Human beings live in the realm of meanings. We do not

experience pure circumstances; we always experience circumstances in

their significance for men. Even at its source our experience is qualified

by our human purposes. " Wood " means " wood in its relation to

mankind ", and " stone " means " stone as it can be a factor in human

life." If a man should try to escape meanings and devote himself only to

circumstances he would be very unfortunate: he would isolate himself

from others: his actions would be useless to himself or to any one; in a

word, they would be meaningless. But no human being );an escape

meanings. We experience reality always through the meaning we give it;

not in itself, but as something interpreted. It will be natural to suppose,

therefore, that this meaning is always more or less unfinished,

incomplete; and even that it is never altogether right. The realm of

meanings is the realm of mistakes.

If we asked a man, " What is the meaning of life? ", he would

perhaps be unable to answer. For the most part people do not bother

themselves with the question or try to formulate replies. It is true that the

question is as old as human history and that in our own time young

people — and older people as well — will often break out with the cry, "

But what is life for? What does life mean? " We can say, however, that

they ask only when they have suffered a defeat. So long as everything is

plain sailing and no difficult tests are set before them the question is

never put into words. It is in his actions that every man inevitably puts

the question and answers it. If we dose our ears to his words and observe

his actions, we shall find that he has his own individual "meaning of life"

and that all his postures, attitudes, movements, expressions, mannerisms,

ambitions, habits and character traits accord with this meaning. He

behaves as if he could rely upon a certain interpretation of life. In all his

actions there is an implicit reckoning up of the world and of himself; a

verdict, " I am like this and the universe is like that "; a meaning given to

himself and a meaning given to life.

There are as many meanings given to life as there are human

beings, and, as we have suggested, perhaps each meaning involves more

or less of a mistake. No one possesses the absolute meaning of life, and

we may say that any meaning which is at all serviceable cannot be called

absolutely wrong. All meanings are varieties between these two limits.

Among these varieties, however, we can distinguish some which answer

better and some which answer worse; some where the mistake is small

and some where it is large. We can discover what it is that the better

meanings share in common, what it is that the worse meanings lack. In