had judged wrongly. My mistake was that
I had applied an answer to my question concerning life which only
concerned my own life, to life in general. My life had been but one long
indulgence of my passions. It was evil and meaningless. Therefore such
an answer had no application to life at large, but only to my individual
life.

I understood the truth which the Gospel subsequently taught me more
fully, that men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds
were evil. I understood that for the comprehension of life, it was
essential that life should be something more than an evil and
meaningless thing revealed by reason. Life must be considered as a
whole, not merely in its parasitic excrescences. I felt that to be good
was more important than to believe. I loved good men. I hated myself. I
accepted truth. I understood that we were all more or less mad with the
love of evil.

I looked at the animals, saw the birds building nests, living only to
fly and to subsist. I saw how the goat, hare, and wolf live, but to feed
and to nurture their young, and are contented and happy. Their life is a
reasonable one. And man must gain his living like the animals do, only
with this great difference, that if he should attempt this alone, he
will perish. So he must labour for the good of all, not merely for
himself.

I had not helped others. My life for thirty years had been that of a
mere parasite. I had been contented to remain ignorant of the reason why
I lived at all.

There is a supreme will in the universe. Some one makes the universal
life his secret care. To know what that supreme will is, we must obey it
implicitly. No reproaches against their masters come from the simple
workers who do just what is required of them, though we are in the habit
of regarding them as brutes. We, on the contrary, who think ourselves
wise, consume the goods of our master while we do nothing willingly that
he prescribes. We think that it would be stupid for us to do so.

What does such conduct imply? Simply that our master is stupid, or that
we have no master.

_V.--Feeling Versus Reason_

Thus I was led at last to the conclusion that knowledge based on reason
is fallacious, and that the knowledge of truth can be secured only by
living. I had come to feel that I must live a real, not a parasitical
life, and that the meaning of life could be perceived only by
observation of the combined lives of the great human community.

The fe