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 verge of
despair.
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy --- ecstasy
so great that I would 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 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 whatI 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 away 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 reverberated 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 I would
gladly live it again if the chance were offered to me.