So that however I may turn these replies of philosophy, I can never obtain
anything like an answer -- and not because, as in the clear experimental
sphere, the reply does not relate to my question, but because here, though
all the mental work is directed just to my question, there is no answer, but
instead of an answer one gets the same question, only in a complex form.
VI
In my search for answers to life's questions I experienced just what is felt
by a man lost in a forest.
He reaches a glade, climbs a tree, and clearly sees the limitless distance, but
sees that his home is not and cannot be there; then he goes into the dark
wood and sees the darkness, but there also his home is not.
So I wandered n that wood of human knowledge, amid the gleams of
mathematical and experimental science which showed me clear horizons
but in a direction where there could be no home, and also amid the darkness
of the abstract sciences where I was immersed in deeper gloom the further I
went, and where I finally convinced myself that there was, and could be, no
exit.
Yielding myself to the bright side of knowledge, I understood that I was
only diverting my gaze from the question. However alluringly clear those
horizons which opened out before me might be, however alluring it might
be to immerse oneself in the limitless expanse of those sciences, I already
understood that the clearer they were the less they met my need and the less
they applied to my question.
"I know," said I to myself, "what science so persistently tries to discover,
and along that road there is no reply to the question as to the meaning of
my life." In the abstract sphere I understood that notwithstanding the fact,
or just because of the fact, that the direct aim of science is to reply to my
question, there is no reply but that which I have myself already given:
"What is the meaning of my life?" "There is none." Or: "What will come of
my life?" "Nothing." Or: "Why does everything exist that exists, and why