A Confession

: I feared life, desired to escape from it, yet still hoped something of it.

“What am I, and what is the uni­verse? And why do I ex­ist, and why does the uni­verse ex­ist?”

“Study the whole life of hu­man­ity of which we can­not know either the be­gin­ning or the end, of which we do not even know a small part, and then you will un­der­stand your own life.”

They say: “To the ques­tion of what you are and why you live we have no reply, and are not oc­cu­pied with that; but if you want to know the laws of light, of chem­ical com­bin­a­tions, the laws of de­vel­op­ment of or­gan­isms, if you want to know the laws of bod­ies and their form, and the re­la­tion of num­bers and quant­it­ies, if you want to know the laws of your mind, to all that we have clear, ex­act and un­ques­tion­able replies.”

I re­garded the defin­i­tion of that law more strictly, and it be­came clear to me that there could be no law of end­less de­vel­op­ment; it be­came clear that to say, “in in­fin­ite space and time everything de­vel­ops, be­comes more per­fect and more com­plex, is dif­fer­en­ti­ated,” is to say noth­ing at all.

I re­garded the defin­i­tion of that law more strictly, and it be­came clear to me that there could be no law of end­less de­vel­op­ment; it be­came clear that to say, “in in­fin­ite space and time everything de­vel­ops, be­comes more per­fect and more com­plex, is dif­fer­en­ti­ated,” is to say noth­ing at all.

it was pleas­ant to look at life in the mir­ror of art.

I saw the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tasted sweet.

ques­tions would not wait, they had to be answered at once, and if I did not an­swer them it was im­possible to live. But there was no an­swer.

The ques­tions would not wait, they had to be answered at once, and if I did not an­swer them it was im­possible to live. But there was no an­swer.