Blaise Pascal worried about some of his friends who seemed to him to be avoiding the most important issues of life. Here is how he characterized them, almost in a parody: I know not who put me into the world, nor what the world is, nor what I myself am. I am in terrible ignorance of everything.… All I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least is this very death which I cannot escape. As I know not whence I come, so I know not whither I go. I know only that, in leaving this world, I fall forever