"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, 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.