The beginning of all spiritual life of any real value is courageous faith in truth and open confession of the same. The most profound religious experience, too, is not alien to thought, but must be capable of derivation from this if it is to be given a true and deep basis. Mere reflection about the meaning of life has already value in itself. If such reflection should again come into being amongst us, the ideals, born of vanity and of suffering, which now flourish in rank profusion like evil weeds among the convictions of the generality of people, would infallibly wither away and die. How much would already be accomplished towards our salvation from our present circumstances if only we would all give up three minutes every evening to gazing up into the infinite [pg 103] world of the starry heavens and meditating on it, or if in taking part in a funeral procession we would reflect on the enigma of life and death, instead of engaging in thoughtless conversation as we follow behind the coffin! The ideals, born of folly and suffering, of those who make public opinion and direct public events, would have no more power over men if they once began to reflect about eternity and mortality, existence and dissolution, and thus learnt to distinguish between true and false standards, between those which possess real value and those which do not. The old-time rabbis used to teach that the kingdom of God would come if only the whole of Israel would really keep a single Sabbath simultaneously! How much more is it true that the injustice and violence and untruth, which are now bringing so much disaster on the human race, would lose their power if only a single real trace of reflection about the meaning of the world and of life should appear amongst us! But is there not a danger in challenging men with this question about the meaning of life and in demanding that our impulse to action should justify and clarify itself in such reflection as that of which we have spoken? Shall we not lose, in acceding to this demand, some irreplaceable element of naïve enthusiasm? [pg 104] We need not thus be anxious as to how strong or how weak our impulse to action will prove to be when it shall have arrived, as the result of intellectual reflection, at an interpretation of life. Only that has real meaning for life which is given as an element of our interpretation of life. It is not the quantity, but the quality, of activity that really matters. What is needed is that our will-to-action should become conscious of itself and should cease to work blindly. But perhaps, it may be objected, we shall end in the resignation of agnosticism, and shall be obliged to confess that we cannot discover any meaning in the universe or in life.