biology, sociology -- one encounters an appalling poverty of
thought, the greatest obscurity, a quite unjustifiable pretension
to solve irrelevant question, and a continual contradiction of each
authority by others and even by himself. If one turns to the
branches of science which are not concerned with the solution of
the questions of life, but which reply to their own special
scientific questions, one is enraptured by the power of man's mind,
but one knows in advance that they give no reply to life's
questions. Those sciences simply ignore life's questions. They
say: "To the question of what you are and why you live we have no
reply, and are not occupied with that; but if you want to know the
laws of light, of chemical combinations, the laws of development of
organisms, if you want to know the laws of bodies and their form,
and the relation of numbers and quantities, if you want to know the
laws of your mind, to all that we have clear, exact and
unquestionable replies."
In general the relation of the experimental sciences to life's
question may be expressed thus: Question: "Why do I live?"
Answer: "In infinite space, in infinite time, infinitely small
particles change their forms in infinite complexity, and when you
have under stood the laws of those mutations of form you will
understand why you live on the earth."
Then in the sphere of abstract science I said to myself: "All
humanity lives and develops on the basis of spiritual principles
and ideals which guide it. Those ideals are expressed in
religions, in sciences, in arts, in forms of government. Those
ideals become more and more elevated, and humanity advances to its
highest welfare. I am part of humanity, and therefore my vocation
is to forward the recognition and the realization of the ideals of
humanity." And at the time of my weak-mindedness I was satisfied
with that; but as soon as the question of life presented itself
clearly to me, those theories immediately crumbled away. Not to
speak of the unscrupulous obscurity with which those sciences
announce conclusions formed on the study of a small part of mankind
as general conclusions; not to speak of the mutual contradictions
of different adherents of this view as to what are the ideals of
humanity; the strangeness, not to say stupidity, of the theory
consists in the fact that in order to reply to the question facing
each man: "What am I?" or "Why do I live?" or "What must I do?"
one has first to decide the question: "What is the life of the
whole?" (which is to him unknown and of which he is acquainted with
one tiny part in one minute period of time. To understand what he
is, one man must first understand all this mysterious humanity,
consisting of people such as himself who do not understand one
another.
I have to confess that there was a time when I believed this.
It was the time when I had my own favourite ideals justifying my
own caprices, and I was trying to devise a theory which would allow
one to consider my caprices as the law of humanity. But as soon as
the question of life arose in my soul in full clearness that reply
at once few to dust. And I understood that as in the experimental
sciences there are real sciences, and semi-sciences which try to
give answers to questions beyond their competence, so in this
sphere there is a whole series of most diffused sciences which try
to reply to irrelevant questions. Semi-sciences of that kind, the
juridical and the social-historical, endeavour to solve the
questions of a man's life by pretending to decide each in its own
way, the question of the life of all humanity.
But as in the sphere of man's experimental knowledge one who
sincerely inquires how he is to live cannot be satisfied with the
reply -- "Study in endless space the mutations, infinite in time
and in complexity, of innumerable atoms, and then you will
understand your life" -- so also a sincere man cannot be satisfied
with the reply: "Study the whole life of humanity of which we
cannot know either the beginning or the end, of which we do not
even know a small part, and then you will understand your own
life." And like the experimental semi-sciences, so these other
semi-sciences are the more filled with obscurities, inexactitudes,
stupidities, and contradictions, the further they diverge from the
real problems. The problem of experimental science is the sequence
of cause and effect in material phenomena. It is only necessary
for experimental science to introduce the question of a final cause
for it to become nonsensical. The problem of abstract science is
the recognition of the primordial essence of life. It is only
necessary to introduce the investigation of consequential phenomena
(such as social and historical phenomena) and it also becomes
nonsensical.
Experimental science only then gives positive knowledge and
displays the greatness of the human mind when it does not introduce
into its investigations the question of an ultimate cause. And, on
the contrary, abstract science is only then science and displays
the greatness of the human mind when it puts quite aside questions
relating to the consequential causes of phenomena and regards man
solely in relation to an ultimate cause. Such in this realm of
science -- forming the pole of the sphere -- is metaphysics or
philosophy. That science states the question clearly: "What am I,
and what is the universe? And why do I exist, and why does the
universe exist?" And since it has existed it has always replied in
the same way. Whether the philosopher calls the essence of life
existing within me, and in all that exists, by the name of "idea",
or "substance", or "spirit", or "will", he says one and the same
thing: that this essence exists and that I am of that same
essence; but why it is he does not know, and does not say, if he is
an exact thinker. I ask: "Why should this essence exist? What
results from the fact that it is and will be?" ... And philosophy
not merely does not reply, but is itself only asking that question.
And if it is real philosophy all its labour lies merely in trying
to put that question clearly. And if it keeps firmly to its task
it cannot reply to the question otherwise than thus: "What am I,
and what is the universe?" "All and nothing"; and to the question
"Why?" by "I do not know".
So that however I may turn these replies of philosophy, I can
never obtain anything like an answer -- and not because, as in the
clear experimental sphere, the reply does not relate to my
question, but because here, though all the mental work is directed
just to my question, there is no answer, but instead of an answer
one gets the same question, only in a complex form.
VI
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:
"Having recognized the inmost essence of the world as *will*,
and all its phenomena -- from the unconscious working of the
obscure forces of Nature up to the completely conscious action of
man -- as only the objectivity of that will, we shall in no way
avoid the conclusion that together with the voluntary renunciation
and self-destruction of the will all those phenomena also
disappear, that constant striving and effort without aim or rest on
all the stages of objectivity in which and through which the world
exists; the diversity of successive forms will disappear, and
together with the form all the manifestations of will, with its
most universal forms, space and time, and finally its most
fundamental form -- subject and object. Without will there is no
concept and no world. Before us, certainly, nothing remains. But
what resists this transition into annihilation, our nature, is only
that same wish to live -- *Wille zum Leben* -- which forms
ourselves as well as our world. That we are so afraid of
annihilation or, what is the same thing, that we so wish to live,
merely means that we are ourselves nothing else but this desire to
live, and know nothing but it. And so what remains after the
complete annihilation of the will, for us who are so full of the
will, is, of course, nothing; but on the other hand, for those in
whom the will has turned and renounced itself, this so real world
of ours with all its suns and milky way is nothing."
"Vanity of vanities", says Solomon -- "vanity of vanities --
all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labor which he
taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another
generation commeth: but the earth abideth for ever....The thing
that hath been, is that which shall be; and that which is done is
that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
