satisfaction. In my search for a solution of life's problem I felt like
a traveller lost in a forest, out of which he can find no issue.

I found that not only did Solomon declare that he hated life, for all is
vanity and vexation of spirit; but that Sakya Muni, the Indian sage,
equally decided that life was a great evil; while Socrates and
Schopenhauer agree that annihilation is the only thing to be wished for.
But neither these testimonies of great minds nor my own reasoning could
induce me to destroy myself. For a force within me, combined with an
instinctive consciousness of life, counteracted the feeling of despair
and drew me out of my misery of soul. I felt that I must study life not
merely as it was amongst those like myself, but as it was amongst the
millions of the common people. I reflected that knowledge based on
reason, the knowledge of the cultured, imparted no meaning to life, but
that, on the other hand, amongst the masses of the common people there
was an unreasoning consciousness of life which gave it a significance.

This unreasoning knowledge was the very faith which I was rejecting. It
was faith in things I could not understand; in God, one yet three; in
the creation of devils and angels. Such things seemed utterly contrary
to reason. So I began to reflect that perhaps what I considered
reasonable was after all not so, and what appeared unreasonable might
not really be so.

I discovered one great error that I had perpetrated. I had been
comparing life with life, that is, the finite with the finite, and the
infinite with the infinite. The process was vain. It was like comparing
force with force, matter with matter, nothing with nothing. It was like
saying in mathematics that A equals A, or O equals O. Thus the only
answer was "identity."

Now I saw that scientific knowledge would give no reply to my questions.
I began to comprehend that though faith seemed to give unreasonable
answers, these answers certainly did one important thing. They did at
least bring in the relation of the finite to the infinite. I came to
feel that in addition to the reasoning knowledge which I once reckoned
to be the sole true knowledge, there was in every man also an
unreasoning species of knowledge which makes life possible. That
unreasoning knowledge is faith.

What is this faith? It is not only belief in God and in things unseen,
but it is the apprehension of life's meaning. It is the force of life. I
began to unde