我為何而生？
作者：伯特蘭·羅素
三股激情，單純卻無比強烈，一直主宰著我的一生：對愛情的渴望，對知識的追求，對人類痛苦不堪忍受的憐憫。這三股激情，如茫茫苦海上的狂風，反複無常，忽而將我吹向一邊，忽而又將我吹向另一邊，一直把我推到絕望的邊緣。
我追逐愛情，首先因為愛情令人迷醉，這種感覺如此強烈，以致於我常常為貪一晌之歡而甘願付出餘生。我追逐愛情，其次因為愛情可緩解孤獨——在那可怕的孤獨之中，一個顫抖著的靈魂，掠過塵世邊緣，向冰冷無情、深不可測、死氣沉沉的淵穀張望。我追逐愛情，最後因為在愛情的結合中，我看到了聖賢和詩人預想天堂景象的神秘雛形。此乃吾之所求，對於人生，這看似太過美好，但最終天遂吾願。
滿懷著同等的激情，我追求知識，希望能夠洞悉人類的心靈，探索星光閃爍的緣由，並盡力理解畢達哥拉斯*用數字支配萬物流變的力量。我學有所獲，但知之甚微。
愛情與知識，盡其所能將我引向天堂，但憐憫之心總把我帶回凡間。痛苦哀號聲在我心中陣陣回蕩，麵黃肌瘦的饑餓兒童，被壓迫折磨的受害弱者，給子輩添贅的無助老人，以及被孤獨、貧窮和痛苦充斥的整個世界，正哂笑著人類本該過的生活。我渴望能夠減輕這些罪惡，但我無能為力，而且也深受其害。
此即我一生，我不枉此生。若上蒼再給我一次重生的機會，我必欣然接受。
*譯者注：畢達哥拉斯（公元前570年－公元前495年），古希臘哲學家、數學家和音樂理論家，畢達哥拉斯主義的創立者。主張“萬物皆數”，認為一切真理都可以用比例、平方及直角三角形去反映和證實。畢氏定理即“勾股定理”。
初稿：2020年7月24日於美國加州洛杉磯
二稿：2020年8月3日於美國加州洛杉磯
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.
