The World as I See It, by Albert Einstein.
Heavily Abridged.
What an extraordinary situation is that of
us mortals! Each of us is
here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose
he knows not, though he sometimes
thinks he feels it. But from the point of
view of daily life, without going
deeper, we exist for our fellow-men--in the
first place for those on whose
smiles and welfare all our happiness depends,
and next for all those unknown
to us personally with whose destinies we are
bound up by the tie of
sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind
myself that my inner and outer
life depend on the labours of other men, living
and dead, and that I must
exert myself in order to give in the same
measure as I have received and am
still receiving. I am strongly drawn to the
simple life and am often
oppressed by the feeling that I am engrossing
an unnecessary amount of the
labour of my fellow-men. I regard class differences
as contrary to justice
and, in the last resort, based on force. I
also consider that plain living
is good for everybody, physically and mentally....
To inquire after the meaning or object of
one's own existence or of
creation generally has always seemed to me
absurd from an objective point of
view. And yet everybody has certain ideals
which determine the direction of
his endeavours and his judgments. In this
sense I have never looked upon
ease and happiness as ends in themselves--such
an ethical basis I call more
proper for a herd of swine. The ideals which
have lighted me on my way and
time after time given me new courage to face
life cheerfully, have been
Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Without the sense
of fellowship with men of
like mind, of preoccupation with the objective,
the eternally unattainable
in the field of art and scientific research,
life would have seemed to me
empty. The ordinary objects of human endeavour--property,
outward success,
luxury--have always seemed to me contemptible.
My passionate sense of social justice and
social responsibility has
always contrasted oddly with my pronounced
freedom from the need for direct
contact with other human beings and human
communities. I gang my own gait
and have never belonged to my country, my
home, my friends, or even my
immediate family, with my whole heart; in
the face of all these ties I have
never lost an obstinate sense of detachment,
of the need for solitude--a
feeling which increases with the years. One
is sharply conscious, yet
without regret, of the limits to the possibility
of mutual understanding and
sympathy with one's fellow-creatures. Such
a person no doubt loses something
in the way of geniality and light-heartedness
; on the other hand, he is
largely independent of the opinions, habits,
and judgments of his fellows
and avoids the temptation to take his stand
on such insecure foundations.
My political ideal is that of democracy. Let
every man be respected as
an individual and no man idolized. It is an
irony of fate that I myself have
been the recipient of excessive admiration
and respect from my fellows
through no fault, and no merit, of my own.
The cause of this may well be the
desire, unattainable for many, to understand
the one or two ideas to which I
have with my feeble powers attained through
ceaseless struggle. I am quite
aware that it is necessary for the success
of any complex undertaking that
one man should do the thinking and directing
and in general bear the
responsibility. But the led must not be compelled,
they must be able to
choose their leader. An autocratic system
of coercion, in my opinion, soon
degenerates. For force always attracts men
of low morality, and I believe it
to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius
are succeeded by scoundrels....
The fairest thing we can experience is the
mysterious. It is the
fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle
of true art and true science.
He who knows it not and can no longer wonder,
no longer feel amazement, is
as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It
was the experience of
mystery--even if mixed with fear--that engendered
religion. A knowledge of
the existence of something we cannot penetrate,
of the manifestations of the
profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty,
which are only accessible to
our reason in their most elementary forms--it
is this knowledge and this
emotion that constitute the truly religious
attitude; in this sense, and in
this alone, I am a deeply religious man. I
cannot conceive of a God who
rewards and punishes his creatures, or has
a will of the type of which we
are conscious in ourselves. An individual
who should survive his physical
death is also beyond my comprehension, nor
do I wish it otherwise; such
notions are for the fears or absurd egoism
of feeble souls. Enough for me
the mystery of the eternity of life, and the
inkling of the marvellous
structure of reality, together with the single-hearted
endeavour to
comprehend a portion, be it never so tiny,
of the reason that manifests
itself in nature.
