Still others there are who are more subtle and more critical. They have come to see how impracticable are all these schemes to redeem life from its troubles. Thus, after they have tried many half-way measures, they come at last to the confession of the wisest of kings: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” They commit themselves to scepticism concerning any meaning in life and to the worship of non-existence. To them the end of life is to be Nirvana, annihilation, the forgetfulness of that which life has been; and they fancy that they have attained a very noble attitude toward life when, after many years of sharp contention with their healthy human nature, which steadily protests against these subtle negations, they are able at last to repeat the words of the Hindoo sage: “_Through birth and rebirth’s endless round I ran and sought, but never found Who framed and built this house of clay. What misery!--birth for ay and ay!_ _O builder! thee at last I see! Ne’er shalt thou build again for me._ _Thy rafters all are broken now, Demolished lies thy ridgepole, low._ _My heart, demolished too, I ween, An end of all desire hath seen._”[8] Such is the final word of their philosophy. Neither light nor hope is left for human life. He does the best who earliest recognizes the hopelessness of life and hastens to its end. Human nature, however, is so abounding in life and so eager for life that except in those transitory and morbid conditions which we have come to describe as _fin de siècle_ moods, it is never long content to interpret experience in terms of universal bankruptcy. On the contrary, it insists that the problem of philosophy must be in the future, as it has been in the past, the shedding of light on the meaning of life. It is a problem which philosophy has often answered with mere phrases, which have brought no meaning or comfort to the troubled heart of man, and it is not surprising that since the climax of this hollow formalism was reached in Hegel, there has been a natural distrust of philosophy.