Three Passions(三种激情
作者：伯特兰·罗素 翻译：褚才刚
三种简单但是异常强烈的激情，主宰了我的生命。它们是：对爱的追寻、对知识的探索、和对人类苦难的同情。这三种激情，像狂风一样，放肆的把我吹来吹去——吹过悲苦的深海，到达了绝望的边缘。
我寻求爱，因为她给人以欢悦。这种欢悦如此巨大，让我常常牺牲生命的其他全部，只为得到片刻的这种愉欣。我寻求爱，还因为她减除孤独。这可拍的孤独，让颤抖的意识透过世界的边沿，看到了冰冷、怪诞、了无生机的险境。最后，我寻求爱，因为在爱的王国中，我秘密地渴望，终于看到了圣徒和诗人想象过的天堂的征象。这就是我所寻求的，也是有益于人类福祉的。起码，我发现了这点。
怀着同样的激情，我寻求知识。我企望理解人们的内心。我尝试过掌握用数字驾驭变化的“毕达哥拉斯之力”。这方面，我的所得还甚少。
爱和知识，就其所能地带人升入天堂。而怜悯往往把我拉回人间。因痛苦而哭泣的声响，萦绕于我的心间。处于饥荒中的孩子，被专权者迫害的受难者，被孩子视为可恨负担的无助的老人，以及这充满孤独、贫困、痛苦的整个世界，对人类本应有的生活做了一番嘲弄。我渴望消除罪恶，然而做不到。我也受着同样的苦楚啊！
这就是我的生活，我发觉这样活着是有价值的。如果还有机会，我会欣然地再这样活一次。
附：原文
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 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 tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flu. 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.
