THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

You have to take risks, he said. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow
the unexpected to happen.

Every day, God gives us the sun—and also one moment in which we have the ability to change
everything that makes us unhappy. Every day, we try to pretend that we haven't perceived that
moment, that it doesn't exist—that today is the same as yesterday and will be the same as
tomorrow. But if people really pay attention to their everyday lives, they will discover that magic
moment. It may arrive in the instant when we are doing something mundane, like putting our
front-door key in the lock; it may lie hidden in the quiet that follows the lunch hour or in the
thousand and one things that all seem the same to us. But that moment exists—a moment when all the power of the stars becomes a part of us and enables us to perform miracles.
Joy is sometimes a blessing, but it is often a conquest. Our magic moment helps us to change and
sends us off in search of our dreams. Yes, we are going to suffer, we will have difficult times, and
we will experience many disappointments—but all of this is transitory; it leaves no permanent
mark. And one day we will look back with pride and faith at the journey we have taken.
Pitiful is the person who is afraid of taking risks. Perhaps this person will never be disappointed
or disillusioned; perhaps she won't suffer the way people do when they have a dream to follow.
But when that person looks back—and at some point everyone looks back—she will hear her
heart saying, "What have you done with the miracles that God planted in your days? What have
you done with the talents God bestowed on you? You buried yourself in a cave because you were
fearful of losing those talents. So this is your heritage: the certainty that you wasted your life"
Pitiful are the people who must realize this. Because when they are finally able to believe in
miracles, their life's magic moments will have already passed them by.

The Religiousness of Science

You will hardly find one among the profounder sort of scientific minds without a peculiar religious feeling of his own. But it is different from the religion of the naive man. For the latter God is a being from whose care one hopes to benefit and whose punishment one fears; a sublimation of a feeling similar to that of a child for its father, a being to whom one stands to some extent in a personal relation, however deeply it may be tinged with awe.

But the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation. The future, to him, is every whit as necessary and determined as the past. There is nothing divine about morality, it is a purely human affair. His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection. This feeling is the guiding principle of his life and work, in so far as he succeeds in keeping himself from the shackles of selfish desire. It is beyond question closely akin to that which has possessed the religious geniuses of all ages.


The Plight of Science

The German-speaking countries are menaced by a danger to which those in
the know are in duty bound to call attention in the most emphatic terms. The
economic stress which political events bring in their train does not hit
everybody equally hard. Among the hardest hit are the institutions and
individuals whose material existence depends directly on the State. To this
category belong the scientific institutions and workers on whose work not
merely the well-being of science but also the position occupied by Germany
and Austria in the scale of culture very largely depends.
To grasp the full gravity of the situation it is necessary to bear in mind the
following consideration. In times of crisis people are generally blind to
everything outside their immediate necessities. For work which is directly
productive of material wealth they will pay. But science, if it is to flourish, must
have no practical end in view. As a general rule, the knowledge and the
methods which it creates only subserve practical ends indirectly and, in many
cases, not till after the lapse of several generations. Neglect of science leads
to a subsequent dearth of intellectual workers able, in virtue of their
independent outlook and judgment, to blaze new trails for industry or adapt
themselves to new situations. Where scientific enquiry is stunted the
intellectual life of the nation dries up, which means the withering of many
possibilities of future development. This is what we have to prevent. Now that
the State has been weakened as a result of nonpolitical causes, it is up to the
economically stronger members of the community to come to the rescue
directly, and prevent the decay of scientific life.

Far-sighted men with a clear understanding of the situation have set up
institutions by which scientific work of every sort is to be kept going in
Germany and Austria. Help to make these efforts a real success. In my
teaching work I see with admiration that economic troubles have not yet
succeeded in stifling the will and the enthusiasm for scientific research. Far
from it! Indeed, it looks as if our disasters had actually quickened the
devotion to non-material goods. Everywhere people are working with burning
enthusiasm in the most difficult circumstances. See to it that the will-power
and the talents of the youth of to-day do not perish to the grievous hurt of the
community as a whole.