My mental condition presented itself to me in this way: my life is a stupid and spiteful joke someone has played on me. Though I did not acknowledge a “someone” who created me, yet such a presentation⁠—that someone had played an evil and stupid joke on me by placing me in the world⁠—was the form of expression that suggested itself most naturally to me.

Involuntarily it appeared to me that there, somewhere, was someone who amused himself by watching how I lived for thirty or forty years: learning, developing, maturing in body and mind, and how, having with matured mental powers reached the summit of life from which it all lay before me, I stood on that summit⁠—like an arch-fool⁠—seeing clearly that there is nothing in life, and that there has been and will be nothing. And he was amused.⁠ ⁠…