the topmost step without the help of the lower ones, then the whole
long ladder, that is the whole of life, with its colours, sounds,
and thoughts, loses all meaning for us. That at your age such
reflections are harmful and absurd, you can see from every step of
your rational independent life. Let us suppose you sit down this
minute to read Darwin or Shakespeare, you have scarcely read a page
before the poison shows itself; and your long life, and Shakespeare,
and Darwin, seem to you nonsense, absurdity, because you know you
will die, that Shakespeare and Darwin have died too, that their
thoughts have not saved them, nor the earth, nor you, and that if
life is deprived of meaning in that way, all science, poetry, and
exalted thoughts seem only useless diversions, the idle playthings
of grown up people; and you leave off reading at the second page.
Now, let us suppose that people come to you as an intelligent man
and ask your opinion about war, for instance: whether it is desirable,
whether it is morally justifiable or not. In answer to that terrible
question you merely shrug your shoulders and confine yourself to
some commonplace, because for you, with your way of thinking, it
makes absolutely no difference whether hundreds of thousands of
people die a violent death, or a natural one: the results are the
same--ashes and oblivion. You and I are building a railway line.
What's the use, one may ask, of our worrying our heads, inventing,
rising above the hackneyed thing, feeling for the workmen, stealing
or not stealing, when we know that this railway line will turn to
dust within two thousand years, and so on, and so on. . . . You
must admit that with such a disastrous way of looking at things
there can be no progress, no science, no art, nor even thought
itself. We fancy that we are cleverer than the crowd, and than
Shakespeare. In reality our thinking leads to nothing because we
have no inclination to go down to the lower steps and there is