Human life must be some kind of mistake. The truth of this will be
sufficiently obvious if we only remember that man is a compound of
needs and necessities hard to satisfy; and that even when they are
satisfied, all he obtains is a state of painlessness, where nothing
remains to him but abandonment to boredom. This is direct proof that
existence has no real value in itself; for what is boredom but the
feeling of the emptiness of life? If life--the craving for which
is the very essence of our being--were possessed of any positive
intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere
existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.
But as it is, we take no delight in existence except when we are
struggling for something; and then distance and difficulties to be
overcome make our goal look as though it would satisfy us--an illusion
which vanishes when we reach it; or else when we are occupied with
some purely intellectual interest--when in reality we have stepped
forth from life to look upon it from the outside, much after the
manner of spectators at a play. And even sensual pleasure itself means
nothing but a struggle and aspiration, ceasing the moment its aim is
attained. Whenever we are not occupied in one of these ways, but cast
upon existence itself, its vain and worthless nature is brought home
to us; and this is what we mean by boredom. The hankering after what
is strange and uncommon--an innate and ineradicable tendency of human
nature--shows how glad we are at any interruption of that natural
course of affairs which is so very tedious.

That this most perfect manifestation of the will to live, the human
organism, with the cunning and complex working of its machinery,
must fall to dust and yield up itself and all its strivings to
extinction--this is the naïve way in which Nature, who is always so