When we are full of vitality and not yet awakened to the knowledge of life, we cannot comprehend the seriousness of all the conflicts involved in it which are apparently for the moment in a state of quiescence. But sooner or later the time will come when we have to face life squarely and solve its most perplexing and most pressing riddles. Says Confucius, “At fifteen my mind was directed to study, and at thirty I knew where to stand.” This is one of the wisest sayings of the Chinese sage. Psychologists will all agree to this statement of his; for, generally speaking, fifteen is about the age youth begins to look around seriously and inquire into the meaning of life. All the spiritual powers until now securely hidden in the subconscious part of the mind break out almost simultaneously. And when this breaking out is too precipitous and violent, the mind may lose its balance more or less permanently; in fact, so many cases of nervous prostration reported during adolescence are chiefly due to this loss of the mental equilibrium. In most cases the effect is not very grave and the crisis may pass without leaving deep marks. But in some characters, either through their inherent tendencies or on account of the influence of environment upon their plastic constitution, the spiritual awakening stirs them up to the very depths of their personality. This is the time you will be asked to choose between the “Everlasting No” and the “Everlasting Yea.” This choosing is what Confucius means by “study,” it is not studying the classics, but deeply delving into the mysteries of life. Normally, the outcome of the struggle is the “Everlasting Yea,” or “Let thy will be done”; for life is after all a form of affirmation however negatively it might be conceived by the pessimists. But we cannot deny the fact that there are many things in this world which will turn our too sensitive minds towards the other direction and make us exclaim with Andreyev in “The Life of Man”: “I curse everything that you have given. I curse the day on which I was born. I curse the day on which I shall die. I curse the whole of my life. I fling everything back at your cruel face, senseless Fate! Be accursed, be forever accursed! With my curses I conquer you. What else can you do to me?... With my last thought I will shout into your asinine ears: Be accursed, be accursed!” This is a terrible indictment of life, it is a complete negation of life, it is a most dismal picture of the destiny of man on earth. “Leaving no trace” is quite true, for we know nothing of our future except that we all pass away including the very earth from which we have come. There are certainly things justifying pessimism.