The world as I see it – Albert Einstein

What an extraordinary situation is that of is mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he feels it. Nut from the point of view of daily life, without going deeper, we exist for our fellow men – in the first place for those on whose smiles and welfare all our happiness depends, and next for all those unknown to us personally with those destinies we are bound up by the tie of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depends on the labours o other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. I am strongly drawn to the simple life and am often oppressed by the feeling that I am engrossing an unnecessary amount of the labour of my fellow-men. I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force. I also consider that plain living is good for everybody, both physically and mentally.

In human freedom in the philosophical sense I am definitely a disbeliever. Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity. Schopenhauer’s saying, that “A man can do as he will, but not will as he will,” has been an inspiration to me since my youth up, and a continual consolation and unfailing wellspring of patience in the face of the hardships of my life, my own and others.’ This feeling mercifully mitigates the sense of responsibility which so easily becomes paralysing, and it prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it conduces to a view of life in which humour, above all, had its due place.

To inquire after the meaning or object of one’s own existence or of creation generally has always seemed to be absurd from an objective point of view. And yet everybody has certain ideals which determine the direction of his endeavours and his judgements. In this sense I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves – such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine. The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Without the sense of fellowship with men of like mind, of pre-occupation with the objective, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific research, life would have seemed to me empty. The ordinary objects of human endeavour – property, outward success, luxury – have always seemed to me contemptible.

My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced freedom from the need for direct contract with other human beings and human communities. I gang my own gait and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties I have never lost an obstinate sense of detachment, of the need for solitude – a feeling which increases over the years. One is sharply conscious, yet without regret, of the limits to the possibility of mutual understanding and sympathy with one’s fellow-creatures. Such a person no doubt loses something in the way of geniality and light-heartedness; on the other hand, he is largely independent of the opinions, habits, and judgements of his fellows, and avoids the temptation to take his stand on such insecure foundations.

My political ideal is that of democracy, let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of late that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and respect from my fellows through no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the one or two ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware that it is necessary for the success of any complex undertaking that one man should do the thinking and directing and in general bear the responsibility, but the led must not be compelled, they must be able to choose their leader. An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates. For force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels. For this reason I have always been passionately opposed to systems such as we see in Italy and Russia today. The thing that has brought discredit upon the prevailing form of democracy in Europe today is not to be laid to the door of the democratic idea as such, but to lack of stability on the part of heads of government and to the impersonal character of the electoral system. I believe that in this respect the United States of America has found the right way. They have a responsible president who is elected or a sufficiently long period and has sufficient powers to be really responsible. On the other hand, what I value in our political system is the more extensive provision that it makes for the individual in case of illness or need. The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the State but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Ho who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms – it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls. Enough for me the mystery and eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it never so tiny of the reason that manifests itself in nature.