Well, it is our fate to live in a time of crisis. To live in a time when all forms and values are being challenged. In other and more easy times, it was not, perhaps, necessary for the individual to confront himself with a clear question: What is it that you really believe? What is it that you really cherish? What is it for which you might, actually, in a showdown, be willing to die? . . . I say, with all the reticence which such large, pathetic words evoke, that one cannot exist today as a person- one cannot exist in full consciousness- without having to have a showdown with one's self, without having to define what it is that one lives by, without being clear in one's mind what matters and what does not matter. (1939)