爱华网Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governedmy life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, andunbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, likegreat winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course,over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge ofdespair.
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasyso great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of lifefor a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because itrelieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which oneshivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into thecold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, becausein the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, theprefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets haveimagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too goodfor human life, this is what--at last--I have found.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished tounderstand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the starsshine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by whichnumber holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, Ihave achieved.
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upwardtoward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth.Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children infamine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people aburden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty,and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long toalleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.
This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and wouldgladly live it again if the chance were offered me.
