The planet sustains its teeming...[billions] of living creatures, born without choice, yet struggling to avoid the inevitable end — death.  Man alone, discontented with entirely purposeless living, tries to reason out meaning.

But many, harassed by the pressure of circumstances, with energies absorbed in "the red mists of doing," do not lift their eyes to distant horizons but seek justification for living in immediate goals.   It is enough to live, to procreate so that others may live to procreate.

There are grandiose schemes of social improvement, of stupendous scientific advancement filling the world with switches and levers releasing the energies of the Universe in the service of man's desires.

Yet death take men in the midst of their dream.  These things which shall be are not for us but for those to come, to whom death also will come as they dream of their future. 

And so the planet spins in the great void, carrying its struggling burden.  Why?   Is the Universe a product of design and purpose?  Why were we born?  And having been born, why do we live?

These questions are not the product of an arid intellectualism.  Indeed, in some natures they are often a poignant cry for light, and few there are who can live without asking, "What's the use of it all?"  The question becomes urgent when suffering and frustration are experienced, but even life at its best assumes a shallow impermanency unless we can at least glimpse some pattern.