what i have lived for

本文作者伯特兰·罗素（Bertrand Russell， 1872-1970），英国哲学家、数学家、社会学家，也是20世纪西方最著名、影响最大的学者和社会活动家之一。其大部分著作都能把理论的深刻性和表达 的通俗性结合起来，既有亚里士多德、黑格尔的思辨性，又有伏尔泰的、达·芬奇作品的那种文采，其流畅清晰的散文在英国文学中享誉甚高。1950年，为了 “表彰他所写的捍卫人道主义思想和思想自由的多种多样意义重大的作品”，罗素被授予诺贝尔文学奖。    

     three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and
unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. these passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
     i have sought love, first, beacuse it brings ecstasy--ecstasy so great that i would often have sacrificed all the rest of my life for a few hours of this joy. i have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness-- that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness lifeless abyss. i have sought it, finally, because in the union of love i have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. this is what i sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what-- at last--i have found.
    with equal passion i have sought knowledge. i have wished to understand the hearts of men. i have tried to apprehend the pythagorean power by which number holds away above the flus. a little of this, but not much, i have achived.
     love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. but always pity brought me back to earth. echoes of pain reverberate in my heart. children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. i long to alleviate the evil, but i cannot, and i too suffer.
    this has been my life. i have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.