an answer to the problem that haunted me. All that I experienced, in
scientific work as in life generally, merely gave it an even sharper
edge. Everywhere I saw an abyss widening between human knowing and
human action. How often was I not bitterly disillusioned by the
behaviour of men for whose ability to think through the most
complicated scientific questions I had the utmost admiration!

On all sides I found this same bewildering gulf between scientific
achievement and the way men conducted their own lives and influenced
the lives of others. I was forced to the conclusion that human
thinking, at any rate in its modern form, was either powerless to
govern human actions, or at least unable to direct them towards right
ends. In fact, where scientific thinking had done most to change the
practical relations of human life, as in the mechanization of economic
production, conditions had arisen which made it more difficult, not
less, for men to live in a way worthy of man. At a time when humanity
was equipped as never before to investigate the order of the universe,
and had achieved triumphs of design in mechanical constructions, human
life was falling into ever wilder chaos. Why was this?

The fact that most of my contemporaries were apparently quite unaware
of the problem that stirred me so deeply could not weaken my sense of
its reality. This slumber of so many souls in face of the vital
questions of modern life seemed to me merely a further symptom of the
sickness of our age. Nor could I think much better of those who, more
sensitive to the contradictions in and around them, sought refuge in
art or religion. The catastrophe of the war had shown me that this
departmentalizing of life, which at one time I had myself considered a
sort of ideal, was quite inconsistent with the needs of to-day. To make
use of art or religion as a refuge was a sign of their increasing