And this very solid world that wounds the stumbling foot, is it not but an idea to each? the solid reality dying for us in our dying--to the flab jelly-fish this splendid wayfaring being even in the living not wholly of the same seeming as to you and me and the other. Yet wholly and absolutely sure are we that all is. Whatever madness possess us, we know the Achievement. For he who splits hairs with his reason, and affirms that nothing exists, except in our imagination, is like to him who thrusts his head against a stone wall; and will find that the wall and his thinking-machinery are, but do not matter. There is no gain in juggling with facts. Matter is matter, and life is life, and denial but denial. Knowledge of the intellect has in it no creative power, no vitalizing essence--cannot give life. The meaning of life must be lived. Nay, knowledge of the intellect is not even the incentive to life--not so much as instigator of our most paltry acts. The instincts and the emotions and intuition are the more vigorous masters and compellers of our living--are outside knowledge--independent of it--often opposed to it, overwhelming it, setting it aside at slightest desire carelessly, contemptuously, passionately. And then---- The brutes of the field have not reason; yet are they moved by this same mystery of life; their flame goes out in the same strange mystery of death! That which is the secret of life in man must also be the secret of life in all else.... The youth had been overwhelmed in the darkness that had shown beyond the impotence of the intellect. He was aroused by the literature of Romanticism. He opened the book of the wisdom of Schopenhauer; it led to the page of life to which he had now turned. The German pointed a guiding finger. Even if the brain’s ken were not limited, it is impotent. But, fortunately, there is a secret stair to the mystery of life. Not by way of the intellect, but by way of the emotions may we pierce to the secret of existence. Life expresses itself through the senses. The emotions hold more of the ultimate mystery than all the vapour-filled brains of philosophers, be they priest or schoolmaster---- The youth thought he had discovered the answer to the riddle of life. Searching deep down into his own being, frankly, with the unembarrassed gaze of himself for sole company, fearlessly, candidly, and in the decent silence, peering for the innermost essence of existence, he perceived throughout all seeming incongruities and inconsistencies and warnings, a strange all-compelling energy which this snarling Schopenhauer called the Will to Live--a blind, never-resting, never-satisfied want--a fierce desire for life.