为何而生What I have Lived for

Posted 2021-05-18 Data+Science+Insight

为何而生

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.

我的一生被三种简单却又无比强烈的激情所控制：对爱的渴望，对知识的探索和对人类苦难难以抑制的同情。这些激情像狂风，把我的恣情吹向四方，掠过苦难的大海，迫使我濒临绝望的边缘。

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy---ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of my life for a few hours for 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.

我寻求爱，首先因为它使我心为之着迷，这种难以名状的美妙迷醉使我愿意用所有的余生去换取哪怕几个小时这样的幸福。我寻求爱，还因为它能缓解我心理上的孤独，在这种可怕的孤独中，我觉得心灵的战栗，仿如站在世界的边缘而前是冰冷，无底的死亡深渊。我寻求爱，因为在我所目睹的爱的结合中，我仿佛看到了圣贤和诗人们所向往的天堂之景。这就是我所寻找的，虽然对人的一生而言似乎有些遥不可及，但至少是用尽一生所领悟到的。

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.

我用同样的激情去寻找知识。我希望能够理解人类的心灵，希望能够知道群星闪烁的缘由。我试图领悟毕达哥拉斯所景仰的“数即万物”思想。我已经悟出了其中的一点点道理，尽管并不是很多。

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always it 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.

爱和知识，用它们的力量把人引向天堂。但是同情却总是又拽回到尘世中来。痛苦的呼喊声回荡在我的内心。饥饿的孩子、受压迫的难民、被儿女们当作负担的无助的老人，还有整个充满了孤独、贫穷和痛苦的世界，都是对人类所憧憬的美好生活无情的嘲弄。我渴望能够减少邪恶，但是我无能为力，我也难逃其折磨。

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

这就是我的一生，我已经找到了它的价值。而且如果有机会，我很愿意能再活它一次。

 

参考：What I have Lived for