What's the sole purpose of life?
Words of Wisdom from Bertrand Russell (1872-1914)
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 the 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 to 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 heart 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 would gladly live it again if the chance were
offered me.
The Autobiography of
Bertrand Russell (1967) London:
George Allen and Unwin Limited.
No comments:
Post a Comment