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我為什么而活著？

三種單純然而極其強烈的激情支配著我的一生。那就是對于愛情的渴望，對于知識的追求，以及對于人類苦難痛徹肺腑的憐憫。這些激情猶如狂風，把我伸展到絕望邊緣的深深的苦海上東拋西擲，使我的生活沒有定向。

我追求愛情，首先因為它叫我消魂。愛情使人消魂的魅力使我常常樂意為了幾小時這樣的快樂而犧牲生活中的其他一切。我追求愛情，又因為它減輕孤獨感——那種一個顫抖的靈魂望著世界邊緣之外冰冷而無生命的無底深淵時所感到的可怕的孤獨。我追求愛情，還因為愛的結合使我在一種神秘的縮影中提前看到了圣者和詩人曾經想像過的天堂。這就是我所追求的，盡管人的生活似乎還不配享有它，但它畢竟是我終于找到的東西。

我以同樣的熱情追求知識，我想理解人類的心靈，我想了解星辰為何燦爛，我還試圖弄懂畢達哥拉斯學說的力量，是這種力量使我在無常之上高踞主宰地位。我在這方面略有成就，但不多。

愛情和知識只要存在，總是向上導往天堂。但是，憐憫又總是把我帶回人間。痛苦的呼喊在我心中反響回蕩，孩子們受饑荒煎熬，無辜者被壓迫者折磨，孤弱無助的老人在自己的兒子眼中變成可惡的累贅，以及世上觸目皆是的孤獨、貧困和癰苦——這些都是對人類應該過的生活的嘲弄。我渴望能減少罪惡，可我做不到，于是我感到痛苦。

這就是我的一生。我覺得這一生是值得活的，如果真有可能再給我一次機會，我將欣然再重活—次。

譯者佚名

What I Have Lived For

by Bertrand Russell

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 great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of 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 looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable 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 wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a 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 this 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.

楚塵文化 2015-08-23 08:40:34