"Albert Einstein. The world as I see it (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

What is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether? To
answer this question at all implies a religion. Is there any sense then, you
ask, in putting it? I answer, the man who regards his own life and that of
his fellow-creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost
disqualified for life.

The World as I see it


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.

In human freedom in the philosophical sense I am definitely a
disbeliever. Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in
accordance with inner necessity. Schopenhauer's saying, that "a man can do
as he will, but not will as he will," has been an inspiration to me since my
youth up, and a continual consolation and unfailing well-spring of patience
in the face of the hardships of life, my own and others'. This feeling
mercifully mitigates the sense of responsibility which so easily becomes
paralysing, and it prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too
seriously; it conduces to a view of life in which humour, above all, has its
due place.

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