What I have Lived For

我為什麼活著 ——羅素

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governedmy 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.

有三種簡單然而無比強烈的激情左右了我的一生：對愛的渴望，對知識的探索和對人類苦難的難以忍受的憐憫。這些激情象颶風，無處不在、反覆無常地吹拂著我，吹過深重的苦海，瀕於絕境。

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.

我尋找愛，首先是因為它使人心醉神迷，這種陶醉是如此的美妙，使我願意犧牲所有的餘生去換取幾個小時這樣的欣喜。我尋找愛，還因為它解除孤獨，在可怕的孤獨中，一顆顫抖的靈魂從世界的邊緣看到冰冷、無底、死寂的深淵。最後，我尋找愛，還因為在愛的交融中，神秘而又具體而微地，我看到了聖賢和詩人們想象出的天堂的前景。這就是我所尋找的，而且，雖然對人生來說似乎過於美妙，這也是我終於找到了的。

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 can’t ,and I too suffer.

愛和知識，只要有可能，通向著天堂。但是憐憫總把我帶回塵世。痛苦呼喊的回聲迴盪在我的內心。忍飢挨餓的孩子，慘遭壓迫者摧殘的受害者，被兒女們視為可憎的負擔的無助的老人，連同這整個充滿了孤獨、貧窮和痛苦的世界，使人類所應有的生活成為了笑柄。我渴望能夠減少邪惡，但是我無能為力，而且我自己也在忍受折磨。

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

泰戈爾的詩：

Stray birds of summer come to my window to sing and fly away.

And yellow leaves of autumn, which have no songs, flutter and fall there with a sign.

On troupe of little vagrants of the world, leave your footprints in my words.

The world puts off its mask of vastness to its lover.

It becomes small as one song, as one kiss of the eternal.

The mighty desert is burning for the love of a blade of grass who shakes her head and laughs and flies away.

The sands in your way beg for your song and your movement, dancing water.

Will you carry the burden of their lameness?

"What language is thine, O sea?"

"The language of eternal question."

"What language is thy answer, O sky?"

"The language of eternal silence."

The mystery of creation is like the darkness of night—it is great.

Delusions of knowledge are like the fog of the morning.

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