Having reached the middle of my life's journey, I sat down to rest and consider. Everything I had hitherto boldly dreamt and desired, I had attained. Sated with shame and honour, pleasure and suffering, I asked myself, ‘What is going to happen now?’

Everything was repeated with deadly monotony, everything was the same as it always was, everything happened all over again. The older generation had said, ‘The universe has no secrets; we have explained all the riddles, we have solved all the problems. By means of the spectroscope we have found that the sun lacks oxygen, which does not prevent it from burning just as well as antimony in chlorine or copper in sulphur.

‘We have traced the canals on Mars, which bear a disturbing resemblance to the Widmannstätten figures on meteorites, and yet we have only just recently gained a clear idea of what the interior of Africa looks like, and we know nothing about either Borneo or the Polar Sea.’

A generation, which has had the courage to abolish God, to destroy both state and church and society and morals, nevertheless bowed down before science. And in science, where freedom ought to reign, the watchword was ‘believe in authority or die!’ No Bastille column had yet been erected where the old Sorbonne stood, and the cross still reigned over the Panthéon and the cupola of the Institute.

There was thus nothing further to do in this world, and, feeling useless, I decided to disappear.