I. Free Will, Immortality

There must be some reason why humanity finds it so difficult to get anywhere with questions which lie so close to the efforts of the human soul, and which arise out of the deepest needs of the soul. The human soul incessantly tells itself that within the human being is hidden something that exists beyond birth and death, and which one should be able to investigate scientifically. It also tells itself that there must be something like free decision at the root of human action, a not being bound to natural necessity as a falling stone is. But when on the basis of its thinking, the soul then tries to investigate the things that are so important to it, it can set out with the greatest hopes of achieving something, but soon other considerations show that it is possible to say as much against it as for it.