WHAT I HAVE LIVED FOR
by Bertrand Russell
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 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 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 gladly would
live it again if the chance were offered me.
