I had ventured to deduce from my knowledge of his nature the men and the works which, in my opinion, should awaken strong echoes in him. A fairly clearly defined line leads to the true path. Outside of any systematic series, I may mention Dostojewski, Cervantes, Homer, Strindberg, Gottfried Keller in the positive sense, Emile Zola and Ibsen in the negative sense. Taken as a whole, this prognostication does not disagree seriously with his own statement, excepting that he lays still greater emphasis on Don Quixote and the Brothers Karamasoff than I had surmised. He expressed himself with reserve about Voltaire. He has no belief in Voltaire's poetic qualities, and sees in him only a subtle-minded and amusing writer. Perhaps if Einstein were to devote himself a little more intensively to Voltaire and Zola, he would assign a higher value to these related spirits. But there is little hope of this occurring, as the wide range of Voltaire's works tends to restrain him. Time, which the physicist Einstein has shown to be relative, has an absolute value for him when measured in hours, and whoever seeks to persuade him to read thick volumes is not likely to gain his goodwill. Our philosophical literature is not received with acclamation by him. If some one wished to undertake the task of ascertaining Einstein's attitude towards philosophy, he would be well advised to plunge into Einstein's works rather than to ask him personally. In them the questioner would find ample hints, pointing towards a new theory of knowledge, the first indications of which are already perceptible. A great portion of philosophic doctrine will yet have to pass through the Einstein filter to be purified. He himself, it seems to me, leaves this process of filtering mostly to other thinkers, but we must not lose sight of the fact that these others derive their views of space, time, and causality from Einstein's physics. It is thus immediately evident that he does not find revelations about ultimate things in already extant literature, for the simple reason that they are not to be found there. For him famous works represent, in Kant's language, "Prolegomena to every future system of metaphysics which can claim to rank as a science." The accent is to be put on the future that has not yet become the present. He praises many, particularly Locke and Hume, but will grant finality to none, not even to the great Kant, not to mention Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte, whom he barely mentions in this connexion. To Schopenhauer and Nietzsche he assigns a high position as writers, as masters of language and moulders of impressive thoughts. He values them for their literary excellence, but denies them philosophic depth. As far as Nietzsche is concerned, whom, by the way, he regards as too glittering, Einstein certainly experiences ethical objections against this prophet of the aristocratic cult whose views are so diametrically opposed to Einstein's own opinion of the relations between man and man.