“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.