我为何而生？
作者：伯特兰·罗素
三股激情，单纯却无比强烈，一直主宰着我的一生：对爱情的渴望，对知识的追求，对人类痛苦不堪忍受的怜悯。这三股激情，如茫茫苦海上的狂风，反复无常，忽而将我吹向一边，忽而又将我吹向另一边，一直把我推到绝望的边缘。
我追逐爱情，首先因为爱情令人迷醉，这种感觉如此强烈，以致于我常常为贪一晌之欢而甘愿付出余生。我追逐爱情，其次因为爱情可缓解孤独——在那可怕的孤独之中，一个颤抖着的灵魂，掠过尘世边缘，向冰冷无情、深不可测、死气沉沉的渊谷张望。我追逐爱情，最后因为在爱情的结合中，我看到了圣贤和诗人预想天堂景象的神秘雏形。此乃吾之所求，对于人生，这看似太过美好，但最终天遂吾愿。
满怀着同等的激情，我追求知识，希望能够洞悉人类的心灵，探索星光闪烁的缘由，并尽力理解毕达哥拉斯*用数字支配万物流变的力量。我学有所获，但知之甚微。
爱情与知识，尽其所能将我引向天堂，但怜悯之心总把我带回凡间。痛苦哀号声在我心中阵阵回荡，面黄肌瘦的饥饿儿童，被压迫折磨的受害弱者，给子辈添赘的无助老人，以及被孤独、贫穷和痛苦充斥的整个世界，正哂笑着人类本该过的生活。我渴望能够减轻这些罪恶，但我无能为力，而且也深受其害。
此即我一生，我不枉此生。若上苍再给我一次重生的机会，我必欣然接受。
*译者注：毕达哥拉斯（公元前570年－公元前495年），古希腊哲学家、数学家和音乐理论家，毕达哥拉斯主义的创立者。主张“万物皆数”，认为一切真理都可以用比例、平方及直角三角形去反映和证实。毕氏定理即“勾股定理”。
初稿：2020年7月24日于美国加州洛杉矶
二稿：2020年8月3日于美国加州洛杉矶
What I have Lived For
By Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
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 great 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 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 this 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.
