What I Have Lived For

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, because it brings ecstasy---ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of my life for a few hours for 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 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.

我為何而生

我的一生被三種簡單卻又無比強烈的激情所控製：對愛的渴望，對知識的探索和對人類苦難難以抑製的嶼。這些激情像狂風，把我恣情吹向四方，掠過苦痛的大海，迫使我瀕臨絕望的邊緣。

我尋求愛，首先因為它使我心為之著迷，這種難以名狀的美妙迷醉使我願意用所有的餘生去換取哪怕幾個小時這樣的幸福。我尋求愛，還因為它能緩解我心理上的孤獨中，我感覺心靈的戰栗，仿如站在世界的邊緣而麵前是冰冷，無底的死亡深淵。我尋求愛，因為在我所目睹的結合中，我仿佛看到了聖賢與詩人們所向往的天堂之景。這就是我所尋找的，雖然對人的一生而言似乎有些遙不可及，但至少是我用盡一生所領悟到的。

我用同樣的激情去尋求知識。我希望能理解人類的心靈，希望能夠知道群星閃爍的緣由。我試圖領悟畢達哥拉斯所景仰的“數即萬物”的思想。我已經悟出了其中的一點點道理，盡管並不是很多。

愛和知識，用它們的力量把人引向天堂。但是同情卻總把人又拽回到塵世中來。痛苦的呼喊聲回蕩在我的內心。饑餓的孩子，受壓迫的難民，貧窮和痛苦的世界，都是對人類所憧憬的美好生活的無情嘲弄。我渴望能夠減少邪惡，但是我無能為力，我也難逃其折磨。

這就是我的一生。我已經找到它的價值。而且如果有機會，我很願意能再活它一次。

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