"Won? Does it ever happen that any one wins? One only argues to convince oneself, never to convince the other person. Just imagine Therese eventually realising that a rational person can never become a member of any party! Or if I had been driven to confess that my independence of party betokened a lack of philosophy of life, as she contended! Why, we could both have shut up shop straight away. But what do you think of all this talk about a philosophy of life? As though a philosophy of life were anything else than the will and the capacity to see life as it really is. I mean, to envisage it without being led astray by any preconceived idea, without having the impulse to deduce a new law straight away from our particular experience, or to fit our experience into some existing law. But people mean nothing more by the expression 'philosophy of life' than a higher kind of devotion to a pet theory, devotion to a pet theory within the sphere of the infinite, so to speak. Or they go on talking about a gloomy or cheerful philosophy according to the colours in which their individual temperament and the accidents of their personal life happen to paint the world for them. People in the full possession of their senses have a philosophy of life and narrow-minded people haven't. That's how the matter stands. As a matter of fact, one doesn't need to be a metaphysician to have a philosophy of life.... Perhaps in fact one shouldn't be one at all. At any rate, metaphysics have nothing at all to do with the philosophy of life. Each of the philosophers really knew in his heart of hearts that he simply represented a kind of poet. Kant believed in the Thing In Itself, and Schopenhauer in the World as Will and Representation, just like Shakespeare believed in Hamlet, and Beethoven in the Ninth Symphony. They knew that another work of art had come into the world, but they never imagined for a single minute that they had discovered a final 'truth.' Every philosophical system, if it has any rhythm or depth, represents another possession for the world. But why should it alter a man's relationship to the world if he himself has all his wits and senses about him?" He went on speaking with increasing excitement and fell, as it seemed to George, into a feverish maze. George then remembered that Heinrich had once invented a merry-go-round that turned in spirals higher and higher above the earth, to end finally in the top of a tower.