The 128 most classic philosophical essays in the world

Chapter 60 Why I Was Born
[UK] Russell
The longing for love, the search for knowledge, and an irrepressible pity for the suffering of mankind, are three passions, simple but powerful, which have governed my life.

The longing for love, the search for knowledge, and an irrepressible pity for the suffering of mankind, are three passions, simple but powerful, which have governed my life.These feelings have blown like winds through my uncertain life, sometimes even across deep oceans of anguish, right to the brink of despair.

I have sought love for three reasons. First, it brings me ecstasy sometimes - ecstasy so powerful that I would often have sacrificed all of life for a few hours of the joy of love.

I have sought, next, that it relieves loneliness -- that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss.

At last, in the union of love, I have seen, in a miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that sages and poets have dreamed, and this is the all I have sought in life.Too good for human life in general as it may be, this is what I have finally found through love.

With equal affection I have sought knowledge. I have longed to know the mind of man, and why the stars shine, and I have wanted to understand the power of Pythagoras.The possible realms of love and knowledge have always led me to the realms of heaven, but sympathy for human suffering has often brought me back to the real world, and those calls of pain have often echoed in my heart.

The starving children, the oppressed and the tortured, the old who are a burden to their children, and the existence of loneliness, poverty, and suffering around the globe are a disregard and irony of the ideals of human life.

I have often wished I could do my little to alleviate this needless suffering, but I have found that I have failed utterly, and that I suffer accordingly.This is my life, and I find that people are worth living.If someone gives me another chance to live, I will gladly accept this rare gift.

Heart mark notes
Russell is rich, and this kind of wealth does not refer to material, but spiritual.A life of pilgrimage to beautiful things, looking for the source of strength in love.A noble soul whose goal is to change the sorrow of mankind.This is a state that is difficult for ordinary people to reach. His mind has transcended time and the secular world, and he only lives for the world.His spirit has become an eternal existence.

In fact, the one eternal measure of greatness and smallness is whether everything you do makes sense.For a person, the terrible thing is not that you can't reach a certain goal or realm, but that you lose and forget what you once pursued.

(End of this chapter)