Variants:
Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.
Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature, for in the final analysis we ourselves are part of the mystery we are trying to solve.
Source: Where is Science Going? (1932)
“There are mysteries which men can only guess at, which age by age they may solve only in part.”
1962, Rice University speech
“Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved”
Source: Big Stone Gap
“Persistence is the key to solving most mysteries.”
Source: Black Blood
“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.”
Attributed to Merton in a number of sources, the earliest located being Studia mystica, Volumes 5-6 (1982), p. 76 http://books.google.com/books?id=59EYAAAAIAAJ&q=%22problem+to+be+solved%22#search_anchor. This does not attribute a direct quote to Merton, but says "To use another of Merton's favorite distinctions, for Furlong Merton's life is seen principally as a problem to be solved, which it was, in the final analysis, successfully, rather than a mystery to be lived". The next-earliest source located is the 1998 book The Artist's Way at Work: Riding the Dragon by Mark Bryan and Julia Cameron, which attributes the exact quote to Merton on p. 152 http://books.google.com/books?id=CghAQDPahhcC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA152#v=onepage&q&f=false. In reality this seems to be a slightly altered version of the quote "The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved; it is a reality to be experienced" which appeared in the 1928 book The Conquest of Illusion by Jacobus Johannes Leeuw, p. 9 http://books.google.com/books?id=OFdVAAAAMAAJ&q=%22not+a+problem+to+be+solved%22#search_anchor.
Misattributed
As quoted in Introduction to Philosophy (1935) by George Thomas White Patrick and Frank Miller Chapman, p. 44
Variant translations:
I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence — as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.
Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavor to comprehend a portion, be it never so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.
1930s, Mein Weltbild (My World-view) (1931)
