If thought is to set out on its journey unhampered, it must be prepared for anything, even for arrival at intellectual agnosticism. But even if our will-to-action is destined to wrestle endlessly and unavailingly with an agnostic view of the universe and of life, still this painful disenchantment is better for it than persistent refusal to think out its position at all. For this disenchantment does, at any rate, mean that we are clear as to what we are doing. There is, however, no necessity whatever for such an attitude of resignation. We feel that a position of affirmation regarding the world and life is something which is in itself both necessary and valuable. Therefore it is at least likely that a foundation can be [pg 105] found for it in thought. Since it is an innate element of our will-to-live, it must be possible to comprehend it as a necessary corollary to our interpretation of life. Perhaps we shall have to look elsewhere than we have done hitherto for the real basis of that theory of the universe which carries with it affirmation of the world and of life. Previous thought imagined that it could deduce the meaning of life from its interpretation of the universe. It may be that we shall be obliged to resign ourselves to abandon the problem of the interpretation of the universe and to find the meaning of our life in the will-to-live as this exists in ourselves. The ways along which we have to struggle toward the goal may be veiled in darkness, yet the direction in which we must travel is clear. We must reflect together about the meaning of life; we must strive together to attain to a theory of the universe affirmative of the world and of life, in which the impulse to action which we experience as a necessary and valuable element of our being may find justification, orientation, clarity and depth, may receive a fresh access of moral strength, and be retempered, and thus become capable of formulating, and of acting on, definite ideals of civilization, inspired by the spirit of true humanitarianism. FOOTNOTES * _Weltanschauung_. Translated ‘theory of the universe’ throughout the first part and elsewhere in this preface. * Translated “world-view” throughout the second part of these Lectures. TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES The formatting of both the .htm and .txt files followed that of two similar books, The Quest of the Historical Jesus and The Mystery of the Kingdom of God, already in Project Gutenberg. In the .txt version I have used utf8 encoding and the following markers: 1. italic text surrounded by _ 2. footnote references in the form _(_number_)_ I have included page numbers in the format [pg xxx] for both .htm and .txt. I made several hyphenation choices, mostly forced by de-hyphenation at the ends of lines: 1. world-theory 2. overcoming 3. self-regarding 4. never-concentrated 5. over-organization 6. over-valuation 7. self-importance 8. rococo-ministers 9. non-existence