I often said to myself: “The life I am living is a dark and troubled dream. Some time I shall awaken to another dream which stands closer to reality and has a deeper meaning than this. Out of that dream I shall awaken to a third and afterwards to a fourth, and every new dream will stand nearer the truth than the one before. This approaching toward truth constitutes the meaning of life, which is subtle and profound.” With the joy of knowing that in my immortal soul I possessed a capital which could not be lost in play or distrained upon for debt, I carried on a dissipated life and squandered like a prince both what was mine and what was not mine. But one evening I found myself with some of my cronies in a large hall, which glittered with gilt and electric light, while from its flooring rose a smell of decay. Two young girls with painted faces and an old woman whose wrinkles were filled with plaster were dancing there on a platform, accompanied by the wail of the orchestra, cries of applause, and the clink of broken glass. We watched the women, drank a great deal, and conversed on the immortality of the soul. “It’s foolish,” said one of my comrades who was older than I, “it’s foolish to believe that it would be a blessing to have an immortal soul. Look at that old harridan dancing there, whose head and hands tremble if she stays still a moment. One sees directly that she is wicked and ugly and entirely worthless, and that she’s getting more and more so every day. How ridiculous it would be to imagine that she had an immortal soul! But the case is just the same with you and me and all of us. What a mean joke it would be to give us immortality!” “The thing that I dislike most in what you say,” I answered, “isn’t that you deny the immortality of the soul, but the fact that you find a pleasure in denying it. Human beings are like children that play in a garden surrounded by a high wall. Time and again a door is opened in the wall, and one of the children disappears through the door. People then tell them that it is taken to another garden bigger and more beautiful than this, whereupon they listen a moment in silence and afterwards continue to play among the flowers. Assume now that one of the boys is more inquisitive than the others and climbs up on the wall so as to see where his comrades go, and when he comes down again tells the rest what he has seen; namely, that outside the gate sits a giant who devours the children when they are taken out. And they all have to be taken out through the gate in due turn! You are that boy, Martin, and I find it unspeakably ridiculous that you tell what you think you’ve seen, not in a spirit of despair, but as if you were proud and glad of knowing more than the rest.” “The younger of those girls is very pretty,” replied Martin. “It’s dreadful to be annihilated, and it’s also dreadful not to be able to be annihilated,” remarked another of my friends. Martin continued this line of argument.