‘Concerning what you write about thoughts of suicide,’ Engelmann added, ‘my thoughts are as follows’:

Behind such thoughts, just as in others, there can probably lie something of a noble motive. But that this motive shows itself in this way, that it takes the form of a contemplation of suicide, is certainly wrong. Suicide is certainly a mistake. So long as a person lives, he is never completely lost. What drives a man to suicide is, however, the fear that he is completely lost. This fear is, in view of what has already been said, ungrounded. In this fear a person does the worst thing he can do, he deprives himself of the time in which it would be possible for him to escape being lost.

Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: the duty of genius, New York, 1991, pp. 186-187