The consciousness of the error in reasonable knowledge helped me to free myself from the temptation of idle ratiocination.the conviction that knowledge of truth can only be found by living led me to doubt the rightness of my life;but I was saved only by the fact that I was able to tear myself from my exclusiveness and to see the real life of the plain working people,and to understand that it alone is real life.I understood that if I wish to understand life and its meaning,I must not live the life of a parasite,but must live a real life,and--taking the meaning given to live by real humanity and merging myself in that life--verify it.
During that time this is what happened to me.During that whole year,when I was asking myself almost every moment whether I should not end matters with a noose or a bullet--all that time,together with the course of thought and observation about which I have spoken,my heart was oppressed with a painful feeling,which I can only describe as a search for God.
I say that that search for God was not reasoning,but a feeling,because that search proceeded not from the course of my thoughts--it was even directly contrary to them--but proceeded from the heart.It was a feeling of fear,orphanage,isolation in a strange land,and a hope of help from someone.
Though I was quite convinced of the impossibility of proving the existence of a Deity (Kant had shown,and I quite understood him,that it could not be proved),I yet sought for god,hoped that I should find Him,and from old habit addressed prayers to that which I sought but had not found.I went over in my mind the arguments of Kant and Schopenhauer showing the impossibility of proving the existence of a God,and I began to verify those arguments and to refute them.Cause,said I to myself,is not a category of thought such as are Time and Space.If I exist,there must be some cause for it,and a cause of causes.And that first cause of all is what men have called "God".And I paused on that thought,and tried with all my being to recognize the presence of that cause.And as soon as I acknowledged that there is a force in whose power I am,I at once felt that I could live.But I asked myself:What is that cause,that force?How am I to think of it?
What are my relations to that which I call "God"?And only the familiar replies occurred to me:"He is the Creator and Preserver."This reply did not satisfy me,and I felt I was losing within me what I needed for my life.I became terrified and began to pray to Him whom I sought,that He should help me.But the more I prayed the more apparent it became to me that He did not hear me,and that there was no one to whom to address myself.And with despair in my heart that there is no God at all,I said:"Lord,have mercy,save me!Lord,teach me!"But no one had mercy on me,and I felt that my life was coming to a standstill.
But again and again,from various sides,I returned to the same conclusion that I could not have come into the world without any cause or reason or meaning;I could not be such a fledgling fallen from its nest as I felt myself to be.Or,granting that I be such,lying on my back crying in the high grass,even then I cry because I know that a mother has borne me within her,has hatched me,warmed me,fed me,and loved me.Where is she--that mother?
If I have been deserted,who has deserted me?I cannot hide from myself that someone bored me,loving me.Who was that someone?
Again "God"?He knows and sees my searching,my despair,and my struggle."
"He exists,"said I to myself.And I had only for an instant to admit that,and at once life rose within me,and I felt the possibility and joy of being.But again,from the admission of the existence of a God I went on to seek my relation with Him;and again I imagined *that*God--our Creator in Three Persons who sent His Son,the Saviour--and again *that*God,detached from the world and from me,melted like a block of ice,melted before my eyes,and again nothing remained,and again the spring of life dried up within me,and I despaired and felt that I had nothing to do but to kill myself.And the worst of all was,that I felt I could not do it.
Not twice or three times,but tens and hundreds of times,I reached those conditions,first of joy and animation,and then of despair and consciousness of the impossibility of living.
I remember that it was in early spring:I was alone in the wood listening to its sounds.I listened and thought ever of the same thing,as I had constantly done during those last three years.
I was again seeking God.
"Very well,there is no God,"said I to myself;"there is no one who is not my imagination but a reality like my whole life.
