re advantages than
he, succeeded, and others again, with many more, failed. It seemed pure
chance. The rain fell alike upon the just and upon the unjust, and for
nothing was there a why and a wherefore.

Thinking of Cronshaw, Philip remembered the Persian rug which he had given
him, telling him that it offered an answer to his question upon the
meaning of life; and suddenly the answer occurred to him: he chuckled: now
that he had it, it was like one of the puzzles which you worry over till
you are shown the solution and then cannot imagine how it could ever have
escaped you. The answer was obvious. Life had no meaning. On the earth,
satellite of a star speeding through space, living things had arisen under
the influence of conditions which were part of the planet's history; and
as there had been a beginning of life upon it so, under the influence of
other conditions, there would be an end: man, no more significant than
other forms of life, had come not as the climax of creation but as a
physical reaction to the environment. Philip remembered the story of the
Eastern King who, desiring to know the history of man, was brought by a
sage five hundred volumes; busy with affairs of state, he bade him go and
condense it; in twenty years the sage returned and his history now was in
no more than fifty volumes, but the King, too old then to read so many
ponderous tomes, bade him go and shorten it once more; twenty years passed
again and the sage, old and gray, brought a single book in which was the
knowledge the King had sought; but the King lay on his death-bed, and he
had no time to read even that; and then the sage gave him the history of
man in a single line; it was this: he was born, he suffered, and he died.
There was no meaning in life, and man by living served no end. It was
immaterial whether he was born or not born, whether he lived or ceased to
live. Life was insignificant and death without consequence. Philip
exulted, as he had exulted in his boyhood when the weight of a belief in
God was lifted from his shoulders: it seemed to him that the last burden
of responsibility was taken from him; and for the first time he was
utterly free. His insignificance was turned to power, and he felt himself
suddenly equal with the cruel fate which had seemed to persecute him; for,
if life was meaningless, the world was robbed of its cruelty. What he did
or left undone did not matter. Failure was unimportant and success
amounted to not