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religious doctrine, accepted on trust and supported by external pressure, thaws away gradually under the influence of knowledge and experience of life which conflict with it, and a man very often lives on, imagining that he still holds intact the religious doctrine imparted to him in childhood whereas in fact not a trace of it remains.
was I believed in I could not at all have said. I believed in a God, or rather I did not deny God but I could not have said what sort of God.
Looking back on that time, I now see clearly that my faith my only real faith that which apart from my animal instincts gave impulse to my life was a belief in perfecting myself. But in
Ambition, love of power, covetousness, lasciviousness, pride, anger, and revenge were all respected.
Our vocation is to teach mankind.
This faith in the meaning of poetry and in the development of life was a religion, and I was one of its priests.
acquired a new vice: abnormally developed pride and an insane assurance that it was my vocation to teach men, without knowing what.
Wise, good, serious, he fell ill while still a young man, suffered for more than a year, and died painfully, not understanding why he had lived and still less why he had to die.
married. The new conditions of happy family life completely diverted me from all search for the general meaning of life.
So another fifteen years passed.
As long as I did not know why, I could do nothing and could not live. Amid the thoughts of estate management
If I desired anything, I knew in advance that whether I satisfied my desire or not, nothing would come of it.
The thought of self-destruction now came to me as naturally as thoughts of how to improve my life had come formerly.
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!
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.
And the truth is death.
all who like myself had sought in knowledge for the meaning of life had found nothing.
"What will come of what I am doing today or shall do tomorrow? What will come of my whole life?"
Answer: it doesn’t matter. Who gives a shit
"Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?"
Not really and get over it
mathematics.
metaphysics.
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."
But a time came when the growth within me ceased.
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.
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 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."
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;
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.
"Study in endless space the mutations, infinite in time and in complexity, of innumerable atoms, and then you will understand your life"
"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."
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.
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.
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.
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."
semi-sciences called juridical, political, and historical.
"The wise man seeks death all his life and therefore death is not terrible to him."
For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.
And whatever mine eyes desired I kept not from them. I withheld not my heart from any joy.
And how dieth the wise man? as the fool. Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit.
for a living dog is better than a dead lion.
"The life of the body is an evil and a lie. Therefore the destruction of the life of the body is a blessing, and we should desire it," says Socrates.
"All that is in the world folly and wisdom and riches and poverty and mirth and grief is vanity and emptiness. Man dies and nothing is left of him. And that is stupid," says Solomon.
Humble man
The first was that of ignorance. It consists in not knowing, not understanding, that life is an evil and an absurdity.
The second way out is epicureanism. It consists, while knowing the hopelessness of life, in making use meanwhile of the advantages one has, disregarding the dragon and the mice, and licking the honey in the best way, especially if there is much of it within reach.
moral dullness makes it possible for them to forget that the advantage of their position is accidental,
The fact that some of these people declare the dullness of their thoughts and imaginations to be a philosophy, which they call Positive, does not remove them, in my opinion, from the ranks of those who, to avoid seeing the question, lick the honey.
they act accordingly and promptly end this stupid joke, since there are means: a rope round one's neck, water, a knife to stick into one's heart, or the trains on the railways; and the number of those of our circle who act in this way becomes greater and greater, and for the most part they act so at the best time of their life, when the strength of their mind is in full bloom and few habits degrading to the mind have as yet been acquired.
