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we are wise, only we feel that we are quite useless and that we

must somehow do away with ourselves.

XII

The consciousness of the error in reasonable knowledge helped

me to free myself from the temptation of idle ratiocination. the

conviction that knowledge of truth can only be found by living led

me to doubt the rightness of my life; but I was saved only by the

fact that I was able to tear myself from my exclusiveness and to

see the real life of the plain working people, and to understand

that it alone is real life. I understood that if I wish to

understand life and its meaning, I must not live the life of a

parasite, but must live a real life, and -- taking the meaning

given to live by real humanity and merging myself in that life --

verify it.

During that time this is what happened to me. During that

whole year, when I was asking myself almost every moment whether I

should not end matters with a noose or a bullet -- all that time,

together with the course of thought and observation about which I

have spoken, my heart was oppressed with a painful feeling, which

I can only describe as a search for God.

I say that that search for God was not reasoning, but a

feeling, because that search proceeded not from the course of my

thoughts -- it was even directly contrary to them -- but proceeded

from the heart. It was a feeling of fear, orphanage, isolation in

a strange land, and a hope of help from someone.

Though I was quite convinced of the impossibility of proving

the existence of a Deity (Kant had shown, and I quite understood

him, that it could not be proved), I yet sought for god, hoped that

I should find Him, and from old habit addressed prayers to that

which I sought but had not found. I went over in my mind the

arguments of Kant and Schopenhauer showing the impossibility of

proving the existence of a God, and I began to verify those

arguments and to refute them. Cause, said I to myself, is not a

category of thought such as are Time and Space. If I exist, there

must be some cause for it, and a cause of causes. And that first

cause of all is what men have called "God". And I paused on that

thought, and tried with all my being to recognize the presence of

that cause. And as soon as I acknowledged that there is a force in

whose power I am, I at once felt that I could live. But I asked

myself: What is that cause, that force? How am I to think of it?

What are my relations to that which I call "God"? And only the

familiar replies occurred to me: "He is the Creator and

Preserver." This reply did not satisfy me, and I felt I was losing

within me what I needed for my life. I became terrified and began

to pray to Him whom I sought, that He should help me. But the more

I prayed the more apparent it became to me that He did not hear me,

and that there was no one to whom to address myself. And with

despair in my heart that there is no God at all, I said: "Lord,

have mercy, save me! Lord, teach me!" But no one had mercy on me,

and I felt that my life was coming to a standstill.

But again and again, from various sides, I returned to the

same conclusion that I could not have come into the world without

any cause or reason or meaning; I could not be such a fledgling

fallen from its nest as I felt myself to be. Or, granting that I

be such, lying on my back crying in the high grass, even then I cry

because I know that a mother has borne me within her, has hatched

me, warmed me, fed me, and loved me. Where is she -- that mother?

If I have been deserted, who has deserted me? I cannot hide from

myself that someone bored me, loving me. Who was that someone?

Again "God"? He knows and sees my searching, my despair, and my

struggle."

"He exists," said I to myself. And I had only for an instant

to admit that, and at once life rose within me, and I felt the

possibility and joy of being. But again, from the admission of the

existence of