#557

THE WORLD AS I SEE IT The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder or feel amazement is as good as dead, a snuffed out candle. It was the experience of mystery, even if mixed with fear, that engendered religion ... a knowledge of the existence of something that we cannot penetrate, of the manifestation of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty 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 this sense alone, I am a deeply religious man. I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures or who has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his natural 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 of the eternity of life, the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in Nature. --Albert Einstein