bottom of a swimming-bath. Incredible! Simply
incredible!... Can it be that I have already lived?

And lo! I, at the age of nearly forty, am putting to myself the old
questions concerning the intrinsic value of life, the fundamentally
important questions: What have I got out of it? What am I likely to
get out of it? In a word, what's it worth? If a man can ask himself a
question more momentous, radical, and critical than these questions, I
would like to know what it is. Innumerable philosophers have tried to
answer these questions in a general way for the average individual,
and possibly they have succeeded pretty well. Possibly I might derive
benefit from a perusal of their answers. But do you suppose I am going
to read them? Not I! Do you suppose that I can recall the wisdom that
I happen already to have read? Not I! My mind is a perfect blank at
this moment in regard to the wisdom of others on the essential
question. Strange, is it not? But quite a common experience, I
believe. Besides, I don't actually care twopence what any other
philosopher has replied to my question. In this, each man must be his
own philosopher. There is an instinct in the profound egoism of human
nature which prevents us from accepting such ready-made answers. What
is it to us what Plato thought? Nothing. And thus the question remains
ever new, and ever unanswered, and ever of dramatic interest. The
singular, the highly singular thing is--and here I arrive at my
point--that so few people put the question to themselves in time, that
so many put it too late, or even die without putting it.

I am firmly convinced that an immense proportion of my instructed
fellow-creatures do not merely omit to strike the balance-sheet of
their lives, they omit even the preliminary operation of taking
stock. They go on, and on, and on, buying and selling they know not
what, at unascertained prices, dropping money into the till and taking
it out. They don't know what goods are in the shop, nor what amount is
in the till, but they have a clear impression that the living-room
behind the shop is by no means as luxurious and as well-ventilated as
they would like it to be. And the years pass, and that beautiful
furniture and that system of ventilation are not achieved. And then
one day they die, and friends come to the funeral and remark: "Dear
me! How stuffy this room is, and the shop's practically full of
trash!" Or, some little time before they are dead, they stay