There are two things that are often talked about--science and life. And I must confess that both the one and the other are antipathetic to me. It is unnecessary to define science, or Science, if you like, with the capital letter, this thing which is now being so widely popularized, the purpose of which is to give us a more logical and exact idea of the Universe. When I used to be something of a Spencerian I believed myself to be enamoured of science; but afterwards I discovered that this was a mistake. It was a mistake like the mistake of those who think that they are happy when they are not. (It is evident that I reject, arbitrarily of course, the idea that being happy consists in thinking that one is happy.) No, I was never enamoured of science, I always sought for something behind it. And when, endeavouring to get beyond its fatidical relativity, I was led to the _ignorabimus_ position, I realized that science had always irked me. And what are you going to put in its place? I shall be asked. I might say ignorance, but that is not certain. I might say, with the Preacher, the son of David, king of Jerusalem, that he who increases knowledge increases sorrow and that the same end awaits the wise man and the fool; but no, it is not that. I don’t need to invent a word, however, to express what it is that I oppose to science, for the word exists, and it is _sabiduría_--the _sagesse_ of the French, the _wisdom_ of the English, the German _Weisheit_ or _Klugheit_. But is it opposed to science? I shall be asked. And I, following my arbitrary method, guided by the passion of my spirit, by my innate aversions and my innate attractions, reply: Yes, they are opposed; science robs men of wisdom and usually converts them into phantom beings loaded up with facts. The other thing that is being incessantly talked about to-day is life, and to this it is easy to find an opposite. The opposite to life is death. And this second opposition helps me to explain the first. Wisdom is to science what death is to life, or, if you prefer it, wisdom is to death what science is to life. The object of science is life, and the object of wisdom is death. Science says: “We must live,” and seeks the means of prolonging, increasing, facilitating and amplifying life, of making it tolerable and acceptable; wisdom says: “We must die,” and seeks how to make us die well. _Homo liber de nulla re minus quam de morte cogitat, et eius sapientia non mortis, sed vita meditatio est_--so Spinoza announces in Proposition LXVII of the fourth part of his “Ethics”: The free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.