Three passions I have lived for
[ 2006-04-12 09:37 ]
人的一生有大大小小很多個愿望，小到考試拿第一，找個好工作，擁有自己的別墅；大至找到一個相知相惜的愛人，成為一個名人，能夠周游世界……
談及愿望，英國著名哲學家羅素這樣說：我的一生中有三個愿望，淳樸而激越?？释麗矍椤⑶笏髦R和對人類苦難的無限悲憫。
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…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.
Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872 - 1970)
was a British philosopher, logician, essayist, and social critic, best known for his work in mathematical logic
and analytic philosophy.
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