A CONFESSION [21]
and I wished to destroy myself. Looking around on the whole of
mankind I saw that people live and declare that they know the
meaning 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
and at their predecessors, I saw the same thing. Where there is
life, there since man began faith has made life possible for him,
and the chief outline of that faith is everywhere and always
identical.
Whatever the faith may be, and whatever answers it may give,
and to whomsoever it gives them, every such answer gives to the
finite existence of man an infinite meaning, a meaning not
destroyed by sufferings, deprivations, or death. This means that
only in faith can we find for life a meaning and a possibility.
What, then, is this faith? And I understood that faith is not
merely "the evidence of things not seen", etc., and is not a
revelation (that defines only one of the indications of faith, is
not the relation of man to God (one has first to define faith and
then God, and not define faith through God); it not only agreement
with what has been told one (as faith is most usually supposed to
be), but faith is a knowledge of the meaning of human life in
consequence of which man does not destroy himself but lives. Faith
is the strength of life. If a man lives he believes in something.
If he did not believe that one must live for something, he would
not live. If he does not see and recognize the illusory nature of
the finite, he believes in the finite; if he understands the
illusory nature of the finite, he must believe in the infinite.
Without faith he cannot live.
And I recalled the whole course of my mental labour and was
horrified. It was now clear to me that for man to be able to live
he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of
the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite.
Such an explanation I had had; but as long as I believed in the
finite I did not need the explanation, and I began to verify it by
reason. And in the light of reason the whole of my former
explanation flew to atoms. But a time came when I ceased to
believe in the finite. And then I began to build up on rational
foundations, out of what I knew, an explanation which would give a
meaning to life; but nothing could I build. Together with the best
human intellects I reached the result that o equals o, and was much
astonished at that conclusion, though nothing else could have
resulted.
What was I doing when I sought an answer in the experimental
sciences? I wished to know why I live, and for this purpose
studied all that is outside me. Evidently I might learn much, but
nothing of what I needed.
What was I doing when I sought an answer in philosophical
knowledge? I was studying the thoughts of those who had found
themselves in the same position as I, lacking a reply to the
question "why do I live?" Evidently I could learn nothing but what
I knew myself, namely that nothing can be known.
What am I? -- A part of the infinite. In those few words lies
the whole problem.
Is it possible that humanity has only put that question to
itself since yesterday? And can no one before me have set himself
that question -- a question so simple, and one that springs to the
tongue of every wise child?
Surely that question has been asked since man began; and
naturally for the solution of that question since man began it has
been equally insufficient to compare the finite with the finite and
the infinite with the infinite, and since man began the relation of
the finite to the infinite has been sought out and expressed.
All these conceptions in which the finite has been adjusted to
the infinite and a meaning found for life -- the conception of God,
of will, of goodness -- we submit to logical examination. And all
those conceptions fail to stand reason's criticism.
Were it not so terrible it would be