"The temporal immortality of the soul of man, that is to say, its eternal survival also after death, is not only in no way guaranteed, but this assumption in the first place will not do for us what we always tried to make it do. Is a riddle solved by the fact that I survive forever? Is this eternal life not as enigmatic as our present one? The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time."

~ Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

This makes me think… Would I puzzle over the meaning of life as I do now if I did not have to face death? Isn't it my mortality that makes life a riddle to solve for me? I need to know the point of my being here for this short while, or, to know if it is not this short at all. I have little time to find out the point and to live it... and no way of being sure if I am right. Isn't that what adds poignancy to the ‘riddle’. It's a living riddle really, an existential one, not an abstract one. But would it be 'existential' in the same way if we were never to cease to exist? Would the word 'existence' mean anything when there is no opposite of it?

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Napoleon, when hearing about Laplace's latest book, said, 'M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its creator.'

Laplace responds, 'Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là. (I had no need of that hypothesis.)

~Pierre-Simon Laplace