Below at the foot of the mountain the fixed decision is demanded. There one must absolutely determine to pay any price which shall be asked for the happiness which is real. No further step can be taken without this first resolution, and by no easier path has any one attained the happiness he sought. Goethe, the teacher of those who sought happiness in other ways, admitted--as I have said--that in seventy-five years of life he had had four weeks of content, and no one who has followed him can, at the end of life, when asked what his conscience testifies, make better reply. We, on the other hand, should be able, at the last, to say: “The days of our years are threescore years and ten, and though we be so strong as to come to fourscore years, and though there has been much labor and sorrow, still it has been a life of happiness.” VII. THE MEANING OF LIFE VII. THE MEANING OF LIFE This is the question of questions. A man must be wholly superficial or wholly animal who does not at some time in his life ask what is the meaning of his life. Yet, sad to say, most men end their lives without finding an answer. Some repeat, in their darker moods, the melancholy confession of a mediæval philosopher: “I live, but know not how long; I die, but know not when; I depart, but know not whither. How is it possible for me to fancy myself happy!” Others drive from their minds these morbid reflections which, as they say, “lead to nothing,” and repeat: “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” Even among what we call cultivated people, where education has made a profounder view accessible, the number of those who find the meaning of life is by no means large. After some vain and superficial attempts to save themselves they yield at last, and often far too soon, to the pitiful programme of self-indulgence. And what is their next step? It is to pursue consistently this programme. But there is not long left the health which is necessary for this life of eating and drinking, and then in throngs they make their pilgrimages, the women at the front, to Pastor Kneipp, or Dr. Metzger, or some other infallible healer, hoping for a quick restoration and a second chance to waste their lives. Still others there are who have not the means to adopt this plan of life. Many of these seek a substitute for it in some form of social scrambling; or if this fails, commit themselves to the new doctrine of economics, according to which the only real problem of life is the “stomach problem,” and which teaches that in satisfying the stomach the social ideals of the race will be also satisfied.