A Confession

: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it.

“The wise man seeks death all his life and there­fore death is not ter­rible to him.”

“The wise man seeks death all his life and there­fore death is not ter­rible to him.”

“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.”

… And philo­sophy not merely does not reply, but is it­self only ask­ing that ques­tion.

“What am I, and what is the uni­verse? And why do I ex­ist, and why does the uni­verse ex­ist?”

“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.”

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.”

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.

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.