What I Have Lived For

生命的追求

Three passions （激情） , simple but extremely 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 here and there in a wild course, over a deep ocean of sorrow, reaching to the very edge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings joy － joy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of my 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 edge of the world into the cold immeasurable lifeless hole. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mysticminiature （缩影） , the bright vision of the heaven that saints （圣人） and poets have imagined. This is what I soughed, 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 grasp the * Pythagorean power by which number holds control above the change. 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 （回荡） in my heart. Children in starvation, victims tortured （折磨） by oppressors, helpless old people, a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery （嘲笑） of what human life should be. I long to lessen 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.

三种激情－－对爱情的渴望，对知识的探求，对人类受苦难的不可克制的怜悯。它们虽然简单但却强烈，势不可挡，已经支配着我的生活。这三种激情就像飓风一样，将我随意地吹向各处，越过深深的苦海，到达了绝望的边缘。

我追求爱情，首先因为它能带来狂喜，使人心醉神迷。我常常真愿舍去我生命的剩余部分，去换取这几小时的欢欣。其次，爱情解除了我的孤独－－那是一个人从世界的边缘看到深不可测的死亡的深渊就不寒而栗时感到的可怕的孤独。最后，我追求爱情是因为在爱情的结合中－－在一个神秘的缩影中，我已经看到了圣人和诗人曾经构想过的天堂中的美好事物。这就是我所追求的，也是我最终发现的，尽管它似乎对人类生活来说太过于完美了。

我用同样的激情去寻求知识。我一直希望能了解人们的内心世界。我一直想知道星星为什么会闪闪发光。我还想明白毕达哥拉斯的乘方，通过乘方数控制万物的变化。我已经获得了点点知识，但不多。

爱情和知识，它们尽可能地引导人们向上直达天堂。然而，怜悯却总把我带回人间。痛苦的哭声在我心中回荡。饥饿的儿童，被统治者折磨的受难者们，成为儿女们憎恨的包袱的无助的老年人以及孤独、贫穷和痛苦的世界，是对人类应有的生活的嘲笑。我想减轻这种罪恶，但我不能。因此，我非常痛苦。

这就是我的生活。我感到值得活着，如果有机会的话，我愿意再享受一次人生。

注： the Pythagorean power 毕达哥拉斯的乘方。毕达哥拉斯（约公元前 580 年－公元前 500 年）古希腊哲学家、数学家，在西欧他首次发现"勾股定理"。他的哲学观点之一为"凡物皆数，物在数中"。数支配万物，也构成宇宙的"秩序"。
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