myself. "I have blundered somewhere." But it was a long time
before I could find out where the mistake was. VIII
All these doubts, which I am now able to express more or lesssystematically, I could not then have expressed. I then only felt
that however logically inevitable were my conclusions concerningthe vanity of life, confirmed as they were by the greatest
thinkers, there was something not right about them. Whether it wasin the reasoning itself or in the statement of the question I did
not know -- I only felt that the conclusion was rationallyconvincing, but that that was insufficient. All these conclusions
could not so convince me as to make me do what followed from myreasoning, that is to say, kill myself. And I should have told an
untruth had I, without killing myself, said that reason had broughtme to the point I had reached. Reason worked, but something else
was also working which I can only call a consciousness of life. Aforce was working which compelled me to turn my attention to this
and not to that; and it was this force which extricated me from mydesperate situation and turned my mind in quite another direction.
This force compelled me to turn my attention to the fact that I anda few hundred similar people are not the whole of mankind, and that
I did not yet know the life of mankind. Looking at the narrow circle of my equals, I saw only people
who had not understood the question, or who had understood it anddrowned it in life's intoxication, or had understood it and ended
their lives, or had understood it and yet from weakness were livingout their desperate life. And I saw no others. It seemed to me
that that narrow circle of rich, learned, and leisured people towhich I belonged formed the whole of humanity, and that those
milliards of others who have lived and are living were cattle ofsome sort -- not real people.
Strange, incredibly incomprehensible as it now seems to methat I could, while reasoning about life, overlook the whole life
of mankind that surrounded me on all sides; that I could to such adegree blunder so absurdly as to think that my life, and Solomon's
and Schopenhauer's, is the real, normal life, and that the life ofthe milliards is a circumstance undeserving of attention -- strange
as this now is to me, I see that so it was. In the delusion of mypride of intellect it seemed to me so indubitable that I and
Solomon and Schopenhauer had stated the question so truly andexactly that nothing else was possible -- so indubitable did it
seem that all those milliards consisted of men who had not yetarrived at an apprehension of all the profundity of the question --
that I sought for the meaning of my life without it once occurringto me to ask: "But what meaning is and has been given to their
lives by all the milliards of common folk who live and have livedin the world?"
I long lived in this state of lunacy, which, in fact if not inwords, is particularly characteristic of us very liberal and
learned people. But thanks either to the strange physicalaffection I have for the real labouring people, which compelled me
to understand them and to see that they are not so stupid as wesuppose, or thanks to the sincerity of my conviction that I could
know nothing beyond the fact that the best I could do was to hangmyself, at any rate I instinctively felt that if I wished to live
and understand the meaning of life, I must seek this meaning notamong those who have lost it and wish to kill themselves, but among
those milliards of the past and the present who make life and whosupport the burden of their own lives and of ours also. And I
considered the enormous masses of those simple, unlearned, and poorpeople who have lived and are living and I saw something quite
different. I saw that, with rare exceptions, all those milliardswho have lived and are living do not fit into my divisions, and
that I could not class them as not understanding the question, forthey themselves state it and reply to it with extraordinary
clearness. Nor could I consider them epicureans, for their lifeconsists more of privations and sufferings than of enjoyments.
Still less could I consider them as irrationally dragging on ameaningless existence, for every act of their life, as well as
death itself, is explained by them. To kill themselves theyconsider the greatest evil. It appeared that all mankind had a
knowledge, unacknowledged and despised by me, of the meaning oflife. It appeared that reasonable knowledge does not give the
meaning of life, but excludes life: while the meaning attributed tolife by milliards of people, by all humanity, rests on some
despised pseudo-knowledge. Rational knowledge presented by the learned and wise, denies
the meaning of life, but the enormous masses of men, the whole ofmankind receive that meaning in irrational knowledge. And that
irrational knowledge is faith, that very thing which I could notbut reject. It is God, One in Three; the creation in six days; the
devils and angels, and all the rest that I cannot accept as long asI retain my reason.
