A small black book called The Philosophy of Despair. In it, David confesses that the trouble with the scientific worldview was that when you pointed it at the meaning of life, it showed you one thing. Futility: “The fires we kindle die away in coals; castles we build vanish before our eyes. The river sinks in the sands of the desert.… Whichever way we turn we may describe the course of life in metaphors of discouragement.” So what were you supposed to do? Puritan that he is, David recommends the un-idling of hands. The “soul-ache… vanishes,” he writes, “with active out-of-door life and the
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