Preface

I believe with Schopenhauer that one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one’s ever-shifting desires … into the world of object perception. … Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way the peace and security he cannot find within the alltoo-narrow realm of swirling personal experience …

I am fascinated by your Vergil (sic) — and am steadfastly resisting him. The book shows me clearly what I fled from when I sold myself body and soul to Science — the flight from the I and the WE to the IT.

An uneasy feeling comes over me when the inevitable birthday nears. All year long the Sphinx stares at me in reproach and reminds me painfully of the Uncomprehended blotting out the personal aspects of life. Then comes the accursed day when the love shown me by my fellow man reduces me to a state of hopeless helplessness. The Sphinx does not let me free for a moment, and meanwhile I am troubled by a bad conscience, being unable to do justice to all this love because I lack inner freedom and relaxation.

All quoted in the book Albert Einstein by Banesh Hoffmann published by Paladin (1975)

All studies begin with an enquiry — getting to know — attempting to understand. The understanding needs to go through a further examination of the validity of the discovery and its usefulness. Later this poses further questions — a never-ending quest.

Freud at one stage of his life regarded himself as a conquistador, who attempted to discover the riddle of the sphinx, untrammelled by the desire to help people. To be a detached observer may have the advantage of getting nearer to the truth in some ways, and the human factor may distort the accurac