My position was terrible. I knew I could find nothing alongthe path of reasonable knowledge except a denial of life; and there
-- in faith -- was nothing but a denial of reason, which was yetmore impossible for me than a denial of life. From rational
knowledge it appeared that life is an evil, people know this and itis in their power to end life; yet they lived and still live, and
I myself live, though I have long known that life is senseless andan evil. By faith it appears that in order to understand the
meaning of life I must renounce my reason, the very thing for whichalone a meaning is required.
IX A contradiction arose from which there were two exits. Either
that which I called reason was not so rational as I supposed, orthat which seemed to me irrational was not so irrational as I
supposed. And I began to verify the line of argument of myrational knowledge.
Verifying the line of argument of rational knowledge I foundit quite correct. The conclusion that life is nothing was
inevitable; but I noticed a mistake. The mistake lay in this, thatmy reasoning was not in accord with the question I had put. The
question was: "Why should I live, that is to say, what real,permanent result will come out of my illusory transitory life --
what meaning has my finite existence in this infinite world?" Andto reply to that question I had studied life.
The solution of all the possible questions of life couldevidently not satisfy me, for my question, simple as it at first
appeared, included a demand for an explanation of the finite interms of the infinite, and vice versa.
I asked: "What is the meaning of my life, beyond time, cause,and space?" And I replied to quite another question: "What is the
meaning of my life within time, cause, and space?" With theresult that, after long efforts of thought, the answer I reached
was: "None." In my reasonings I constantly compared (nor could I do
otherwise) the finite with the finite, and the infinite with theinfinite; but for that reason I reached the inevitable result:
force is force, matter is matter, will is will, the infinite is theinfinite, nothing is nothing -- and that was all that could result.
It was something like what happens in mathematics, whenthinking to solve an equation, we find we are working on an
identity. the line of reasoning is correct, but results in theanswer that a equals a, or x equals x, or o equals o. the same
thing happened with my reasoning in relation to the question of themeaning of my life. The replies given by all science to that
question only result in -- identity. And really, strictlyscientific knowledge -- that knowledge
which begins, as Descartes's did, with complete doubt abouteverything -- rejects all knowledge admitted on faith and builds
everything afresh on the laws of reason and experience, and cannotgive any other reply to the question of life than that which I
obtained: an indefinite reply. Only at first had it seemed to methat knowledge had given a positive reply -- the reply of
Schopenhauer: that life has no meaning and is an evil. But onexamining the matter I understood that the reply is not positive,
it was only my feeling that so expressed it. Strictly expressed,as it is by the Brahmins and by Solomon and Schopenhauer, the reply
is merely indefinite, or an identity: o equals o, life is nothing. So that philosophic knowledge denies nothing, but only replies that
the question cannot be solved by it -- that for it the solutionremains indefinite.
Having understood this, I understood that it was not possibleto seek in rational knowledge for a reply to my question, and that
the reply given by rational knowledge is a mere indication that areply can only be obtained by a different statement of the question
and only when the relation of the finite to the infinite isincluded in the question. And I understood that, however
irrational and distorted might be the replies given by faith, theyhave this advantage, that they introduce into every answer a
relation between the finite and the infinite, without which therecan be no solution.
In whatever way I stated the question, that relation appearedin the answer. How am I to live? -- According to the law of God.
What real result will come of my life? -- Eternal torment oreternal bliss. What meaning has life that death does not destroy?
-- Union with the eternal God: heaven. So that besides rational knowledge, which had seemed to me the
only knowledge, I was inevitably brought to acknowledge that alllive humanity has another irrational knowledge -- faith which makes
it possible to live. Faith still remained to me as irrational asit was before, but I could not but admit that it alone gives
mankind a reply to the questions of life, and that consequently itmakes life possible. Reasonable knowledge had brought me to
acknowledge that life is senseless -- my life had come to a haltand I wished to destroy myself. Looking around on the whole of
mankind I saw that people live and declare that they know themeaning of life. I looked at myself -- I had lived as long as I
knew a meaning of life and had made life possible. Looking again at people of other lands, at my contemporaries