FREE ESSAY ON EINSTEIN AND LIFE

EINSTEIN AND LIFE

When I was a fairly precocious young man I became thoroughly impressed with the futility
of the hopes and strivings that chase most men restlessly through life. Moreover, I soon
discovered the cruelty of that chase, which in those years was much more carefully
covered up by hypocrisy and glittering words than is the case today. By the mere
existence of his stomach everyone was condemned to participate in that chase. The stomach
might well be satisfied by such participation, but not man insofar as he is a thinking
and feeling being. As the first way out there was religion, which is implanted into every
child by way of the traditional education-machine. Thus I came - though the child of
entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents - to a deep religiousness, which, however, reached
an abrupt end at the age of twelve. Through the reading of popular scientific books I
soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The
consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of freethinking coupled with the impression
that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing
impression. Mistrust of every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical
attitude toward the convictions that were alive in any specific social environment-an
attitude that has never again left me, even though, later on, it has been tempered by a
better insight into the causal connections. It is quite clear to me that the religious
paradise of youth, which was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the
chains of the merely personal, from an existence dominated by wishes, hopes, and
primitive feelings. Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of
us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least
partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world
beckoned as a liberation, and I soon noticed that many a man whom I had learned to esteem
and to admire had found inner freedom and security in its pursuit. The mental grasp of
this extra-personal world within the frame of our capabilities presented itself to my
mind, half consciously, half unconsciously, as a supreme goal. Similarly motivated men of
the present and of the past, as well as the insights they had achieved, were the friends
who could not be lost. The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as
the road to the religious paradise; but it has shown itself reliable, and I have never
regretted having chosen it.