我为什么而活着 - 伯特兰·罗素 (1872-1970)

What I Have Lived For - by Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) 

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.

(British Philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) won the Nobel prize for literature for his History of Western Philosophy and was the co-author of Principia Mathematica.)

Reference: http://users.drew.edu/jlenz/br-prolog.html

我为什么而活着 - 伯特兰·罗素 (1872-1970)

对爱情的渴望，对知识的追求，对人类苦难不可遏制的同情心，这三种纯洁而无比强烈的激情支配着我的一生。这三种激情，就像飓风一样，在深深的苦海上，肆意地把我吹来吹去，吹到濒临绝望的边缘。

我寻求爱情，首先因为爱情给我带来狂喜，它如此强烈以致我经常愿意为了几小时的欢愉而牺牲生命中的其他一切。我寻求爱情，其次是因为爱情可以解除孤寂一—那是一颗震颤的心，在世界的边缘，俯瞰那冰冷死寂、深不可测的深渊。我寻求爱情，最后是因为在爱情的结合中，我看到圣徒和诗人们所想像的天堂景象的神秘缩影。这就是我所寻求的，虽然它对人生似乎过于美好，然而最终我还是得到了它。

我以同样的热情寻求知识，我渴望了解人的心灵。我渴望知道星星为什么闪闪发光，我试图理解毕达哥拉斯的思想威力，即数字支配着万物流转。这方面我获得一些成就，然而并不多。

爱情和知识，尽其可能地把我引上天堂，但是同情心总把我带回尘世。痛苦的呼唤经常在我心中回荡，饥饿的儿童，被压迫被折磨者，被儿女视为负担的无助的老人以及充满孤寂、贫穷和痛苦的整个世界，都是对人类应有生活的嘲讽。我渴望减轻这些不幸，但是我无能为力，而且我自己也深受其害。

这就是我的一生，我觉得值得为它活着。如果有机会的话，我还乐意再活一次。

(英国哲学家罗素1950年获得诺贝尔文学奖，以表彰其“多样且重要的作品，持续不断的追求人道主义理想和思想自由”）

转载自：http://hi.baidu.com/_tiebing/blog/item/12f1dbd39ef17231960a1687.html

后记：

我无意间发现罗素这篇自传短文，读后觉得很有意思。

罗素就是为什么徐志摩要去剑桥大学留学的原因，徐志摩很想当罗素的学生。虽然徐志摩最后在剑桥没遇到罗素，志摩倒是在剑桥大学遇到林徽因。

之后的故事：http://nebulafreedom.blogspot.com/2011/11/blog-post_19.html