not understood. I long was timid before science, and it seemed tome that the lack of conformity between the answers and my questions
arose not by the fault of science but from my ignorance, but thematter was for me not a game or an amusement but one of life and
death, and I was involuntarily brought to the conviction that myquestions were the only legitimate ones, forming the basis of all
knowledge, and that I with my questions was not to blame, butscience if it pretends to reply to those questions.
My question -- that which at the age of fifty brought me tothe verge of suicide -- was the simplest of questions, lying in the
soul of every man from the foolish child to the wisest elder: itwas 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 doingtoday 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 deathawaiting me does not destroy?"
To this one question, variously expressed, I sought an answerin science. And I found that in relation to that question all
human knowledge is divided as it were into tow opposite hemispheresat 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 isthere an answer to life's questions.
The one series of sciences seems not to recognize thequestion, but replies clearly and exactly to its own independent
questions: that is the series of mental" target="_blank" title="a.实验的">experimental sciences, and at theextreme end of it stands mathematics. The other series of sciences
recognizes the question, but does not answer it; that is the seriesof 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 attractedme, and until I put my question definitely to myself, until that
question had itself grown up within me urgently demanding adecision, I contented myself with those counterfeit answers which
science gives. Now in the mental" target="_blank" title="a.实验的">experimentalsphere I said to myself: "Everything
develops and differentiates itself, moving towards complexity andperfection, and there are laws directing this movement. You are a
part of the whole. Having learnt as far as possible the whole, andhaving learnt the law of evolution, you will understand also your
place in the whole and will know yourself." Ashamed as I am toconfess it, there wa a time when I seemed satisfied with that. It
was just the time when I was myself becoming more complex and wasdeveloping. My muscles were growing and strengthening, my memory
was being enriched, my capacity to think and understand wasincreasing, I was growing and developing; and feeling this growth
in myself it was natural for me to think that such was theuniversal law in which I should find the solution of the question
of my life. But a time came when the growth within me ceased. Ifelt that I was not developing, but fading, my muscles were
weakening, my teeth falling out, and I saw that the law not onlydid 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 hadfound in myself at a certain period of my life. I regarded the
definition of that law more strictly, and it became clear to methat 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 inthe 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 sciencesare very interesting and attractive, but that they are exact and
clear in inverse proportion to their applicability to the questionof life: the less their applicability to the question of life, the
more exact and clear they are, while the more they try to reply tothe question of life, the more obscure and unattractive they
become. If one turns to the division of sciences which attempt toreply to the questions of life -- to physiology, psychology,
biology, sociology -- one encounters an appallingpoverty ofthought, the greatest obscurity, a quite unjustifiable pretension
to solve irrelevant question, and a continualcontradiction of eachauthority by others and even by himself. If one turns to the
branches of science which are not concerned with the solution ofthe 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. Theysay: "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 thelaws 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 andunquestionable replies."
In general the relation of the mental" target="_blank" title="a.实验的">experimental sciences to life'squestion may be expressed thus: Question: "Why do I live?"
Answer: "In infinite space, in infinite time, infinitely smallparticles change their forms in infinitecomplexity, and when you
have under stood the laws of those mutations of form you willunderstand why you live on the earth."
Then in the sphere of abstract science I said to myself: "Allhumanity lives and develops on the basis of spiritual principles
and ideals which guide it. Those ideals are expressed inreligions, in sciences, in arts, in forms of government. Those
ideals become more and more elevated, and humanity advances to itshighest welfare. I am part of humanity, and therefore my vocation
is to forward the recognition and the realization of the ideals ofhumanity." And at the time of my weak-mindedness I was satisfied
with that; but as soon as the question of life presented itselfclearly to me, those theories immediately crumbled away. Not to
speak of the unscrupulous obscurity with which those sciencesannounce conclusions formed on the study of a small part of mankind
as general conclusions; not to speak of the mutualcontradictionsof different adherents of this view as to what are the ideals of
humanity; the strangeness, not to say stupidity, of the theoryconsists 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 withone tiny part in one minute period of time. To understand what he
is, one man must first understand all this mysterioushumanity,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 myown 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 asthe question of life arose in my soul in full clearness that reply
at once few to dust. And I understood that as in the mental" target="_blank" title="a.实验的">experimentalsciences there are real sciences, and semi-sciences which try to
give answers to questions beyond their competence, so in thissphere there is a whole series of most diffused sciences which try
to reply to irrelevant questions. Semi-sciences of that kind, thejuridical and the social-historical, endeavour to solve the
questions of a man's life by pretending to decide each in its ownway, the question of the life of all humanity.
But as in the sphere of man's mental" target="_blank" title="a.实验的">experimental knowledge one whosincerely inquires how he is to live cannot be satisfied with the
reply -- "Study in endless space the mutations, infinite in timeand in complexity, of innumerable atoms, and then you will
understand your life" -- so also a sincere man cannot be satisfiedwith the reply: "Study the whole life of humanity of which we
cannot know either the beginning or the end, of which we do noteven know a small part, and then you will understand your own
life." And like the mental" target="_blank" title="a.实验的">experimental semi-sciences, so these othersemi-sciences are the more filled with obscurities, inexactitudes,
stupidities, and contradictions, the further they diverge from thereal problems. The problem of mental" target="_blank" title="a.实验的">experimental science is the sequence
of cause and effect in material phenomena. It is only necessaryfor mental" target="_blank" title="a.实验的">experimental science to introduce the question of a final cause
for it to become nonsensical. The problem of abstract science isthe recognition of the primordial essence of life. It is only
necessary to introduce the investigation of consequential phenomena(such as social and historicalphenomena) and it also becomes
nonsensical. Experimental science only then gives positive knowledge and
displays the greatness of the human mind when it does not introduceinto its investigations the question of an ultimate cause. And, on
the contrary, abstract science is only then science and displaysthe greatness of the human mind when it puts quite aside questions
relating to the consequential causes of phenomena and regards mansolely in relation to an ultimate cause. Such in this realm of
science -- forming the pole of the sphere -- is metaphysics orphilosophy. That science states the question clearly: "What am I,
and what is the universe? And why do I exist, and why does theuniverse exist?" And since it has existed it has always replied in
the same way. Whether the philosopher calls the essence of lifeexisting within me, and in all that exists, by the name of "idea",
or "substance", or "spirit", or "will", he says one and the samething: 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 isan exact thinker. I ask: "Why should this essence exist? What
results from the fact that it is and will be?" ... And philosophynot merely does not reply, but is itself only asking that question.
And if it is real philosophy all its labour lies merely in tryingto 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 theclear mental" target="_blank" title="a.实验的">experimentalsphere, the reply does not relate to my
question, but because here, though all the mental work is directedjust to my question, there is no answer, but instead of an answer
one gets the same question, only in a complex form. VI