Ecclesiastes 2:1

I will prove thee with mirth The self-communing of the man talking to his soul, like the rich man in Luke 12:18-19, in search of happiness, leads him to yet another experiment. He will lay aside philosophy and try what pleasure will do, and live as others live. The choice of Faust in Goethe's great drama, presents a striking parallel in the world of creative Art. The fall of Abelard is hardly a less striking parallel in the history of an actual life. Consciously or unconsciously (probably the former) the Debater had passed from the Hebrew and the Stoic ideals of wisdom to that of the school of Epicurus. The choice of the Hebrew word for "pleasure" (literally "good") implies that this now appeared the summum bonumof existence. But this experiment also failed. The doom of "vanity" was on this also. The "laughter" was like the crackling of burning thorns (chap. Ecclesiastes 7:6) and left nothing but the cold grey ashes of a cynical satiety. In the "Go to now" with which the self-communing begins we trace the tone of the irony of disappointment.