhere, was
someone who amused himself by watching how I lived for thirty or
forty years: learning, developing, maturing in body and mind, and
how, having with matured mental powers reached the summit of life
from which it all lay before me, I stood on that summit -- like an
arch-fool -- seeing clearly that there is nothing in life, and that
there has been and will be nothing. And *he* was amused. ...
But whether that "someone" laughing at me existed or not, I
was none the better off. I could give no reasonable meaning to any
single action or to my whole life. I was only surprised that I
could have avoided understanding this from the very beginning -- it
has been so long known to all. Today or tomorrow sickness and
death will come (they had come already) to those I love or to me;
nothing will remain but stench and worms. Sooner or later my
affairs, whatever they may be, will be forgotten, and I shall not
exist. Then why go on making any effort? ... How can man fail to
see this? And how go on living? That is what is surprising! One
can only live while one is intoxicated with life; as soon as one is
sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and
a stupid fraud! That is precisely what it is: there is nothing
either amusing or witty about it, it is simply cruel and stupid.
There is an Eastern fable, told long ago, of a traveller
overtaken on a plain by an enraged beast. Escaping from the beast
he gets into a dry well, but sees at the bottom of the well a
dragon that has opened its jaws to swallow him. And the
unfortunate man, not daring to climb out lest he should be
destroyed by the enraged beast, and not daring to leap to the
bottom of the well lest he should be eaten by the dragon, seizes s
twig growing in a crack in the well and clings to it. His hands
are growing weaker and he feels he will soon have to resign himself
to the destruction that awaits him above or below, but still he
clings on. Then he sees that two mice, a black one and a white
one, go regularly round and round the stem of the twig to which he
is clinging and gnaw at it. And soon the twig itself will snap and
he will fall into the dragon's jaws. The traveller sees this and
knows that he will inevitably perish; but while still hanging he
looks around, sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the twig,
reaches them with his tongue and licks them. So I too clung to the
twig of life, knowing that the dragon of death was inevitably
awaiting me, ready to tear me to pieces; and I could not understand
why I had fallen into such torment. I tried to lick the honey
which formerly consoled me, but the honey no longer gave me
pleasure, and the white and black mice of day and night gnawed at
the branch by which I hung. I saw the dragon clearly and the honey
no longer tasted sweet. I only saw the unescapable dragon and the
mice, and I could not tear my gaze from them. and this is not a
fable but the real unanswerable truth intelligible to all.
The deception of the joys of life which formerly allayed my
terror of the dragon now no longer deceived me. No matter how
often I may be told, "You cannot understand the meaning of life so
do not think about it, but live," I can no longer do it: I have
already done it too long. I cannot now help seeing day and night
going round and bringing me to death. That is all I see, for that
alone is true. All else is false.
The two drops of honey which diverted my eyes from the cruel
truth longer than the rest: my love of family, and of writing --
art as I called it -- were no longer sweet to me.
"Family"...said I to myself. But my family -- wife and
children -- are also human. They are placed just as I am: they
must either live in a lie or see the terrible truth. Why should
they live? Why should I love them, guard them, bring them up, or
watch them? That they may come to the despair that I feel, or else
be stupid? Loving them, I cannot hide the truth from them: each
step in knowledge leads them to the truth. And the truth is death.
"Art, poetry?"...Under the influence of success and the praise
of men, I had long assured myself that this was a thing one could
do though death was drawing near -- death which destroys all
things, including my work and its remembrance; but soon I saw that
that too was a fraud. It was plain to me that art is an adornment
of life, an allurement to life. But life had lost its attraction
for me, so how could I attract others? As long as I was not living
my own life but was borne on the waves of some other life -- as
long as I believed that life had a meaning, though one I could not
express -- the reflection of life in poetry and art of all kinds
afforded me pleasure: it was pleasant to look at life in the
mirror of art. But when I began to seek the meaning of life and
felt the necessity of living my own life, that mirror became for me
unnecessary, superfluous, ridiculous, or painful. I could no
longer soothe myself with what I now saw in the mirror, namely,
that my position was stupid and desperate. It was all very well to
enjoy the sight when in the depth of my soul I believed that my
life had a meaning. Then the play of lights -- comic, tragic,
touching, beautiful, and terrible -- in life amused me. No
sweetness of honey could be sweet to me when I saw the dragon and
saw the mice gnawing away my support.
Nor was that all. Had I simply understood that life had no
meaning I could have borne it quietly, knowing that that was my
lot. But I could not satisfy myself with that. Had I been like a
man living in a wood from which he knows there is no exit, I could
have lived; but I was like one lost in a wood who, horrified at
having lost his way, rushes about wishing to find the road. He
knows that each step he takes confuses him more and more, but still
he cannot help rushing about.
It was indeed terrible. And to rid myself of the terror I
wished to kill myself. I experienced terror at what awaited me --
knew that that terror was even worse than the position I was in,
but still I could not patiently await the end. However convincing
the argument might be that in any case some vessel in my heart
would give way, or something would burst and all would be over, I
could not patiently await that end. The horror of darkness was too
great, and I wished to free myself from it as quickly as possible
by noose or bullet. that was the feeling which drew me most
strongly towards suicide.
V
"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?"
remained quite unanswered. And I understood that those sciences
are very interesting and attractive, but that they are exact and
clear in inverse proportion to their applicability to the question
of life: the less their applicability to the question of life, the
more exact and clear they are, while the more they try to reply to
the question of life, the more obscure and unattractive they
become. If one turns to the division of sciences which attempt to
reply to the questions of life -- to physiology, psychology,
